The Truth of the Matter (20 page)

He heard footsteps as the young worker came after him around the front of the car.

“Hey! Hold on, you!”

Roebuck turned, the .38 in his hand leveled at the man’s midsection.

Fright and puzzlement crossed the young, handsome face. “What goes on here?”

Roebuck heard the edge of fear in the voice, felt the sudden shift in the delicate balance. He had the power now.

“Stay where you are, Junior.” Roebuck’s fingers flexed around the gun butt. “Now, what are you doing out here?”

“I work here. I forgot my lunch and came out to get it, that’s all.”

“Which car is yours?”

The slender man pointed to a late model red Ford.

“Let’s get in,” Roebuck said, putting hardness in his command.

Roebuck ordered the man behind the wheel, then got in on the passenger’s side and sat with the gun nestled in the crook of his elbow, still aimed at his young hostage.

“Look,” the man began, “I gotta work….”

“Drive, Junior!”

The red Ford pulled out of its parking space with its headlights off. Roebuck ordered the car stopped on the driveway just outside the floodlit area of the lot. Ellie ran out of the darkness and scrambled into the back seat behind Roebuck, He saw the young man’s blue eyes follow her blonde figure in surprise, unable for a moment to look away.
I’ll bet you’d like some of that
, Roebuck thought smugly, juggling the gun,
if you weren’t so scared!

“Who’s this?” Ellie asked.

“He’s a young fellow who’s lending us his car,” Roebuck said. “Turn your lights on and drive, Junior.”

They drove south for an hour in silence, the young man trying to concentrate on his driving but finding his attention centering on the revolver that was aimed at him.

“I wouldn’t try anything if I were you,” Roebuck said tersely. “I’m wanted for killing four F.B.I. agents in a shootout and I don’t have a
damn
thing to lose.”

“Listen,” the man said in a scared voice, “this ain’t any of my business. All I want is to take you where you want to go and get out of it.”

Roebuck noticed the young man’s eyes flick to the rear view mirror as he spoke, appealing to Ellie’s sympathy.

“She’s not a bad-looking woman, is she?” Roebuck said.

The slender man didn’t answer, but his grip on the wheel tightened.

Roebuck smiled. “That’s a steel mill you work at, isn’t it?”

“We bake bread,” the man said. “It’s a bakery.”

“Oh.” Roebuck steadied the gun in his hand. “I couldn’t tell in the dark.”

They had been traveling a desolate strip of highway now for the past ten minutes, a straight gray line between black, borderless fields. Only darkness lay ahead of them.

“Pull over here, Junior!” Roebuck commanded. He saw his captive draw a sharp breath.

“Leave the engine running,” Roebuck said when the car was parked on the shoulder of the road. He didn’t say anything else for a full minute, watching the fright crawl over the lean, handsome face.

“Nobody’s going to hurt you,” Ellie said from the back seat. “You just have a good walk ahead of you.”

Roebuck got out of the car and motioned for the young man to scoot across the seat and get out on the same side. Ellie got behind the wheel while the two men stood facing one another beside the highway, the revolver between them.

“We better get going, Lou,” she said. “A car’s liable to come along.”

“That’s right,” Roebuck said. “Back up, Junior.” He waited until the lean man was ten feet away before waving the gun for him to stop. Then Roebuck got in the car and shut the door, still aiming the revolver at the young man through the open window. He could see the slender body tighten, tensing itself for the rip of a bullet. The thin, handsome face was drawn, the eyes wide in the moonlight and riveted to the gun barrel.

Roebuck lifted the revolver to point directly at the frightened face, his finger trembling on the trigger.

“So long, Junior!” he screamed as the car roared away. He jerked his hand at the last instant and the gun exploded, firing the bullet almost straight up into the night sky.

The young man instinctively dived to the ground with a startled shout.

“I only scared him!” Roebuck yelled as Ellie picked up speed, her eyes fixed straight ahead on the highway. “I only scared him…!” His voice trailed off on the rush of wind into the car.

Roebuck and Ellie were traveling again.

T
HEY HAD DRIVEN
south long enough. Roebuck wheeled the red Ford to the west less than an hour after they’d left its young owner shaken by the side of the road.

