Uncertain Justice

Chapter 20

They stumbled down the dark prairie to the road and walked west, hoping to find someone heading toward the closest town. Even if they had to hike the whole way, it wouldn't be very long before they got to the small town and a phone. They built a believable story by their third mile of walking. By the fourth, they'd practiced it several times and were confident they could bring it off.

The young deputy remembered she also needed to tell her husband something about why she and the trooper had been caught together and how they'd been captured so easily. She thought finding a way to placate him would be easy. Her husband had a good job in the bank and didn't have a clue about her life as a deputy sheriff. He wouldn't remember what a patrol zone was, much less the limits of hers.

They had to go five miles on foot before waving down a truck full of farm workers traveling east out of town. The truck turned around in the narrow roadway and set off on the return trip into the small settlement. The two officers were delivered to the courthouse by field hands hard-pressed to conceal their snickering. Not one of them believed the story the two had concocted.

The night watchman let them in and sat them down in a darkened courtroom. He busied himself with turning on all the lights in the building while he hummed happily to himself. It appeared tonight's shift would be filled with plenty of excitement.

He couldn't ... to save his life ... remember what he'd done with that darned handcuff key, he explained. He looked through all the drawers in his untidy desk trying to find it. Fortunately, the town constable had one on his belt when he came in twenty minutes later. The night watchman's face fell the tiniest bit as he watched the constable help the two out of their cuffs. He brightened again when the passengers from three state cars and a county vehicle stalked into the room.

Their ordeal in the short drive into town was nothing compared to what the pair of officers experienced when the trooper's watch commander and the County Sheriff began comparing notes. The lovers had forgotten the blankets and other gear in the old farmhouse but officers sent to the scene found them easily. A smirking highway patrol corporal marched into the commandeered courtroom with the foot pump dangling in one hand and the inflatable mattress in the other.

There was no way to explain how the patrol car got out in front of the old frame house without first telling how it happened that the state trooper surrendered his sidearm and car keys. That led to a discussion on how the deputy lost her equipment too. As more pieces to the puzzle were fitted together, the conversation between the couple and their seniors became more heated.

Few saw the unassuming young man who slipped in a side door and listened to the discussion until he'd heard enough. Still-faced, he departed as quietly as he had come. He refused to speak with the deputy when she got home later that evening or, in fact, ever again. The next morning he moved out and didn't see his wife again until the court date for the final divorce decree.

Nothing of what the young man heard, nor anything the Colorado State Trooper supervisor and the Sheriff discovered about their underlings changed anything about the underlying crime being investigated. The lovers would be disciplined internally and much of the messy story would be quashed to keep the departments from being embarrassed.

That wouldn't save the shotgun wielding man from Texas though. They were going to nail his hide to the wall.

§

Having told his captives he was going to Kansas, Miles headed in that direction because it suited his purpose. He drove east to U.S. Highway 385 and followed it north almost to the Nebraska Panhandle. He pushed the pickup hard, over the speed limit more often than not. Deliberately braking late, he muscled the vehicle through curves and accelerating on the straight-aways. He was trying to stay ahead of the expanding "bubble" of information that was surely going out as one police agency after another was notified.

He hoped to get out of the area where he'd captured the two officers before a perimeter was established, but he didn't really expect to. Realistically, he had no more than two, maybe three hours, he decided. The adrenalin rush dissipated, leaving him tired and dejected.

A couple of hours later, he stopped for gas at a twenty-four hour service station near Julesburg, Colorado, a few miles south of the Nebraska border. The overweight, middle-aged man running the gas station paid little attention as the weary customer topped off his tank and came inside to drop a twenty-dollar bill on the counter. Idly, he watched the traveler drive down the eastbound on-ramp for Interstate 76.

The gas station attendant stopped watching the pickup to accept a credit card from the haggard young blond waitress from the truck stop up on IH 80. The disheveled woman was attractive when she took the time to fix herself up. He knew that for a fact. He'd seen her more than once in one of the local watering holes on many a Saturday night. Tonight, she carried the odor of stale beer and had a vaguely unkempt air about her. The gas station attendant frowned slightly as he watched her elbow her way out the door. He'd already forgotten about the man in the big pickup.

§

Miles drove east on the nearly deserted Interstate until he came across an exit where he could reverse his direction of travel, driving back west on Interstate 80 and aiming for Cheyenne, Wyoming. If he drove south from there to Denver, he'd be driving back toward the area where he'd tied up the two officers, but maybe that would play out in his favor. Maybe the cops wouldn't be looking for someone coming toward where the incident had occurred, versus trying to get away.

Hiding out in Denver would be a lot easier than in a smaller town too, he figured. Then, after the search died down, he could safely drive west and south into the southern Colorado mountains. It wasn't much, but it was the only plan he had.

He thought about ditching the shotgun and everything he'd taken from the abandoned house but decided not to bother. If he were stopped, a simple check on his drivers license would land him in the same maximum security prison he'd be in if the authorities connected him with recent events. Besides, he was hungry again and he wanted that chicken he'd confiscated from the young trooper.

CB radio traffic increased drastically a few minutes after he reversed course. He began to hear of lots of state troopers, sheriff's vehicles, and even local cops popping up to patrol the highways.

Keeping out of sight from police cruisers was already Miles' primary goal and the new reports only heightened that desire. He knew there was really only one way to get away from a policeman in a car chase and that was to not get in one to begin with.

Truckers kept him out of jail more than once through the night and into the new day as they chatted on their CB radios. The truck drivers didn't know Miles was there but their casual warnings of where the "bears" were setting up to watch the highway gave him notice of places he had to avoid. With their help, he managed to detour around all the danger points.

Coming back to Interstate 80 after using local roads to avoid a trio of police vehicles sitting on an overpass, Miles heard warnings of a highway patrolman coming up behind him, running hard with his overheads and siren on. Miles scooted up an exit ramp to park with his lights out on some unnumbered ranch road.

He stayed where he was, waiting until he knew something more about what the trooper was up to. The speeding cruiser got off the interstate a few miles farther on and sped south into the night, leaving the way open for Miles to drive on.

He left the four-lane highway himself a while later; the number of patrol cars and the net they were weaving were too much to deal with. His plan to get into Denver as quickly as possible all but forgotten, he drove almost aimlessly, staying on the move. He didn't know what else to do.

Much of the time, he followed unmarked roads he hoped would lead him generally north and west. Sometimes they didn't. Twice during the night, he had to turn around and find a different route when dirt roads dead-ended at locked gates to private property.

Dawn found him driving west on a gravel road that faded out beneath a huge pile of sand a hundred yards short of a highway. After scouting for a better path, he shrugged fatalistically before driving around the mound, a rocky field on the other side, and then a shallow creek to get to the paved surface.

Working his way north of Cheyenne, Wyoming, Miles got on Interstate 25, going south for a short distance before breaking away to the west again when he heard about a local cop watching from a rest area. A later CB report had the officer concentrating more on filling out reports than surveillance, but that might not last long--and the next officer he heard of might be more observant.

By mid-morning the day after his run-in with the two officers, he'd reversed course three more times. He picked up and abandoned Interstate 80 again in south-central Wyoming before turning back northeast on rural roads back toward Cheyenne.

His energy gone, he found a place outside the Air Force base there to park and eat a couple of hamburgers while he listened to the radio traffic from the truckers out on the nearby interstate. Judging by the conversations he heard, the disturbed beehive activity of highway patrol and other police was still buzzing.

Tired of dodging what seemed to be every cop in the world, he got on Interstate 80 again and drove west. He made no further attempt to turn back south to Denver. The gloomy expression on his face showed signs of becoming permanent.