Chapter 15

 

 

 

Luck favored them, for once; they were just turning onto Central, not that far from the University, when Maud spotted their quarry, puttering along at the lowest speed of his two-level power bike down the street. He was steering with one hand and drinking out of a disposable cup held in the other. He might have bombs and other sinister gadgets in the pockets of his filthy padded jacket or his torn jeans, but he looked quite harmless at the moment, a street person enjoying the sunshine while he looked for some new gutter in which to take up residence.

"Pretty bold," said Sandy, staring, "for a man who has police stations up and down between here and White Reef looking for him."

"Slow down, slow down, I can't aim properly," said Lt. Price, fighting with the car window.

"You can't shoot him here anyway," said Sandy, looking at the traffic, the pedestrians, the scattering of small shops and coffee places and bars around the University and the Institute. "Too many witnesses."

"No one is looking," said Maud; if you were quick and quiet and made no fuss, the odds were good that no one would notice. She touched the power button, bringing up the speed just a little and tried to maneuver into the outside lane, but she had to wait for a pair of delivery trucks and a little old lady on a power scooter.

"Pull up beside him," said Lt. Price, getting her window down. "I'll lean out and shoot him and we can drive away before anyone notices."

"Or we could get him with the beam pistol," said Maud, taking her pistol out of her pocket and laying it conveniently on the car seat, "and drag him into the car and get around the corner and out of sight."

"Wait a minute!" said Sandy. "I'm in this car too! What if the police stop us? How am I going to explain to Lewis and the boys why I was arrested?"

"They won't stop us," said Maud. "If they do try," she explained, "we'll just grab Lincoln and leave; it won't be a problem." There might be a slight concern about a car in motion without a driver on Central, and they would need to put down the shields to grab Lincoln, but she thought in mid-morning, with the lighter traffic, it shouldn't be a large issue. She could always hit automatic last thing before she used the traveler. No doubt the car had some default destination, programmed by its previous owner.

"I knew you were going to get us into trouble," Sandy said to her companion, tapping her forehead. "Maud, you can't shoot someone in the middle of the city and vanish into thin air –"

Maud reached the intersection in the right lane and looked down Central. He had gotten about a block and a half ahead of them while she was maneuvering, but he was still moving along at his ease, drinking from his cup, enjoying the spring morning. Sandy uttered a protesting sound, and Lt. Price braced the pistol against the passenger side door, ready to aim and shoot as soon as they got within reach. Maud thought about aiming her own pistol over Lt. Price's shoulder, but it was going to be awkward, at best. Maybe she ought to let Lt. Price try out her tracker; if it actually attached itself, they could always find Lincoln and shoot him properly later.

The little old lady on the power scooter turned off at a package liquor store, leaving a little gap in the traffic; Maud speeded up and placed herself within a short distance of the man on the bike, dropping the collision shield on that side.

He tossed his disposable cup down into the street, glanced once at the traffic around him, not taking any special note of their car moving in on him, and turned onto the University Drive, coasting toward the Y where the road branched off to Morris Hall, housing fine arts and language arts.

Ann, and Nelson, and Cara.

Maud didn't think twice; she slammed on the power and shot onto University Drive, cutting off a load hauler. Lincoln glanced back over his shoulder – the car was too old to be quiet, especially at this speed – and saw them bearing down on him, and he may have recognized Lt. Price, who was now hanging out of the passenger window with her pistol. He certainly saw the pistol. He punched up into the top power level and cut off to the right, across the fine rolling lawn. "Oh, god," said Sandy, in reference to Lincoln or Lt. Price's pistol or Maud's driving or all three as Maud let the car lift a full meter and a half and sailed across the lawn after the bike. A cluster of students cutting across the grass scattered, screaming, as Lincoln tore past them and Maud drove through them and pulled up beside Lincoln, who cast them a panic-stricken look and swerved to the right again.

"Damn!" said Lt. Price, and Maud swung after him. Sandy, in the back seat, braced herself and Lt. Price lifted her pistol again. "Keep it steady, can't you?" she shouted, and Maud gripped the steering wheel and came up beside Lincoln once more.

Lt. Price leaned out the car window and shot him right in the torn arm of his padded jacket.

He shrieked. There was no way he could have been hurt by the tracking device; it was small and the power was low and the jacket, although torn, was still padded. But he saw them and he saw the pistol and he saw Lt. Price in the act of shooting, and he shrieked. He jerked the bike; it lifted briefly in the air, although most bikes of that sort lacked lift units, and it came down facing Central and still racing at top level, and Lincoln charged over the grass, through the shrieking students who had regrouped down by the ornamental bushes, and out onto the street again, heading away from the University as fast as he could go.

