Pursuit
by: S.L. Kotar and J.E. Gessler
Chapter 10
May 12, 1964 2:45PM. – Tuesday
Rec’d call from Tucson PD. Positive ID.
Alias: Jim Lincoln
At last!
He scowled as his eyes ran over the four sentences. The first and last he had hurriedly scrawled before catching a plane. Upon his return – without Richard Kimble – he had added the third. Different pen, different handwriting, expressing the grim awareness that catching the fugitive was not going to be as easy or as uncomplicated as most expected. That meant he would have to begin collecting data, starting with the identities he used. Some, obviously, would be of necessity: names on driver’s licenses Kimble picked up along the way.
How would he do that? He had already suggested one manner to his wife: have a false one made. Perhaps he might do that to obtain a passport, but that idea had already been dismissed. Kimble wasn’t going to need one if he stayed in the continental United States. But a driver’s license was different. Even a man on the run – No, especially a man on the run, he corrected himself, required some form of ID. Applying for a job, cashing a check, even being stopped for jaywalking, he would be required to prove who he was.
Stealing was the easiest and most logical way to obtain one. Pick a man’s pocket; go through the jackets hung from a rack in a wayside restaurant; even filch one from the hook on the back of a washroom stall.
Would a man who was raised as a gentleman: one bred to follow the rules of the better strata of society, lower himself to the level of a common thief?
Gerard could not discount the possibility.
He would if he had no choice.
Where else get one?
Buy it from a man more down-and-out than he is. Here’s five dollars – enough to buy a bottle.
Trade for it. I set your child’s broken arm. In repayment, all I want is a driver’s license.
Walk up to the DMV and apply for one.
I live at the Crestview Apartments, Room 247.
Fill out the form, take the test, wait for it to come in the mail.
And then, there was a more insidious way: have someone obtain one for him.
You’ve told me your story. I believe you’re innocent. I want to help.
That was a method Lieutenant Gerard had not expected. Like Dr. Kimble, he was learning as he went.
“Had him and let him get away.”
Captain Carpenter arched an eyebrow.
“Go on.”
“His picture was hanging on the wall. A wanted poster as large as life,” the detective added in only slight exaggeration. “They even brought him in for questioning.”
“About the murder?”
“No. Another matter, entirely. Some wealthy landowner from Phoenix accused him of breaking up his family, or some such.”
“Was he?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I want to find out, sir. This is the first confirmed ID I’ve had. There have been other reports, of course: ones I’ve gone so far as to chart on my map.” Both men’s eyes snaked to the large, transparent map, meticulously marked with sightings of Richard Kimble. “As it turned out, they were wrong or suspect or way too late.” He hesitated before adding, “I’m not as sure about them as I once was. Experience,” he admitted in a lower voice, “teaches. But here, I’ve got a real opportunity to discover the truth. I’d like to fly to Tucson and do some investigating. Interview the sergeants who spoke with him. Have a word with the woman. Try and find out if she knows where he went. If I put a little pressure on her, she may tell me.”
Then, again, she may not.
“He’s gone? Kimble’s gone?”
“I may learn something useful. For the next time.”
“And the time after that? And the time after that?” Carpenter repeated.
“I hope not.”
The captain shrugged. He hoped not, too. Almost as much as the lieutenant.
“All right.” He almost added, “Go, if you must,” but didn’t bother. “Must” equated to Gerard’s absolute imperative.
The desk officer made the reservation for him. He was directed to pick up his ticket at the airline counter. One of the local Arizona men would be waiting for him when he arrived. Nothing was said about accommodations. The return trip was scheduled for 6 PM the following day.
The outboard flight took Gerard to Phoenix. Unlike the other passengers who read magazines, discussed the benefits of the various golf courses they were likely to play, chatted with the stranger seated next to them, or closed their eyes and slept, he remained reclusive and awake. Although not a solitary man by nature, he was transforming in ways he did not see. Nor would he have understood them.
At Phoenix, he was required to transfer to a puddle-jumper for the last lap of the journey. Sergeants Burden and Fairfield met him in Tucson. Neither looked pleased to see him. They shook hands and exchanged names. Burden indicated his partner take the out-of-town detective’s carry-on luggage.
“Tell me about Richard Kimble,” Gerard snapped once they had gotten into the unmarked police car.
If they expected preliminaries, they were disappointed.
Burden took the initiative by way of self-defense.
