Uncertain Justice

Chapter 8

In military terms, security had not yet been compromised. No one had the slightest idea he was going to run and he wanted it to stay that way. The dentist would figure out Miles wasn't going to meet the appointment when he didn't come in.

After lunch, everything he could think of to do was done but he had a nagging suspicion he was forgetting something important. He couldn't shake the idea, but neither could he figure out what he was missing. Another tour around his home--it was quickly becoming only a house--didn't help. He could find nothing left undone.

When the big grandfather clock in the hallway struck two o'clock in the afternoon, Miles took a calculated chance ... and the first public act in his plan. Leaving the house, he drove the Taurus across the city, making sudden, random right and left turns while watching the rear view mirror closely.

If anyone was following him, he decided they were doing a heck of a good job of it because he hadn't seen any vehicle follow him through more than one of the route changes. He didn't think there was much chance a big team was mirroring his moves on parallel streets like he'd seen on some cop shows.

Doing that took lots and lots of unmarked cars and abundant manpower resources. There was no reason for the authorities to commit that amount of their limited resources for no purpose they could possibly be aware of ... not yet, anyway. He pulled into the credit union's parking lot fifteen minutes before it closed.

The two thousand dollars and change he withdrew to close his account was everything he had left from a military career in which he'd careful saved every dime he could for his retirement. The attorney wasn't costing him anything, but Miles was footing the bill for the private investigator Trenton had hired. Even if he was declared innocent this afternoon, the cost of defending himself had succeeding in bankrupting him.

A fresh storm cell broke over the city as he left the credit union. He drove home in near darkness with rain clouds pressing close to the ground, dumping their loads of water on already saturated ground. Lightning crackled, filling the sky with streaks of electrical energy, and the heavy thunder was almost constant. It was impossible to listen to the radio.

As he reached for the volume control, the station was knocked off the air and hissing static replaced classic rock. He switched the radio off. Officially, sunset was still a couple hours away but it was already hard to see without the headlights on. Perfect weather for someone like himself--or what he was about to become--he thought. If a fugitive couldn't get away in this muck ... well, he deserved to be caught.

Back home Miles transferred all but three hundred dollars of the withdrawal to a dry pack. The small pouch made of flexible, heavy-duty plastic would seal tightly. It was advertised to keep its contents dry at the bottom of a lake.

He shoved the finished jerky inside the backpack and then added all the canned meat from the pantry. Finally, he put in the dry pack. Hauling the backpack onto his back, he walked out to the garage and dropped the pack on the bed of the pickup beside the boxes he would mail to his family. Tucking a heavy tarp around the pack, he made sure there were no places rainwater could get underneath to soak the boxes or gear.

He got in the pickup's cab and started the engine. Letting it run for a while, he pulled the bottom of the garage door a few inches off the concrete floor to allow some airflow. After ten minutes or so, the water temperature gauge rose into the low-normal range and stayed there. The oil pressure and voltmeter showed no problems and the motor ran smoothly in spite of the vehicle's lengthy stay in the garage. All the lights shined brightly--the brakes and turn signals worked perfectly. He switched the motor off, closed the garage door, and strolled into the kitchen to prepare dinner.

§

The big T-bone steak had been reduced to a well picked-over bone. Miles was comfortably full of the meat, mashed potatoes, and steamed broccoli he'd prepared as a going away dinner for himself. The big slab of apple pie, topped with an equally large scoop of ice cream, finished off the meal perfectly.

He put the plates and silverware in the sink and moved to the living room to watch TV. The information he needed was on a few minutes later. All the local stations were preempting normal programming with reports on the widespread flooding and carried many stories chronicling the number and comparative situations of those who ignored barricades to drive through high water. There were frequent updates on road conditions. He watched these closely. U.S. 281 north was still open--as was Interstate 35 once you got a little way out of town.

He wanted to get north of the city as quickly as he could. It was the fastest way out of the county. It was here in Bexar County that police would be most familiar with his face and status. Once outside this county and beyond the weather front, he could begin change course to the west on state highways. West Texas was sparsely populated even in the twenty-first century and he intended to avoid cities like they were hotbeds of bubonic plague.

Returning to the kitchen, he washed and dried the dishes by hand to draw out the process as long as he could. Finishing, he carefully draped the towel on the edge of the sink, pulling at it a couple of times until he had it perfectly centered.

He walked slowly to the bedroom, his pulse rate increasing in spite of his efforts to stay calm. What he was about to do was getting to him a lot more than he had thought it would.

He got into a clean pair of jeans and pulled a dark blue sweatshirt over his head. Lacing up well broken-in hiking boots took only a minute but he did the left one twice to make sure it was double-tied perfectly.

