William P. McGivern

Murder on the Turnpike

Story was originally serialized in three issues the “Saturday Evening Post” in January 1961.

I

The headlights rushed at him like long yellow lances. They swept by on his left in a formation of threes, each pair of lights following its own lane; but they might change direction at any instant, he thought, and plunge straight at his car. There was always the unknown enemy to fear...

He was traveling south on the Tri-State Turnpike. New York was a dozen miles behind him. Now he was safe, an innocent, anonymous unit in a vast complex of speeding cars and flashing lights. In the rear-vision mirror the lane behind him stretched emptily for several hundred yards. And ahead of him, less than a quarter of a mile away, was a Howard Johnson’s restaurant and service station, gleaming like a necklace of diamonds in the darkness.

He pumped the brakes and swung off the pike, stopping on the graveled roadbed that flanked the highway. Now he was about two hundred yards from the restaurant.

The traffic rushed by him, the headlights splintering on his thick glasses. He blinked his large eyes. The noise and movement confused him — the spinning tires, the flashing lights and the exhaust fumes of roaring traffic. But one thing was untouched by the bewildering racket of the turnpike — the plans he had made. They were like a rock of purpose in tossing, uncertain seas.

He climbed from his car, removed his hat and bulky tweed overcoat, and threw them into the back seat. Then he switched off the headlights, took the key from the ignition and hurled it with all his strength into the black fields bordering the pike. Let them figure that out, he thought, smiling.

He was tall and broad, heavily and powerfully, built, with an iron-gray crew cut and strong, harshly cut features. When he smiled, his teeth flashed in the darkness, white and pronounced. Everything about him projected a sense of purpose and determination. Everything, that is, but his eyes; they were mild and clear, and when he was excited, they glittered with a childish sort of anticipation and malice.

As he walked swiftly from his car, legs churning powerfully and shoulders hunched into the wind, he was conscious of only two needs. The first was for another car. That was terribly important. He must have a car. And second, and equally important, was the need for something hot and sweet to drink. After what he had done, his whole body ached for the comfort and reassurance of steaming, heavily sugared coffee.

It was not quite seven o’clock.

Trooper Dan O’Leary spotted the abandoned car five minutes later as he swept along with the northbound traffic. He speeded up to give himself room for a turn, then drove up onto the wide lane of grass which separated the north-and southbound streams of traffic. When the highway was clear, he bumped down into the southbound lane and pulled up behind the apparently empty car, the headlights of his patrol car bathing it in yellow radiance. O’Leary picked up the phone that hung on the right side of the steering post and reported to the dispatcher at Turnpike Headquarters, sixteen miles south at the River head Station.

“Patrol Twenty-one, O’Leary, I’m checking a stopped Buick, a ’Fifty-one sedan. New York plates.” He repeated the numbers twice, then glanced at a numbered milepost a dozen yards or so beyond the Buick. The turnpike was marked by such mileposts from the first exit to the last, and O’Leary had stopped at No. 114. He gave that information to the dispatcher and stepped from his car with a hand resting on the butt of his revolver.

This action was reflexive, a result or training which had been designed to make his responses almost instinctive under certain circumstances. There was seldom anything casual or whimsical about his work He had stopped behind the parked car for good reasons; he could approach it under the cover of his own lights, and he was in no danger of being run down. His report to the dispatcher was equally a matter of training and good sense; if he were fired on or if the car raced away from him, its description would go out to a hundred patrols in a matter of seconds And it was the same thing with his gun; the car looked empty, but O’Leary approached it ready for trouble. He flashed his light into the front and rear seats, noted the tweed overcoat and gray felt hat. There was no key in the ignition. He touched the hood and found it warm. Probably out of gas. He went around to take a look at the trunk.

While O’Leary made this preliminary investigation. Sergeant Tonelli, the dispatcher at the Riverhead Station, checked the license number O’Leary had given him against the current file of stolen cars. Tonelli, a tall, spare man with graying hair and thick, white eyebrows, sat in the middle of a semicircular desk in the headquarters office. Strong overhead lights flooded the room with noonday brightness, pushing back the darkness beyond the wide, high windows. The glare of the turnpike swept past the three-storied headquarters buildings, six lanes of traffic flowing smoothly into the night. Directly behind Tonelli a door led to Captain Royce’s office. The captain was at his desk checking certain arrangements and plans which he had submitted weeks earlier to the Secret Service, The plans had been approved, and Captain Royce was presently giving them a last, careful inspection.

The current file of stolen cars was impaled on a spike near Tonelli’s big right hand, and he flipped through the lists with automatic efficiency while continuing to monitor the reports crackling from the speaker above his switchboard. Sergeant Tonelli was responsible for approximately one third of the hundred-mile length of the turnpike. This area was designated as Headquarters North. Two subsidiary stations, Substation Central and Substation South, divided the remaining sixty-odd miles between them; their responsibility was limited to traffic, and in all other matters they look orders from headquarters and Captain Royce.

Under Sergeant Tonelli’s direct control were eighteen patrol cars, assorted ambulances, tow trucks, fire and riot equipment. In his mind was a faithful and imaginative picture of the turnpike at this exact moment; he knew to the mile the location of each patrol car and what it was doing; he knew of the speeding Mercedes-Benz being chased ten miles north; he knew of the accident that had plugged up the slow and middle lanes beyond Interchange 10, and he knew, of course, that Dan O’Leary, Car 21, was presently investigating a Buick parked at Milepost 114.

In addition to this routine activity, Sergeant Tonelli was considering certain areas of the problem that faced Captain Royce. The President of the United States would be riding on the turnpike tonight, entering in convoy at Interchange 5 and traveling south to the end of the pike, a distance of about fifty miles. Sergeant Tonelli would dispatch certain of his patrol cars to that area in an hour or so, and he was turning over in his mind how best to take up the slack that would be caused by their departure.

But meanwhile he continued his check of the stolen-cars file, a check which proved futile.

Trooper O’Leary returned to his patrol car and called headquarters. He said to Tonelli, “Car Twenty-one. O’Leary. Looks like the Buick’s out of gas. The driver must have walked up to the Howard Johnson’s. I’ll check and see if he needs help.”

“Proceed, Twenty-one.”

O’Leary drove into the service area and pulled up to the gas pumps. A wiry, gray-haired attendant hurried to his car.

O’Leary rolled down his window, “Anyone been in for a can of gas, Tom?”

“Not a soul, Dan. Not since this morning, anyway.”

“O.K., thanks,” O’Leary said and drove back to the parking area that flanked the restaurant. The owner of the disabled car might have slopped for something to eat, he thought. O’Leary straightened his shoulders and dark-green jacket before walking into the warm foyer of the restaurant, but both of these corrective gestures were unnecessary; his back was straight as a board, and his uniform was trig and immaculate. O’Leary was twenty-eight, solidly and powerfully built, but his stride would have pleased a drill sergeant. There was almost a touch of arrogance in the set of his head and shoulders, and he handled his body as if it were a machine he understood and trusted completely. He had short black hair and eyes as cold and hard as marbles, but there was something boyish about the seriousness of his expression and the clean, wind-scrubbed look of his skin.

O’Leary had one fact that might help him find his missing motorist; he probably wasn’t wearing a hat or overcoat. He had left them in the car.

But the hostess who escorted diners to tables remembered no such person. “Not in the last ten or fifteen minutes, Dan.” She glanced around the restaurant, which was divided into two large wings, one on either side of a long soda fountain and take-out counter. Both were crowded; the air was noisy with conversation and the clatter of cutlery and dishes. “Of course, he might have come in while I was seating someone.”

“He couldn’t have found a table for himself?”

“Not when it’s crowded like this. But he might have gone to the take-out counter.”

“Thanks. I’ll check that.”

O’Leary stood patiently at the take-out counter while the waitress took an order for hamburgers, French Tries, milk and coffee from a thin young man who seemed vaguely embarrassed at putting her to so much trouble, He smiled nervously at O’Leary and said, “The kids are too little to bring in here. They’d play with the menus and water glasses instead of eating. My wife thinks it’s easier to feed them in the car.”

“She probably knows best,” O’Leary said. “Anyway, eating in a car is pretty exciting for kids.”

“Yes, they get a kick out of it.” The young man seemed relieved by O’Leary’s understanding air. When he went away with his sackful of food, O’Leary asked the waitress if she had served a man recently who wasn’t wearing a hat or overcoat.

“Gee, I don’t think so, Dan.” She was a plain and plump young woman, with mild brown eyes. Her name was Millie. “How come he wasn’t wearing an overcoat?”

“He left it in his car, which is out of gas about two hundred yards from here. I guess he figured he wouldn’t freeze in that time.”

At this point it was a routine investigation, a small departure from O’Leary’s normal work of shepherding traffic along the pike, of running down speeders, of watching for drivers who seemed fatigued or erratic, of arresting hitchhikers, or assisting motorists in any and all kinds of trouble. A car out of gas, the owner not in evidence at the moment; that’s all it amounted to. He might be in a washroom, might have stopped in the service-station office to buy cigarettes or make a phone call. There was no law against his doing any of these things. But O’Leary wanted to find him and get his car back in operation. The safety of the pike depended on smoothly flowing traffic; any stalled car was dangerous.

“Do you want a cup of coffee?” the waitress asked him.

“No, thanks, Millie.” There would be little time for coffee breaks tonight, he knew. A threat of rain was on the cold, damp air, and that meant the hazards of thickening traffic and difficult driving conditions. Also there was the convoy; every trooper on the pike had been alerted to that responsibility.

But at that moment there was an interruption which took O’Leary’s mind off his missing motorist; a dark-haired girl came up beside Millie and said breathlessly, “Has Dan told you about the glamorous date he has tonight?”

“Now, Sheila,” O’Leary said, and ran a finger under his collar.

“Tonight and every night,” Sheila said with an envious sigh, which O’Leary knew was about as sincere as the average speeder’s excuse and contrition. “You see, Millie,” Sheila went on, “Dan and I had a date last Tuesday, and before we went home he took me up to Leonard’s Hill. We could see the turnpike below us, the headlights blazing like long strings of diamonds in the darkness. And do you know what he told me?”

“Now, Sheila!” O’Leary said helplessly.

“He told me he loved the turnpike. Isn’t that lucky for him? Night after night he’s close to his one true love — a hundred miles of asphalt.”

“It’s concrete,” O’Leary said miserably; he knew it was a token point, but he disliked inaccuracies about the turnpike, major or minor. The fact was, he did love that hundred-mile stretch of concrete. And sitting in the darkness with Sheila the other night, it had seemed natural to put the thought into words. Why was he such a fool? And why did she make him feel so helpless and vulnerable? The top of her head barely reached his shoulders, and he could swing her hundred-odd pounds into the air as easily as he would a child, but these things made no difference; he was clumsy and inept with her, driven to silly talk by something intangible and mysterious that radiated from her personality. It wasn’t mere beauty, he knew that much; as an Irishman he was also a poet, and while he appreciated her green eyes and elegantly slim body, his heart and soul responded to more than these physical attractions. There was a quality of grace and strength about her, a thread of steel and music permeating her whole being, and because of this — and because I’m a fool, he thought — he had blurted out his feelings to her that night as they sat watching the traffic on the pike.

In his eyes the turnpike was a fascinating creation, a fabulous artery linking three mighty states, a brilliant complex of traffic rotaries, interchanges and expressways which carried almost a quarter of a million persons safely to their homes and offices each and every day of the year. Consider it, he had urged her, unaware that she was smiling at the clean, boyish line of his profile. This on their fourth date. She was not a regular waitress, but a part-timer filling in on evenings and weekends to help pay for her last year in college. Their fourth date and probably their last, he thought, for he had got on the subject of speeders.

