“The escaped
convict!” The little twerp jabbed his finger at me. “Mazie Maguire.”
“I
am not!” I snapped.
The
kid’s mother whirled around. “It
is
her.” She gasped, yanking the boy to
her bosom.
He wrenched away,
twitching with excitement. “She was sneaking up on us!” he screeched. “I saw
her. I bet she was going to stab us.” He eyed me with greedy curiosity. “How
many people did you kill?” he asked.
More
people swarmed around, jostling for position. “Ohmygod!” shrieked a woman.
“It’s her! The one who shot a guard and broke out of prison!” She thrust a pen
and a ripped-out bank deposit slip at me. “Quick—sign it—before
they throw you back in the can!”
A
gray-haired woman with a walker elbowed her. “Wait your turn, toots. I was here
first. Now sign this
to Junior
and don’t forget to date it—”
I
felt a sharp tug at the back of my neck. Spinning around, I caught the little
creep hacking at my hair with a Swiss Army knife.
“I’m
gonna sell it on eBay!” he crowed, holding up a swatch of my hair. “Bet I get a
million bucks.”
I
grabbed for the knife, but he danced away. “When they catch you, you’re gonna
get the electric chair. Z-z-z-zt!”
“Wisconsin
doesn’t have the electric chair!” I was itching to smack that smirk off his
self-satisfied little face.
“Then
they’ll hang you!” He mimed a noose, bugging his eyes and lolling his tongue.
I jerked my head
around, trying to find an escape route, but the crowd was edging in on me,
cellphones held up like villagers brandishing crosses at a vampire.
“What’s
going on?”
A
security guard shouldered his way through the crowd, his shoulder patch
identifying him as a member of the Safe’n’Sound Security Squad
.
Blond,
clean-cut, and butt-chinned, here was Dudley Do-Right, keeping the toilets of
America safe for democracy.
“That
there is Mazie Maguire,” the elderly woman informed him. “The one who
machine-gunned two guards and busted out of prison in an armored truck.”
The
guard stared at me, flinty-eyed. “Hold it right there, lady. Let’s see some
identification.” His hand twitched toward his weapon, which was the size of an
elephant gun. Why would you need a gun that size in this place? To keep the
little kids from peeing in the pretend toilets? I edged away as he advanced,
but the autograph hounds hemmed me in. Couldn’t go forward. Couldn’t go left or
right.
Trapped! This was
where it all ended. I could almost feel the cold metal cuffs clamping onto my
wrists.
But something odd
was happening. The crowd wasn’t parting to let the guard through. If I hadn’t
known better I would have sworn they were deliberately obstructing him, the
gray-haired woman whomping her walker down on his foot, another woman tugging
on his arm, asking him to show her the way to the ladies’ room. Nudging the
knife-wielding brat aside, I forced my way to the balcony rail, looked over,
and saw that there was a twelve-foot drop to the floor below.
I put one leg
over the railing, then froze in place, assailed once again by the height virus:
clammy palms, queasy stomach, the sensation of being needled by a million
wasps. My brothers had attempted to cure my fear of heights the way the Navy
cures water-phobics: by dumping them in a pool, sink or swim. My brothers
dumped me off roofs. There was an art to it: I would cling to the roof edge by
my fingertips, crying and whining, until my brothers stomped on my knuckles. If
I survived the jump, my brothers rewarded me with bubble gum.
The therapy
didn’t take. Heights still literally made me sick.
I put the other
leg over the railing, teetering on tiptoes on the narrow lip of ledge. The
guard dived at me. I jumped.
She lands! She
scores a perfect two-point landing without breaking either ankle!
Above, Mr. Law
and Order jerked his gun out of its holster and ripped off a shot. Twitchy with
nerves, he shot high. A huge chip of porcelain zinged off a toilet seat
attached to the Great Wall and razored across my upper arm.
Jesus!