It felt good to be traveling west again, aimed like an arrow toward a land of sun and perpetual summer. Roebuck wondered why he instinctively sensed safety to the west, danger to the east. Why had he run west after Ingrahm’s death instead of east to one of half a dozen closer large cities he could have lost himself in? Perhaps that was it, losing himself, ceasing to exist to everyone else and so to himself. The anonymity of a big city horrified him. Then there was the vastness of the west to run to before being confronted with an ocean. Didn’t the fear of every animal decrease in proportion to the vastness of the area into which it could retreat?

Roebuck snorted. Animal? He was no animal; he was a man!

As soon as they could, Roebuck and Ellie stole another car, this time off the lot of a large A&P supermarket. They hid the red Ford in the darkness behind the V formed by two huge billboards constructed to face both lanes of traffic. From each billboard smiled the massive sincere face of a political candidate in the upcoming elections. Roebuck wished they could have hidden the cruiser there, to be found in the black crotch of that gigantic political pitch. What an ironic delight that would have been, a final tweak of the nose at Boadeen!

“When do you want to stop someplace?” Ellie asked as they sped along the highway in their new car, a yellow Mercury sedan.

“Late,” Roebuck said. “About one or two. We need distance.” He squinted dramatically into the onrushing night.

“I think we got away clean.” Ellie smiled and glanced backward. “They might not connect this car with us at all.”

“Maybe not,” Roebuck said wisely. “The way we hid the Ford it might not be found for a long time.”

As they drove on, that first flush of freedom from their narrow escape began to wear off of Roebuck, and the worry began to set in again, nagging, pecking, corroding his peace of mind like acid. He sat watching the wavering white center line play out before the headlights of the car, and far ahead the distant red pinpoints of taillights, giving some clue to the twists and turns of the dark road. Roebuck thought with dread of the dangers that lay ahead of them, the vast, efficient machinery of the law, out to get him, out to kill him now or later, the cold business of spilled blood. And somewhere, watching, following, was Benny Gipp. He tried to ignore the headache that began throbbing behind his eyes. Inexorably the joy of sudden freedom was turning to a disturbing sense of naked exposure.

Ellie twisted the rear view mirror and began arranging her hair as best she could with a broken-toothed comb. “I’ve seen enough woods for a while. I itch all over.”

“Yeah,” Roebuck said, “you’re not too at home in the woods.”

Ellie smiled at herself in the mirror as she combed a tangle from a blonde lock. “I did all right, I guess. We didn’t get lost or caught.”

Roebuck stared straight ahead, listening to the low rasp of the comb through her hair. Was she thinking of that night he’d got lost in the woods? Had she read something in his voice then, sensed the fear in him as he’d worried an animal might?

“You didn’t slow me down too much,” he said. He glanced over at her with a grin. “All in all you’ve been worth having along.”

She smiled back.

Or was she smiling through him? Roebuck felt again the pressure on his arm as she pulled his sleeve to step out onto the road where Boadeen’s cruiser was. She couldn’t think he had been afraid. He was only being careful, methodical. There are times for action and daring, but that hadn’t been one of them. Suppose the whole thing had been set up by Boadeen, and that he and his deputy had been waiting in the woods on the other side of the road? It had been nothing but a lucky break, being able to steal the sheriff’s cruiser. Just like Ellie to step right into a possible trap.

Roebuck whizzed around a brightly lighted tractor-trailer and cut back just in time to miss an oncoming set of headlights.

“Should you drive so fast, Lou? We might get stopped or something.”

“No cops along this kind of highway,” Roebuck said. “Don’t be afraid to take chances. The only reason we got this far is because we dared.”

“I guess you’re right.” Ellie was finished with her hair, so she twisted the mirror back into position and put the comb in the glove compartment. “Look,” she said in a pleased voice, “a five dollar bill.” She held it up for Roebuck to see. “It was laying right there in the glove compartment!”

“So what?”

“So we can use it.” The childlike pleasure in her voice had given way to vague annoyance. “We’re not independently wealthy, you know.”

Roebuck didn’t change expression. “We’ve still got plenty of money.”

“Less than you think,” Ellie said. “Some of our money was in the suitcase we left in that pickup truck.”

