Chapter 25

Officer Friendly was after us seconds after we cleared the smashed gate, no siren or flashing lights, and I was pretty sure no pretense at bringing us in this time. There were no witnesses left to protest his blatantly unprofessional behavior or remind him of our civil rights. Also, Honey had shot him, and I think he was pretty pissed off about that.

The old range was now just a field overgrown with weeds, one end lined with leaning wooden booths and the other with the weathered remains of ancient target backdrops. The largest structure stood between the gravel parking lot and shooting field, a simple, small clubhouse where members paid dues and met to compare caliber sizes.

Local kids used the place as a handy and out of the way party place. The walls were covered with graffiti, the parking lot littered with trash. A large ring of scorched rocks in the center of the field contained the remains of long dead bonfires. I’d been there twice before, once to round up a bail-jumper for Uncle Higheagle, once to rescue the rebellious teenage daughter of an old friend.

She did not thank me for the considerable time and effort I put in to tracking her down, but that’s another story for another day.

I don’t know what Honey had planned, probably nothing much beyond the immediate problem of putting a little distance between herself and the hereafter, but I couldn’t argue with her priorities.

The Ventura was a good car, solid, straight and fast, but it was no match for the Interceptor in Officer Friendly’s cruiser, and he was on our ass in no time. He drew up close behind us in the parking lot, drifted to the right, surged forward, thumping my rear quarter panel in a nicely executed PIT maneuver.

I had no Oh Shit handles, so I gripped the dash and held on.

We slid sideways, would have flipped over if we’d been on blacktop, but the gravel was a more forgiving surface. We spun though, round and round, the badly lit landscape around us blurring as it spun around us. I closed my eyes, I may even have screamed a bit.

Honey didn’t make a sound.

When the spinning stopped, I opened my eyes and found the countryside rushing past again. Honey was back in full control and glaring through the windshield.

“Shut up you big baby.”

I could think of no clever response to that. I was beyond clever responses, or even coherent ones. I bit my lips and hoped I’d be around to think of a good one later.

Officer Friendly had fallen behind again but was closing the gap.

“Hold on!” Honey turned sharply where the gravel lot ended and gave way to a rocky slope, the kind of natural ramp that would have been perfect for a Dukes of Hazard stunt jump, but usually only ended in blood and tears in the real world. We slid again, then shot out into the open field of the firing range. I saw Honey grin at the rearview mirror, but the grin faded when Officer Friendly made the same turn, completely failing to fall for her trap. He even gained a few more yards on us.

She put her foot down harder on the gas and the Ventura bounced and skittered across the rough and rocky ground, shaking me from seat to ceiling like a ball in a pinball machine.

“Can’t this piece of shit go any faster?”

“Watch it!”

“Sorry, I did not mean to insult your piece of shit!”

She yanked the wheel hard to the left, just avoiding the fire pit in the center of the field.

Officer Friendly avoided it just as easily.

“Shit,” Honey said.

I was too busy being her pinball to respond.

She swerved right, left, right, then yanked the steering wheel hard left. We made a rough, bouncing U-turn that threw me face-first into the passenger side glass and sideswiped two of the old leaning booths. Wood flew in splinters and Honey demonstrated her mastery of the English language in a blue streak that would have made a West Valley crack whore blush.

Officer Friendly stomped on his brakes, missed the booths, but fell behind again.

“Hey!” Honey kept her eyes on the road, or lack of road in front of us, but slapped my arm when I didn’t respond.

“What?”

Honey stomped the gas again but kept the Ventura straight, aiming for the parking lot. Officer Friendly wasted no time catching up to us. He was closing in on us fast.

“Do cop cars have airbags?” I heard her scream clearly enough, but my shaking brain was about as useful to me as a Jell-O fruit salad. It took a few seconds to put her words in context.

“What...no, don’t!”

She did.

Officer Friendly was closing in again, setting us up for another PIT maneuver, and Honey stomped on the brakes.

We did that sliding thing that I love so much. I saw Officer Friendly’s Holy Shit face over the hood of his ride and moving fast toward the Ventura’s rear passenger door as he responded by stomping down on his brakes.

Too little too late, as they say. He clobbered the same rear panel he’d already dented, pushed my side of the car clean off the ground, and I was looking at sky as we flipped over and started to roll.

* * *

When I opened my eyes, the world seemed reluctant to come back into focus. Behind me, Mr. Blue flapped and squawked indignantly from inside his cage, but it was still belted in, and he seemed to be okay. Finke flopped around inside the trunk, clearly displeased with the seating arrangement, but clearly still alive. The driver’s seat was empty, the side window busted out, so Honey had managed to free herself.

