Duke slapped the back of Erik's head. "Ya ahole, look whatcha done."

"It's not that bad," Erik tried to commiserate.

"Not that bad? Man, we can't walk the street like this. We look like a couple of rejects from some California h.o.m.o farm." Duke glared at Erik, then stomped out of the bathroom.

At least we don't look like our file pictures, Erik thought. That much was correct. The hospital updated their wardresidence photos every year. The police probably wouldn't be looking for two guys with Erik thought. That much was correct. The hospital updated their wardresidence photos every year. The police probably wouldn't be looking for two guys with white white hair. hair.

Duke slouched on the bed. He was watching the Three Stooges: Shemp was pumping Larry up with a fireplace bellows stuck in his mouth. Erik changed the channel.

"Hey, man! Whatdaya think you're doin? It's a Shemp!"

Shemp, Erik thought. Erik thought. We're two killers trying to outrun the entire state, and all he cares about is Shemp. We're two killers trying to outrun the entire state, and all he cares about is Shemp. "We have to monitor the news as much as we can," his voice creaked. He flipped through latemorning cartoons, then-froze. Suddenly, he was looking at "We have to monitor the news as much as we can," his voice creaked. He flipped through latemorning cartoons, then-froze. Suddenly, he was looking at himself himself on the TV screen, and a newscaster was saying, "...have killed four in less than twentyfour hours. Erik Tharp and Richard 'Duke' Belluxi escaped the state mental facility near Luntville yesterday morning at eleventhirty, overpowering two employees and murdering two more. They fled the grounds in a lawn contractor's vehicle which was later found abandoned at a nearby convenience store, where they murdered a clerk and abducted a twentyyearold Luntville woman only minutes after their escape. The woman, whose name is being withheld, was found dead later that afternoon in a ditch off State Route 154. She'd been shot, beaten, and raped, police say." on the TV screen, and a newscaster was saying, "...have killed four in less than twentyfour hours. Erik Tharp and Richard 'Duke' Belluxi escaped the state mental facility near Luntville yesterday morning at eleventhirty, overpowering two employees and murdering two more. They fled the grounds in a lawn contractor's vehicle which was later found abandoned at a nearby convenience store, where they murdered a clerk and abducted a twentyyearold Luntville woman only minutes after their escape. The woman, whose name is being withheld, was found dead later that afternoon in a ditch off State Route 154. She'd been shot, beaten, and raped, police say."

Duke chortled laughter, pointing. "Looky! It's us!"

Indeed it was. Both their faces filled the screen. Duke was grinning in his picture. Erik stared.

"Yeah, my mama, I'll bet she's proud!" Duke laughed. "Can tell all her friends her son's a TV star!"

"Come on!" Erik shouted. "We gotta get out of-"

"What are you s.h.i.ttin' a brick about?"

"They found the girl's body, Duke. That means they know what kind of car we're driving!"

The station wagon was parked right out in front of the motel, in full view from the main road. The first cop car that drove by would see it and then...

"Get our stuff together," Erik commanded. "I'm gonna move the car around back so no one can see it from the road. We'll have to leave on foot, get a new car somewhere else."

"Right," Duke said.

Erik slipped out the front door and got in the station wagon. How long had the police known what they were driving? It was incredible that the car hadn't been seen yet.

Too incredible.

Something clicked behind his ear.

"Right there, fella," a voice whispered.

Erik's whole body seized.

The female cop had sneaked up alongside the car. She leaned over, pressing the barrel of a Ruger .357 to his temple. "You blink and your brains go out the other side of your head. Understand?'

"Uh, yes," Erik croaked. His eyes darted right. A police cruiser was parked on the side of the last room. "Luntville Police Department," a seal read.

The woman had dark red hair tied in a bun behind her hat. She wore mirrored sungla.s.ses in which Erik could see twins of his own face. "You and me," she whispered, "we're gonna walk over to that squad car nice and quiet, right?"

"Uh, yes," Erik croaked.

"You get out real slow and keep your hands up."

The woman opened the station wagon door. She kept her gun trained on him. It was a big gun, but then Erik thought of Duke's, which was even bigger. Right now, Duke was doing one of two things. He'd either crawled out the bathroom window and was heading for the hills, or he was standing behind that tacky louvered motel room door and lining up the sights of the gun he'd taken off the old man at the QwikStop.

