A long, hollow silence.
“Just make sure it gets done, Chief. If you know what’s good for you.”
“Threaten me again, Governor, I’ll turn this car around and kick your-”
Click.
Cross ended the call, shaking his head. Covington had always been overbearing on the topic because of brother Andy, but this was ridiculous.
Passing the state prison in Pontiac, where Death Row was housed before Covington transferred it to Stateville for its proximity to the new Naperville Justice Center, he visualized Emily bouncing off the hood of the getaway car. Imagined Miss Reynolds drowning in her own blood. Saw Ray Luerchen drain into the wormholes of a hot, lonely parking lot.
He pushed the cruiser to 140.
He flipped on the siren when other cars appeared but otherwise kept it silent - too hard on the ears. Twigs and gravel banged off the glass, disappeared in the slipstream. The steering wheel shook. He wondered how long he could hold this speed without breaking something.
As long as I have to.
2:27 p.m.
The family in the next lane stared at the highly agitated driver talking to no one.
The Executioner glared back, peeling his lips off his long white teeth.
Dad tromped on the brakes. The trucker behind rode the air horn.
You’ve got to relax, the Executioner told himself. You escaped Naperville just fine. Don’t blow it now by attracting attention.
“I’m on Interstate 55,” he told Bowie over the hands-free throwaway cell. Billboards flew by at sixty-five mph. Each promised Big Laffs in the upcoming TV season. He doubted that. “Nobody saw me. Nobody’s following.”
The rearview was smudgy from all the times he’d made sure.
“I’ll get a couple of stiff drinks in St. Louis, then a nice supper. Fly out in the morning.”
His muscles began leaking tension.
A million-to-one shot, Emily Thompson smearing his windshield. But truth was stranger than fiction. No way she could identify him, of course. Not from the half-second she spent before blowing away, and not with how well he’d altered his appearance.
He’d left no fingerprints thanks to his skintight, flesh-colored gloves. Deposited no hair thanks to body shave, hairnet, and orange-and-blue Bears cap, which were hardening with the paint. He’d rented the Audi with a fake driver’s license and prepaid credit card. Ditto Subaru and Land Rover. It was so easy to forge credentials with Photoshop, Internet, and card burner.
“Time to sign off, sport,” he told Bowie. “See you when I’m back.” Several moments’ pause. “Yeah, me, too.”
He disconnected, then punched the radio preset. Drummed his fingers through weather, sports, and nausea/bloat/hygiene commercials.
Finally the news.
The announcer said a woman was shot this morning in Naperville. Said the upper-middle-class city of 150,000 was thirty miles west of Chicago and the nation’s best place to raise kids. Said the woman died instantly. Said cops found the getaway car, launched a dragnet. Said a female police detective was inside the spa and heard screaming.
So that’s how Emily got there.
Said the detective chased the killer but got run over. Said the detective wasn’t seriously injured. Said her name was Emily Marie Thompson. Said two years ago, she was a hero.
The Executioner whistled “Zippity-Do-Dah” as he disengaged cruise control. What the announcer didn’t say was a description. If Emily had seen him, that would have led the story. Ditto the fat cop in the park. He was utterly, completely safe.
He put on his turn signal and pulled to the shoulder. Slow, deliberate, a total Calvin Careful. Traffic whizzed past inches from his door, the wind shear rocking him like a hobbyhorse. He saw a black-and-white police car running full-boogie in the northbound lanes. He didn’t care. His hands were steady as iron plates.
He pulled a spiral notebook from his poplin sport coat. It had a canary cover and light-blue page rules. He clicked a Fisher Space Pen - the one the astronauts used, which was cool - and ran a line through Zabrina Reynolds. His all-caps lettering was precise and touched neither rule. He unclicked and counted the ink lines.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
Followed by three still un-inked. Two were out west.
The last was back in Naperville.
He smiled.
Emily Thompson was already dead.
She just didn’t know it yet.
4:18 p.m.
“Who could have done this to my Zabrina?” Cassie Reynolds wailed. She curled sideways on her daughter’s bed, knees clutched to her chest. “Who? Why?”
“We don’t know, ma’am,” Branch said. “Not yet.”
“You’re the police! You’re supposed to know! What’s taking you so long?”