“We had no reason to expect he was anyone but a transient.”
“You had his wanted poster on your bulletin board.”
“An out-of-state fugitive. Not the kind of man you’d expect to show up in Tucson.”
“Where would you expect him to ‘show up’?”
“We didn’t see it until it was too late,” Fairfield tried. As an apology, it fell flat.
“So I gathered. Tell me about this Ed Welles.”
Burden assumed the responsibility to continue.
“He claimed your man – he called himself Jim Lincoln – was breaking up his marriage. She and his son had skipped out. He traced her to a bar called the Branding Iron. She was playing piano there. Lincoln – Kimble – was tending bar. He had just drifted into town. He had only had taken the job. But Mr. Welles took offense at something he said. I don’t know what. Came to the lady’s defense, I suppose.”
Gerard was not a “supposing” man. Therefore, he did not reply.
“Mr. Welles was an important man in the state. Everyone knew his name. A philanthropist. He told us this Jim Lincoln was interfering with his marriage. That it would be better for everyone involved if he packed up and left town as quickly as he came. That he would appreciate our help.” A pause. No reply. “That’s what we’re paid to do. Help. We were glad to oblige.”
“So: you picked him up.”
“Read him the riot act, you might say,” Fairfield tried.
“Drove him to his hotel room. Had a look around.”
“You know what he had there?” Fairfield phrased it like a joke.
Gerard failed to see the humor.
“If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking.”
“Hair dye. He had a bottle of hair dye on the bathroom sink.”
That caught his attention.
“Hair dye? He dyed his hair? What color?”
“Black.” The two men exchanged glances, relieved they had something useful to impart. “You didn’t know that?”
“No.”
“Black as the ace of spades, that’s what it was.”
“He said he had seen a few grey hairs; didn’t want a prospective employer to think he was too old to do the job. It sounded all right.”
“How was his hair cut?”
“Different from the wanted poster. Longer, I’d say. Combed back. Neat.”
“So he wouldn’t look like a transient?”
Uncertain whether or not he was being sarcastic, the two local men shrugged.
“He didn’t look like a –”
“Well, he is,” Gerard snapped. Too soon. Burden finished with the word “doctor,” rather than “murderer.” Gerard scowled.
“What else did you find?”
“The usual. Toothbrush; shirts. Underwear. Half a dozen newspapers.”
“Newspapers? What sort of newspapers?”
“Some local; others out of state.”
“You didn’t think that was odd.”
“We thought it was odd, Lieutenant, not criminal.”
“What did you tell him?”
“We thought it better for his health and welfare to leave Tucson.”
“How did he react?”
“He said he’d go.”
“He didn’t put up an argument?”
“No.”
“And that didn’t surprise you?”
“Men drift in and they drift out. He didn’t want any trouble.”
“And you were trouble. Not enough, apparently. Go on.”
“We thought the matter was closed until a call came in from the bus depot. We were alerted a man had been shot.”
“We responded and found Mr. Welles dead. Apparently the woman and the boy were packed and leaving town with – Kimble. Welles either followed them or reasoned out where they were going and got there just as they were boarding. There was a fight – Mr. Welles and Kimble. Your man was getting the worst of it when the security officers intervened. Mr. Welles took a shot at them and they returned fire. Killed him.”
“Too bad for his philanthropy.” The two men cringed. “What about the woman – Mrs. Welles and her son?”
“They were both pretty shaken.”
“I’d like to meet her.”
“The funeral is tomorrow afternoon.”
“Where?”
“In Phoenix. You’ll have to go there if you want to attend it.”
That idea seemed to please them. Gerard didn’t pick up on their relief.
“All right. Before I rearrange my flight schedule, I’d like to see Kimble’s belongings. You have them in the police station?”
They looked surprised.
“He took everything with him. In a duffel.”
“You did check his hotel room?”
“Of course. We’re not exactly hicks, you know,” Burden snapped. Since Gerard did not know, he let it pass. “Once we found the wanted poster and positively ID’d him we went back and lifted prints. When they came back positive, we called your precinct.”
“Giving him quite a head start.” It was their turn to be silent. “Do you have any idea where he might have headed? Did you put out an APB? Road blocks? Get any calls?”
“It was too late to do any of that.”
“You let him get away.”
“Then, I guess you can sympathize with how we’re feeling.”
His statement fell like a bombshell in Gerard’s lap. He shivered in the cooling desert air.
