Head Shot (A Thriller): A Crime and Suspense Thriller (16 page)

Fifty-Five

Hank Campbell paused.  Yellow lights flashed across his eyes, his head swirled, and his entire body was drenched in sweat.  The blood lust he had felt before was now supplanted with the stronger instinct of self-preservation.  Hank had been told many times by many people that he was a prime candidate for a heart attack.

He turned and headed back toward the Bronco.

When he thundered out of the dense thicket near the highway, the first thing he spotted was the woman.  Her face was still a bloody mess, and the napkins were stuck to her forehead, the baseball hat tilted crazily on her head.  She looked like she'd been through hell and back with someone who had a sadistic sense of humor.

She was on her hands and knees, vomiting onto the dirt and gravel next to the car.

Hank had no time to stop and offer her assistance, his mind was busily planning the capture of the psychopath who Hank thought had pretty big balls to think he could escape in the woods.

Campbell knew these woods better than anyone in the county.  He had thoroughly hunted the Chequamegon forest both in and out of season, taking trophy deer with no regard to what he considered to be the DNR's bullshit laws.

In Hank's opinion, the man he was chasing couldn't have picked a surer way to die than to go mano y mano with Hank Campbell in the woods, and worse still, he couldn't have picked a worse section of the forest in which to try an escape.

This area was known as the Flambeau bluff, because the Flambeau river supposedly originated here, although no one had actually proven that fact.

Because of the high bluff and dense forest, there was really only one way to run.  It was a narrow gulch that provided easy traversing, and was a great place to look for deer, who ambled along the path unsuspecting of the hunters lined up on one side of the path.

Hank Campbell had hunted this very area many times.  And he had been successful on most of those outings.

His primitive mind told him that the killer, in a blind run, would naturally follow the path through the woods and eventually spill out on the only road bisecting the giant plot of state forest.

Millet Road was a long, winding dirt road full of rocks and washboard gravel.  Mostly used by the DNR, some hunters and trout fisherman had gotten to know the road on forays for game.

Hank Campbell knew it well.

He steered the Bronco around the car with the puking girl next to it, and raced down Highway 2.  In less than ten minutes, he saw the turn off for Millet Road, and took it.

Hank wiped the sweat from his brow.  His breathing had returned to normal, but he could feel the metallic taste in his mouth from the exertion of running in the woods, and his clothes were sopping wet with sweat.  He was getting his second wind, though, and the hard part was over.

But now came the tricky part.

How far down the road should he go?

There was no telling how much ground the guy could cover, nor how fast he could go.  Judging by the brief impression he got watching the man's dark form scamper up the bluff, Hank figured he was in pretty good shape.

But would he flee in a straight line, following the gulch?  Or would he get spooked by the road?

It took several minutes for Hank's feeble mental horsepower to see the answer.

By the time the man saw the road, it would be too late. 

All Hank had to do was scout out where the gulch met the road, set up the gun, and his big-city, crazy-ass serial killer would deliver himself to Hank like a salmon to a grizzly bear.

The Bronco barreled down the dirt road and Hank turned the lights off, then cruised more slowly.  After several minutes, a small gap in the forest caught his eye and he knew he was there.

He parked the Bronco and got his rifle ready.

Now it was only a matter of time.

Fifty-Six

Fuck the gunshot wound, Mike Sharpe thought to himself, these mosquitoes are killing me.

He was crouched next to a tree, just off the trail he'd discovered, listening for the sounds of his pursuer and wondering what to do next.

Mike leaned his head as far as possible to the right to try to get a look at his shoulder, but all he could see was a dark stain, he had no idea how badly he was wounded.

This was totally unreal.  Mike's mind shifted from total fear and panic to blind fury and back to fear every few seconds.

Now he was beginning to wonder if he'd made the right decision. Maybe the guy was on his way back to the car right now, to rape Laurie.

Something else occurred to him.