Erik stood straight, his hands in the air. He whispered, "Lady, the other guy's in the room right in front of us and he's got a-"

It was a strange collision of sounds and sights crammed into a single second. The woman's police hat shot up in the air, and suddenly she was standing before Erik with no head. It simply...disappeared. Only then did Erik hear the loud bang! bang! The woman, headless now, seemed to stand for a moment, her pistol still thrust out. Then the body collapsed. The woman, headless now, seemed to stand for a moment, her pistol still thrust out. Then the body collapsed.

Erik's expression collapsed as well. He lowered his arms. More blood on my hands, More blood on my hands, he thought. he thought.

"Oooooeee!" Duke celebrated. He'd fired through the louvers. "Perfect head shot, man, fifteen, maybe twenty feet!"

Duke loped out, the Webley still smoking. He picked up the policewoman's hat and put it on, laughing.

My G.o.d, Erik thought. Erik thought.

"Get the stuff," he said, "and move the cop's body into the room. I'm moving the car."

Duke whistled gaily, dragging the body toward the room. "S'shame, though, you know? Wasted a perfectly good set of t.i.ts. Could've had me a good ol' time with this girl-fuzz."

Erik parked the station wagon behind the motel. Then he jogged back around to see what was keeping Duke.

Duke was sitting in the pa.s.senger side of the woman's patrol car. He adjusted the hat on his head and looked up, grinning.

"Come on, buddy. We might as well ride in style, right? I'll ride shotgun."

By now Erik had resigned to Duke's sociopathy. He had no choice. He started the car and tromped the accelerator. Duke wailed.

Luntville was just north. Erik sped south. The cop had probably radioed in her location when she'd spotted the station wagon. When she didn't answer up, her friends would come looking.

Duke looked like a kid in a candy shop, surveying the car's interior. Erik's mind raced. "We've probably got five minutes before they're onto us. When they find the cop you killed, there'll be a hundred cars after us." Erik turned off the main road, fishtailing. The further off the main roads they got, the more time they'd have to change cars. He remembered the area well. The back roads were a maze. "We have to ditch this car and get a new one real fast."

"Why? I like this car," Duke complained. He tore open a pack of Twinkies. "How come we gotta change cars all the time?"

"Don't you understand anything? As long as they know what we're driving, we don't stand a chance. We need a car that n.o.body knows we're in."

And that prospect worried him. Taking a car meant taking (or killing) the owner. Erik didn't want any more people dead, but he knew Duke had other ideas in that regard. How can I control an uncontrollable person? How can I control an uncontrollable person? he grimly asked himself. he grimly asked himself.

The mobile radio, a plugin Motorola, began jabbering. Then, much more clearly, a woman's voice broke: "Twozeroeight?"

Erik stuck his head out the window. The front fender bore the stencil: 208. "That's us," he croaked.

"Twozeroeight, do you copy?"

Duke gaped at him, cheeks stuffed.

"Twozeroeight, acknowledge."

"Give it a shot," Erik advised. "We've got nothing to lose except our lives, and we'll probably lose those anyway."

"Think positive, buddy." Duke pointed to his own head. "Positive, that's the way. How do you work this thing?"

"Just pick it up and push the b.u.t.ton when you want to talk."

Duke keyed the mike. "This is twozeroeight. Go ahead."

"Twozeroeight, what's your status?"

"Aokay. Everything's just fine."

Erik was shaking his head.

The radio fizzed through a pause. "Twozeroeight, are you teneight?"

"That's a roger. I'm the big teneight." He released the b.u.t.ton and chuckled. "What the f.u.c.k's teneight?"

"I don't know," Erik said. "What do I look like? Adam 12?"

Duke laughed.

"Twozeroeight, do you want a disregard on that possible fiftyfive?"

"Yeah, sure, gimme a disregard. Why not?"

Another fizzy pause. Then: "Twozeroeight, state your ID number."

Duke looked at Erik. They both shrugged.

"Twozeroeight, identify yourself by name and ID."

"This is bad boy Duke Belluxi, baby!" Duke wailed into the mike. "I am your friendly neighborhood walkin' and talkin' schizoaffective paranoid schizophrenic. And sittin' right by my side is Captain Erik Tharp of the Starship Psychopath Psychopath. We boldly go where no escaped mental patients have gone before, oooooodoggie!"

"Jesus," the dispatcher muttered. "Twozeroeight, please put the unit's officer on the line."

"Oh, you mean that pretty redheaded girl-fuzz? Well, she can't talk right now on account of she seems to have misplaced her mouth. Oh, and do me a favor, okay? s.h.a.g my b.a.l.l.s."

