Chat - Archer Mayor [87]
“God damned son of a bitch,” Willy swore as he staggered to his feet and gave chase, amazed by the other man’s reflexes. Already, Nugent was halfway down the block, despite his inebriated state.
Willy had given no thought whatsoever to asking the local police department for assistance with this, purely on principle. And even now, as his quarry began vanishing into the darkness, he didn’t rue his decision. He was hoping, however, that Nugent’s adrenaline would run out sooner rather than later.
As it turned out, that didn’t matter. When Nugent reached the next major cross street, a car pulled up out of nowhere and—in defiance of typical behavior—came to a complete stop at the sign. With the same reactive fluidity that he’d used against Willy, Nugent ran straight up to the driver’s door, yanked it open, pulled out the astonished young man at the wheel, and all but threw him across the sidewalk. In the time it took Willy to cover five yards, the car’s rear wheels were burning and squealing as the vehicle peeled away, its open door slamming shut from the momentum.
“Shit!” Willy yelled, shifting directions to aim for his own car, parked within sight. No longer simply irritated at his man for being half rabbit, he was already visualizing ranks of irritated senior officers looming in his proximate future.
He unlocked his car at a run using the remote, half fell in behind the wheel, and jammed the key into the ignition. His one hand controlling the car, he used the same technique as Nugent to slam his door, and swerved around the baffled, dispossessed driver, now staggering in the middle of the street.
From the air, Bellows Falls fit roughly between two major streets that matched up at either end like parentheses placed too close together, and which therefore formed an oval-shaped loop. The one cutting through downtown proper was named Rockingham—where Nugent had spent half the night drinking. The other was Atkinson, where, with Willy in hot pursuit, he was now driving north at exuberant speed. As Willy could have predicted given his present turn of luck, the Bellows Falls Police Department was located just beyond the northern juncture of this loop. And, naturally, it was just as Nugent was approaching this spot, hoping to burst through it and beyond to the interstate entry ramp some five miles off, that a patrol officer, no doubt bored with his own paperwork, left the office in his cruiser and began heading south.
He didn’t need a radar to interpret what was approaching. Nor did he have to think twice before hitting his blue lights.
Willy saw the light bar burst to life ahead of Nugent’s stolen car. This time, however, his reaction was almost muted. “Christ,” he snorted quietly, by now philosophical. “What next?” He quickly moved to turn on his own hidden grille strobes.
Nugent’s response was finally predictable. He cut his wheel right, went sliding broadside toward the oncoming cruiser, and, just shy of collision, shot into the parking lot of a gas station at the juncture of Atkinson and Rockingham, intent on heading down the latter in the opposite direction.
The cruiser skidded to a stop, unable to turn without hitting Willy, and swung around instead in his wake, his siren now joining the light show that was jaggedly bouncing off the nearby buildings.
Willy hit the radio transmit button he had mounted to his steering wheel to favor his disability.
“BFPD, this is VBI two-four, directly in front of you. Do you copy?”
The response was a delayed and breathless “Ten-Four. This is M-eight-five-one. What’s going on?”
By now, all three cars were tearing down Rockingham, the nearby red-brick walls whipping past at white-knuckle speed. Willy could only hope that no one else would be taking in the sights on a wintry night.
“In pursuit of a stolen vehicle. Better alert everybody on both sides of the river.”
A woman’s calm voice then broke in. “This is Bellows Falls Dispatch. Do you have a description of the vehicle?”
With a small sigh at the inevitable reprimands to come, Willy rattled