As a logical corollary to O’Leary’s affection for the turnpike was his dislike of those who abused its privileges; and speeders topped this list by a country mile. O’Leary always thought of them as small and shifty-eyed, although the last one he had caught was built like a professional wrestler. They regarded the turnpike as a challenge and troopers as natural enemies. They didn’t have the brains to realize that the checks and safeguards, the radar and unmarked police cars were designed solely for their protection. Instead they acted like sullen, sneaky children, behaving only as long as the parental eye was on them. O’Leary knew their works very well; he had stood dozens of limes at the scene of wrecks, with the moans of the dying in his cars, and seeing the wild patterns of ruptured steel and broken glass, and the nightmarish contortion human bodies could assume after striking a concrete abutment at seventy miles an hour.

He felt strongly about these matters and had tried to make Sheila understand his convictions; but after completing his lecture with an interesting recital of various statistics, he had turned to find her peacefully asleep, with shadows like violets under her eyes and still the faintest trace of a smile on her lips.

Millie had turned to wait on another customer. A woman with two children was trying to catch Sheila’s eye. O’Leary adjusted his cap. Then he said quietly, formally, “I simply wanted you to understand—”

But she didn’t let him finish. “I understand,” she said, smiling up at him. “I couldn’t resist teasing you a little. I’m sorry.” She moved a sugar bowl, and the back of her fingers touched his hand. “It wasn’t very nice of me. I’m afraid.”

“Next Saturday?” he said, smiling with relief and pleasure. “Same time?”

“I’d love to.”

The man who had abandoned the Buick twenty minutes earlier stood in the shadows of the parking lot watching O’Leary and the dark-haired waitress. It was like a movie, he realized with pleasure, the big plate-glass window and the people behind it outlined starkly by the restaurant’s bright lighting. A silent movie, of course. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he could see their shifting expressions and the smiles that came and went on their lips.

They weren’t talking business, he thought, and took a deliberate luxurious sip from his container of hot, heavily sweetened coffee. But the big trooper had been very businesslike until the slim, dark-haired girl came along. Talking to the attendant at the gas pumps, then going into the restaurant and quizzing the hostess and the stupid-looking little blonde at the take-out counter. Very serious and efficient. The man watching through the window had seen all that. But now the trooper’s manner had changed. He and the girl were smiling at each other, trying to be impersonal, of course, masking their feelings; but it was nakedly apparent, disgustingly evident to the man sipping the sweet coffee in the dark parking lot. His name was Harry Bogan, and despite his irritation at their intimate, suggestive smiles, he was still grateful they weren’t talking business. The trooper’s business, that is. For it was from this slender, dark-haired girl that Bogan had bought his coffee and frankfurter. And the trooper hadn’t asked her about it; that was obvious.

Without his overcoat Bogan was cold. But he stood motionless in the shadows until the trooper turned away from the counter after giving the girl a last quick smile and a soft salute. Then Bogan walked the length of the parking lot and moved silently into the opening between two cars. He ate his frankfurter in quick, greedy bites, savoring the tart bite of the mustard on his tongue, and dropped the empty, cradlelike container to the ground. Then he finished the coffee, tilting the cardboard cup high to let a little stream of liquefied sugar trickle into his mouth. He let the cup fall at his feet and drew a deep, satisfied breath. Sugar or honey usually made him feel grateful and at peace with himself.

He watched the doors of the restaurant as he pulled a pair or black-leather gloves over his thick, muscular hands. His eyes were bright with excitement. He shivered with pleasure as he found a crumb of sugar on his lip. His tongue moved dexterously, then flicked the tiny sweetness into his mouth.

Bogan did not have long to wait. Within a matter of seconds a plump, elderly man came hurrying along the line of parked cars, fumbling in his pockets for his keys. Bogan shifted his position slightly, moving into the deeper shadows until only his thick glasses glinted in the darkness, as steady and watchful as the eyes of a crouching cat.

O’Leary returned to his patrol car and reported to headquarters. Sergeant Tonelli said. “Captain Royce wants to talk to you, O’Leary. Hold on.”

The captain’s voice was hard and metallic, as arresting as a pistol shot. “O’Leary, did you get a lead on the man who abandoned that Buick?”

“No, sir. I drew blanks with the gas-pump attendants and the waitresses in the restaurant. He probably wasn’t wearing a hat or overcoat — that’s all I had to go on.”

“Get back to that car. Don’t let anyone near it. Lieutenant Trask and the lab men are on their way. That Buick was used in a double murder in New York not more than an hour ago. Get moving, O’Leary.”

Lt. Andy Trask was short and muscular with shoulders that bulged impressively against his black overcoat. At forty-five, the lieutenant was a study in somber tones — broad, tanned face, brown eyes and black hair that only in the past year had faded to silver along the temples. As the lab technicians went to work on the car, searching trunk and glove compartments, fingerprinting and photographing, Trask gave O’Leary an account of the information that headquarters had received in a three-state alarm from New York.

“We’ve got no description on the murderer, except that he’s big, and was wearing a light-colored tweed overcoat and a gray hat. Here’s what he did: Around six-thirty this evening he walked into a little furniture-repair-type shop on Third Avenue in Manhattan and shot and killed the owners, a young married couple named Swanson. It wasn’t a robbery: he just shot ’em and ran out The Buick belongs to a druggist who’d parked it about a half block from the furniture shop, with the keys in the ignition. The killer was seen running from the shop by an old woman in an apartment across the street; but she’s an invalid with no phone.

“It took her half an hour to get hold of her landlady. The landlady, like everybody else in the neighborhood, was down in the street talking about what had happened. So — half an hour later — the invalid tells her story. She described the clothes the guy was wearing and the license number of the Buick. But by that time the murderer had got through the Lincoln Tunnel and onto our pike.” Trask turned and jerked his thumb at the Buick. “Now he’s ditched this crate and more than likely is looking for another one. We’ve got to find him before somebody else gets hurt.”

“With no description,” O’Leary said slowly. “He’s got rid of the tweed coat and gray hat. We’ve got nothing to go on. He could be off and running by now in another car.” He glanced helplessly at the streams of traffic rolling smoothly past him. “Any car, lieutenant. With a gun he could force his way into a station wagonful of college kids. Or climb in with a nice little family group where he’d look like innocent Old Uncle Fred. He could be in a truck, or in a trailer, holding a gun against some woman’s head while her husband drives him off the pike. It’s like chasing ghosts blindfolded.”

The radio in Trask’s black, unmarked car cracked a signal sharply. Trask slipped into the front seat and picked up the receiver. He listened for a few seconds, a frown shading his somber features, and then said, “Check. We’ll get at it.” He dropped the receiver back on its hook and looked sharply at O’Leary. “You called it, Dan. He’s off and running. There’s a dead man up at Howard Johnson’s, and an empty space where his car was parked. Come on.”

The body of the dead man had been discovered by a young couple returning to their car after dinner. The woman almost fell over his legs. Her husband flicked his cigarette lighter to see what was wrong. She began to scream then, and her husband ran back toward the bright lights of the restaurant, shouting for help.

Sergeant Tonelli received the report of the murder from the manager of the Howard Johnson’s and relayed it immediately to Lieutenant Trask. He dispatched Trask and O’Leary to the restaurant and then flashed the information to the communications center at State Police Headquarters in Darmouth.

This was the nerve center of a communications web which embraced every patrol car, station and substation within the state-police organization. In addition it was linked in a master net with the facilities of sin nearby states; under emergency priorities Darmouth could alert the full resources of police departments from Maine to South Carolina, throw its signals across the entire North Atlantic seaboard.

Lieutenant Biersby was on duty in Communications when Sergeant Tonelli’s message was brought to his desk. Biersby, short, plump and methodical, walked with no evidence of haste into an outer room where a dozen civilian clerks under the supervision of state troopers worked at batteries of teletypewriters and radio transmitters.

Lieutenant Biersby’s special talent was judgment; each message Hashed from his office required a priority, and it was his responsibility to establish the order of precedence to be given the thousands of alerts and reports which clattered into the office on every eight-hour shift. A smooth flow, based on relative importance, was essential; lapses in judgment could jam the mechanical facilities and burden already overworked police departments with trivial details and reports.

As Lieutenant Biersby walked toward a teletypewriter operator, he considered the facts: A killer was loose on the pike, a sketchily identified man who had murdered two persons in New York City and another in the parking lot at Howard Johnson’s No. 1 south. It was a reasonable inference that he had killed the third time to get possession of another car. But there was another possibility which didn’t escape the lieutenant; the killer might have left the turnpike on foot. This would be difficult, since the pike was guarded by a nine-foot fence designed in part to keep hitchhikers from getting onto the highway between interchanges. But a strong and agile man might manage it.

It was Biersby’s decision — reached as he walked the twenty feet from his desk to the teletypewriter machine — to alert every police officer fifty miles from the spot the Buick had been abandoned; if the killer had left the pike on foot, he’d be within that circle. All hitchhikers, prowlers and suspicious persons would be picked up for investigation. This was a routine and probably fruitless precaution, Biersby thought; because his judgment, which was blended of experience, instinct and vague promptings he had never succeeded in analyzing, told him that the killer was still on the pike. Speeding safely through the night, an anonymous man in an anonymous car, lost in the brilliant streams or traffic.

He said to the teletypewriter operator, “This is a Special. Get it moving.”

The dead man was in his sixties, small, gray-haired, seemingly respectable; his clothes were of good quality, and a Masonic emblem gleamed in the lapel button-hole of his suite coat. He had been strangled; his face was hideous. He lay in an empty parking space that gaped like an empty tooth in the row of night-black cars. Near one outflung hand was an empty coffee container and one of the small cardboard cradles that were used Tor take-out orders of French fries or frankfurters. There was no identification in his clothes; his pockets had been stripped.

An ambulance had arrived, and the two interns were examining the body in the light from Lieutenant Trask’s flashlight. Three white-and-blue patrol cars blocked off the immediate area, their red beacons swinging against the darkness, and troopers were posted about the parking lot to keep traffic moving. A crowd had gathered in front of the restaurant to watch the police activity.

Dan O’Leary stood behind Trask, frowning faintly at the empty parking space. When Trask turned away from the body, O’Leary touched his arm. “I’ve got an idea,” he said. “The killer took the car that was parked here, that’s obvious. Well, we might get a line on what kind of a car it was from the people who parked beside it. They arrived after he did probably, since their cars are still here. Maybe they can—”

“Yes,” Trask said, cutting him off. “Get those people out here. Fast.”

O’Leary took down the license numbers from the cars on either side of the empty parking space and ran toward the restaurant.

The car on the left was a Plymouth sedan owned by a thin young man with horn-rimmed glasses and a nervous stammer. The owner of the car on the right was a middle-aged woman, a peaceful, padded sort of person, with the kind of composure that seemed to deepen under tension.

Lieutenant Trask, realizing that their memories might be short-circuited by haste or pressure, squandered a few seconds in lighting a cigarette. Then he said quietly, “We’re trying to get a description of the car that was stolen from this space about fifteen minutes ago. It was here when you arrived. You parked alongside it. Now take your time; do you remember anything about it? Any detail?”

“I wa... was in a hurry,” the young man said shrilly. “I’m supposed to be in Cantonville by eight-thirty. I just ra... ran for a cup of coffee. I wa... wasn’t thinking about anything else.”

“Well, it was big,” the woman said, nodding with impeccable assurance. “Its tail stuck out of the line. I had to make two tries before I could get in beside it.”

Their recollections came slowly, haltingly. The young man recovered a remnant of poise and mentioned details of the bumper; the woman remembered something about the lights and fenders. They agreed it was a station wagon, and finally, after what seemed interminable indecision, settled on the color — either white or light yellow. Trask glanced at O’Leary. “Well?”

“If they’re right, it’s an Edsel station wagon,” O’Leary said. “Can’t be anything else.”

“How far is the next interchange?”