Maud lifted several more meters; the car complained but it held the altitude and it kept them largely out of the way of the students. The car went over their heads; they couldn't see who was in it and who was driving it, even if the windows weren't entirely darkened. They would have trouble identifying it, unless one of them had been collected and resourceful enough to write down the license number. She didn't think any of them had.

They reached Central. Lincoln was a block ahead of them now, heading north as fast as his bike would go, casting frantic looks over his shoulder. Beside Maud, Lt. Price had put the pistol away and was fiddling with the locater. "I think the tracker is working," she said, sounding pleased.

"I don't see a cop," said Sandy. "Yet."

"Don't worry about cops," said Maud, turning up the speed. "Don't worry about the tracking device. I'm going to make sure he doesn't go anywhere for the next forty years; you won't need to track him." Lt. Price made a protesting noise. "Didn't you see where that son of a bitch was going?" Maud demanded. "He was heading to Morris Hall! Don't you know what Morris Hall is?"

"You scared him away from Morris Hall," said Sandy, hanging on. "Slow down, Maud, you already scared him away."

"We can find him any time!" said Lt. Price, waving the locater. "The tracker is working!"

Lincoln cast one more look over his shoulder and veered left and shot into the small space between a little grocery store and a tavern constructed of foamboard formed and painted to resemble ancient beams of wood and moss-covered stone. There was room for the bike; there was no room for a car. Maud, cursing, goosed the car again and spun to the left at the next corner, looking for a side street or an alley, but there was a jumble of shabby houses and a large apartment building with Zamuaon lettering over the door, a student lodge, from the look of it, with ceremonial grounds in back.

Lincoln had vanished.

Maud turned past the lodge and made another turn past a small house with a large yard on the next corner and let the speed drop. "Damn," she said. "Lost him."

"No, we haven't," said Lt. Price, holding her locater, and Sandy hung over the back of the front seat to see it.

"Over there," she said, pointing, and Lt. Price nodded.

"Yes, he's going between the houses," she said.

"He's not going to the University, Maud," said Sandy. "He's trying to get away now."

"What was that ugly idiot planning to do, anyway?" said Maud. She looked up and down the street but she couldn't see any sign of him. This was probably lucky for him; she had given some thought to the sound it would make if she kept the collision shields down and ran right into him. The bike would make a metallic crash as it smashed against a building; his body would make a meaty sort of thump as it hit the pavement.

And that was stupid; if she killed him, she would release the It inside him, and the It would take up residence in someone else, a body they did not know, one they would not recognize if it turned on the Y toward Morris hall and did whatever it wanted to do.

She parked the car and sat still, aware that although her hands looked steady on the wheel, they were actually shaking, just a little. She didn't think her companions saw that, but she could feel it.

Ann, and Nelson, and Cara. And the baby.

There was a silence in the car, and then she felt someone pat her shoulder; she turned her head and saw Sandy looking at her with concern. "Whatever it was he planned," she said, "he ran away instead. We scared him away, Maud, we did that much."

"And we installed the tracking device," said Lt. Price, "so we can find him again easily. See?" She displayed the locater. "He's going that way." She pointed toward the north; the little blip on the small screen did seem to be headed in that direction, if Maud was reading it right.

She swore in a tongue so old only Oliver would be able to translate it, and set the car in motion again.

He was definitely heading north, back to the place where he felt safest. The tracker seemed to be working better than any other of Lt. Price's gadgets, and Maud, taking deep, deliberate breaths, grew calmer as they followed. He didn't connect with Central again, but she did; it was the fastest, simplest route to 90^th, for which he seemed to be aiming.

They were waiting on the corner when he reached an intersection several blocks down; they watched as he wove through the traffic on 90^th and hit the other side of the street and kept going, casting a hunted look over his shoulder, not slowing down for a second.

Maud didn't bother trying to follow him; she drove directly to 110^th Avenue and paused, screened by a messy jumble of half-dead bushes on a corner, and from this hiding place they observed Lincoln hit the parking lot of the Leaning Tree. He rode directly to the door, stopped long enough to shove it open, and drove the bike inside. The door shut behind him.

He did not emerge.

 

Time passed.

Sometime after lunchtime, Sandy and Lt. Price talked Maud into going back to Lt. Price's apartment; Sandy pointed out that to remain parked here much longer might attract attention. And Lt. Price wanted to see if their visitors had gotten in. They had. They had left the vase with the pink rose in the middle of the table. It had a note propped up against it, "Congratulations and best wishes for your happiness in your new apartment," in Saizy's precise handwriting.

