Phantoms

Chapter 26

Escape From the barred window of the temporary holding cell, Fletcher Kale had a good view of the street. All morning he watched the reporters congregating. Something really big had happened.

Some of the other inmates were sharing news cell to cell, but none of them would share anything with Kale.

They hated him. Frequently, they taunted him, called him a baby killer.

Even in jail, there were social classes, and no one was farther down the ladder than child killers.

It was almost funny. Even car thieves, muggers; burglars, holdup men, and embezzlers needed to feel morally superior to someone. So they reviled and persecuted anyone who had harmed a child, and somehow that made them feel like priests and bishops by comparison.

Fools. Kale despised them.

He didn't ask anyone to share information with him. He wouldn't give them the satisfaction of freezing him out.

He stretched out on his bunk and daydreamed about his magnificent destiny: fame, power, wealth…

At eleven-thirty, he was still lying on his bunk when they came to take him to the courthouse for arraignment on two counts of murder. The cellblock guard unlocked the door. An other man a gray-haired, pot-bellied deputy-came in and put handcuffs on Kale.

"We're shorthanded today," he told Kale." I'm the only one detailed for this. But don't you get some damn-fool idea that you'd have a chance to make a break for it. You're cuffed, and I've got the gun, and nothing would please me as much as shooting your ass off.”

In both the guard's and the deputy's eyes, there was loathing.

At last, the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison became real to Kale. To his surprise, he began to cry as they led him out of the cell.

other prisoners hooted and laughed and called him names.

The potbellied man prodded Kale in the ribs." Get a move on.”

Kale stumbled along the corridor on weak legs, through a security gate that rolled open for them, out of the cellblock, into another hall. The guard remained behind, but the deputy prodded Kale toward the elevators, prodded him too often and too hard, even when it wasn't necessary. Kale felt his self-pity giving way to anger.

In the small, slowly descending elevator, he realized that the deputy no longer saw any threat in his prisoner. He was disgusted, impatient, embarrassed by Kale's emotional collapse.

By the time the doors opened, a change had occurred in Kale, as well. He was sill weeping quietly, but the tears were no longer genuine, and he was shaking with excitement rather than with despair.

They went through another checkpoint. The deputy presented a set of papers to another guard who called him Joe.

The guard glared at Kale with undisguised disdain. Kale averted his face as if he were ashamed of himself. And continued to cry.

Then he and Joe were outside, crossing a large parking lot toward a row of green and white police cruisers that were lined up in front of a cyclone fence. The day was warm and sunny.

Kale continued to cry and to pretend that his legs were wobbly. He kept his shoulders hunched and his head low. He shuffled along listlessly, as if he were a broken, beaten man.

Except for him and the deputy, the parking lot was deserted.

Just the two of them. Perfect.

All the way to the car, Kale looked for the right moment in which to make his move. For a while he thought it wouldn't come.

Then Joe shoved him against a car and half-turned away to unlock the door-and Kale struck. He threw himself at the deputy as the man bent to insert a key into the lock. The deputy gasped and swung a fist at him.

Too late. Kale ducked under the blow and came up fast and slammed him against the car, pinning him. Joe's face went white with pain as the door handle rammed hard against the base of his spine. The ring of keys flew out of his hand, and even as they were falling, he was using the same hand to grab for his holstered revolver.

Kale knew, with his hands cuffed, he couldn't wrestle the gun away. As soon as the revolver was drawn, the fight was finished.

So Kale went for the other man's throat. Went for it with his teeth. He bit deep, felt blood gushing, bit again, pushed his mouth into the wound, like an attack dog, and bit again, and the deputy screamed, but it was only a yelp-rattle-sigh that no one could have heard, and the gun fell out of the holster and out of the deputy's spasming hand, and both men went down hard, with Kale on top, and the deputy tried to scream again, so Kale rammed a knee into his crotch, and blood was pump-pump-pumping out of the man's throat.

"Bastard," Kale said.

The deputy's eyes froze. The blood stopped spurting from the wound. It was over.

Kale had never felt so powerful, so alive.

He looked around the parking lot. Still no one in sight.

He scrambled to the ring of keys, tried them one by one until he unlocked his handcuffs. He threw the cuffs under the car.

He rolled the dead deputy under the cruiser, too, out of sight.

He wiped his face on his sleeve. His shirt was spotted and stained with blood. There was nothing he could do about that.

Nor could he change the fact that he was wearing baggy, blue, woven institutional clothing and a pair of canvas and rubber slip-on shoes.

Feeling conspicuous, he hurried along the fence, through the open gate.

He crossed the alley and went into another parking lot behind a large, two-story apartment complex. He glanced up at all the windows and hoped no one was looking.

There were perhaps twenty cars in the lot. A yellow Datsun had keys in the ignition. He got behind the wheel, closed the door, and sighed with relief. He was out of sight, and he had transportation.

A box of Kleenex stood on the console. Using paper tissues and spit, he cleaned his face. With the blood removed, he looked at himself in the rearview mirror-and grinned.