Stealing Faces - Michael Prescott [89]
“She’s got her headlights off. I’m using a night-vision scope. Maintain your speed till you’re past the checkpoint. We’ll take it from there.”
“I understand,” Cray said.
He set down the radio on the passenger seat next to his medical kit, feeling vaguely disappointed. It hardly seemed sporting of the law enforcement authorities to hunt poor Kaylie with a night-vision scope. Cray himself had never used such equipment when he chased down his prey.
He drove on. The aria reached its climax. “Mi struggo e mi tormento,” the soprano sang. Her suffering, her torment.
Kaylie had struggled so hard to evade capture, all these long years.
Soon her torment would be over.
But in another sense, it had only just begun.
40
Wheelihan watched the Lexus cruise past. He waited another twenty seconds, watching the car with no headlights as it approached in the green fog of the night scope.
A small car, subcompact, not new, in poor condition.
Lone occupant, hunched over the wheel, a smeared glow of green.
Close now.
Almost here ...
Wheelihan lifted his rover radio and scrambled his troops with a one-word command: “Go.”
Three pairs of high beams snapped on, bright fans of light crisscrossing the desert brush, and a moment later the dome lights burst into whirls of furious color.
The trio of patrol cars skidded around clumps of mesquite and careened onto the gravel road, then halted, forming a disorderly row that blocked both lanes. They waited there, garish in the pulsing varicolored light, but silent; Wheelihan had told his men to keep their sirens off.
The little car was still coming, confronted now by a barricade of steel.
For a tense moment Wheelihan wondered if Kaylie would stop and surrender peacefully, or panic and try to ram through the roadblock.
His men were ready for that eventuality. If Kaylie offered resistance, they were under orders to shoot.
Shoot to kill.
He didn’t want it to end that way, and so he was relieved when the subcompact slowed, brakes squealing, and finally stuttered to a stop a few yards from the blockade.
His men stayed in their vehicles, as they’d been told. Every one of them had his weapon sighted on the suspect huddled behind the wheel. From the ground by his feet, Wheelihan picked up an electronic bullhorn, a toy he’d rarely had the opportunity to use,
“Turn off your engine,” he said, speaking normally. It was a mistake to shout into one of these things.
There was a moment’s hesitation, and the little car shuddered as the motor died.
Good. Very good.
“Now raise your hands. Raise them where we can see them.”
Another pause. Then slowly two pale, trembling hands were lifted out of the shadows.
“Keep them raised. Do not move. You will not be harmed.”
His men were emerging from their vehicles now, first using the open doors for cover, then approaching fast and low, their guns leading them.
When the subcompact was surrounded, Wheelihan allowed himself to breathe.
“Got her,” he whispered.
He was still congratulating himself on a smooth operation, damn smooth, when Mel Baylor, who had missed his wife’s pot roast this evening, called out, “Chuck, we got a problem here.”
Problem?
Wheelihan set down his bullhorn and hurried to the car, a battered and dented Toyota Tercel. As he drew near, he saw what the problem was. Yes, indeed.
Hunched in the front seat was the driver, who was not Kaylie McMillan, but instead a very large, very bald man blubbering like a child.
* * *
Cray reached the scene at a run, his medical bag swinging at his side, and found Walter standing in tears by the side of his car. He kept repeating two words, “Dr. Cray,” with imbecilic insistence.
“This guy seems to know you, Doc,” Undersheriff Wheelihan said, disgust souring his voice.
Cray hated being called Doc. He pushed his irritation away.
“He’s a patient,” he said, trying to be calm, but afraid suddenly—terribly afraid of what Walter might say. “He lives at the institute. But he’s not confined there. He has a car, this car, and he runs errands.”
“Runs ’em at night? With