“I apologize if I sound abrupt. I’ve been waiting six months for this chance. You can’t imagine how many false leads I’ve followed up on; sightings here, sightings there…” His voice trailed off. “All for naught. Half the time the man in question didn’t even resemble Kimble. He was just… suspicious. Or shady. Or… who knows what?”
Clearing his throat, the cop from Indiana stared out the window at the passing landscape. Burden and Fairfield exchanged glances before the former took a more conciliatory tone.
“Ever been to Tucson before, Lieutenant?”
“No. No, I haven’t. From what I saw of it flying over, it seems quite…” He tried a furtive smile. “What do you say about a city? Quite nice?”
“Try flat,” Fairfield open-mouth grinned. “There’s the mountains, of course. You have children, Lieutenant?”
“Two. A boy and a girl.”
“If you like hiking, you might consider coming back when… you have time,” he amended from his original thought of, when this is all over. “Go up Mount Lemon. The scenery from the top is beautiful. Of course, we’re just past prime flowering season. April’s the best month. The whole desert explodes into color.”
“I wouldn’t have thought.”
“Most people don’t,” Burden picked up the thread. “They think the desert is one vast Death Valley. But there’s lots of life if you know when – and where to look for it.”
“I see. And you were saying about the flatness?” he tried, making an attempt to be sociable. These were his people, after all: law enforcement men. Perhaps, he mused, I need to learn as much about them as I do about Kimble. What makes them tick? Why some pick up clues others don’t. What type of man studies the blank faces on wanted posters and others don’t?
Two sergeants who didn’t expect an interstate fugitive to tarry for a week or a month in their ‘fair’ city, but who were certainly attuned to the request of a wealthy landowner who called on them to evict a man who hadn’t broken the law.
Unconsciously, his leg shook. Once. Twice. Three times.
Did ‘Mr. Edward Welles, from Phoenix,’ offer them a bribe? Did he throw his weight around? Intimidate them? No, I don’t suppose he had to. They were glad to help.
‘We’re not exactly hicks, you know.’
If you were prompted to say that to me, then you’ve been stung before. Tucson isn’t exactly Phoenix. It isn’t exactly anywhere. Yes, sergeants. You’re right. Mr. Welles called upon you exactly for that reason. Because he knew you’d respond to his big name and his bluster. ‘Do me this favor because I’m an important man and for a week or a month you can consider yourself important men.’
Good to know.
Good to know, but more difficult to understand. If someone had asked, Phillip Gerard could have listed, without more than a second thought, the name of every man whose sullen, dark-eyed photograph graced the bulletin board or filled the “Wanted” notebook of the Stafford police station.
They’re my people, but they’re not like me. What does the phrase, ‘enforcing the law’ mean to them? If Ed Welles, of Indianapolis, walked in on me and gave me the song and dance Ed Welles, of Phoenix, gave these men, would I have been glad to oblige? The answer was self-evident. Not on a bet. Not for any reason. I would have told him I’m a policeman, not a marriage counselor.
“Lieutenant?”
Gerard snapped to attention.
“Yes?”
“I was saying, Tucson is flat because of the local building ordinances. The city council didn’t want our fair city to look like New York or Los Angeles. Or, even Phoenix, for that matter. They wanted it to stay – natural, I guess you’d call it – part of its surroundings. No skyscrapers, no tall buildings you can ‘leap in a single bound,'” Fairfield joked.
“Aesthetics,” Burden clarified.
“Yes. I see. Very effective.”
“We like it.”
Does it make you feel more or less like hicks?
He almost asked, then clenched his jaws.
“What’s Stafford like?” Fairfield picked up in the ensuing silence.
“Tall.”
They presumed he was making a joke and laughed.
“Never been Back East, myself,” Burden announced.
Gerard couldn’t decipher whether or not he was proud of the fact.
“We like to think of ourselves as being in the Midwest. ‘Back East’ implies New York; Rhode Island. Connecticut. New Jersey. Pennsylvania.”
“What about Maine?” Fairfield queries. “I like lobster.”
“North-east.”
“Do you like lobster, Lieutenant?”
“I’m more of a rattlesnake man, myself.”
He was joking. Or, thought he was.
“When I was a boy, I used to go rattlesnake hunting,” Burden announced. “I got fifty cents for every rattle I brought back. Doesn’t sound like much, but in those days it sure beat my ten cent allowance.” When his odd, out-of-state companion offered no flattery, he continued. “Used to wear one in my hat. Considered myself quite a fancy fellow. I used to skin them, too. A good skin brought 35-cents.”