“Twenty-eight miles,” O’Leary said sharply. “And he’s only been gone twenty minutes. He can’t possibly make it. And he’ll be easy to spot in a white Edsel station wagon A Ford, Chevy or Plymouth would be another matter.”

“Flash your dispatcher,” Trask said, but O’Leary was already running to his car.

At headquarters Captain Royce, senior officer of the turnpike command, stood behind Sergeant Tonelli checking the reports coming in from interchanges and patrols. The tempo of the office had picked up a sharp, insistent beat in the last half hour; every available off-duty trooper had been ordered back to the pike, and riot squads had been dispatched to substations Central and South. Royce was in his fifties, tall and sparely built, and with a look of seasoned toughness about his sharply chiseled features. As a rule there was little suggestion of tension or impatience in his manner, but now, as he filled a pipe and struck a match, a tight, anxious frown was shadowing his hard gray eyes.

Trooper O’Leary’s report had come in a half hour ago. Within minutes the turnpike had been transformed into a hundred-mile trap; every patrol had been alerted, every interchange had been instructed to watch for the white Edsel station wagon. But so far there was no trace of the killer. Patrols had stopped three Edsels, but in each case the passengers were above suspicion — a carload of college girls, a Texan with a wife and four children, and four Carmelite nuns being transported at a stately speed by an elderly Negro chauffeur.

Royce looked at the big clock on the wall above the dispatcher’s desk. It was eight-ten. The Presidential convoy would swing onto the pike at nine-forty. In just ninety minutes...

Sergeant Tonelli looked up at him and said, “Trooper O’Leary asks permission to speak to you, sir.”

“Where is he?”

“At Interchange Twelve.”

This was twenty-eight miles from Howard Johnson’s No. 1. The killer might be miles beyond that now; he’d beer gone from the Howard Johnson’s more than forty-five minutes. “I’ll take it in my office,” Royce said, and went with long strides to his desk. As he lifted the receiver he saw that it had begun to rain; the turnpike flashed below his windows, and he could see the slick gleam of water on the concrete and the distorted glare from long columns of headlights.

“This is Captain Royce. What is it, O’Leary?”

“Just this, sir. He’s had time to make Exits Twelve or Eleven by now — if he’s thinking about getting off the pike.”

“What do you mean, if? What else could he be thinking about?”

“He made a mistake taking a white Edsel. Maybe he’s realized it. Also he took it from the middle of a row of cars which gave us a lead on it. Maybe he’s realized that too. My guess is he won’t try to get off the pike in that car. I think he’ll try to ditch the Edsel before making a break.”

“Hold on a minute.” Royce glanced quickly at the turnpike map which covered one wall of his office. The interchanges were marked and numbered in red, the Howard Johnson’s restaurants in green. Captain Royce saw instantly what O’Leary meant — before Exit 12 there was another Howard Johnson’s restaurant and service area. This was designated Howard Johnson’s No. 2; it was only twelve miles from No. 1. The killer might have driven only from No. 1 to No. 2; with the fifteen-minute head start he could have made it comfortably — and found another car.

“O’Leary, get back to Number Two on the double. Tonelli will dispatch help.”

Harry Bogan had done as O’Leary had guessed — driven the white Edsel station wagon only as far as Howard Johnson’s No. 2, then abandoned it in the parking lot. Now he stood in the shadows, watching the activity at the gas pumps, a slocky, powerful figure, with the light glinting on his thick glasses and the rainy wind brushing the wiry ends of his gray crew cut. He was smiling faintly, foil lips softly curved, large mild eyes bright with excitement. The police would be sniffing around the exits now, he knew, the long blue-and-white patrol cars lined up like hungry cats at a mousehole. Waiting to pounce.

Bogan knew he had made a mistake in taking the white Edsel station wagon, but he hadn’t time to be choosy. The important thing was to get away from the area where he had left the Buick. But now he could be more discriminating. He had special requirements, and he was prepared to wait until they were satisfied. Time wasn’t important, and in that lay his safety. The police would think he was frantic, ready to bolt at the first whiff of danger. But that wasn’t the case. The feeling of power and control sent a heady flash of warmth through his body.

He heard the thin cry of a siren on his right, the sound rising and Tailing like the howl of an animal. On the turnpike he saw the red beacon light of a police car sweeping with brilliant speed through the orderly lanes of traffic. And he heard other sirens approaching on his left. The first patrol car made a u-turn over the grass strip that divided the turnpike and swerved into the restaurant service area. An attendant coming from the gas-station office stopped within a few feet of Bogan to watch the patrol car flash past the pumps and pull to an expert stop at the parking area in front of the bright restaurant.

Bogan was amused. He said, “Seems to be in a hurry, doesn’t he?”

The attendant glanced toward Bogan’s voice, but saw only the suggestion of a bulky body in the shadow. “Looks like it,” he said.

Bogan recognized the trooper; it was the one who had been simpering at the dark-haired waitress from whom he had bought his coffee and hot dog. Watching him stride along the row of parked cars gave Bogan a curious flick of pleasure. The attendant said, “Well, he’s safer driving at a hundred than most guys are at fifty. That’s Dan O’Leary, and he can really handle that heap.”

The attendant returned to the gas pumps, and Bogan continued his patient examination of the cars lining up for service. He soon found what he wanted, an inconspicuous Ford sedan driven by a young man with horn-rimmed glasses. A college boy, Bogan guessed, noting a bow tie and crew-cut blond hair. This would do nicely. The car was like one of thousands rolling along the pike, and the boy looked intelligent. That was important. There was a lot to explain, and it would be tiresome explaining things to a fool.

By then two more patrol cars had arrived. The troopers had joined the one called O’Leary. Bogan saw. And O’Leary was standing beside the white Edsel, inspecting it with his flashlight. Bogan laughed softly. They thought they were so clever; strutting pompous fools with their uniforms and guns. They’d learn nothing from the big white station wagon. He had parked it off by itself; no one had seen him leave it. They could rip it to pieces, and it would tell them nothing. They had no way to identify him, no way to know what kind of car he would presently ride off in.

The young man was paying for his gas now, and Bogan moved slowly from the shadows. This would require nice timing, he realized. The attendant gave the young man his change and walked back to the next car in line. The young man rolled up his window and started the motor.

Bogan opened the door just as the car began to move. He slid onto the front seat and showed the young man his gun. “Now let’s go,” he said quietly. “We’ve got a nice little ride ahead of us.”

Harry Bogan murdered a young couple in New York and drove to the Tri-State Turnpike. He abandoned his car to avoid identification by the police and started looking for an inconspicuous car to drive.

At the service station near Howard Johnson’s No. 2 he found what he wanted: a Ford sedan driven by a young man with horn-rimmed glasses. The boy looked intelligent. That’s important, Bogan thought. There was a lot to explain, and it would be tiresome explaining things to a fool.

After the young man paid for his gas, the attendant walked back to the next car in line. Bogan opened the door just as the car began to move. He slid onto the front seat and showed the young man his gun.

II

“I didn’t really mean to kill them,” Bogan said a few moments later as they were rolling smoothly along the pike. The young man’s name was Alan Perkins, and Bogan had instructed him to drive in the slow, right-hand lane at about forty-five miles an hour. It was dark and windy outside, with rain spattering through the headlights, but the interior of the car was snug and warm. Bogan felt grateful and at peace with himself as he studied the reflection of his teeth and glasses in the windshield. The young man, Perkins, would be pleasant company. He had a clean, immature face, and was dressed neatly in tweed jacket worn over a sweater. Very polite and obedient, Bogan thought, with his bow tie and glasses, and thin white hands grasping the steering wheel. He drove with care, hunched forward slightly, and never letting his eyes flick toward the gun gleaming in the dashboard light.

In a careful voice the young man said, “If you didn’t mean to kill them, perhaps the best thing would be to tell the police about it.”

Bogan smiled, admiring the sudden emerging brightness of his big, white teeth. “No, that wouldn’t be the best thing. There’s no need to tell the police anything.”

Bogan touched his forehead with his fingertips. This wasn’t what he wanted to talk about; it was the other thing, the red heat of the summer, and watching them night after night from the humid darkness of his room. Yes, that had to be made crystal clear. “They hadn’t been married long,” he said, and was pleased at the low, judicial tone of his voice. “Naturally, they were selfish — it’s something young people can’t help, I know. But it’s evil of them to shut out everyone else,” He paused, aware that his breath was coming quickly. It was really so simple, so obvious, but when he tried to trap his thoughts with words, they skittered away like mice.

The young couple operated a small furniture shop on Third Avenue near Forty-eighth Street. That was accurate, Bogan knew; he had watched them from his room across the street. She was slim and blonde; he was a tall redhead. They laughed a lot, but were serious about their business. They sold unpainted sections of tables and chairs and desks which could be fitted together with glue or a few nails. Frequently they worked at night, and the young man would bring in sandwiches and beer, and they would eat and drink, sitting on the counter, the girl in shorts, bare legs golden in the soft evening tight and the young man grinning up at her.

Bogan felt his breath catch sharply in his throat: the memory of the couple he had killed reminded him of the trooper and the slim, dark-haired girl at the Howard Johnson restaurant. He was rigid with pain. They were the same sort, selfish and greedy, driving everyone else away from the radiance of their love. They drew a magic circle about themselves that no one could pass through.

“Do you have a girl?” he said suddenly, and stared at Perkins’s clean, young profile.

“No,” Perkins said. He groped for something to ease the tension he could feel in the man beside him, “Girls can be a big waste of time. There’s lime for all that later, I guess.”

Bogan nodded approvingly. If they would all just wait a while instead of rushing together to lock themselves in the charmed circle. That was the maddening thing about the couple in the furniture shop. Twice he had stopped to make a trifling purchase, and they had made him feel like an intruder, something gross and ugly profaning their happy isolation. They were polite enough on the surface, quick with a smile and a comment on the weather, but they gave him no warmth or affection. That was too precious to squander on anyone but themselves. He couldn’t remember when he had decided to kill them; the thought must have been there always.

The planning had been a dreary business and strangely confusing — acquiring the gun from a disquietingly jocular pawnbroker, and then the tedious search for a car, which had been the most difficult problem of all But eventually he found what he needed — the Buick used by the corner drugstore for deliveries. The young man who drove it obviously operated on a tight schedule, for he didn’t remove the key when he went inside to pick up his parcels. When the car was parked at the curb, the key was always in the ignition; Bogan established this fact in a week of patient snooping. Thus the timing of his ultimate act was determined by the delivery schedule of the drugstore. And for some obscure reason this pleased Bogan; it lent a whimsical, unpremeditated tone to his plans.

Bogan felt in his pockets for a chocolate bar, then remembered that he had left them in his overcoat. He felt his eyes sting with tears; he needed something sweet, but he had been so pressed and excited that he hadn’t remembered to take the candy bars from his overcoat.

Bogan sat up straighter. Suddenly he thought of the dark-haired waitress at the restaurant — the one he had bought the coffee from. Why had he been such a fool? The need for something warm and sweet had been powerful, but he should have resisted it; she would tell the police what he looked like — and enjoy doing it, he thought sullenly and unhappily. She would like telling on him, getting him into trouble. He knew that from her face and eyes; there was no warmth there, only meaningless politeness.

“Don’t get excited,” he told himself, his soft lips silently forming the words. The trooper didn’t ask her about me; there was still time.

He said quietly to Perkins, “We’re going to have to make a U-turn.”

“But that’s not legal. We’ll be stopped.”

“We’ll just make sure there are no patrol cars in front or behind us,” Bogan said easily “Anyone else will think we’re an unmarked police car.”

Bogan put the muzzle of his gun against Perkins’s side. “You’re a nice young boy. I don’t want to hurt you. Turn into the left-hand lane, and we’ll watch for one of those openings the police cars use.”

Bogan felt a pleasant excitement running through him; he was almost glad of the way things were working out. It would be very satisfying to have that arrogant girl in his hands. And he realized that he had the bait to lure her to him — the name he had heard from the gas-station attendant: “Dan O’Leary.”

