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Leaving the warehouse, Stickman kept an eye on the handcuffed man in the rearview mirror. He stepped from the pickup and walked back to the overhead door, reaching in to press the control button. He returned to the pickup, feeling the man’s eyes, knowing he would snatch the cell phone when the door closed.
As they headed toward the interstate, they passed an automotive store and, on impulse, Stickman circled the block to pull in. The clerk did, indeed, have in stock a brake light for the popular pickup. Stickman also found a compound to fill the bullet holes. They looked like splatters of mud when he finished the patch job in the store’s parking lot a few minutes later. He was opening a small toolbox for a screwdriver when a patrol car cruised past. With his nerves fraying, Stickman opted to repair the brake light at the first rest area.
“How you doing?” he asked, getting back in the pickup.
“I’ll make it,” Maple said weakly. “You wouldn’t know what to do with a twenty-five million dollar corpse.”
“You’ve got a point. I’d better keep you alive.”
Stickman wasn’t confident Maple would make it without a doctor’s care. The direct hit had done a lot of damage, cost him a lot of blood. Stickman wondered if an emergency room visit were possible, but seeking help for a gunshot wound was a huge risk. Even in the fading light, he could see a sheen of perspiration on Maple’s face. Rosy seepage blemished the front of his shirt from the bandaged shoulder, the back no doubt worse. Stickman wished they had spent more time on medical training over the years.
The pickup blended into rush hour traffic, just another big honking pickup slowly making its way home. Or so they wished. A New Jersey State Police car parked on the right shoulder suddenly was moving, flipping rooftop lights on as he pulled behind their right rear bumper. “The pickup with Pennsylvania plates, pull to the side of the road. Now!”
Stickman immediately followed the order. A tall patrolman unwound himself from the marked car and approached. He was so tall that he squatted rather than bent over to draw even with Stickman’s window. “I need to see your driver’s license, sir. Do you know you have a brake light out?”
“Yes sir. I noticed it not long ago. I think it was vandals, the way the cover is smashed,” Stickman answered, handing over the license. “Anyway,” he continued, gesturing at the boxes on the dashboard, “I stopped a few miles back and got what I need. Planned to fix it at the first rest area.”
“I see. That will be fine,” the lanky officer said, handing Stickman back his license. Leaning in slightly, the officer peered intently at Maple. “Your friend doesn’t look so good. Looks like his shoulder is bleeding.” As he took a half-step back and raised himself to a crouch the officer’s right hand moved to the butt of his handgun. “I want both of you to get your hands where I can see them, then step slowly from the vehicle. You, driver, first.”
Stickman’s hands came up slowly, a Glock in the right one. As it cleared the door the patrolman found himself looking down a gun barrel for a slice of a second before his world went black. The round struck the bridge of his nose and he sat straight down, jaw dropping as he flopped backwards into the roadway. A SUV veered sharply to avoid him, hitting the front fender of a car in the next lane. The SUV driver stopped and began screaming at Stickman, “I think you killed that man! You killed that cop!”
Stickman ignored him. The exit ramp just ahead offered escape and he gunned the pickup to the right, roaring down the shoulder past the slow-moving traffic. The exit had two lanes but all the traffic was on the right. A lagging driver gave Stickman room to cut left between cars, clipping the front car’s rear bumper. Speeding up the open lane, he caught a yellow light and turned left, crossing over the interstate. Almost immediately they were in a residential area and, with exit ramp traffic still in sight, Stickman turned onto a quiet street. He took the first right and casually drove a few blocks before returning to the street he had exited. They were below the sight line of the ramp traffic.
Without doubt, a flood of 911 calls had frantically reported an officer being shot, and every squad car within miles was rushing to assist. Maple was only semi-conscious, mumbling that he wanted to help. Telling him to rest, Stickman drove with one hand and one eye on the road as he punched GPS buttons to call up a map showing their location. Not far ahead was a larger road. Stickman took it with no clear idea of where he was going, but satisfied to know it was west and away from a dead cop. Within a mile he met two police cars, sirens blaring and lights flashing. “Good,” Stickman told the incoherent Maple. “They’re still in rush-to-the-scene mode. Maybe we can get far enough out to avoid roadblocks.”
He stopped at a municipal park and in the shadows of a bandstand changed the brake light. He hadn’t wanted to stop so soon, but the repair was the best thing he could do to avoid being stopped again. Stickman worried, though, that the patrolman could have radioed in why he was stopping the F-150, with a full description.
He kept nosing west, roughly parallel to Interstate 78 until traffic grew light, then started fretting about any Ford F-150 being suspect. Near Spruce Run Reservoir in western New Jersey he stopped at a remote copse of trees. Changing Maple’s bandages, he didn’t see signs of infection, but couldn’t be sure. All he could do was make him comfortable in a sleeping bag.
Awake much of the night, Stickman kept tapping the “seek” button for radio reports that barely changed. The 39-year-old patrolman was the married father of two small children. A dragnet had been thrown up but as best Stickman could tell, it was behind them. A couple reports speculated about the killer being involved in the embassy or Mall of America attacks, but had nothing supporting that from law enforcement. The unchanging reports encouraged Stickman, who reasoned that police were struggling to find a warm trail. There was no news about Hoboken police investigating a grisly murder scene in a warehouse. Apparently the handcuffed man called friends and was now an arms dealer, whether to jihadists or others.