This guy was nuts. What was he using for ammo—cannonballs? Luckily he
couldn’t shoot for shit; his next shot hit a pink toilet on the top row. It
tore loose from its anchor bolts and plummeted into the toilet below, which
ripped loose in turn, knocking against the bowls next to it. The goon kept
blasting away as though he was saving the fake bathrooms from raving hordes of
Taliban.
Suddenly there
was an ominous creak, followed by the sound of a million bolts ripping loose.
And then the entire wall of toilets avalanched down, the higher ones knocking
into the lower ones in a thunderous chain reaction of shattering porcelain. The
toilets smashed to the floor and exploded, jagged chunks of china spraying
through the air like shrapnel. A black toilet bowl thumped down behind me like
a bomb as I hurtled toward the fire exit.
Every
tourist in the building had the same idea. Screaming and hysterical, they
stampeded through the doors and scrambled out into the parking lot. I ran along
with them, zigzagging between careening cars. The lot was fenced in by hedges
and there were only two exits. I sprinted for the closest one, but just as I
reached it, a patrol car squealed to a halt directly in my path. Two local cops
heaved themselves out and eyeballed the scene. This was where the cops bellowed
The jig is up, Maguire!
and made me flatten myself against a car.
Then I remembered
a scene in
The Fugitive.
Pursued through a building by the marshal,
Richard Kimble is halted by security guards. He yells to them that there’s a
guy with a drawn gun behind him. The guards tackle the marshal while Richard
Kimble once again skips away, leaving a thick layer of egg over the faces of
his pursuers.
“There’s a man
with a gun!” I yelled, pointing toward the building.
The
cops’ heads swiveled toward the design center. At that moment Mr. Safe’n’Sound
burst out, waving his weapon.
“Stop
her!” he bellowed at the cops, but he might as well have yelled
Columbine!
The cops, in an act of stupendous courage or courageous stupidity, launched
themselves at him. The last I saw they were going at it hand-to-hand, writhing
around on the blacktop, all of them cursing at the tops of their lungs.
Swerving
around the patrol car, I took off running. The trouble with this town was its
size. I ran out of Vonnerjohn in about thirty seconds and found myself on its
designer golf course, Whistling Creek. Once—back in my other
life—Kip and I had played nine holes here. The greens fee had been three
hundred dollars plus one kidney per person—but of course that had
included the cart rental. I plunged onto the course. The blood from my cut
dribbled down onto the manicured grass, laying out a nice, easy trail for the
bloodhounds to follow.
Escape tip #7:
Corn: it’s not just
for flakes anymore.
You
know the scene in
North by Northwest
where Cary Grant ducks into a cornfield
to avoid getting machine-gunned by the guys chasing him in an airplane? As it
turned out, cornfields
do
make excellent cover. The tasseled-out corn,
ten feet tall, closed over me like a rain forest canopy. Even someone in a
helicopter hovering two feet over the field couldn’t have spotted me beneath
the lattice of leaves.
I
figured I had a small window of time before the cops realized they’d let the
notorious murderess slip through their fingers. After that it would be open
season on Mazie Maguire. In the meantime, I was using every precious second,
pounding through the cornfields that bordered the village, trying not to
shriek when I crashed through the sticky webs strung up between rows by fat
spiders.
The corn rows ran ruler-straight for
miles. When I ran out of corn I commando-crawled through fields or duckwalked
through pastures. I slogged on through the blistering heat of midday. I walked
until my lungs felt as though they’d been skewered with barbecue forks and my
feet felt like they’d been pressed to hot coals. I waded through streams
because that was how Cool Hand Luke had thrown the bloodhounds off his trail.
So far I hadn’t actually heard any dogs, but there were helicopters, two of the
pesky things buzzing back and forth, sometimes flying so low I could feel the
wash of their rotors.
I
drank stream water, too thirsty to worry about any malign organisms lurking in
it. I wrenched off a cob of corn and gnawed on the kernels, but they sat like
sharp-edged pebbles in my stomach and I was soon nostalgic for the Kronenwetter
jelly beans. I worked generally south, detouring if I came out on a road and
spotted patrol cars with gimlet-eyed cops raking the ground with binoculars.