Lieutenant Trask and O’Leary learned nothing from the white Edsel station wagon; it had been driven twelve miles, from Howard Johnson’s No. 1 to No. 2, and then abandoned, the driver disappearing like a phantom. Lieutenant Trask had checked out the waitresses and countermen in the restaurant while O’Leary and a team of troopers searched the grounds and inspected the trucks that were lined up like huge animals in the truckers’ area. They waked the drivers and examined the lashings and tail gates for any sign of forced entry.

After this O’Leary talked to the gas attendants. None of them remembered anything helpful. He did come on a bit of irrelevant information, however; one of the attendants mentioned that someone — a man standing in the shadows of the office — had made some comment about O’Leary’s speed when O’Leary had driven into the area ten or fifteen minutes earlier. The attendant said he told the man Trooper O’Leary knew his business — or something to that effect. The attendant wasn’t exactly sure of what he’d said, but it wasn’t important in any case, O’Leary decided.

He rejoined Trask, who had returned to the Edsel station wagon. Trask had been in contact with Captain Royce. They now had an identification on the owner of the Edsel, the elderly man who had been killed at Howard Johnson’s No. 1.

“He lived in Watertown,” Trask said, flipping his cigarette into the darkness. “Name was Nelson, Adam Nelson, a widower, retired executive at the paint factory there. They got a line on him from the laundry marks in his shirt.”

These markings — in this case a triangle with the digits 356 beneath it — had been relayed to state-police headquarters by radio, where they had been checked against the master file of all laundry marks in the state. The sergeant in charge had established the location of the laundry from the triangle: a telephone call to the manager had established the identity of the customer from the digits 356.

Trask added, “He was on his way to spend a few days with a married daughter in Newbury. None of which helps us a damn bit.”

O’Leary was frowning faintly. He had been trying to fit together a picture of the murderer, and for some reason his guesses about the man bothered him; the portrait was Hawed with inconsistency, and O’Leary had that tantalizing feeling that a significant fact was hidden somewhere in that blurred image.

What in heaven’s name was it? O’Leary tried to analyze the inferences he had drawn from the man’s behavior. The killer was both bold and deliberate. He had killed brutally and swiftly, with no signs of panic. He had made a mistake in taking a conspicuous car, but had corrected it cleverly — which meant he was thinking clearly under pressure And he hadn’t duplicated his first mistake; he had got away from the Edsel without being seen, and by now, safe to assume, was on his way in a less conspicuous car. Also, he seemed to be working according to a plan, time wasn’t important to him, or he’d have taken a chance and tried to get through an exit in the Edsel. After all, he couldn’t have known for sure that the police would identify the missing car. But he hadn’t taken that chance; he was in no hurry. And he’d given the police credit for being as smart as he was.

It was a picture of a man who was ruthless and cunning. A man who thought clearly and measured his chances shrewdly. And that was where the inconsistency became apparent; the image was streaked with flaws, something was out of place, something incongruous. Because the killer had done something foolish...

“What’s the matter with you?” Trask said.

O’Leary put both hands over his ears; the traffic on the pike rushed by like a river of noise and light, and he tried to shut out the sound of it, tried furiously to find the truth that was hidden somewhere in this maze of facts and hunches, of inferences and intuitions. Then it was as if a clear and brilliant light had snapped on in his mind; then he had it.

He caught Trask’s arm. “The dead man. Nelson; he’d had his dinner, right? He had left the restaurant and walked to his car. But there was a coffee container beside his body. And one of those little cardboard things they put hot dogs in. Remember?”

“Sure,” Trask’s dark face was impassive; but a flicker of understanding came to his eyes. “Go on.”

“Those containers belonged to the killer,” O’Leary said. “He ate and drank there beside Nelson’s car. Then he dropped them on the ground.”

“Which means he went into the restaurant after all,” Trask said, his voice sharpening. “But you told me you checked out the waitresses. They should have remembered a guy without a hat or coal on a night like this.”

“I didn’t check all of them,” O’Leary said. He suddenly felt sick with guilt and apprehension. “I talked to the hostess. She’d have spotted anybody who wanted a table. Then I went to the take-out counter. But I only questioned one of the girls on duty. I... I forgot about the other one.”

“You forgot?” Trask said sharply. “What do you mean by that?”

“She’s a friend of mine, Sheila Leslie.” O’Leary drew a deep breath. “I was more interested in her than my job, that’s all, lieutenant. But I wasn’t after a murderer then. I was after the owner of a stalled car. Which is no excuse.”

“I guess it’s not,” Trask said. “But you’ve put us back on the right track. We’ll find the girl who sold him that coffee. When we know what he looks like, we’ll seal off this pike till it’s damn near watertight. I’ll call Captain Royce on the way. Let’s go.”

O’Leary ran toward his car. The killer must have bought his coffee from Sheila, he realized; if he hadn’t done that one compulsive, dangerous thing, they might never have got a line on him. He could have drifted through their nets like a wisp of smoke. And then O’Leary remembered something that caused a strange coldness to settle in his stomach; the killer had corrected one mistake. He had got rid of the Edsel. Would he try to correct his other mistake — by getting rid of the only witness who could identify him?

O’Leary snapped on his red beacon and jammed his foot hard on the accelerator.

Harry Bogan sat in the rear seat of Alan Perkins’s sedan, which was now parked close to the entrance of Howard Johnson’s No. 1. He was smiling softly; they had made two U-turns in doubling back to the restaurant, and for all the attention they received they might have been lazily circling about a sleepy village on a Sunday evening. He held his gun so that it pointed at Perkins’s head. “We’ll have to wait until a car pulls in alongside us,” he said. “You remember what you’re to tell the driver?”

“Yes, I remember,” Perkins said.

“You’re a good boy. I don’t want to hurt you.”

They were close enough to the restaurant for Bogan to see the dark-haired girl at work behind the take-out counter. She was slim and cool and swift in her while uniform, her skin smooth and glowing under the bright light, her teeth flashing now and then in quick smiles. They meant nothing, he knew, and felt his heart speeding with anger. A bone thrown to a hungry dog, nothing more. The smile that told of her real feelings wouldn’t be squandered on the lonely and miserable persons lined up at her counter. She would save that for the trooper, inviting him with her eyes and lips into the warm, selfish circle of her love.

They did not have long to wait, A small, middle-aged man in a leather jacket pulled in beside them and climbed from his car.

“All right,” Bogan said quietly.

Perkins rolled the window down and called to the man. “Pardon me, sir, but would you do me a favor?”

The man turned, peering into the darkness toward Perkins’s voice. The shadows blurred Perkins’s face and obscured Bogan completely. The man came a step closer. “Well, if I can, I don’t mind,” he said in a soft Southern accent.

“There’s a waitress inside I want to send a message to.” Perkins said. “You can see her from here — she’s the dark-haired one at the take-out counter.”

The man glanced toward the restaurant, nodding slowly. “I see her all right. Just what kind of a message is it?”

“Just tell her Trooper O’Leary wants to see her outside for a second.”

Bogan smiled in the darkness; the trooper’s name had been a gift, a priceless bit of luck, and he accepted it as a talisman of success.

“Trooper O’Leary, is that it?” the man said. “Well, I’ll tell her for you.” He laughed softly. “Man taking messages to pretty girls can get in a fix of trouble sometimes. But this is kind of different.”

“Listen to me, for heaven’s sake,” Perkins said to Bogan, as the stranger walked with a leisurely gait toward the restaurant. “It won’t work. She’ll be frightened; she’s liable to scream or something.” He turned his head slowly, cautiously, until he could see the shine of Bogan’s glasses. “Please, there’s no need — to hurt anybody I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. You can ride in the trunk. I give you my word of honor.”

“I don’t need your help to get off the turnpike,” Bogan said, laughing softly. “Now you just do as I told you. When she gets that message, you drive up and stop in from of the entrance. Keep the motor running. That’s all you’ve got to worry about.” He prodded the boy’s cheek with his gun, sharply, cruelly. “Do you understand?”

“Yes, all right.” Perkins barely whispered the words.

They watched the man in the leather jacket make his way through the crowded restaurant to the take-out counter. He removed his hat and raised a hand to get the dark-haired girl’s attention.

The girl smiled at him, and when he spoke she leaned forward slightly, her head tilted slightly to one side. She glanced toward the windows; the man had gestured in that direction, obviously telling her where he had received the message. The girl gave him a quick, warm grin then and came swiftly around the counter and walked toward the revolving doors of the restaurant, one hand pushing at a stray curl on her forehead. She stopped briefly to speak to the hostess. Asking permission to step outside for a moment or so, Bogan thought, smiling faintly. A very proper little girl, obedient and responsible. She was moving again, walking toward the entrance.

“All right,” he said quietly.

Perkins backed his Ford out of line, then cut the wheels and drove toward the entrance, which was marked as a no parking area. The revolving doors glittered as they spun around, and the girl came out onto the broad sidewalk. An awning protected her from the rain, but the cold wind whipped the skirts of her white uniform about her slim legs.

Perkins stopped, and Bogan reached forward and opened the front door. The girl came toward the car, bending to look into the dark interior. “Dan, is that you?” she said, in a clear, unworried voice.

Bogan glanced quickly out the rear window. A family was hurrying toward the restaurant, a mother, father and four small children, but the parents were involved in shepherding their charges and paid no attention to the stopped car and the girl standing beside it.

“I have a message from Dan,” Bogan said.

“What is it?” She put her head in the car, bracing herself with a knee against the front seat. The family with the four children had filed out of sight, and when she said, “What is it?” the second time, a bit sharply now, Bogan caught her arm and pulled her into the front seat, “Go!” Bogan said to Perkins, and before she could scream, he had the gun in her face, and the car was leaping forward, the door swinging shut with a bang.

She would have screamed, regardless of the gun, but Perkins’s voice cut through her terror. “Don’t!” he cried. “Please do what he says. He’ll shoot.”

“That’s true,” Bogan said, pleased with the young man. “Now drive over to where the trucks park.” He still held the girl’s arm and could feel the tremors shaking her body.

“Now what do you want with me?” she said in a dry, careful voice.

“That will have to wait a bit. We’ll have time to talk later.” The fear in her eyes and face satisfied something deep inside him; and he remembered how the girl in the furniture shop had looked when he raised the gun, her face blank with panic, eyes wild and frantic. Once as a child he had seen a horse trapped in a burning barn; and the girl’s eyes were like those of the poor horse, crazed and helpless. The sight of her fear had been almost unendurably exciting.

The area reserved for the big trucks was a hundred yards beyond the gas station, an unlighted expanse of concrete the size of a football field, with parking spaces indicated by lines of while paint Bogan directed Perkins to the far end of the lot.

In the silence that settled when Perkins cut the motor, Bogan heard the girl’s shallow, uneven breathing. The sound was satisfying; no longer laughing and confident, he thought, no longer warmed by the admiring eyes lingering on her slim body. Now she would pay attention to him. In a quiet, deliberate voice Bogan explained what he wanted them to do, and they obeyed carefully and quickly, like children trying to appease a fearsome, unpredictable adult. It wasn’t the gun they responded to, but the tension coiling beneath his surface calm. They knew with a primitive instinct that he was hoping they might disobey him; they knew he would relish the excuse to throw his self-control to the winds.

They got out of the car on the girl’s side and stood motionless until he joined them. Then the girl, on order, climbed into the rear-seat section and lay face down on the floor. Bogan had already removed his tie and belt. He gave them to Perkins, who knotted the tic about the girl’s wrists and looped the belt about her ankles, buckling it with trembling fingers. When he straightened up, Bogan inspected his work, then closed the rear door. “Now climb into the front seat.” he told Perkins, but when Perkins turned to obey, Bogan struck him heavily with the barrel of his gun, the blow landing just above his right ear. Perkins pitched forward, moaning in pain, but Bogan caught him before he struck the ground and carried him into the field adjoining the parking lot. He rolled the limp body into a ditch and returned to the car.

