CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

At seven we met back at the office and I checked everybody’s equipment—Kevlar-lined vests, Kevlar helmets with shock-resistant face shields, and radios with wrist mikes and earpiece headphones much like the Secret Service uses. Bob Thornton had secured an unmarked DPS van, and that gave us two. I assigned Toby, Linda, and Hotchkiss to the rear, and Bobo Stovall to cover the side door that opened from the kitchen. The four of them were in the DPS unit, which was stationed in an abandoned garage on the street behind the target house. Thornton and I parked well around the corner on a potholed side street and waited, sweating like pigs the whole time.

I have never known of a criminal who could consistently be on time for anything. That is, I think, part of their problem. On every stakeout and raid I have ever participated in, at least one of the suspects was late. It was eight-nineteen when my headphone came alive and I heard the urgent tones of Otis Tremmel’s voice informing us that a big Lincoln Town Car had just pulled up in front.

“Let us know when they get inside,” I said. “Toby, bring your people into position.”

Less than a minute later the radio came alive again: “They’re in the house and the door just closed,” Tremmel said.

Thornton and I stepped from the van and quickly made our way around to the front of the house and started carefully up the walk. We had almost reached the front door when two shots rang out inside, followed closely by a short burst of fire from an automatic weapon of some sort. We stood silently, waiting, then we heard several shots behind the house. A moment later Toby’s voice came through my radio earpiece! “It’s Kimball, Bo. He was coming out the back door when he saw us. He shot first, and then ducked back inside.”

“Hold your positions,” I whispered into my mike. “Everybody hold your positions and do not approach.”

“Bo, what do you think?” Thornton asked.

“I think if we hit him now he’ll flush. I don’t believe this boy will ever give up, and if we wait around for him to get his bearings things will just be that much more dangerous when we do have to go in.”

“My notion exactly,” he said. “And I really don’t want this to turn into a three-day standoff.”

“Me either. Right through the front door together?”

“Let’s knock the damn thing clean off its hinges.”

We did. It caved in like a cracker box to reveal a small living room that held some worn but decent furniture, a half dozen cluttered bookcases, and two bodies that appeared very dead. An instant later Scott Kimball materialized in the doorway on the opposite side of the room and fired two quick shots. The first hit Thornton in the chest of his flak jacket and put him down. The second shattered a vase on a bookcase beside my head and threw stagnant water all over the faceplate of my helmet, clouding my vision. I snapped off three shots of my own, only to catch a glimpse of the kid as he vanished into the darkened room beyond. I wiped my faceplate and looked down at Thornton. He had the wind knocked out of him, but his vest had held. He motioned me to go on.

It’s strange what runs through your mind in such situations. As I moved carefully across the room, I was very aware that this was a near replay of the day before when Arno was killed. I also found myself wishing that Charlie Morton was waiting outside with that Remington riot gun along with my other people. I knew from experience that Charlie wouldn’t hesitate, and I was afraid some of them might, good hands though they were.

I crept up to the doorway and peeked around the door facing. I caught a quick glimpse of Kimball on the other side of the room with a duffel bag in one hand, a pistol in the other, and what looked like an Uzi slung over his shoulder. I jerked my head back just as he fired a shot that splintered the doorway’s wooden molding right beside my ear.

“Give it up, Scott,” I yelled. “The place is surrounded.”

“Fuck you, old man,” he called out, and I swear there was a happy lilt to his voice. Then two more bullets slammed into the wall just opposite my head, and I found myself thanking my lucky stars that the house was old enough to have wooden interior walls instead of the plasterboard they use nowadays. I stood motionless for a few seconds, barely breathing until the silence was broken by a long burst of automatic weapon fire from the rear of the house. It was counterpointed by a half dozen or so individual shots that seemed to come from several directions. The earpiece of my radio crackled with static, and I heard, “Trooper down! Trooper down! Linda’s hit!”

I ran through the next room and out onto the back porch in time to see Kimball spray one final burst of fire from the Uzi and then dive through the dense privet hedge that bordered the right side of the yard. He made it, but his duffel bag didn’t. It hung up in the shrubbery, and I emptied my .45 at the hand that held it. The hand dropped the bag, and I heard footsteps running down the alley beside the house. Just as I slammed another magazine into my pistol, Linda yelled over the radio, “It’s just my damn foot! Go get the bastard! Aw, God, but it hurts!”

A motorcycle engine roared to life in the alleyway, and I fought my way through the hedge in time to see its taillight turn out into the street. I ran as fast as my aging legs would carry me and reached the end of the alley just as Toby screeched up in the van. I piled in and we took off after the rapidly dwindling cycle.