Miraculously, I wasn’t spotted.
When
it got dark, the helicopters went away. I kept walking, wondering how far I’d
come. What felt like a trip to the south pole was probably only about seven or
eight miles. My legs cramped. I had bugs on my teeth. My face felt radioactive
with sunburn. My stomach bitched and moaned. The corn that had been my friendly
protector by day turned menacing by night, the leaves rustling as though they
were telling secrets. The spiderwebs between the rows, now damp with dew, felt
even creepier. I kept whirling around, certain I heard stealthy footsteps
behind me. Somehow I’d wandered into Stephen King territory. I didn’t want to
be out here in the dark, feeling alone and unloved.
Why didn’t I just
give myself up? All I’d accomplished was to make myself miserable. I had bug
bites the size of gopher mounds and E. coli bacteria in my guts. What was the
point? Eventually I’d be caught anyway.
I’m confident
my team and I will have her in custody by the end of the day.
Irving Katz’s
sharp-angled face rose up before me. He was still out there hunting me; I could
feel him. He was smart, determined, and undoubtedly using all the tools at his
disposal: body heat sensors, night-vision goggles, and topographical maps
showing every ridge, rivulet, and rabbit hole within a thirty-mile radius. The
net was probably tightening around me at this very moment.
Something inside,
a small streak of perverse pride, reared up. However steep the odds against me,
I wasn’t going to let that arrogant city slicker meet his deadline. He was
not
going to have me in custody by the end of the day. Tomorrow, most likely. But
not today. Tapping into some hidden reservoir of energy, I slogged on.
I found myself
trampling through an unfamiliar crop, each footstep spuming a spicy fragrance.
It was like stamping through a giant packet of drawer sachet. Lavender! This
was a lavender field! A cozy farmhouse sat at the edge of the field, its
mailbox identifying the place as belonging to
The Kucksdorfs.
I could
see the Kucksdorfs through a lighted bedroom window—a mother and three
little Kucksdorfs. The kids were in their pajamas, bouncing on the bed, carrying
on with the kind of monkeyshines kids typically use to delay bedtime. A man—probably
Papa Kucksdorf—entered the room carrying a book. The kids scrambled over,
arranging themselves around him on the bed, elbowing one another for better
spots.
I nearly burst
into tears. Twenty years folded back. It was the Maguire farmhouse and my dad
was telling my brothers and me a bedtime story. Unlike my mom, who preferred to
read us classics like
Robin Hood
and
Treasure Island,
Dad spun stories out of his imagination, tales in
which the Maguire kids hunted buried treasure, sword-fought with pirates, and
vanquished dragons.
My parents gave
me that rarest of experiences: a happy childhood. We lived on a dairy farm
outside a small town called Quail Hollow. It was a wonderful place to grow up.
There were always kittens to cuddle, piglets to raise, eggs to gather. No kids
my age lived nearby so I spent a lot of time with my older brothers, Brendan
and Jimmy, playing football, falling out of trees, and building soapbox cars
out of lawn mower wheels and scrap lumber. When my brothers weren’t attempting
to kill me, they taught me the lessons that would serve me well throughout
life: never tattle, never whine, and never get caught.
Never
get caught, dummy!
Standing here with my nose pressed to the Kucksdorfs’
windows like the Little Match Girl, I was practically begging Katz to swoop in
and nab me. I forced myself to move on.
Cornfield.
Cornfield. Another cornfield. A full moon rose, silvering the night, making it
easier to navigate. A farm loomed just ahead. Barn, silo, sheds, house,
everything run-down and ramshackle. No lights shone from the house. No dogs
barked. Maybe nobody lived here. Creeping cautiously around the farmyard, I
found the unlocked door of a shed and let myself in. Dark inside, fragrant with
the smell of hay. As my eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness I could make
out haylofts above a wooden floor.