Chat - Archer Mayor [88]
Nugent, in the meantime, was fast approaching a choice: to turn left at the bottom of the village’s small square and cross the bridge into neighboring New Hampshire, or continue south to the village limits and select Route 5 into Westminster and the interstate’s southern ramp, or west toward Saxton’s River and the back roads beyond.
He skipped the bridge, eliminating New Hampshire for the moment, and led the way up and out of town, abandoning, among other things, its quaint and demure twenty-five-mile-an-hour speed limit—something Willy thought he’d include on the list of offenses he was mentally tallying up, for fun if nothing else.
“Eight-five-one—Dispatch,” he heard over the radio from the car behind him, “we’re proceeding south on Westminster toward Red Light Hill.”
“Ten-four,” was the laconic reply.
Westminster Street was merely Rockingham renamed, wider and flatter than it was in the village. Nugent took advantage of this to extend the gap between himself and his pursuers, apparently not knowing, as they did, what lay ahead. At the aforementioned Red Light Hill—actually a four-way intersection—his two easiest choices were either a hard left or a steep hill straight up, unless he opted for an even tougher right turn back onto Atkinson all over again. In all cases, the one common denominator was a need to slow down.
Willy didn’t know if Nugent was too new to the area or too drunk and scared to care, but as they approached the junction, he began to realize that the lead car wasn’t going to survive.
He eased off the accelerator and keyed his mike, “This is VBI two-four. I think we’re looking at a ten-fifty in the making. I recommend we drop back.”
The cruiser driver didn’t answer, but he made no effort to pass Willy in the straightaway.
Now far ahead of them, the stolen car chose the left-hand turn, not surprisingly shooting for the distant interstate he’d been aiming at when the patrolman had changed his plans. Willy saw little puffs of smoke in the car’s red lights as the rear end swerved and the tires burned with a sudden braking, and then the whole package yielded to simple physics. Nugent broke into an uncontrolled skid, his car slithered both sideways and to the right until it caught the edge of a concrete median, and then it flipped, vaulting spectacularly into the night air. It hung there for a split second, as if arrested by a movie projector glitch, before coming down into a gas station driveway, careening into both of the station’s outermost pumps.
There was a flash, a flicker, a long and bated pause, and then, almost mercifully, a fireball explosion that made Willy drop onto the passenger seat for cover. A thunderous whump filled the air and compressed his lungs, even inside the closed car, followed by a showering of small, hard objects all around, including one that smashed his windshield.
With the patrolman’s yelling on the radio as a backdrop, Willy got out of his car and surveyed the scene before him—a beautiful, constant fountain of flame, with the car and the mangled pumps at its heart.
“Guess there won’t be a trial,” he said to himself.
Chapter 21
Joe heard about Wayne Nugent while he was lying in bed beside Lyn, shortly after his cell phone started vibrating from deep within his pile of clothes on the floor. He’d tried sliding his arm out from under her head in order to retrieve the phone and slip out into the hallway, but she’d heard it, too, and urged him to get back into bed with it in order to stay warm. It was an attractive offer, and not only because of her presence. She’d been right—the rest of the apartment had become uncomfortably cool.
“Gunther,” he answered, pulling the covers back up over them both.
“Hey, boss,” Sammie said. “Sorry to bother, but I thought you better get this hot off the presses. Willy was just in a ten-eighty in Bellows Falls with the guy he says raped Andy Griffis.