“I thought they shed their skins,” Gerard tried. He was tired and growing annoyed.
“Sure. When I got older, I’d build a fire and cook it over a spit. Rattlesnake’s not bad eating. You have a boy, you said? Bet he’d like that. Be a good story for him to tell at school: how he caught and ate a rattler.”
“We’re fishermen.”
Offended, Burden pouted.
“That’s not much to brag about. ‘I caught a trout.'” He spread his hands. “‘This big!'”
Fairfield laughed.
“But you shoulda seen the one that got away.”
That abruptly ended the conversation. And all hope of camaraderie. Taking the fleeting thought, They’re my people, with it.
Neither Burden nor Fairfield offered Gerard a bed in their homes for the night, compelling him to take a motel room. He paid for it in cash and asked for a receipt. Since he had no car and there were no restaurants within walking distance, he went without dinner. In the morning when no car arrived from the police station, he called a cab and took it to the airport. Waiting for his flight, he called the Phoenix constabulary, explained his desire to attend the funeral of Mr. Edward Welles on official business and asked they provide transportation. Not being hicks, at least in their own eyes, they readily agreed.
Arriving an hour ahead of the mourners, Gerard sat in the squad car and perused the local newspaper. Beginning with the edition published the day after his death, The “Ed Welles Tragedy” had garnered considerable attention. Well known as a local celebrity, the loss of “the man who could have been governor” made the front page every day running. Little but the bare facts were reported in the first edition. According to the story, the much admired local man, known for his thriving cattle business and his good works around the Phoenix area, had driven to Tucson to meet his wife and son who were “spending some time there with relatives.” A “deranged man” had accosted Mrs. Welles and the couple’s young son, possibly in contemplation of robbery. Mr. Welles had attempted to stop him, a fight had ensued and in the scuffle, the “heroic husband” had been shot.
A statement from the local police had been vague and somewhat contradictory. An unidentified officer “investigating the accident” was quoted as saying, “The incident is under investigation. At this time the only thing I can confirm is that Mr. Edward Welles, of Phoenix, was with his wife and son at the bus terminal when he became engaged in an altercation with a drifter identified as James Lincoln. After beating the man, Mr. Welles drew a gun and attempted to shoot him. In order to prevent bloodshed, officers on the scene called to Mr. Welles to put up the weapon. Possibly thinking they were they accomplices, he directed his gun at them. To protect their own lives and those of bystanders, they fired, striking Mr. Welles in the chest. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
“Mrs. Monica Welles and her son, Mark, who unfortunately witnessed the scene, were understandably in a state of shock. After being treated by a physician, they returned home on a charter flight. Mrs. Welles was not available for comment. Funeral arrangements are pending.”
The following day, more details followed.
“Ed Welles, noted landowner, cattle baron, financier and much respected citizen of this city, was shot and killed Thursday night in Tucson. Although circumstances are still unclear, Mr. Welles apparently drove there with the intention of picking up his wife and son who were staying in the area.
“Mrs. Welles, a graduate of Phoenix Preparatory High School, was appearing at a local venue playing piano, a professional skill she had demonstrated numerous times at various local charity functions. There, she was introduced to a man calling himself James Lincoln, recently hired to work in the Banding Iron Saloon as a bartender. Suspicious of this man’s intentions, Mr. Welles reported him to the Tucson police, who kept him under surveillance and subsequently ordered him out of town. Complying with the request, Mr. Lincoln was accompanied to the bus station by Mrs. Welles and her son, who wished to see him off.
“Suspicious of Lincoln’s motives, Mr. Welles followed them, attempting to stop the stranger who he presumed was taking his family away under duress. The two were engaged in hand-to-hand combat when security guards arrived to break up the fight. Mistakenly identifying them as cohorts of Lincoln, Welles directed fire at the pair, who subsequently returned fire, killing him. James Lincoln, the cause of this tragic death, ran away from the scene and has not yet been found although the Tucson police were doing all they could to locate him for questioning. He is described as being six foot, two inches, dark hair, with a pale complexion.”