Mike remembered Mr. Hauser, his gym teacher in high school.  Hauser had been a huge man, he'd been an offensive lineman in the NFL for a few years before his knee blew out.  But the thing Mike remembered about him was that for a big man, he had very small feet and hands, and he moved with an incredibly deceptive grace.

What if the man following him was the same way?  These guys that lived up here all hunted, and maybe he could move through the woods silently.  Maybe he was a hundred yards away and Mike just couldn't hear him.

Fuck
.

He could run back the way he'd just come, and scope out the car, see what was going on there, and maybe be able to see how Laurie was doing.  He could stay put, hide out, and hope that the cops would be on the scene soon.  Or he could keep moving away from his hunter, and hopefully prolong the chase long enough until the cops would arrive.

In the end, he decided to keep moving, hopefully to get some kind of cell signal so he could call for help.  But also because he didn't want to be a sitting duck for someone who might know these woods a helluva lot better than he did.

He stood and began trotting his way through the darkness of the forest, following a narrow gulch.

He could keep up this pace for a long time.  His breathing had settled down, and he touched his shirt above his shoulder and it already felt crusty, which hopefully meant the bleeding had stopped.

Mike knew that if he was in bad shape, he'd be feeling dizzy and would faint if he lost too much blood, but that wasn't the case. Maybe he could get out of this without he or Laurie getting killed.

If he ended up on television again, he didn't want it to be a report on an actor being hunted down and killed in the woods, a case of mistaken identity.

As he raced down a small embankment, he had to circle a small stand of trees before he found the path again.  He had stepped up the pace and the pain in his shoulder was lessening the harder he ran.

He thought back to that day in Beta's office when he chose to go after the
Nation’s Most Wanted
role.

Fucking Beta, he thought.

None of this would've happened if he'd taken the part of the hemorrhoid sufferer.

This role, he thought with no small amount of dark amusement, had certainly turned out to be the bigger pain in the ass.

Fifty-Seven

Rodgers Bay Police Chief Don Lenzen plunked into the driver's seat of his squad car, his Afro pressed against the car's ceiling, and slammed the car into gear.  The rear tires smoked blue as he tore out of the police department's parking lot.

His lights and sirens on full blast, he roared down the main street of Rodgers Bay.

Lenzen reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out the card Ray Mitchell had given him, and he struggled to read the phone number scrawled on the back.

He hit the dome light and then with one hand punched the numbers into the car phone.

Ray answered on the first ring.

"Mitchell?  This is Chief Lenzen.  I got a call from a guy I know who said he's chasing your killer."

Lenzen listened briefly.

"On Highway 2, west of town.   Look for my cruiser."

Lenzen hung the phone up.

He flew past the stores and businesses downtown, then tore through the small residential neighborhoods before turning onto Highway 2. 

There was little traffic at this time of night, and the few cars on the road pulled over immediately to let the Chief by.

Although the situation felt entirely foreign to him, he knew how high the stakes were in this case, and he remained calm, staunchly determined to hold up his end of this case.

Lenzen had been the arresting officer on one of Hank Campbell's drunk driving charges, so he knew what Hank's Bronco looked like.  Because he was keeping his eyes peeled specifically for Campbell's vehicle, he almost drove right past Laurie, thinking that the Taurus was another car pulled over to let him by.  But when he saw the woman sitting on the gravel of the shoulder, she lifted her hand half-heartedly to wave him down, and he laid a thirty yard patch of rubber as he brought the cruiser to a stop.

He spoke into his police radio, notifying to the dispatcher his location as precisely as he was able to, glad that his deputies were on their way, as well as Mitchell.

Lenzen trotted over to Laurie, his hand on his gun.

As he approached, he could see that she was dazed, dried blood smeared her face and she was crying, her hair falling in disheveled ribbons across her forehead.

"Thank God, you're here, Officer," she said, struggling to get to her feet.  She reached out for Lenzen's arm and he supported her as she stood, swaying slightly.

The Chief looked closely at her cut, and her swollen lips, the laceration on the forehead.  He shined the flashlight on her shoulder, casting enough light on her face for him to get a look at her eyes.  The pupils were clearly dilated and he figured she had a concussion.

