WE SPRINT AROUND the hotel, to the parking lot. There’s a gathering of cops positioned around the front door. But the village PD have obviously concentrated their efforts on the back of the building where our hotel room is located and where we had easy access to the exterior.
“We need a car,” I say, gazing at all the vehicles parked in the lot. “We can’t just hop a bus.”
We’d taken the bus up north from Albany. The car Penny and I had before I went to prison was sold off a long time ago.
“We don’t have keys,” Penny stresses. “How the hell we gonna steal a car, Sidney?”
“I learned a thing or two in prison, Pen. Plus, I have the fingers of a surgeon. Problem is, I need to find an older model to work with.”
We still haven’t been spotted by the cops positioned in the near distance. But that doesn’t mean we’re not being spotted on the hotel’s exterior mounted CCTV cameras in real time. Then, Penny raises her arm, points.
“What about that one there, Doc?”
I turn, spot the vehicle that’s caught her attention. It’s an old Jeep. A CJ Wrangler, probably dating back to the early eighties. There’s no top on it, hard or soft, and no doors. It means we don’t have to worry about door locks.
“Good eyes, Pen. Now let’s just hope it’s got enough gas.”
We go to the Jeep, which is parked in between a Mercedes sedan and a brand-new Ford F-150 pickup truck.
“Hop in,” I say. “We’re gonna make this quick.”
Reaching under the steering column, I feel for the spaghetti of wires with the index fingers and thumbs on both my hands. I pull them out, exposing them. There’s a series of four wires, but it’s the wires that bookend all the others that have my full attention. A red wire and a blue wire connected to the starter. What I need to do, in theory at least, is tap their ends together, and that should create the spark needed to fire up the engine. Problem is, I need something metal to create the proper bridge between the wire ends.
Turning to my wife. “Pen, you got a safety pin or anything like that?”
She reaches into her bag, rummages around, comes back out with a paperclip.
“How about this?”
“Perfect.”
I bend the paperclip so that one end is touching the blue wire, the other hovering over the red. I’m just about to touch the red wire when I hear the shouts.
“That’s him!” comes the voice of a man. “That’s O’Keefe there!”
I shift my focus on the gathering of cops at the hotel entrance. Standing in the middle of them is the desk manager. He’s pointing at me.
“There’s the murdering son of a bitch!” he shouts once more.
The cops turn towards us, draw their weapons, enter into a sprint. Pressing both feet against the rubber floor mat to ground myself against electrocution, I touch the paperclip to the red wire. Sparks shoot out, but the Jeep starts up with a hearty roar.
Left foot on the clutch, the right on the gas, I grind the gear into reverse, pull out of the parking space. Hitting the brakes, I throw the shift into first, and burn rubber. The cops go down onto their knees, combat position, the black barrels on their service weapons staring us in the face.
Reaching out, I grab hold of Penny’s shirt, pull her down into my lap. I lower my head as the pop, pop, pop of discharged weapons fill the air and the bullets whiz past my head like hornets.
“Why are they trying to kill us?!” Penny screams. “They’re supposed to be on our side.”
“Don’t talk!” I shout, as I speed the length of the parking lot, knowing the only thing standing before the Jeep and the open road is four Lake Placid police officers.
“I’m not going to stop!” I scream, throwing the shift from second to third, the big V6 engine roaring.
I’m convinced I’m about to run all four officers down when, at the very last second, they leap out of the way. Peering into the rearview, I see them take aim once more, fire their weapons at will. More bullets whiz past, one of them bursting through the windshield, making a nickel-sized hole, from which several cracks emerge.
Heading out onto Main Street, I hook a left, and gun the engine past Olympic Center on our right and the Village Police Station on my left. From there I turn onto the road that will take us south and into the Adirondack mountain range.
State Highway 73.
The highway through the forest.
“You can get up,” I say to Penny, pulling on her shirt.
She rises, slowly, cautiously, as if the police are right on our tail. Something that will happen sooner than later. That is, if I can’t find a suitable place for us to hide while we try and make sense of this whole thing.
“Where are we going?” Penny asks as we pass by the old, massive Olympic ski jumps and head into the thickly forested region.
But I don’t answer right away. I haven’t eaten anything of substance in almost twenty-four hours. But that doesn’t prevent the nausea from overwhelming me. I pull off the side of the road, jump out, bend over, vomit a stomach full of clear, burning bile.
“Doc, what’s the matter?” Penny pleads. “We have to keep going.”
It takes a long few seconds, but eventually, the nausea abates, and I make my way back to the Jeep, slip behind the wheel.
“We’ve just fled from the police,” I say, still somewhat dizzy and sick. “I assaulted Giselle when I slapped her with the gun. This … this situation we’re in … it’s getting worse by the minute.” Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “The decisions I’m making. I’m worried they’re all wrong.”
“We’re doing it for Chloe,” Penny says.
“That’s what I keep telling myself. And it’s the truth. But listen, Pen, if we don’t find her, and the police catch up to us, I’m done, finished. I’ll never see the light of day again.”
“We won’t let that happen.”
“You say that. I say that. Maybe even God says that. But the smart thing to do would be to work with the cops, not fight them, run from them.”
“Then why are we running, Doc?”
“Because I don’t trust them. I don’t trust Walton as far as I can throw him.”
In my head I’m thinking about the lecture he gave me inside his office after he insisted Penny step outside. Him telling me about Rabuffo, about his vault, then accusing me of hurting my own daughter.
“Then we’re doing the right thing,” Penny goes on.
I attempt to work up a smile.
“God willing,” I say.
I pull back out onto the road.
“Where exactly are we heading?” Penny asks after a few beats, the cool sweet-smelling breeze blowing against our faces, my stomach calming down.
“We’re going to head down into Keene Valley and the Mount Marcy range. There’s a lot of abandoned cabins in that area. We get lucky, we’ll find a secluded spot that will take the police forever to find.”
“Then what?” Penny asks.
I shrug my shoulders, feel the cool wind against my face.
“I’m not sure,” I say. “I’ve never been a fugitive before.”
“What’s that mean, Doc?”
“It means there’s people out there who want to kill us. And if we die, Chloe dies. So we need to hide.”
But I pray the forest is big enough to hide us from the law. But not so big that we can’t find Chloe before the sun sets a second time.