As soon as I caught my breath, I said, “Call the city PD and the highway patrol.”

“I already did,” came the reply. “I wonder what was in that suitcase. Dope or money?”

“Money,” I said firmly.

“What makes you think so?”

“Two dead men in the front room of that house back there. Scott didn’t come here for a deal. He just decided he’d kill himself a couple of mainline hoods, take their money, and then go sell his crap someplace else. Ain’t this boy a piece of work?”

Kimball headed for the south side of town. Twice he cut through yards and down alleys and we almost lost him, but Toby hung on. As we rounded the square, he flashed onto South Main just past the courthouse and blazed down the street ahead of us, weaving his way in and out between cars and pickups and running two red lights in the process. We threaded through traffic and eventually managed to close up half the distance between us and the taillight of the motorcycle by the time we reached the edge of town. “He’s heading out State Highway Nine South,” Toby said over the radio.

Just as we passed the city limit a highway patrol cruiser roared up beside our van. Toby motioned him ahead, and the cruiser shot past us, its lights blinking and its siren howling. Our van wasn’t built for either handling or speed, and it had been a miracle that we stayed with him in town. Out on the highway we gradually began to lose ground, but the DPS car was slowly gaining on him. About two miles outside of town a Sequoya Police Department patrol unit joined the chase, then a couple of miles farther on we saw a second DPS cruiser coming toward us from the opposite direction with its lights flashing. It was in the process of trying to turn sideways to block the highway when the motorcycle swerved to the right onto an oil-topped county road that angled away from the main highway.

The first highway patrol cruiser was going too fast to make the turn and screeched past it with its brake lights shining and its front bumper almost down to the asphalt as the trooper tried to slow his cruiser. The city boys managed to fishtail onto the oil road, and we were right behind them. After a half mile or so, I looked back to see the two DPS units gaining on us. It was a wild ride, one I never want to repeat. Sixty and seventy miles an hour on a winding, one-lane county road in the dead of night is not my idea of fun. A mile or so off the highway the deep woods began, and soon came the sensation that we were flashing down a dark canyon whose walls rose high on either side of us. Three miles farther and the road’s oil surface turned to gravel, yet still we sped onward, the motorcycle’s taillight a faint red dot far ahead.

We slid through a broad, sweeping turn and roared down a long grade, going deeper into the forest. Then a sign flashed by that said COUNTY ROAD 7, and I realized where we were. “Toby,” I said calmly, “get on the radio and tell those city boys to start slowing down. We’re coming up to a dead end.”

He picked up the mike and spoke, and a moment later I saw the cruiser’s brake lights come on. “Then we’ve got him,” he said.

“Nope. We’re going to lose him.”

“How?”

“Just watch.”

Far ahead the motorcycle’s taillight bounced a time or two, then dwindled and vanished. The city police car pulled up into the intersection and stopped, and we swung in beside it. A few seconds later both highway patrol units arrived. We all climbed from our vehicles.

“What the hell happened to him?” Toby asked.

“See that?” I asked and pointed across CR 292 where CR 7 continued on into the woods as two narrow, overgrown, and rutted trails.

“What on earth?” one young city patrolman said.

“When CR 292 was built back in the 1930s, the county decided not to maintain Road Seven past this intersection. Hell, they were just old logging roads, and neither of them were even numbered back then. But they put in a culvert on the far side of 292 so timber company trucks could get across in wet weather.”

“So where’s Kimball?” one of the DPS troopers asked.

“Gone, my friends. This one got away.”

“But where does that trail lead?” Toby asked.

I laughed. “It leads to anywhere he wants to go. The damn thing crosses three more county roads and a half dozen other old logging trails that are in good enough shape for a motorcycle.”

“Do you want us to call over to the prison unit for the dogs and horses?” one of the DPS troopers asked.

“Lord, no,” I said. “He’ll be gone from these woods long before they could even get here. I don’t guess anybody got close enough to get the tag number on that motorcycle, did they?”

The young city cop grinned. “I got it with my night binoculars.”

“Great work,” I said. “Put it out on the radio, but I don’t really expect to catch him riding it. This kid is too smart for that. He’ll abandon that cycle and steal himself a car someplace.”

“Where do you think he’s heading?” Toby asked.

“Houston. He’s been living down there for several months, and no doubt he’s got contacts and people who will help him.”

“Looks like this boy is trying to be the John Dillinger of Caddo County,” the older DPS trooper said.

“As far as I’m concerned he’s done made it,” I said. “We exchanged a few words tonight inside that house, and from the tone of his voice it sounded like he was having the time of his life. What can you do with a guy like that?”