Using the radio attached to his shoulder, he asked the dispatcher to send an ambulance.

"Why don't you tell me what happened, ma'am?" he asked, forcing himself to be patient.

Laurie looked around as if she was seeing her surroundings for the first time.

"I don't know, I was asleep and I heard a crash, then I woke up, and then I remember seeing this huge guy standing over me, and then he was gone."

Lenzen realized his worst case scenario looked like it was coming true.

"Who was driving the car, ma'am?"

"Mike Sharpe, my boyfriend."

"Goddamnit," Lenzen said.

He could hear sirens coming down the road.

Where the hell was Hank?

"Can you describe what your boyfriend looks like?"

Laurie started to describe Mike, then paused, realization flooding her face, and she crumpled, Lenzen barely catching her in time, preventing her from crashing to the ground.

"Oh my God, nooooooo!" she screamed, and began sobbing.

Fifty-Eight

Ray Mitchell fish tailed onto Highway 2 and saw flashing lights and heard the sirens ahead.  He raced forward, and discovered that he was behind an ambulance and several other cop cars.

The phone call from Lenzen had caught him off guard.  He was hoping for leads from the show to come in, but he had not been expecting this to happen at all.

The questions raced through his mind.

Was it Ferkovich?  Had one of the locals really spotted him and managed to engage him in a pursuit? 

Ray considered the prospects of a civilian finding Ferkovich, and wasn't sure whether to jump for joy or pray to God it was the wrong guy.

Mitchell knew that
Nation’s Most Wanted
had racked up some impressive figures in mobilizing the public to guide law enforcement officials to the location of suspects.  But he didn't know of any cases where civilians actually apprehended the perps.

Ferkovich was dangerous, and Ray didn't want any more innocent blood to be spilled by the psychopath.

Well, he would find out soon enough.

Ray pulled the car in behind the mass of lights and quickly tracked down Lenzen in the crowd.  The Chief was surrounded by deputies and was walking next to the paramedics, who were carrying a stretcher to the ambulance.

On the stretcher, Ray saw a woman who looked like she'd gone a few rounds with someone's fists.

Lenzen spotted Ray.

"This is incredible, Detective,” the Police Chief said.  “According to that woman," he said, gesturing toward the ambulance that was now pulling a U-turn on the highway and heading for the hospital, "the driver of this vehicle was Mike Sharpe, the actor who portrayed Ferkovich on tonight's episode of
Nation’s Most Wanted
."

Lenzen almost looked sheepish.

"You don't mean..." Ray started to say.

The Chief nodded his head.

"I'm afraid our boy Hank Campbell confused the actor with the real McCoy."

"Jesus Christ."

Lenzen caught Ray's eye.

"Couple more things.  There's blood on the driver's side door, the driver's seat, and the front passenger seat."

"The woman's?" Ray asked.

"Nope.  She said she never left the back seat."

"Oh, Christ."

"Hank's a hunter, he probably had a gun in his truck.  So he must have shot the actor, but it looks like the guy got out of the car and made it into the woods."

"So where's this Campbell?"

"Well, according to one of my deputies, there's a dirt road up ahead, Millet Road.  Apparently it circles around this section of the forest.  He thinks that if the actor ran into the woods, Hank may have driven up ahead to cut him off."

"If he's a hunter, why wouldn't he have followed him into the woods?"

Lenzen again looked sheepish.

"Hank's a big guy, 6'6", three hundred and fifty pounds.  There's no way he could win a footrace through these woods."

Ray caught something in the Chief's tone, but bit his tongue.  Lenzen continued.

"I'm going to send in two deputies to track the actor from behind.  If he's lost much blood, he may not make it all the way out to Millet Road.  If that's the case, I don't want him bleeding to death out here.  Plus, if he's able, he may try to circle back.  If he does, they'll be able catch up with him."

He gave the signal to the waiting deputies who retrieved shotguns from the squad cars and disappeared into the woods.