Safely lay on him like a balm, filling him with a warm complacence. Perkins wouldn’t recover consciousness for hours, if at all; and the only other witness who might identify him was trussed up in the back of his car. Now there was nothing left but to get off the turnpike. And he knew how to solve that problem.

He started his car and drove along the wide, curving lane that led to the turnpike, laughing as he merged smoothly with the swift, southbound traffic. The rain was coming down harder, bouncing on the shining concrete, and the Ford was swiftly lost in the dark streams of cars, with no more identity than a leaf in a storm or a chip swirling down a stream. The beams of oncoming headlights broke on his thick glasses and glittered against the excitement in his eyes.

“Are you all right?” he said in a high, pleased voice. “Are you comfortable?”

The girl lay with her wrists bound at the small of her back, her cheek flat against the car’s rough carpeting. She was trembling with cold and with fear, but she said evenly, “Where are you taking me?”

“Well, I’m not sure,” Bogan said. In truth, he didn’t know; but when they left the turnpike he would make up his mind. He would find a place that was dark and quiet. A field, he thought, or the bank of a stream, where he could rest, where they might talk for a while.

He glanced quickly over his shoulder: she lay with her knees bent, her feet raised in the air, and he saw the soles of her small white shoes, and the shine of his belt looped about her ankles. For the lime being everything was all right. “Just don’t worry about anything,” he said.

In the manager’s office of Howard Johnson’s No. I, Trask and O’Leary questioned the man in the leather jacket who had delivered the message to Sheila Leslie. “Let’s try it once more,” Trask said evenly, after the man told his story for the third time. They had checked his identification and knew he was a family man, steadily employed by a construction company in Philadelphia. He had a gasoline credit card in his wallet, snapshots of his wife and children, and seemed to be a responsible citizen. But Trask said, “Let’s go over it again from the start — every detail, everything you saw and heard and said.”

The man sat in a straight-backed chair under clear, soft overhead lights. He was about fifty, with thinning hair, work-roughened hands, and he wore jeans and a woolen shirt under his leather jacket “Well, like I told you.” he said, blinking his eyes nervously. “First the man called to me, speaking nice and polite, and asked me to do him a favor. The car he was sitting in was one of the popular makes, but I can’t rightly say which one. It wasn’t new. Maybe a ’Fifty or ’Fifty-one. It was a dark color, like I already told you. So he asked me to tell this girl that’s missing that Trooper O’Leary wanted to talk to her.”

O’Leary closed his eyes and ran a hand over his face. She was gone, helpless in a killer’s hands, and it was his fault He hadn’t done his job; instead of questioning her swiftly and impersonally, he had blushed and simpered like a fool, letting his feelings for her come between him and his work.

“Well. I went into the restaurant and told her.” the man in the leather jacket said. “And she smiled real nice and thanked me and went outside. I sat down to my dinner, where I was when you got here and began asking for who gave her the message.” One of the waitresses had remembered that someone had spoken to Sheila just before she went outside; and Trask and O’Leary had shouted for silence in the restaurant, and when they explained what they wanted, the man in the leather jacket had got uneasily to his feel. “I didn’t think I’d done nothing wrong,” he said now, eyes swinging quickly from Trask to O’Leary. “I was just doing a man a favor.”

“You’re sure he used my name?” O’Leary asked him sharply. “You’re sure he said O’Leary?”

“Yes, I’m positive about that.”

“Let’s go back to the start.” Trask said. “It was a young man who gave you the message?”

“Nearly as I could make out, yes.”

“And he was alone in the car?”

“Well, there seemed a kind of shadow in the back, but I didn’t see anybody.” The man hesitated, then said. “The young guy sounded kind of funny, he talked fast, I mean, like he was speaking words he’d memorized.”

O’Leary forced himself to think; his emotions were roiling inside him, blunting his memory and judgment. While Trask went over the man’s story again, O’Leary paced the small office, the overhead lights shining on his pale, set features He got himself in hand with a conscious effort. It occurred to him once again that the killer’s pattern of action suggested a generous time schedule; twice he might have got off the pike — once in the white Edsel, again in the car he had commandeered to pick up Sheila. But he hadn’t made a break for it. This might mean he had some special plan for getting off the turnpike, that he had found a loophole in the pike’s defenses. But how to account for the fact that he had used the name O’Leary to lure Sheila outside? How had he known the name? And that Sheila would respond to it? Then O’Leary recalled the irrelevant bit of information he had gleaned from the gas-station attendant at Howard Johnson’s No. 2. Someone had mentioned O’Leary’s driving, and the attendant had told him that O’Leary was safer at a hundred than most people were at fifty. Or something to that effect. But had the attendant actually used his name?

Trask completed his questioning of the man in the leather jacket, thanked him and excused him. When the man had gone. O’Leary told Trask of the conversation with the attendant at Howard Johnson’s No. 2.

“You get back there,” Trask said. “We’ve got to get a lead, and fast.”

“He’s got the girl in his car,” O’Leary said desperately. “That’s a lead, isn’t it? We can search every damn car on the pike.”

Trask looked away from O’Leary, pained by what he saw in the big trooper’s face. He gestured impatiently at the flash of the turnpike traffic which they could see through the windows of the manager’s office.

“There’s twenty-five or thirty thousand cars rolling out there tonight. Doctors on emergency calls, pregnant women, businessmen making plane and train connections, parents hurrying to sick kids. How can we tie up that traffic? And where would we get the men to search the cars? The pike would be stalled bumper to bumper in a matter of minutes. We’d block the highways coming in from three states Maybe we could stop all cars of a certain kind — like we stopped those Edsels. Or pick up men answering to a fairly general description. But we can’t bring that traffic to a halt without something to go on, Dan. Now you get back to Number Two. Maybe that attendant can give us the lead we need.”

O’Leary covered the twelve miles in eight minutes, with his beacon flashing and siren screaming. The attendant he had talked with earlier recalled the incident. “I was just coming out of the office, and a man standing there said something about it looking like you were in a hurry. Well, I told him you knew how to handle your car, that’s all.”

“Think hard.” O’Leary said. “Did you use my name?”

“Well, sure, I thought I told you. I said Trooper O’Leary or maybe Dan O’Leary, but I know I mentioned your name.”

“What did this man look like?”

“He was standing kind of in the shadows. I just glanced over my shoulder at him; you know, the way you do when something doesn’t mean much. He was pretty big. I’d say. And he was wearing glasses. I saw ’em flash when he turned his head.”

A big man with glasses, O’Leary thought with despair; a description that might tit half the men driving the pike tonight. He questioned the other attendants then, hoping someone might have seen the man leaving the shadows of the office. But he drew blanks; none of them had seen him or noticed any unusual activity around the pumps.

O’Leary returned to his patrol car and flashed Sergeant Tonelli at headquarters. He told him what he had learned, but his heart sank as he repealed the meager description — a big man with glasses.

“Check,” Tonelli said in his hard, impersonal voice, “You’ll proceed south now, O’Leary. Report to Sergeant Brannon at Interchange Five and take further orders from him. You’re going to be working the presidential convoy.”

O’Leary was filled with bitter guilt and despair; the plans being made to find the killer obviously didn’t include him. He wouldn’t have even the solace of trying to save Sheila. His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Look, sergeant, just one thing. The killer isn’t in any hurry to get off the pike. Have you noticed that?”

O’Leary’s question was considerably out of line, but Sergeant Tonelli was a man who understood a number of things that weren’t spelled out in the department’s training manual and training directives. He said quietly, “We’ve noticed it. Dan. But we don’t know yet what’s behind it. You get moving now.”

“Check,” O’Leary said and turned his car into the curving approach to the dark turnpike. He felt helpless and miserable, consumed with a leaden fear.

Sheila had fought down her first panic, which had been like the fear or smothering she had known as a child. Once when she was very small her brother and his friends had locked her in a trunk during some game or other and had gone off and forgotten about her. For a long time afterward she couldn’t bear anything that threatened her breathing — swimming under water, a dentist’s wad or cotton in her mouth, even the slight pressure of a locket at the base of her throat was enough to make her heart pound with terror. But she had finally conquered that dread; she had faced the issue with hard common sense, refusing to pity herself, refusing to let herself be shackled by morbid fears.

Now, lying helpless in the rear of Bogan’s car, she tried to apply the same therapy to her straining nerves. So tar nothing had happened to her; her body was cold and cramped, and dust from the carpeting had made her eyes water, but that was all. She knew she was safe as long as they were on the turnpike. After that she would be completely helpless. He could take her anywhere, do anything he wanted with her. She faced that fact clearly. It meant she must get away from him before he drove off the pike. Somehow she must make him stop. Dan had told her any stopped car would be quickly checked by the police, with the trooper concealed by his own headlights and emerging from their brightness with a hand on his gun.

It seemed a hideous irony that she had been amused by his earnest discussion of the various methods used in policing the turnpike — and just a tiny bit bored by his enthusiasm for his work — when that skill and energy might be the only thing that could save her life. She tried to stop thinking about Dan O’Leary. It would make her cry, she knew, and there was no time now for that kind of self-pity. She could think of him later; of his tall, alert way of walking, and the fine, dark hair on the backs of his big clean hands, and the way he got a joke a split second after she did and grinned a bit sheepishly at her swifter understanding.

Now she must make this madman bring the car to a stop. “Please,” she said in a weak voice. “I’m going to be sick. I feel dizzy.”

“Well, that’s too bad. But it’s not much longer.” Bogan glanced at his watch and then at a numbered milepost that gleamed ahead of him in the darkness. He was a bit behind schedule, but not seriously so. The rain had made him lose time. He smiled.

“Please,” she said again. “I’m freezing. There’s no circulation in my arms and legs. Please stop and untie my ankles.”

“You’re Trooper O’Leary’s girl, I know,” he said. “I saw the way you smiled at each other, Are you going to marry him?” He was still smiling. “Answer me. Are you going to marry him?” he said coldly.

She was silent; the changed tone of his voice sent a chill through her cramped body. She tried to guess at his thoughts, to form some picture of his needs and compulsions; but it was as hopeless as attempting a jigsaw puzzle blindfolded. “I’m not sure,” she said at last.

“You’re not sure,” he said, mocking her in a high, petulant voice. The lying little beggar. They would get married, all right, and buy a little house and pull all the blinds down so no one could see them. And keep everyone outside their little circle of pleasure.

He remembered how it had been in his own home, the long nights that belonged only to his father and mother, and finally his guilty relief and happiness after his father’s death. There was just his mother and brother then, and it was very nice. She baked sweet cookies and told them stories. It went on for such a long and pleasant time. Until his brother brought home a girl. They had fought about that; Bogan had warned him of the terrible thing he was doing, but his brother had got married anyway, and then there was just his mother and himself, and that was the best time of all. He worked as a night watchman because the sunshine hurt his weak eyes. She kept their apartment shaded in the daytime, and they watched television together, and she made his meals and took care of his clothes. When she died he asked his brother if he could live with him, but there were children now and no room for him. That was when he had got the tiny place on Third Avenue and begun to watch the couple in the furniture shop.

Bogan shook his head sharply; his thoughts were distracting him, flickering brightly and erratically against the quiet darkness of his mind.

“Please!” the girl cried again. “Fumes are coming up through the floor boards. I can’t breathe.”

“I’ll roll down the window,” he said, smiling. “I’m not going to slop, so you might as well forget your little tricks.”

The cold damp wind swept over her chilled body. She was suddenly close to panic; this was what excited him, to toy with her in a cat-and-mouse fashion, relishing her helplessness. If she couldn’t get him to stop, there was no hope — unless a patrol car flagged him down. But the police obviously had no way of identifying him. Otherwise he wouldn’t be driving along so confidently. How could she attract the attention of the police? To herself or to the car, it made no difference.

