Devoted(85)
The only person in the room who wasn’t in deep shit, who could walk away and get on with his life, was Ben Hawkins. But he said that he had been in deep shit many times before, had gotten out of it, and in retrospect had enjoyed the experience and always learned something from it. They were forming a mutual-defense society here, or maybe an extended family, and Ben insisted on having a role in it because, he said, he wanted to be part of the magic that was Kipp. The magic-of-Kipp part was surely true, but the way he looked at Woody’s mom was how Woody imagined he himself would look at a girl he wanted to kiss, if one ever entered his life, so it wasn’t all about Kipp.
Mr. Conroy said, “Right now, Megan, the sheriff is flooding you with protection because he thinks this is where Shacket might go. He doesn’t care about you and your boy, only about his career. If they find Shacket and take him down, he’ll pull these deputies out of here. Then if someone shows up from this Dark Web operation . . .”
“We’re on our own,” she said.
Conroy shook his head. “It’s worse than that. Hayden Eckman is already doing the bidding of someone—maybe the NSA, maybe Purcell—by making no objection to the transfer of jurisdiction to the state attorney general. If Purcell wants these Dark Web killers to have a clean shot at you—at us—and he attempts to corrupt Eckman, he’ll find the sheriff eager to be bought. Then we won’t be able to rely on local law enforcement. Any deputy hired by the former sheriff, Lyle Sheldrake . . . well, I’d trust them. But Eckman has been purging Lyle’s best people and expanding the force as much as he can afford. There are some of his men, if they showed up to protect me . . . I’d want to be anywhere but here.”
“Should we leave?” Woody’s mom wondered. “Where would we go? I don’t like the idea of running.”
“There’s nowhere you can go that you can’t be found,” Ben said. “Not if someone with Purcell’s resources wants to find you.”
“We need a plan,” Woody said. “That’s what people do in stories when they’re in really bad trouble. They make a cool plan.” He slid off the sofa, and Kipp jumped to the floor with him. “Mrs. Brickit made some totally great muffins. Would anybody like one? Should we make some coffee?”
Although obviously tired and worried, Woody’s mom seemed to surprise herself with a quick laugh. “Woodrow Eugene Bookman, just look at you. The host with the most.”
A blush warmed his face, but this was a far different kind of embarrassment from that under which he had so long suffered. “I know how to make coffee,” he declared, and hurried off to the kitchen, with the dog close at his heels.
90
The wind was the voice of madness, and Hayden Eckman thought he heard deep within it the rabid-coyote cry, demonic-hyena call, evil-clown laugh of Shacket. The fugitive now seemed to be as swift and unrestrainable as the wind, as elusive as the rain that had been impending since the previous afternoon, as dark as the night into which he’d vanished much like Dracula, in those old movies, swirled his cape and became a bat and was gone.
The blood trail petered out along the south side of the hospital, only forty feet from the impact point below the third-floor window. The sheriff stood at the end of it, his back against the wall of the building, waiting while three deputies with Tac Lights searched the concrete sidewalk and the blacktop parking lot for a telltale crimson drop.
Being an attorney had entailed no risk other than potential disbarment, and during his five years as a deputy in generally quiet Pinehaven County, he’d never needed to draw his gun. Nor had he even once faced the muzzle of an adversary’s firearm. He anticipated that a four-year term as sheriff would be a pleasant ride with numerous opportunities for self-enrichment, various civic honors bestowed by organizations of grateful businesspeople and charities, the respect accorded law enforcement, and the special attention of those women who were enchanted by men in uniform.
Instead, not quite nine months into his first year in office, here he stood with his back to the wall, his hand on the grip of the pistol in his belt holster, nervously surveying the night, expecting to be suddenly assaulted by a naked maniac. Not just a naked maniac. A naked maniac who had torn loose of restraining straps that were guaranteed escape proof, overpowered an armed deputy who stood six feet four and weighed two hundred ten pounds, survived a fall from the third story onto a concrete walkway, and carried off a dead or crippled lawman for some purpose that didn’t bear contemplation.
With $300,000 and a fortune in diamonds in the trunk of his patrol car, the sheriff was pondering a different future from the one he had planned when he ran for office.
Given the chaos of the past twelve hours—three murders, one deputy badly bitten, Megan Bookman and son terrorized, all of them victims of the sole escapee from the catastrophe at Springville—there would be investigations at the state and perhaps even the national level. As long as Hayden Eckman remained in office, he would have some ability to influence the results of those inquiries. If he left office, he’d become an easy scapegoat for the bureaucrats and politicians who cared even less about the truth than Hayden did.
He was spared further consideration of an assuredly bleak future when a deputy, Freeman Johnson, hurried to him with the news that a uniform shoe, evidently belonging to Thad Fenton, the missing deputy assigned to guard Lee Shacket, had been found toward the east end of the hospital grounds.