The road twisted ahead. It was like driving through hot, sodden cotton. He put another bitter caffeine pill in his mouth and swallowed it dry. His eyes held the road with difficulty.
And then, so suddenly that it was like a materialization, a lean man emerged from the side of the road, waving a C.O.'s jacket. A man wearing graystriped guard pants and the apricot T-shirt of the row.
"Oh, Jesus!" Harold Haines cried. He hit the accelerator. The man leapt into his headlights and vanished.
"It's him!" Haines moaned. "Williams. My God, I ran over him."
Haines hit the brakes and his car fishtailed wildly, scattering the roadside palmetto bugs, swapped ends, and came to a stop, its grille pointing away from the prison, not far distant in the suffocating night.
Harold Haines stumbled from his car. His headlights impaled the dirt road with insect-busy illumination. He couldn't see a body. Maybe he hadn't hit him after all. There hadn't been any impact sound. Unless the guy went under the chassis and between the wheels. Haines's mind flashed back to an incident many years ago when he had run over a cat.
The cat had unexpectedly leapt from a roadside hedge, directly in the path of Haines's car. There had been no place to swerve on the narrow one-way road. The cat it was a common tabby-disappeared under his bumper. No crush of bones. No thud of impact.
In his rearview mirror Harold Haines had seen the cat rolling in the wake of his car, apparently unharmed. He pulled over and ran back to the poor creature. It was on its back, its paws shaking violently, as if it were warding off an unseen predator.
Carefully, because it looked so helpless, Harold Haines used his shoe to nudge the agitated feline to the curb and out of the way of oncoming traffic. It stopped squirming when it nudged the curb. But its paws continued that spasmodic frantic twitching. And then the blood began to seep from its open, silent mouth. Only then did Harold Haines realize it was dying-or dead, its brain neurons causing that furious electric spasming.
Many years ago, but as fresh as the palmetto bugs that scurried from his path.
As Harold Haines loped down the road, he half-expected to see the condemned man lying in the dirt, on his back, his eyes wide and unseeing, his arms and legs twisting violently like ... like an electrocution victim's.
Instead, an apricot-hued flash came upon him in the darkness to chop him down with the hard edge of a hand to the side of Harold Haines's thick neck. He went down hard. He didn't know he twitched until he woke up-he had no inkling how much later-to find himself alone in the dark, his car gone, his hands and feet working jerkily, as if fighting off an aerial predator.
Harold Haines dragged himself to the side of the road and sobbed quietly. When he found his courage, he began a stubborn lope to the gates of Florida State Prison.
Haines was allowed through the gate by a tightlipped C.O.
"I was ambushed," he told the guard. "Williams. He must have escaped."
"We know. See the warden. Right now."
Warden McSorley was on the phone when Harold Haines was brought into his office. McSorley waved him to a seat impatiently and turned his attention back to his call.
"Yes, Governor. I do understand, Governor. But we can't hush something like this up. He was scheduled for execution"-McSorley looked at his watch-"excuse me, is scheduled to walk down the line exactly two hours from now."
McSorley listened in silence for so long Harold Haines was forced to pop another caffeine pill. He was starting to feel light-headed. He tried to follow the conversation from the warden's side, and although the words were clear, Haines was still not receiving. His fingertips vibrated like harp strings.
When McSorley finally put down the telephone, he hit an intercom button and spoke to his secretary. "Tell the watch commander to call off the search. No, no explanation. But I want the entire facility to remain on lockdown until we find out how the prisoner escaped."
Then McSorley looked up with tired eyes.
"Looks like you don't work today, Harold," he said.
"I quit," Harold Haines returned dully.
"I may join you. I had the most peculiar conversation with the governor. He told me in no uncertain terms not to pursue Williams. He escaped. I guess you know."
"He ambushed my car. Stole it."
"I wish you hadn't told me that. Look, Harold, I don't know what this is about. I may end up being hung out to dry, politically, but the governor said to abandon the search and make sure no word of this leaks. He wouldn't say why. Can I count on you?"
"I'm afraid," Haines said sincerely. His fingers twined like mating worms.
"Of what?"
"He's gonna come back to get me," Harold Haines said, burying his head in his hands. "I just know he is. You should have seen his eyes in the headlights. They were like tiger eyes. They glowed. His eyes were dead, but they glowed."
"Put it out of your mind," McSorley said, rising. "Whoever or whatever that boy is-or was-he's well on his way out of Florida and I doubt that he's ever coming back. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go down to Central Files, personally burn the Remo Williams file, and spit on the ashes."
Chapter 16
Outside Charleston, South Carolina, Remo Williams' stolen car ran out of gas. He coasted it to a stop in the breakdown lane of Route 95 North.
There was no point in putting up the hood as a distress signal. Remo had no I.D., no driver's license, no registration, and no money. And for all he knew, the state police had been alerted to his description. Although he was starting to wonder about that. He had encountered no roadblocks leaving Florida, no cruising state police in Georgia. It seemed too easy.
Remo left the car and started walking backward, his thumb hooked hitchhiker-style. He didn't expect to be offered a ride and was not disappointed. He was waiting for the first long-haul truck to come his way.
An eighteen-wheeler eventually rumbled up, and Remo, not thinking that what he was about to attempt was dangerous, if not impossible, leapt into the wake of its exhaust. He caught the tailgate in his hands and levered himself into sitting on it with a twisting spring of his feet. It was that easy.
Remo sat perched on the tailgate, watching the following cars. He was still too conspicuous. He tried the locking lever of the truck gate. It creaked open. Remo let the folding gate rise enough to admit him, and rolled inside.
The truck interior smelled of oranges. They reminded Remo that he was hungry. After pulling down the gate, he broke open a wooden crate and began peeling a dozen oranges with his hard fingers. He ate intently. Then Remo found a clear space and fell asleep, grateful for his full stomach and his life. He was living on borrowed time now, but all he cared about was sleep.
The truck stopped several times along the way, but the cargo door wasn't opened. The stink of diesel exhaust began to be a problem. Remo was having trouble breathing.
Although the darkness of the truck interior didn't seem to change, Remo could sense, somehow, that night had fallen. The truck was rumbling along, speeding up and slowing down as the driver managed the fast flow of superhighway traffic. Remo hoped the truck was continuing north.
He knew that there was more to the chain of events that had buffeted him since he woke up at Florida State than he understood. The answers, he felt, were somehow connected with a place called Folcroft Sanitarium.
The trouble was, he had no idea where Folcroft Sanitarium was-or if it actually existed.
But finding the University of Massachusetts and an anthropology professor named Naomi Vanderkloot should be no great challenge....
The drone of the eighteen wheels put Remo to sleep again.
Chapter 17
In his office overlooking Long Island Sound, the director of Folcroft Sanitarium watched as the cursor raced back and forth on the desktop computer screen, making phosphorescent green letters like a highspeed snail laying a trail of slime.
There were no reports of a man answering the description of the escaped death-row inmate Remo Williams coming in from any of the usual sources. A man like Williams was unpredictable. But without money or identification, he shouldn't get very far.
The director leaned back in the chair, which was so old it felt like the springs would break under the pressure of his weight. He steepled his tented fingers under his chin and half-closed his eyes in thought.
"Now, where would I go were I he?" he said aloud. "The man has no home, no relatives, no friends. He cannot come here, therefore Folcroft is safe."
His eyes darted to a new line appearing on the computer screen. It was some errant nonsense about a security threat emanating from the Chinese embassy in Washington. Time enough for such matters later.