All the bells of hell were ringing inside my bruised and battered brain-cage, so I was clearly still alive as well.

I should have been grateful, but gratitude had settled somewhere near the bottom of my current emotional stew.

No way I was letting Honey drive again.

Gunfire startled me from my ungenerous, drifting thoughts, and I fumbled for my seatbelt. I didn’t even remember buckling up. I’d probably done it without thinking after Honey’s assault on the gate.

Another shot, a scream from Honey. Frustration instead of pain.

My passenger door was uncooperative but popped open when I put my shoulder to it. The poor abused Ventura had landed right side up but now looked like I felt.

The cruiser was a few yards away, the radiator sending out stinking plumes of steam and the deflating airbags filling up the cab. The driver’s door stood open.

I saw Officer Friendly a moment later, gun drawn and pointing his way as he approached one of the old booths. I could see Honey crouching low inside it, clutching her gun but not firing.

I felt inside my jacket, found a gun, flicked off the safety as I drew, aimed, fired. He was fifty feet away, give or take, and I wasn’t that good of a shot. I didn’t think I’d hit him, but distract him away from Honey, sure.

The gun flew from his hand, discharged as it hit the ground.

He clutched his arm, screamed, ululating and high-pitched, then fainted.

My first few steps in his direction were unsteady, the gongs were sounding loud and clear inside my head again, but the world had more or less stopped trying to tip me off by the time I reached him.

He was still clutching his arm and blood flowed freely from between his fingers.

“You should have shot that pig in his head,” Honey said, almost growled from behind me. She walked with a limp, but I thought she was lucky to be walking at all. She regarded the Glock in her hand, glared at it actually, and deftly slipped it back into her thigh holster. The action momentarily revealed most of her thighs, and there was a stir of interest from Little Butch again.

I wished she’d quit doing that. It was distracting.

“Out of bullets,” she said, then directed her glare at me as if she’d just read my thoughts. Probably she had.

“I was aiming for his head,” I said, trying to direct her annoyance away from me. I nudged Officer Friendly with the toe of my boot. He rolled with it, his hand losing its loose grip on the injured arm. The hole in it was large and still leaking blood, but it looked like the slug had gone all the way through, and the wound was starting to clot. He’d probably live until morning. I gave him a gentle kick to express my mixed feeling about that. It made me feel a little better.

“And you’re welcome,” I said to Honey.

* * *

She wanted to cap him where he lay, but with the proper application of reason I persuaded her to spare his life.

“Give me your gun!”

“No.”

She made a visible effort to calm herself and attempted to deconstruct my reason for refusing her perfectly reasonable request. “I only want to shoot him a little.”

“No.” I had other plans for him.

“He called me a cunt!”

I ignored her and unclipped the handcuffs from his belt.

“Help me drag him.”

“No,” she said, and stalked away with her arms crossed.

Oh well.

I stripped him of his belt and holster, found his handcuff keys and tossed them into the weed-choked field, dragged him toward the fence. I cuffed him and left him there, content in the knowledge that come morning he might get a chance to see how the other half lived. I hear ex-cops are very popular in prison.

Honey passed us, walking back toward the road with Mr. Blue’s cage in her arms.

“Where are you going?”

She ignored me, kept walking.

My head hurt too much to argue. I walked back to the Ventura and considered it for a moment.

A Pontiac Ventura is a tough car, but roll one once or twice, and it’s going to show. The hood was partially caved in, the side panels and doors smashed almost flat, the rear bumper twisted. She was going to need more than a wax and a buff to make her pretty again.

The lights were still on, though a little dimmer than I usually like to see them. They’d been running off the battery for five, maybe ten minutes, but they did still work.

The driver’s door required some persuasion, but I got it open, found the key still slotted in the ignition where Honey had left it and gave it a turn. To my happy surprise, it started right up.

I met Honey by the road and took a moment to enjoy the shock on her face as she watched me roll up to her. Probably not up to her usual standards, but hell, it beat walking.

She shook her head, but smiled and climbed into the passenger seat.

“Well, what are we waiting for?”

“There’s something I need to grab,” I said, climbing out as she shut her door. I approached Officer Logan’s car.

She lay slumped against the front of her cruiser, her ruined head resting against her breasts.

“Sorry,” I said, and I was. She had been one of the good ones.

Inside the car her dash cam was still recording. I pushed the stop button and pulled it from its mount. The recording would go a long way toward helping me prove my story, if I lived long enough to tell it to the people that mattered.

It would also make sure Officer Friendly got exactly what he deserved.

Back in the Ventura, once again rolling down the blacktop toward safety, I said, “Didn’t you have a call to make?”