She was right! Roebuck ran their speed up another five miles an hour. She was always right. Or seemed to be, anyway. He had forgotten the money in the plaid suitcase. How much had it been? Three hundred dollars? Five hundred?

“There was almost six hundred dollars in there,” Ellie said.

There was triumph in her voice, Roebuck thought. She was glad they’d lost the money! For the first time Ellie was really beginning to aggravate him.

He reached into his pocket for his wallet and tossed it into her lap. “Count this.”

He listened as she flicked through the bills.

“Almost seven hundred dollars.”

“That means there was another seven hundred in the suitcase,” Roebuck said. “You were wrong as usual.”

“I didn’t count that money, Lou.” She sounded hurt. “You put it there.”

Roebuck took a corner too fast. “You know what they say about one basket.”

“Well, I didn’t say you made a mistake, Lou. It was just a bad break we lost it.”

“Tell you the truth,” Roebuck said, “when we jumped out of the truck I yelled for you to grab the suitcase. You were closest. I didn’t know you didn’t have it until we were too far away to go back.”

“I didn’t hear you, Lou.”

“You were excited.”

Low silence, the hum of the tires on the road.

“I suppose you’re right,” Ellie said at last.

Roebuck briskly punched in the car’s lighter. “Give me a cigarette.”

Smoking seemed to lessen the pain in Roebuck’s head. He smoked cigarette after cigarette as they drove on through the night. Ellie had turned on the car radio to listen for news, and the soft, relaxed flow of music from some distant town helped to soothe his nerves. Around them in the darkness the rolling hills were getting shallower, farther apart. The land was unlimbering, stretching out into flatness like a motionless earth wave spewing itself onto a mammoth beach. They were almost into Kansas.

“That looks like a motel,” Ellie said, pointing through the windshield at a lighted sign about a mile ahead of them. “Why don’t we stop, Lou?”

Roebuck squinted at the blinding beams of approaching headlights, then he winced as the car shot past them with a blast of air and glaring yellow light.

“I was going to pull in there,” he said, rubbing the base of his neck where the muscles were stiffening. “You’re probably getting tired of traveling.”

“I’m just afraid we’re going to have an accident,” Ellie said. “You haven’t slept for a long time.”

Roebuck flicked his cigarette butt out the window like a tiny rocket. “I can go a long time without sleep.”

They checked into the Wayside Motel, a modern two story building built on a square around a swimming pool. They requested a room on the first floor toward the back. So it would be quiet and they could be near the pool, Roebuck had told the man behind the desk.

“It sure is a little room,” Ellie said, looking around as Roebuck shut the door behind them.

She had a way of sizing up every room she walked into, he thought irritably, as if she had to make a scaled, itemized drawing.

“The room is fine,” he said, sitting in the one chair and working off his boots. “The room is goddamn fine!”

“Don’t get mad, Lou.” She walked over and flicked on the light above the double bed. “There’s no reason to get mad.”

She was right, Roebuck realized. There wasn’t any reason.

Ellie tested the mattress with the flat of her hand. “I’m just used to being outside, I guess. Any motel room’d seem small.”

Roebuck carried his boots into the bathroom and wiped the dust off them with toilet paper. He’d feel better when he got them shined.

He heard the faint rustle of Ellie removing her clothes, and he walked back in and set the boots by the bed.

“We’ll have to buy some more stuff tomorrow,” he said, stepping out of his pants. “Food, something to wear….” He walked to the door in his jockey shorts and double checked to make sure it was locked.

“We’re safe here,” Ellie said with a smile. Wearing only panties and bra, she slipped beneath the folds of white sheet. “Like in a cocoon.” The smile was still on her face as she closed her eyes.

Holding that picture of Ellie in his mind, Roebuck turned off the reading lamp. He got into bed and made love to her, roughly, forcibly. He slapped, he dug his fingernails into the soft, round meat of her buttocks. And she met him all the way, building, building, biting and moaning into the burning flesh of his neck.

It was over, with long, mournful sighs that seemed never to fade.

Roebuck rolled onto his back, pulling out of her warmth and wetness, back into the cold, real world. The thermostat clicked and the air conditioner began to hum.

“Lou?” Beneath the sheets her fingertips brushed the side of his thigh pleadingly.