Wandering from room to room, he remembered the few good times he'd had in the brief time he'd lived there. He shook his head. The good times had been too few.

He'd often said good-bye to homes, friends, and family because of military orders. This would be just one more time he had to leave everything behind. It was a shame ... he'd thought all that was over and this was his home, with everything that meant.

Moving woodenly, he wound up back in the bedroom and opened the closet door for one last check. His eyes fell on the twelve-gauge shotgun he'd bought to defend his new home a week after putting down the deposit. It had been a special purchase--a lucky find at a g*n show.

He was deserting the house, but he was suddenly loath to leave the weapon behind. Making a snap decision, refusing to think about it, he grabbed two boxes of express cartridges--double aught buckshot--and dropped them on the bed. His decision to not take a long g*n with him was discarded, forgotten in the yearning to keep something from the home with him.

Shrugging into the lightweight jacket he would wear against tonight's weather, he turned off the closet light and closed the door. The shotgun under his arm, he walked numbly through the house, unplugging electronic equipment and appliances as he went. He couldn't have said why. It was just the right thing to do.

Searching the pantry for a paper bag to carry the shotgun shells to the pickup, his hand nudged a box of iodized salt. That reminded him of something he hadn't considered. Salt was worth its weight in gold in the wilderness and he couldn't depend upon finding clean natural outcrops of the life giving mineral out there.

He grabbed the full box as well as the one he had been working from for the last month and put both in the shopping bag. He added the shotgun shells. He'd find space in the pack for the late additions somewhere down the road. He added a box of zipper-locked plastic freezer bags.

Waiting for a minute, his eyes scanning the shelves full of canned foods and condiments, nothing else jumped out at him as something he needed. He closed the pantry door.

Going from the kitchen through the dining room, he looked around the living room for something he might have missed. He unlocked the front door. In a few days, the police would come looking for him and he didn't want them to wreck the door to get in. The house would make someone a fine home someday.

He walked slowly back into the kitchen and picked up a small cooler from the counter filled with plastic-wrapped sandwiches, orange juice, milk and a couple of diet sodas. Exiting from the kitchen to the garage, he put the cooler into the floorboard on the passenger side. A larger cooler, similarly filled, was already in the truck bed beside the tarp-covered load. The shopping bag full of salt and shotgun ammunition was pushed behind the passenger seat.

Road maps went on the large bench seat beside where he would sit. A pair of small but powerful 7X--15X binoculars in a sturdy case went on the g*n rack's lower hook and he hanged a heavy-duty rain poncho from the upper one. The shotgun and shells went on the floorboard behind the seat with the butt toward the driver's side ... and then he was finished with all the preparations. He surveyed the interior of the pickup truck's cab but could find nothing to rearrange.

Stepping up on the running board, he sat on the wide bench seat and settled himself behind the big steering wheel. Playing with the floor shift, he depressed the clutch and moved the stick through all five forward gears. It seemed to him the seat should be a little bit forward and he spent a long minute finding the perfect position.

Turning the ignition key to the accessory position, he touched fingertips to the controls for the CB radio, the AM/FM radio with the cassette deck and CD player. He rotated the control knob for the headlights to turn them on and tapped the turn signal to make sure the high beams worked.

He pushed the turn signal lever up and then down. Red and amber lights reflected off the garage walls and the door behind him. The rearview mirror was exactly where it should be. Everything worked.

He knew he was stalling and commanded his hands to relax in his lap. He was still a moment longer, listening to the sounds of the turbulent night beyond the garage doors.

Everything he could do was done and it was time to go, but it was infinitely more difficult to do than he'd thought it would be when he conceived the plan last night. Once he left, he would be severing his ties with everything he had and everything that he had been. It was a hard thing to do.

Shaking his head to clear it, he turned the ignition key. The engine started with a roar that was magnified tenfold in the confined space. The pickup's motor warmed quickly and ran smoothly.

Grabbing the remote control from the dash, he thumbed the button to turn off the garage lights and then the one that raised the garage door. No one in the neighborhood could possibly hear the engine noise or the creaking of the door over the wind and blowing rain.

He backed into the darkness, turning carefully at the end of the driveway, and stopping the truck in the middle of the street. He put the transmission in first gear.

Raindrops reached inside the open window to splash on his arm and face. He delayed once more while he looked stoically at the house he'd bought with money set aside from twenty-two years of scanty military paychecks. Lightning flashes became more numerous and heavy waves of thunder rolled over him. Wind-driven sheets of rain marched along the street toward him.

He forced himself into motion. There was nothing to be done except what he was doing. He pressed the button to close the garage door against the weather. At the last minute, he tossed the remote through the opening with a flip of his wrist. It skittered through just before the door slammed down. Rolling up the window, he let out the clutch and switched on the headlights as the truck lurched into motion.