The Stolen - Jason Pinter [66]
We jogged down the dark road, continually looking
over our shoulders to see if we were being followed. I
heard nothing, saw nothing. My body felt numb. I was still
shirtless, and my side ached. Amanda suddenly stopped,
put her hand on my chest.
"Is that a burn mark?" she said.
"We don't have time," I panted.
Then out of the darkness a pair of headlights
appeared. My eyes widened, and I ran forward waving
my hands like a crazy person. I was in the middle of the
road, and I only prayed the driver could see well enough
not to run me over.
It was a gray Cadillac. It pulled to a stop a yard in front
of me. I ran to the driver's-side window, gasping for air.
The driver was a woman of about forty, a DVD from
Blockbuster on her front dashboard.
"Don't...don't hurt me," she said. Her eyes were frightened. I could only imagine the sight in front of her.
"Please," I said, "my friend and I were attacked. If you
could just take us away from here and call the police...
Please, they're trying to kill us."
The Stolen
187
She reached for the shift, prepared to drive away, then saw
Amanda huddled next to me, shivering in the lights of her
car.
A minute later we were in the backseat of the Cadillac,
heading away from one nightmare.
Then I felt the receipt in my pocket, and knew that
another nightmare had just begun.
23
The police station was cold. Nobody had gone out of their
way to offer Amanda or me a blanket or a drink or anything
else to settle our nerves. I was wearing a blue workshirt
with the name "Bill" stitched across the front. One of the
detectives had given it to me. I didn't want to know where
it came from, but didn't get the feeling Bill was looking
too hard for it.
Ironically the only hospital within driving distance was
Yardley. After the kind Vanessa Milne picked us up on the
side of the road in her Cadillac, she took us right to the
emergency room. The docs smeared the burn with something called Silvadene, then dressed it, told me to change
the dressing every two hours and reapply the cream. It was
just a first-degree burn. Would go away in a week, and
hopefully wouldn't leave a scar. Amanda didn't have a
scratch on her. But she was pissed off beyond belief.
A pair of detectives met us at Yardley, but they made
us wait a good two hours before arriving. And even when
they did, they didn't seem too keen to help. I found this
odd, that two people had escaped from men who wanted
to either torture or kill them, and they seemed about as
interested as they would be in macroeconomics.
The Stolen
189
They asked several questions. First, why had we
decided to follow Dmitri Petrovsky in the first place, and
what we planned to ask him. I told them the truth. That
Dmitri Petrovsky was linked to two children born in Hobbs
County who'd disappeared, only to reappear several years
later. I told them that we had a feeling based on his
behavior at the pediatric clinic that he'd been withholding
something. They asked for proof of misconduct. I told
them we didn't have proof. That was the point of following him.
After we were released, the cops took us back to the
Hobbs PD station. We were led through a cubicle farm of
desks and eventually seated in a nondescript gray room
with a metal table and chairs that were bolted to the floor.
A pitcher of water sat in front of us, along with two
glasses.
The same two cops joined us and sat down. They
poured themselves two cups of water, drank them loudly.
I had a strange feeling that we were being treated like the
criminals here.
"Can we get some of that?" Amanda asked. The cops
just stared at us. They had identical mustaches that rode
straight across their upper lips, then down the sides of
their mouths at a right angle. I got a gross mental image
of them standing over a sink with a razor, shaving those
'staches in neat lines.
"You have any idea what this town is like now?" the
fatter one asked. He had a crew cut and a neck full of angry
jowls, like he'd recently graduated from the Mike Ditka