Lt. Price inspected the door, trying to devise some means of locking it that would not give way to whatever tools their visitors brought with them. She reset the thumb lock and frowned at the privacy lock set above it. "You can't lock and unlock that from the hall," Maud said impatiently. "Only from the inside. We can set up more thumb locks, but frankly, if they want to get in badly enough –"

"They're just teasing you," said Sandy. "They can't resist it; you challenged them, trying to keep your address a secret, and now they've found you they can't help rubbing it in a little."

"But if they can find me, so can the adversaries," said Lt. Price. "Besides, someone might follow them on their visits, or they may let the address slip, by accident, in conversation. They are often careless about such things. Dr. Ramirez sees no problem in talking on the phone."

"Even when the line isn't secured," agreed Sandy, grinning.

"I would move," said Lt. Price. "I should. But I have already paid two months' rent here."

"We only just got you moved in," said Maud, thinking of the rented dolly and the struggle to get the safe out of the old place and into the new one.

"And you still have the old place, too," said Sandy, "don't you? You must have paid the rent there until the end of the month, at least."

"Two months," said Lt. Price in a tone of mild despair. She looked at the locks again. "I will purchase another thumb lock," she said, "and perhaps a power bolt that can be activated from the outside; those are very hard to break."

"I bet Willis can figure out a way," said Sandy, "in under two hours."

He was good at those sorts of things, Maud agreed, but Lt. Price insisted that it couldn't be done in under a week, at which point she could always buy and install another one, so, taking the locater with them, they drove to the nearest hardware store, paused to pick up something for lunch, and brought their shopping bags back to Lt. Price's new home. According to the locater, Lincoln was not moving. They could leave him there for a few hours, they agreed, since they knew where he was, although Lt. Price put the locater on top of the coffee maker where they could keep an eye on it. Then she dug into her safe and produced a handful of tools and tackled the locks and the door.

And then the fuel cell in the power drill blew, taking a chunk of the door frame with it.

 

Maud let Sandy of the car out a block away from the D'ubian house. "Keep your phone on; I'll call when we go after Lincoln," she said. "Which we would have already done," she added, glowering at Lt. Price, "if you hadn't insisted on playing around with your power tools."

"The locks; I had to have the locks," said Lt. Price, and Sandy laughed. "And see, the subject still hasn't moved. He's been there all afternoon."

"He took off his jacket and left it," said Maud grimly, "and he's long gone."

"Yes, call me," said Sandy, and slapped her forehead impatiently. "Stop whining! We have to get home! You can see how she did the locks later!"

"He's getting louder," Maud observed, and Sandy sighed.

"Much more insistent," she agreed, "just like a two-year-old. Unluckily for him, I've had three of those. I can put up with a few tantrums if I have to."

 

The door frame was repaired, the locks were installed. Maud had a broken fingernail and a smudge on the sleeve of her second favorite silk blouse. Lt. Price had a rip down the side of her blue shirt; before they went to dinner, she changed into one of her black shirts. She put the locater, humming quietly to itself, into the pocket of her denim jacket.

According to the locater, Lincoln still hadn't moved. Dinner consumed, Maud left a message on Sandy's phone and they put the locater on the dash and drove north, following the satisfied sounds the device seemed to be making.

"Back to the Leaning Tree," said Maud, slowing down as they passed this fine establishment. The locater pulsed and blinked happily and zeroed in on the battered front door, and the broken window with foamboard over it. There was, on a Monday night, only one car in the lot; it had an alarming sag on the driver's side.

She parked by the wrecking yard just past the Breezeway Park for a change, and the two of them turned around to look back at the bar. It looked, from the outside, very quiet indeed. There was no way to tell whether Lincoln himself was inside, or only his jacket.

"We'll wait until the bar closes," said Lt. Price. "He will have to go somewhere then."

"Unless he sleeps under one of the tables."

Her phone chimed. "So," said Sandy, "is the door fixed? Has Lincoln moved? I had to turn my phone off; there were too many people around."

"The door is fixed," said Maud, "and Lincoln is still at the Leaning Tree; we're sitting here just down the block. And I, for one, am getting tired of it. I think," she told Sandy and Lt. Price, "we should just go in and get him."

"Into the Leaning Tree?" said Sandy.

"But the weapons," said Lt. Price urgently. "We should wait."

"And if he left his jacket and sneaked out again," said Maud, "we're giving him extra time to do whatever he's planning to do. I'll take the traveler and come and get you, Sandra; can you walk down to the D'ubian corner?"

"I'll go," said Lt. Price, grabbing at her pendant. "You can stay with the car and watch for Lincoln, sir."

"No!" exclaimed Sandy. "No, no, no! Maud –"

Maud seized Lt. Price and her pendant. "You stay and guard. It's your locater," she said. "I'll get Sandra."

"But –"

"Stay!" said Maud, and took hold of her own pendant.