Suddenly, a wave of voices panicked over the transmission. "Thirteen, thirteen! Officer down at Gein's Motel!" Others shouted in the background. "She's dead! The motherf.u.c.kers killed her!" "Check the back!" "Harley, get the gas gun!" "Holy f.u.c.king-" "The car, the motherf.u.c.kers took her car!" "Jesus Christ, they blew off her-"

"Head," Duke finished into the mike.

"This is twoonetwo to dispatch. Officer is shot and killed. No sign of unit twozeroeight. Repeat, unit twozeroeight is missing."

Duke made pig noises in the microphone. Then he stuck the mike between his legs and farted. "How about all you pigs out there go f.u.c.k each other, and lick my crack too, while you're at it, just like all your mamas do to me every night. Catch me if you can, piggies! Oink oink oink!"

The dispatcher was yelling over the air: "Tenthree! All units tenthree! Tenthree, tenthree, tenthree!"

A crystalclear silence filled the void, which seemed antic.i.p.atory and vivid. Then: "Duke Belluxi, Erik Tharp, this is Chief Lawrence Mulligan of the Luntville Police Department." The slight drawl sounded easy, almost chummy. "I want you boys to come to your senses. Give it up. Give us your location."

"We're at your mama's house, Chief. Where'd you think?" Duke said, then made some more pig noises. "Looks like we're going to have to wait, though. See, there's a big line going all the way around the house, starting at the bedroom. Course, good poon like your mama's is always worth waitin' for, don't ya think?"

"I want you fellas to know that every available state and local police car in this county is heading your way from every direction. You got a world of hurt bearin' down on your a.s.ses, boys."

Duke bubbled laughter. "Say, Chief, your wife's the one with the really big t.i.tties who blows every guy in town for free, ain't she? Think maybe she'd tongue my b.a.l.l.s if I asked her nice?"

All this time during Duke's profane fun, Erik had been fishtailing deeper and deeper into the back roads.

"You're askin' for serious trouble, boys," Mulligan was saying. "You don't want my men to catch ya on the run. Now be reasonable."

"s.h.a.g my b.a.l.l.s, Chief," Duke answered. "How's that for reasonable? Say, I heard your daughters do the football team. That true?"

"Listen to me, son. It's G.o.dd.a.m.n impossible for you all to get away. Pull that car over right now, give us your location, and give yourselves up. You all have my personal guarantee that you won't be harmed."

"I got a better idea, Chief." Duke chuckled. "You give me your mama's location, and I'll give you my personal guarantee that I'll diddle her poon like your daddy never dreamed."

Duke then repeated his rendition of pig noises into the microphone.

Erik turned off the radio.

"Say, buddy, you're whippin' this car around these turns like a regular Mariano Mandretti." Duke dug into some more Twinkies, and burped. "And how do you like that nod.i.c.k chief? Thinks we're just gonna give up, just like that. f.u.c.ker would kill us in less time than it takes me to shake the p.i.s.s off my p.e.c.k.e.r."

Duke had that right, however uneloquently. Most cops down here thought the U.S. Const.i.tution was a ship from the War of 1812. They'd shoot first and ask questions next month.

The network of back roads would hide them for a while but not forever. Unless they got an inconspicuous car, it was only a matter of time before somebody spotted them.

"We need a new car," he said. "Now."

"Way out here in the sticks, there ain't nothing," Duke observed. "We need a shopping center, grocery store, something like that."

"I don't think there are any this far in."

Abruptly, Duke peered forward. "Well, looky there."

Erik saw it.

"Tell me G.o.d ain't on our side," Duke said.

The road wound down through the woods. Up ahead was a onelane truss bridge which crossed a deep creek.

Parked off the side was a white van.

It was one of those custom jobs, cursive pinstriping, multiple coats of lacquer, Keystone mags. And lower, a guy and a girl sat at the creekside with fishing rods.

"We're taking them with us, Duke, right? You're not going to kill them, right?"

"No sweat, buddy. I swear on my daddy's grave. From here on I don't kill n.o.body."

Erik pulled over. The two kids looked up the crest. Duke fiddled with some switches until the flashing red and blues popped on. "This is the police," he barked out the window. "You two get on up here."

The girl looked questioningly to her boyfriend. She wore white shorts, flipflops, and a maroon bikini top. The guy wore overalls. They both looked in their late teens.