Meeting Evil by Thomas Berger Page B

if he left, he who had put the phone out of commission.
    “Come on, John,” Richie said. He shouted at Sharon to drive the car to the barn. They followed on foot as she drove slowly along the bumpy unpaved lane. “I was going to dump her,” he said, “but she’s got her uses.”
    “You can’t keep this up forever,” John said. “The longer you do, the worse it gets. You can’t really be thinking of a standoff with the police?”
    Sharon stopped at the open barn door. Richie yelled, “Go on in!” To John he said, “Besides, she’s harmless. Her brain’s like a rotten pear.”
    Sharon drove the car inside. When they reached it, Richie told her to put it in neutral and stay at the wheel. “Do you mind, John?” he asked. “You’re stronger than me. Could you roll it over there?” He pointed to a far corner, the only area not obstructed by partitions or farm equipment in disrepair, including what had once probably been a tractor but was now a rusty relic with two wheels of bare iron.
    With an effort, pushing against the frame of the driver’s window, John was able to get the car moving. Its weight made the old floorboards groan, but once started, it was easy to keep moving.
    John felt guilty about having deserted Sharon earlier. He spoke to her in an undertone. “Are you okay?” She showed no physical damage.
    She kept her eyes on where she was steering. “I’m feeling better. He just drove around, looking for you.”
    “He’s no friend of mine!”
    “Tell
him
that,” she said, tight-lipped. She stopped the car and watched Richie’s approach in the rearview mirror. “We can beat him, but
you’re
the answer.”
    John was taken aback by her new energy. He was not quite sure what she meant and could not ask for elucidation, for Richie was at hand, carrying an old tarpaulin he had found. He barked at Sharon as she left the car. “Cover up the automobile!”
    John helped her with the heavy oil-soaked canvas. When they were done, it was obvious that a car was concealed underneath it, but Richie said it would be sufficient to delude the cops, if there was no other evidence that the fugitives had come to this farm.
    “We’ll get inside the house and keep it buttoned up,” he said as they walked back. He brought up the rear with the shotgun. Sharon was in front.
    John remembered he had to protect the boy. “That’s really a dead end. Why not hike out through the woods? They’re going to be looking for the car for a while, not for people on foot.”
    “Much as I like you, John, I realize that what you want to do is get caught. So all your plans are going to have that idea back of them.”
    This was so rational a statement as to give John at least a small hope that Richie could be talked to. “Okay,” he said, “but they’re going to find us sooner or later, you must know that, and the longer it takes, the worse it looks, the tougher it will be to make your case, and—”
    “I don’t have a case, John!” Richie cried, in what sounded like glee. “They have to take me as I come: this is it, like it or not.”
    They arrived at the back door of the house. John prayed that the boy would have escaped from one end or side of the building, by door or window, while they were at the other, but knew it was an unrealistic hope: like any normal human being, the lad would feel most safe in his own home, whatever the menace, with the possible exception of fire or flood. That’s what a home is, beyond its provisions for eating and sleeping: all the fortress most of us will ever require, and John was in trouble only because he had been lured out of his own.
    As ordered by Richie, Sharon mounted the one-step platform that constituted the back porch, swung the unlatched screen door aside, turned the unresistant knob, and opened the unlocked door.
    John caught himself before blaming the kid. How could a boy be expected to have the mentality of a combat soldier? The young fellow was probably crouched in some