Otis Faucheur supplied a cranberry-red 1988 Chrysler Voyager, a minivan, with weather-eaten paint, rust-streaked rocker panels, one of six grille segments broken out, and a general air of senescence. But jammed in the resized engine compartment was a GM Performance Parts 383ci stoked small-block V-8 with a steel crank, hydraulic roller cam, 9.7:1 slugs, and a set of Fast Burn aluminum heads. In fact, the entire chassis was new; only the body survived from ’88. The sole giveaway to the casual observer might have been the tires, which could take whatever punishment the outrunner demanded of them.
Luther had no difficulty keeping pace with Jane’s Mexico-souped Ford Escape.
In a shopping-center parking lot in Fort Smith, Arkansas, she measured the children’s feet and did some estimating. Luther took her notes into a store and purchased twelve pairs of sneakers. From that assortment they shoed the eight properly without drawing undue attention. He also bought underwear and socks in various sizes.
Famished, they ate a late breakfast in a restaurant where the food was delicious and the portions generous, and where Jane felt safe from recognition. No one was searching for Luther Tillman, and no authorities were looking for the kids, not officially, not so that their precious faces would be on TV. Jane had her long auburn hair and green eyes and unnecessary glasses, but the best disguise was her black companion and the covey of rumpled but content young ones. Few would imagine America’s most-wanted fugitive might travel with so many children—adopted, they told the waitress—or that a woman known to be a traitor and murderer and thief would be this same loving mother, or that such well-behaved boys and girls would regard the monstrous Jane Hawk with such trust and quiet affection.
From Fort Smith, they crossed into Oklahoma. The heavens were china blue with a few long stratus-cloud formations like series of low snow-covered hills risen from the earth and gliding eastward.
At 2:40 P.M. Wednesday, in Oklahoma City, they transitioned to I-35 south. They intended to be in Ardmore by five o’clock and stay the night. Most of the way, one or another of Jane’s namesake birds was making lazy circles in the sky either to the east or west of the highway.