But she could do nothing at all while she was helpless. She began to strain at the bands about her wrists, twisting her hands until the skin was raw, exerting all her wiry strength against the silken fabric. The young man hadn’t done too efficient a job, and she blessed him for it. Perhaps he’d given her this chance deliberately. The knots were loose, and her struggles produced a precious half inch of slack. That was almost enough, for her hands were quite small. She tried again, twisting her wrists silently and desperately until the knots slipped again. This was enough. She freed her hands and put them over her mouth to silence the sounds of her rapid, shallow breathing.

But there was still not much she could do. She could unlatch the rear door, but to push it open against the wind stream would be almost impossible in her cramped position. And it wouldn’t serve any purpose unless she intended to throw herself from the car. That thought instantly led to another — if not herself, what else was there to throw from the car? Specifically, through the opened window — beside the driver’s seat? The crumpled silk tie that had bound her wrists probably wouldn’t attract anyone’s attention. She felt cautiously about the floor of the car, but found only a folded newspaper and what seemed to be an empty cigarette package. No good. It had to be something that would point to her.

She thought of removing a shoe but after a painful effort realized that it wasn’t possible. She could arch her back and grasp her ankles in her hands, but she couldn’t unbuckle the bell or untie the shoelaces in that position. And she couldn’t risk turning over and sitting up. He would be sure to see the top of her head in the rearview mirror. But the thought of shoes prompted her to take a personal inventory. Ring, small comb, hair ribbon, a pencil clipped in the pocket of her uniform. Thai was all; and none of these had any special significance. They would mean nothing to whoever found them.

“That’s enough air,” Bogan said, and began to roll up the window.

“No, please!” Her heart was beating wildly; she had just remembered the apron she was wearing, the short, white tea apron with the restaurant’s distinctive emblem emblazoned on it. Everybody associated the emblem with Howard Johnson’s; it was as identifiable as a signature “Please don’t close the window. I’m suffocating.” The terror in her voice was genuine; if he closed the window now her only chance would be gone.

“Well, we don’t want that,” he said and rolled the window down again. “We want you nice and healthy for your handsome trooper. You wouldn’t be pretty if you smothered to death.”

Lying bound in the rear of Harry Bogan’s car, Sheila Leslie tried to control her nerves. She worked in a turnpike restaurant. Bogan, a maniacal killer, had kidnaped her because she could identify him. She knew she was safe as long as they were on the Tri-State Turnpike, but after that she would be helpless. Bogan had murdered three people, and he wouldn’t hesitate to kill again.

Sheila’s only chance was to attract attention by throwing something out of the open window, something that would cause the finder to call the turnpike police. She finally freed her hands, but she couldn’t think of anything to throw.

Then she remembered the apron she was wearing, the short white tea apron with Howard Johnson’s emblem on it.

Conclusion

She worked quickly to untie the knot that secured the apron about her waist. When it came free she raised herself cautiously on one elbow and looked up at the window, careful to keep her head below the top of the front seat. It wasn’t possible, she realized with despair; his big shoulder and arm completely sealed off the area between the back seat and open window. If she tried to push the apron past him, he would feel the pressure of her hand and sense that she was moving behind his back.

Bogan said, “We’re running a bit late. I’ll have to step on it. But don’t you worry. I won’t be caught speeding.”

The car swerved into the left, or passing, lane, body rocking on its springs, and she saw his head and shoulders move forward out of sight at the same time. He had hunched closer to the windshield to see more clearly while passing. Now the sway of the car told her they had cut back into the middle lane, and at the same time she saw his head and shoulders loom above her, returning to their customary position.

She breathed a soft prayer. When he moved forward, the open window was clear and unobstructed by his bulk. And if he passed another car he would be likely to push himself forward again.

She made a ball of the apron in her right hand, and raised her arm cautiously. When he passed another car she wouldn’t be able to look up to see if he had moved forward; he would be close to the rearview mirror then and apt to notice any movement behind him. She would have to gamble — her only hope — shoving the apron up and out the window without looking, and praying that her hand didn’t strike his shoulder.

They drove for several minutes in the middle lane.

“That’s enough air,” he said with a vicious snap to his voice. “When I get around this truck, the window goes up and stays up. Why should I care whether you’re comfortable? Do you have any sympathy for me? Do you care about me at all?”

The car swerved to the left and gained speed, with the tires whining on the wet pavement. She counted to three slowly, trying to control the paralyzing fear that gripped her body. Now, she thought, but couldn’t force her hand to move. The car was swerving back into the middle lane, and she bit down viciously on her trembling lip and said “Now!” in a desperate little whisper.

She thrust her hand toward the window, dreading a contact with his body; but she felt nothing but the wet wind like ice against her knuckles. A fold of the cloth made a tearing noise in the windstream. She held the apron between thumb and forefinger, felt it tug and billow against her grip, then released it; and as she snaked her hand away from the window, Bogan settled back in the seat, and her fingers made a tiny whispering sound on the fabric of his coat.

But he didn’t seem to notice. He said, “If you want to smother, go ahead,” and rolled the window up tightly. “Why should I care?” There was a dangerous, vengeful tone in his voice. “I don’t care if your face turns black and your lungs burst.” Bogan flipped on the car’s radio.

She lay completely still, exhausted by fear and tension. The back of one hand was tight to her lips to hold back a sob.

The salesman whose name was Harry Mills swore angrily and fluently as he swung his car onto the graveled roadway that flanked the turnpike. His wife, Muriel, was in tears; her voice shook as she said, “We could have been killed, Harry. You almost lost control.”

“Of course I did,” Harry Mills said furiously. “I couldn’t see the road for a full five seconds. The damn thing was plastered right over the windshield wipers. I’m going to report this.” He climbed from his car, redfaced and pugnacious, and walked around to his wife’s side. “Some cop’ll stop pretty soon,” he said, and turned his overcoat collar up against the rain. “We’re alive and kicking, hon. I guess we’re lucky at that.”

“What was it’?” she asked in the same high, frightened voice. “What did those fools throw from the window?”

“Well, it’s still tangled in the wiper,” he said, and he began to extricate the soggy piece of cloth which had blown from the car ahead of him to plaster itself across his windshield. He spread it out on the hood. “Well, how about that?” he said, and pushed his hat up on his forehead.

The flaring red light of a patrol was already bearing down on him, swerving expertly through the lanes of heavy traffic. The time was nine-thirty-five.

At headquarters Captain Royce stood with Sergeant Tonelli and Lieutenant Trask studying the large map of the turnpike on the wall of his office. There had been no trace of the killer in the last forty-five minutes. Captain Royce knew that he had left Howard Johnson’s No. 1 with the girl at approximately eight-fifty. Forty-five minutes meant forty-five miles; and in forty-five miles the killer had had opportunities of leaving the pike anywhere between Exit 12 and Exit 5. All those interchanges were under surveillance, of course; a car-to-car search wasn’t possible, but Ford, Plymouth and Chevrolet sedans were being given close attention, particularly those that were driven by large men wearing glasses. The killer might have slipped by, but Royce was reasonably certain he was still on the pike.

He glanced at the big clock on the opposite wall, and Sergeant Tonelli checked his wrist watch.

In two more minutes the presidential convoy was scheduled to enter the turnpike at Interchange 5.

Tonelli cleared his throat. “Those reporters are still outside, captain,” he said.

“Good place for ’em,” Royce said.

Newspapermen and TV and radio reporters had been streaming into headquarters in the last hour. They might give Royce and the turnpike a bad time if he didn’t brief them on what was going on and what plans had been put into effect to trap the killer; but Royce was prepared to accept this. All off-duty troopers were now back on the pike; it was a hundred-mile trap, guarded by every marked and unmarked patrol car that was certified for service. Three special riot squads were cruising at twenty-mile intervals, read to converge on any alarm with tear gas and shotguns. And Lieutenant Biersby at Communications had alerted all police within a hundred miles of the pike, and this net was being widened with every passing minute. The toll collectors, who were not police officers but unarmed civil servants, had been replaced by special details of State Police who had been transferred to Royce’s command.

If this information were phoned in by a reporter to a radio or TV station, it would be on the air in a matter of minutes. And it would sound very good, Royce thought. People listening in would nod approvingly, no doubt, and decide the cops were doing a job after all. It might even allay a bit of their indignation the next time they got a ticket for speeding. But against the advantages of a good press, Royce placed one all-important fact — the killer might have a radio in his car, and he would certainly be interested in the details of the plans being made to trap him.

A bell rang at the dispatcher’s desk, and they heard the crackle of the radio, a distant voice reporting. The dispatcher turned quickly and glanced at Captain Royce who had walked to the doorway of his office.

“Interchange Five reporting, sir,” he said. “The President is on the pike. An eight-car convoy, with our patrols at the front and back. Traveling in the right lane at about fifty-five.”

“All other patrols reported in position?” Royce said.

“Yes, sir.”

Royce nodded and rubbed a hand over his damp forehead. Then he walked back to the map. He could visualize the progress of the convoy, and he knew the density of the surrounding traffic and the weather conditions on that stretch of the pike. None of it was favorable; the highway was slick with rain, and the traffic was both sluggish and heavy.

“Captain Royce!” the dispatcher in the outer office called in a rising voice. “Would you come here, sir?”

Royce, with Tonelli and Trask at his heels, reached the dispatcher’s desk in long strides.

“Car Sixteen just reported, sir,” the dispatcher said quickly. “He’s just checked a stopped car. The driver pulled off the pike because a Howard Johnson’s apron was thrown from the car ahead of him and hit his windshield. The apron came from the driver’s window of a ‘Fifty-two Ford with New York tags. The wife got the last three license numbers: six-four-two.”

“Where was this?”

“Patrol Sixteen stopped at milepost fifty-four at—” The dispatcher checked his pad. “I got his request to pull off the pike two minutes ago.”

Royce made a swift calculation; the ‘52 Ford had those two minutes, plus the time it had taken the stopped motorist to hail a patrol. A total of five minutes, say, which would take him down to milepost fifty, at Interchange 5.

“Who’s closest to fifty?” he asked sharply.

“O’Leary, patrol Twenty-one. He’s tailing the President by a couple of hundred yards.” He added unnecessarily, “Keeping the traffic behind the convoy slow.”

“Flash him. Tell him to pick up that Ford. And alert our unmarked cars in that area.”

When O’Leary received his orders from the dispatcher at headquarters, he was traveling in the middle column of southbound traffic at milepost forty-eight. The presidential convoy a few hundred yards ahead of him rolled smoothly in the right lane; he could see the red beacon of the tail patrol car flashing in the darkness.

O’Leary sat up straighter, big hands tightening on the steering wheel. He repeated the three digits the dispatcher had given him, then said, “Check!” and replaced his receiver. His heart was pounding with hope and excitement. He had been slowly closing the distance between himself and the convoy in the last five minutes, and he was fairly certain he hadn’t passed any ‘52 Ford sedans. Which meant the killer was ahead of him, somewhere in the lines of traffic between himself and the convoy. Checking his rearview mirror, O’Leary swung into the left lane, controlling the smoothly powerful car as if it were an extension of his body. He flashed by three slower cars and, after checking their license plates, swung back into the middle lane. He remained there long enough to inspect the plates ahead of him, and to his right, then swerved back to the high-speed lane and passed the cars he had eliminated. The rain made his work difficult, but he made his moves with deliberate precision, sweeping in and out of the traffic with effortless skill.

It was at milepost forty-three that he made contact; the Ford was traveling in the middle lane, fifty yards behind the presidential convoy, but gaining slowly on it.

O’Leary dropped back discreetly and grabbed the receiver from beside tile post of the steering wheel, “O’Leary, twenty-one,” he snapped to Sergeant Tonelli. “I’ve got him. Milepost forty-three south, middle lane.”

