The Night Monster_ A Novel of Suspense - James Swain [69]
I looked down at State Road 27 directly beneath us. Twenty-seven ran due north, and had plenty of cut-offs. Mouse would feel safer on 27, and I envisioned him taking it north until he reached 441, where he could then easily get lost. I tapped the pilot’s shoulder.
“Let’s take Twenty-seven,” I yelled in his ear.
Morris gave me a thumbs-up. The chopper turned, and we roared north.
Broward is one of the most populous counties in America; when you head west into the swamps the population drops to nothing and vast farms spring up. If Mouse had driven this way, we would find him soon enough.
I glanced at the pilot’s instruments and found the speedometer. We were pushing a hundred twenty miles per hour, or a mile every thirty seconds. Long turned around in his seat and addressed me through cupped hands.
“How can you be sure they went this way?”
I stared down at the highway. “I’m not,” I yelled.
“But what if—”
“Shut up, and watch the road.”
Long didn’t like that. People hired me to do a job, and that didn’t include explaining my actions. I grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him around.
“Look at the road!”
“You’re a real prick!” Long said angrily.
“Who cares?” I replied.
The chopper suddenly slowed. Morris waved to me, then pointed straight down. He had spotted something and wanted to take a closer look. I gave him the thumbs-up, and he took us down. It felt like the floor had dropped out from beneath our feet, and Buster buried his head in my lap and shut his eyes.
I continued looking down at the highway. A crew of tree cutters were trimming back the overhang on 27, and had traffic stopped in both directions. If Mouse had run into this during his escape, it would have slowed him down considerably. I hadn’t had much to cheer about lately, but this turn of events lifted my spirits. Maybe I’d finally caught a lucky break.
We flew another five minutes, each of us focused on the backed-up line of vehicles below. Long had stopped speaking to me. I supposed I could have apologized, but I didn’t look very good on my knees.
Another minute passed. Off to my left, I spotted something strange. A compound of white, deserted buildings sat in an overgrown field, the buildings surrounded by a chain-link fence topped by razor wire. It looked like an abandoned prison, yet I knew of no prison in this part of the county.
“I want to take a look at that,” I yelled to Morris.
The chopper dipped, making me feel weightless. Morris brought us down directly over the compound’s entrance. I stared at the shell of a guard house. At one time, the abandoned place had been some type of institution.
A single road made of crushed seashells led into the compound. I spotted a fresh pair of tire tracks in the shells, their indentations several inches deep. Someone had recently been here, and I told Morris to see where the tracks led.
Morris followed the road into the compound. It was an enormous facility, and I counted six towering buildings, each painted an institutional white. The buildings’ windows had been knocked out, as had the doors, giving them a ghostly feel. On one building, rusted bars covered the windows on every floor. Not a prison, I thought, but a mental institution.
The tracks stopped in a courtyard, then made a complete circle, and went back out. It could have been teenagers, or some curious tourists looking for a photo opportunity. Or it could have been Mouse and the giant, looking for a place to hide.
Long turned around in his seat. “Why are we stopping?”
“I think they came here,” I said.
“You’re nuts. This is a ghost town.”
It was a ghost town, its memories long since displaced. But sometimes people returned to places that filled their souls with darkness. Mouse and his partner had been in Broward eighteen years ago, and something told me that this was where they’d lived.
“Let’s go!” Long told the pilot.
The chopper left the compound. Flying over the entrance, I spotted a rotting wood sign lying on the ground beside the front gate. The name of the institution was painted on the sign in bold