“Hang on, here’s the captain.”

Captain Royce said sharply, “O’Leary, did you get a look at the driver?”

“No, sir. I’m three or four car lengths behind him.”

“Any sign of the girl?”

“No, sir.”

“Pull on past him. We’ll cover with unmarked cars from now on.”

“Check!” O’Leary was ready to turn, into the left lane when he saw the Ford suddenly pick up speed and pull abreast of the presidential convoy. The eight-car convoy was proceeding at fifty-five, with intervals of perhaps one hundred and fifty feet between each sedan.

“Good Lord!” O’Leary muttered softly. The Ford was moving to the extreme right of the middle lane, angling slowly toward one of the intervals that separated the cars in the convoy. He picked up his receiver and cried harshly, “Tonelli, he’s trying to get into the convoy. That’s what he’s been wailing for!” It was a wild, desperate plan, but there was a spark of brilliance to it; if the Ford sliced into the convoy ahead of a carful of Secret Service agents, it would be detected instantly. But if it moved into an interval between newspapermen or presidential aides, it might not be noticed. And once in the convoy the killer was assured of a safe exit from the pike; the President wouldn’t be stopped at a toll gate — the entire convoy would be waved on with deferential salutes.

Captain Royce was already issuing commands that cracked like pistol shots from O’Leary’s speaker. To unmarked patrols thirty and forty he gave the location and license number of the Ford and ordered them to intercept it, slow it down, keep it out of the convoy. To O’Leary he said, “Pull up beside him. He won’t try anything with you there. When patrols thirty and forty get into position, pull on ahead a few hundred yards. And for heaven’s sake, be careful. We can’t have a wreck, and we can’t have any shooting.”

“Check!” said O’Leary and swung out into the left lane. As he pulled up beside the Ford, he saw the driver hunched forward over the wheel, but the streaming rain made it impossible to single out the details of his features; he had an impression of bulk, the flash of eyeglasses, nothing else. O’Leary slowed down to pace the Ford, which was still edging toward the right side of the middle lane. In the right lane the presidential convoy rolled smoothly down the pike, stately and decorous, with patrol cars at the head and rear of the column. O’Leary noticed that the Ford was swinging back gradually to the center of its lane; the driver had obviously spotted him and was postponing his move. In his rearvision mirror O’Leary saw a pair of headlights rushing up on him through the rain that slashed vividly through the darkness.

This would be the first of the unmarked patrols. O’Leary moved a car length ahead of the Ford, then another, giving the trooper speeding up behind him room to cut into the middle lane and position his car in front of the killer’s.

Sheila must be lying on the floor of the Ford, O’Leary realized, and the thought was a maddening one; he hated to leave now, but there was no place for impulsive heroics in the business of policing the turnpike. And his years of training and discipline were strong enough to counterbalance any temptation toward individual action. If she was in the car, her best chances of safety lay in police teamwork. If she was in the car — the thought made him feel sick. Hut he knew the killer might have knocked her unconscious, or killed her and thrown her body into the fields alongside the pike. To stop and get rid of her body would have taken only a few seconds, and in that brief time he would run little risk of being spotted by a patrol.

O’Leary stepped on his accelerator and moved ahead of the convoy; in his rearvision mirror he saw a black station wagon cut smoothly in front of the Ford.

Harry Bogan cursed at his luck, cursed at the rain driving in thin, silver columns through his headlights. He hunched himself forward and wiped steam from the windshield with the palm of his hand.

A few minutes before he had been laughing with boisterous good humor. The plan was going to work; he had been convinced of it. The intervals between the cars in the convoy were long, and the rain was a fine, steaming cover for the move he had planned to make. He had read in the newspapers of the President’s trip, that he was attending a floodlighted ground-breaking ceremony at a veterans’ hospital in Plankton, near Exit 5, and that he was traveling back to Washington that night.

And then, as Bogan approached Exit 5, he had picked up a broadcast from the local station in Plankton which assured him that his plans to intercept the President’s convoy were timed exactly right. The mayor was being interviewed; he spoke of the honor done the village by the President’s visit, of the inspiring message the President had delivered not only to Plankton but to the nation, to free men everywhere. Bogan had listened intently, irritated by the big words, the round, oratorical voice booming in the car. And then the mayor had said, “Although he has been gone from us only a few short moments, we nevertheless miss him deeply, and our hearts wish him Godspeed on his journey.”

That was what Bogan had needed to know — the time of the President’s departure from Plankton. Until then he had been guessing; now he was certain.

But suddenly, as he was preparing to execute the final step, a police car had come up alongside him and had hung there with maddening persistence. And when it had finally driven on, a fool in a black station wagon was hogging the road in front of him, slowing him down to forty miles an hour and arrogantly ignoring the furious blast of his horn.

The convoy had pulled away from him, the red light of the patrol cars fading into the darkness, and the black station wagon had then swung sedately into the right lane to let Bogan pass. But now another Tool was in the way, a man in a small pickup truck who seemed either drunk or suicidal; he weaved erratically in front of him, frustrating all his attempts to get by.

Bogan no longer felt inflated by the proud sense of accomplishment. Everything had become confusing and pointless; as with the breach with his brother and the long years of bitter and meaningless disappointments, there was no rhyme or reason to what was now happening to him, only the feeling of having been wronged somehow and the need to strike back at his tormentors. But his trail of splintered thoughts had come to a sustaining end. Every hand was raised to destroy him. But they wouldn’t find it so easy.

He called sharply to the girl in the back seat. “You think you’re going to marry your big handsome trooper, don’t you? You think I’ll turn you over to him safe and sound, eh? Pretty and sweet, so he can paw you. Is that what you’re hoping?”

Sheila was lying on her side. In that position she was able to work at the buckle that secured the belt about her ankles. “Where are you taking me?” she said. There was no purpose to her question; she hoped only to distract him from his ugly preoccupation with herself and Dan. She couldn’t bear the thread of obscene excitement in his voice, the frenzy of his insinuations.

“You’ll know where I’m taking you when we get there,” he said.

She had given up hope that her apron would be found. She imagined it wet and crumpled on the highway with thousands of tires grinding it into a soggy, unrecognizable mass. The only chance now was when he stopped to pay his toll at an exit; if it were possible, if he didn’t discover that her hands were free before then, she would claw open the door and throw herself from the car. He would shoot her, of course; she knew that from what he had been saying and the sound of his voice that he intended to kill her one way or another. But she could choose the way; and she knew that a bullet would be infinitely preferable to being alone with him in the anonymous darkness that stretched beyond the turnpike.

Bogan laughed suddenly. The pickup truck had moved out of his way. He hadn’t lost more than a few minutes. The President’s convoy was traveling under the legal limit, probably only a mile or two ahead of him. There was still time to catch up with it. He pushed down on the accelerator.

At headquarters battle plans were laid. Sergeant Tonelli had marked the turnpike map with a red thumb tack at the killer’s position and a dozen green ones to indicate the patrol cars surrounding him. Captain Royce sucked on his cold pipe and considered the problem to be solved; they would get the killer, of course, but the job was to get him without hurting anyone else. The presidential convoy was now well out of danger. After pulling ahead of the killer’s blocked-off car, the convoy had moved to the left lane and increased its speed to seventy miles an hour, with a patrol car clearing the way with sirens. The convoy was streaking toward the last exit now, and the killer couldn’t possibly catch it; and even if his car were fast enough, there were patrols available to cut him off.

“We might take him right on the pike,” Tonelli suggested. “Box him in; knock him off the road. There’d be guns in his face before he knew what hit him!”

Royce frowned at the map, considering the traffic and weather conditions in the killer’s area. He didn’t like Tonelli’s idea; blocking a car at high speed was never an easy mission, but tonight it would be especially hazardous. He trusted his men and had a fierce pride in their skill and judgment, but he didn’t intend to expose them to the caprices of a madman under these circumstances. Also, there were the civilian motorists to consider; if there was shooting or if the killer attempted to evade the patrols, it could cause a panic that might result in a bloody wreck.

“We’ll let him get off the pike,” Royce said, “He’s got just three more chances, at Exits Three, Two and One. We’ll take him when there’s no chance of involving anybody else.”

“And what about the girl?”

Royce turned from the map and stared at the windows; outside the weather had worsened, and the rain rolled in waves down the wide panes. He could see the flash of the turnpike traffic moving sluggishly through the storm.

“We’ll try to keep him so busy he won’t have time to worry about her,” he said slowly. “It’s all we can do. And it isn’t much. Right now he’s dangerous. He lost the convoy, and if he’s not a complete madman he’ll know he can’t catch it. His plans have gone wrong, and he’ll be expecting trouble.” He rubbed his forehead. “If we could just calm him down a bit, make him feel confident. Then we could...” Royce paused, still staring at the windows. A grim smile touched his hard, seasoned features. “He’s looking for a convoy, isn’t he, sergeant? Supposing we arrange one for him?”

“What do you mean?”

“Listen, then get hustling. Flash Interchange Two, and Sergeant Brannon at Substation South. We’re going to put a convoy on the pike ahead of the killer. Our convoy. With escort patrols at the front and rear. We’ll let him into it. Then we’ll spring the trap.”

The eight black sedans were commandeered from the municipal administrations of townships at the southern end of the pike. They were assembled in convoy column fifteen minutes after Royce’s order was transmitted to Sergeant Brannon, and at one minute after ten o’clock they rolled smoothly through Interchange 2 and merged with the southbound traffic on the pike. The convoy moved into the right-hand lane, with the escorting patrols clearing a path with their sirens. Al the head of the column was Trooper Frank Sulkowski, a seasoned veteran who kept the convoy speed down to fifty miles an hour. At the rear was Dan O’Leary. He was watching his rearvision mirror for any glimpse of the killer’s Ford. The eight sedans herded between them were manned by troopers and detectives in civilian clothes, and the drivers were purposely allowing an inviting interval between each car. The convoy was a moving trap, with seven holes baited to tempt the killer.

O’Leary lifted his receiver and spoke to Sulkowski. “I think we’re too fast, Frank. Let’s drop it a bit.”

“Check.”

Their exchange was monitored by the dispatcher at headquarters, who relayed it to Captain Royce. “Convoy’s in lane three, milepost eighteen. Reducing speed below fifty.”

Royce nodded and checked the position of the killer’s car on the map. Standing beside him was Major Townsend, the state-police commandant’s chief of staff. He had arrived a few minutes before, a wiry man in his late fifties, for a personal report from Royce on the situation.

“Milepost eighteen,” Townsend said. “And where’s the Ford?”

“A quarter of a mile behind. We’ve got it under surveillance. He’s coming up steadily.”

“And if he bites? What then?”

“The convoy will close up its intervals and swing over onto the middle lane. Unmarked cars in lanes one and three will come up on each side of him. He’ll be in a four-car box.”

“And supposing he doesn’t bite? Is there anything about the look of our convoy that might make him suspicious?”

“I don’t think so, major. Not unless he’s a mind reader. There’s nothing about our convoy to distinguish it from the President’s. Particularly on a dark, rainy night like this one. Its rate of speed is consistent, and it’s moving along right where the killer will expect it to be — in the right-hand lane, same number and type of cars as the President’s, with patrols at the front and rear, beacon lights flashing.”

“All right,” the major said. “Assume he sticks his head into the noose. Where do you intend to take him into custody?”

Royce moved closer to the map and pointed to Exit 1, the last interchange on the pike. “Right here, sir.”

O’Leary didn’t identify the Ford until pulled up alongside him in the middle lane; until that instant it had been nothing but a blur of approaching brightness in his rearvision mirror. Now he saw the driver’s bulky silhouette and, as the sedan crept past him, the license number. He picked up his receiver and spoke to Sulkowski. “He’s just passing me. Frank.”

Other voices cracked from O’Leary’s radio phone — the dispatcher at headquarters, and then the troopers in the unmarked cars tailing the Ford.

O’Leary watched the killer’s car pull slowly abreast of the convoy, red taillights winking in the rainy darkness. Then the car picked up speed suddenly and swerved right, taillights disappearing abruptly. The killer had slipped in between the third and fourth sedans in the convoy.

O’Leary said sharply, “He’s in, Frank!”

“Check!” Sulkowski said. “Close up the intervals now and hang on.”

The drivers of the third and fourth sedans in the convoy skillfully shortened the intervals between themselves and the Ford, and then the column of cars curved gracefully as Sulkowski swung into the middle lane. Unmarked patrols came-up swiftly in lanes one and three to position themselves alongside the killer’s car. The carefully timed mission was complete; the killer was boxed in on all sides, caught in a moving trap that rushed him along toward the last exit on the pike.

Captain Royce’s plans to capture the killer were based on the fundamentals of simplicity and surprise; the police convoy would be escorted to the tollgate at the extreme right side of the interchange and kept well dear of normal turnpike traffic. The highway beyond the exit stretched a half mile to the Washington Bay Bridge, and this area was blocked off; all other traffic was being diverted to secondary roads.

At headquarters Royce explained the final details to Major Townsend. “We’ll stop the convoy right here,” he said, turning to the map and pointing to the right-hand toll booth at Exit 1. “About fifty yards this side of the toll booth we’ve placed a traffic standard or red blinker lights. When the convoy stops, a trooper will salute the first car and point to these lights, indicating that he wants the driver to stay on the right of them. Then he’ll salute again and wave the car on past the toll station. He’ll repeat this performance at the next two cars. The killer’s car comes next. The killer will be watching, naturally, but all he’ll see is a respectful trooper waving the President’s convoy into its proper lane, expediting its departure from the pike.” Royce prodded the surface of the map with his finger. “Meanwhile, troopers will be coming up behind the killer with their guns drawn. Dan O’Leary, who’s the tail escort on the convoy, will leave his car and move up on the right. Troopers and detectives from the convoy cars will join him, covering the killer on both sides. They’ll take him from behind, and they’ll kill him if he makes a fight of it.” Royce glanced at Major Townsend. “See any bugs in it?”

“No, it looks all right. I don’t like exposing the trooper in front of the killer. And I don’t like the fact that the girl’s probably in the car. But if things were as simple as I’d like them to be, we could go fishing and let a pack of Girl Scouts make the arrest.”

“I know,” Royce said, and rubbed his forehead; the strain of the last three hours was evident in the lines about his mouth and eyes. “We’ll need a break.”

The dispatcher left his station and strode into Royce’s office. “Captain, a trucker discovered the body of a young man at Howard Johnson’s Number One, In a ditch near the truckers’ parking lot, He’s not conscious, but they seem to think he’s in fair shape. His papers show he’s the owner of the Ford the killer’s driving.”

“Ambulance on the way?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the boy’s got a chance?”

“Seems like it, sir. He’s lost some blood and has a nasty lump on his head, but he’s breathing pretty well.”

“That’s one bit of good news,” Royce said. “Maybe we’ll get another break now.” He turned and frowned at the map. “We’ll know in a few minutes.”

In the speeding convoy Bogan was laughing softly with relief and excitement. He felt snug and confident in the smoothly rolling column of official cars; in front and back of him, reassuringly close, were the privileged black sedans of the President’s convoy, and on either side of him, coincidentally and luckily, were cars that happened to be traveling at exactly his rate of speed. No one could get at him now; he was safe from everyone in this speeding steel cage, rushing to freedom behind an invincible shield of power and authority.

He felt cunning and triumphant once more, all of his emotions raised to a thrilling pitch of excitement. He called to the girl, “We’ll be leaving the turnpike soon. Courtesy of the police.” He laughed softly, savoring the warm confidence running through him. “We’re very important people, did you realize that? We’re riding right along with the President. The police will salute and bow as we go by. It’s a pity you can’t sit up here with me and enjoy it.”

Sheila had managed to unbuckle the belt about her ankles, but Bogan’s words destroyed her hopes; if they didn’t stop at the toll booth, what had she accomplished by freeing her legs?

“You’re making a mistake taking me with you.” she said desperately. “The police will be searching for me. If you let me go, I promise I won’t—” She stopped, knowing the hopelessness of her appeal and despising the sound of animal fear and entreaty in her voice.

“You won’t tell on me, is that what you were going to say? I’m sure you wouldn’t,” he said with heavy sarcasm. “But the police won’t find us. Don’t worry about that. Not before we have our little talk. We’ll go somewhere nice and quiet. And I’ll get some coffee and sweet rolls. I know just the kind you’ll like. They’re covered all over with sugar, and inside there’s a thick filling of jelly. I’ll untie you and you’ll be comfortable.” Bogan frowned and touched his forehead; there was a strange, confusing pain there. What was it he wanted to explain to her? It had something to do with the big trooper she wanted to marry. Yes. He had to tell her that wasn’t right. And there was the thing about his family, his father and brother, and the young couple in New York, the girl with the slim, bare legs she displayed so cruelly. They hadn’t been nice to him, he remembered, and he thought it would be interesting to talk to them too. But he couldn’t do that. Somehow they got away from him.

With saving instinct, Bogan knew he shouldn’t be thinking about these things; they would confuse and anger him, and he needed all his cunning and strength to fight the forces ranged against him.

“You shut up,” he said petulantly, sullenly. “You got me into this trouble. That’s what I’m going to talk to you about later. You wait.”

“Please,” she said, and for the first lime her voice broke; she knew then he wanted to kill her. “Please don’t—”

“Shut up!” he cried in a low, harsh voice, and hunched forward, eyes narrowing with tension.

The convoy was slowing down. Ahead he saw the arched lights of Interchange No. 1 glowing brilliantly in the darkness. The streams of turnpike traffic were fanning out as they entered the broad approach to the last exit. The convoy swung past a line of troopers standing at attention and turned toward the blinker lights and the toll booth at the far right side of the interchange. They were coming to a stop, and Bogan felt his heart pounding with fear; this was all wrong, no one could stop the President’s convoy — unless they were looking for something. The thought was a lightning flash of terror in his mind. He pulled the gun from his pocket and rolled his window down halfway. A spray of cold rain struck his face. Beads of moisture collected on his glasses, and the traffic lights and police beacons splintered against them like threatening lances. In the silence he could hear the girl’s rapid breathing.

“Don’t you move or make any noise,” he told her quietly. “If you do, you’ll be responsible for the men I’ll have to kill.”

Bogan wiped his glasses with the tip of his index finger, clearing a small tunnel of visibility through the rain and lights and shadows. When he saw a trooper approaching the first car in the convoy, Bogan raised his gun and rested it on the edge of the rolled-down window. But the trooper stopped a good six feet from the first car, came to attention and saluted smartly. He pointed toward the standard of blinker lights, obviously directing the driver to the right of them, then saluted again as the car moved ahead slowly. The performance was repeated with the second car, and Bogan realized that this was simple routine, a respectful policeman directing the convoy into its appointed, privileged lane. He withdrew his gun from the window and let out his breath slowly. Everything was all right; the feeling of relief was so intense that he almost laughed aloud. Now the car immediately ahead of him was moving out, and the trooper was walking toward him with long, swinging strides, a tall black figure in the slashing rain.

Bogan heard the girl stirring behind him and heard the metallic click as the lock of the rear door was released; then a thin edge of cold air touched the back of his neck. He twisted about desperately, fear leaping through him in sudden, shocking waves. The girl was free, he saw; the belt was gone from her ankles, her hands were clawing at the partially open door. He felt nothing then but a despairing ache of betrayal; she was worse than all the rest, tricking him in silence, cunningly plotting to frustrate all his plans.

And then, through the rear window, Bogan saw the figure of a uniformed man running at a crouch toward his car. He cursed furiously and released the clutch; and at the same instant he turned and fired at the trooper approaching his car from the front. The thrust of the car under full power caused the rear door to close with a crash, and Bogan heard the girl scream in pain. Her fingers, he thought, as he swung the car to run down the trooper who had hurled himself to the roadway at Bogan’s shot. Slim white fingers, soft as velvet in a caress. Bogan twisted the wheel savagely, swerving clear of the trooper and rushing at the toll booth. Escape was important, not the fool lying there in the rain. Take care of him later, lake care of them all later.

O’Leary was six feet from the rear of the Ford when Bogan fired at the trooper. He leaped forward, closing the distance in one stride, but the car was already lunging away from him, swerving off sharply to the left; but then it swung back crazily to the right, heading for the toll booth, and O’Leary hurled himself at the rear door, catching the handle in both hands. The speed of the car jerked him off his feet, swinging his body in a bruising arc along the turnpike, but he kept his grip for a precious second, and managed to release the catch and open the door.

The Ford bucked spasmodically as Bogan shifted gears, and in that momentary halt O’Leary flung the upper part of his body into the back seat of the car. He wrapped his arms around Sheila’s knees and let his weight go limp; and when the car surged forward again, his legs dragged along the ground, and then he was free, slamming painfully against the wet concrete with Sheila’s light weight held desperately in his arms.

O’Leary came to his knees and held her tightly against him for an instant, isolating her from the roar of cars, the flash of gunfire. She was crying hysterically, saying his name over and over, but there was no recognition in her eyes or face. The terror would not leave her for a long time, but she was clinging to someone who would be with her until it did.

O’Leary left her with detectives who had poured from the convoy sedans and ran back to his own patrol car. The Ford had crashed past the loll booth and was racing down the half-mile stretch of highway that led to the bay bridge. But there was no escape now; three blue-and-white patrol cars were speeding after it, maneuvering for position with merciless precision. There were no other cars on the road; Bogan roared down a deserted tunnel, with patrol cars closing in behind him.

O’Leary shot past the toll booth after the pursuing police cars, holding his microphone to his lips. “He’s all alone,” he said. “The girl’s out of the car, she’s safe.” His report sounded in the patrols ahead of him and at headquarters in Riverhead.

Captain Royce said, “Don’t get careless now; don’t take any chances. He’s not going anywhere.” And he issued an order to the bridge police to open their span.

The bridge barriers slid automatically into place, and the powerful cables at the four corners of the bridge began to turn on their drums, lifting the span slowly into the air. “Take him when he stops,” Royce said.

Bogan saw water sparkling ahead of him, spreading away like a broad, calm meadow at dusk, with a soft wind stirring the leaves of grass so that they flashed with the last glancing rays of evening light. It was very lovely; quiet and peaceful. But he couldn’t stop crying. The tears streamed from his mild eyes and ran coldly down his cheeks. He needed someone to comfort him; someone he wasn’t afraid of.

The patrol cars were racing up behind him, he saw; stalking him like great, dangerous animals.

Brilliant red lights flashed in his eyes, and he saw a barrier, and beyond that a heavy chain swinging across the highway. And beyond that nothing but the wide, peaceful meadow that looked like water in the curious confusion of nighttime lights and shadows. He heard the crash of his car against the barrier and then the wrenching, snapping sound of the chain giving, and then he was free at last, soaring toward the dark, mild meadow, as effortlessly as a bird, or a child’s paper airplane.

Dan O’Leary swung his car about and snapped off his siren and beacon lights. He sat for half a moment with his arms crossed on the steering wheel, his forehead resting on the backs of his hands. It was all over; the Ford had plunged into Washington Bay, and after the noise of the crash and a plume of white spray, there was nothing left but the spreading ripples on the surface of the black, silent water.

O’Leary said a prayer that Sheila was safe. Then he started back to Interchange 1, where she was waiting for him. He drove at less than the legal maximum speed, steadily and precisely, his big hands firm on the wheel, his eyes alert on the road ahead of him. There was no need to hurry this last half mile to Interchange 1, he thought gratefully; the important part of him was already there.

Content

William P. McGivern
Murder on the Turnpike

I

II

Conclusion