Discarding the paper, Gerard’s lips pursed in disgust. Not only had the reporter danced around the facts, he had purposely turned them in Welles’ favor. Muttering to himself, “Money didn’t save his life but it worked wonders for his posthumous reputation,” he scanned yesterday’s paper. It basically repeated what had been printed the day before without once mentioning the fact “James Lincoln” had actually been identified as Richard Kimble, an interstate fugitive, wanted in Indiana to avoid “confinement for murder.”
“Confinement” being an euphemism for “execution.”
If the Tucson police hadn’t notified him, he never would have had his first confirmed sighting. He supposed he should be grateful but failed to summon the required sentiment. Rather, he concentrated on the positive.
Pale complexion.
A fact Burden and Fairfield failed to impart. That implied Kimble had been working indoors rather than as a field hand or a day laborer as some of the other “sightings” had indicated. He had the very real suspicion that would change.
Kimble can read the newspapers as well as I can. No matter how far he’s gotten, he’ll find a way to track the story. Unfortunately, he’ll be relieved to know it was whitewashed to protect the ‘grieving’ wife and son.
A pause, then the added thought, What in the world attracted her to him?
It was a question which needed an answer.
Mourners began arriving. Having no interest in those who came to pay their last respects to a man in whom he had no interest, Gerard ignored them as being a mere backdrop to the one individual paramount to his case. It was nearly 12:45 before the stretch limo carrying the widow, her son and a matron made its appearance. Stopping very near the car in which he sat, Gerard watched as the driver got out and opened the rear door. Mrs. Welles emerged, giving him his first look at her.
By any standards, Monica Welles was stunningly beautiful. Tall for a woman, shoulders squared, back erect, she offered the picture of one who had suffered great tragedy with dignity. What that loss represented, however, lay open to interpretation. Unlike the newspaper reporter or the police in Tucson who did not care to delve into the less seemly facts of Ed Welles death, Gerard was drawn to them.
The three of them: Kimble, Mrs. Monica Welles and her son Mark were together at the depot. Three tickets had been purchased for the proverbial next bus out of town. All three had packed bags. Without a shadow of doubt, they planned on traveling together.
She and the boy were going with him. Why? To escape her husband? Obviously. She had taken the child and fled him once, so clearly theirs was a troubled marriage. Details of which certainly never surfaced in the police report or the media. That much, money can buy. Welles was dangerous; he brought a gun with him and wasn’t afraid to use it. Did she think he planned on shooting her and the boy?
No. He sought to drag them back to Phoenix. Not the outcome she desired, but hardly a death sentence.
What, then, possessed her to flee on a bus to nowhere? With a convicted killer; a wife murderer? Did she know? Had Kimble confessed to her?
That was harder to determine but in his gut he knew the answer.
He told her something. ‘I was convicted, but not guilty. I’m innocent, Monica.’ And she believed him.
All right. She was desperate. He was kind.
Gerard inwardly shriveled at the thought.
Kind.
It was not a word typically associated with a wife killer.
Ask Helen Kimble how kind he was when he raised that lamp over her head and brought it down, smashing the life out of her.
It was a scene Gerard, himself, had envisioned numerous times. A man so choked with rage he resorted to the ultimate violence. Had he meant to kill her? To silence her forever? To rid himself of a spouse he no longer loved? To avoid the embarrassing humiliation of a divorce dragged through the courts? One that could possibly ruin his career and certainly his reputation as a loving, caring pediatrician?
Did Monica Welles have time to think her actions through? Placing herself and her child in the hands of a murderer? Didn’t it ever cross her mind she was going from a bad situation to a worse one?
He had to know; desperately needed a solution to those myriad thoughts.
What would have made more sense? To go home with her husband, taking the chance he would beat her? Beat the boy? She had tried to escape once and failed. He’d keep a closer eye on her next time. Hire men to shadow her. Yet, she must have had money of her own; household expenses. Jewelry she could pawn. Dye her hair, change her identity; catch a plane to ‘Back East.’ If she were willing to play piano in a seedy bar in Tucson, she had the courage to start fresh somewhere else. New York. New Jersey. Maine, and serve lobsters to out-of-state tourists. That would have made sense.
And yet, she reacted emotionally, opting for the immediate rather than the long term. Going with a man she hardly knew. What did she see in Richard Kimble the jury didn’t?
He did not ask, “What did she see that I don’t see?” for then he would have been forced to answer it. To reply, “I see only a killer,” would be half-truth, half-lie and he hated dissembling. He used that excuse enough with other people. The fact they believed him almost convinced him he believed it.
But almost only counted in horseshoes.
I have a job to do.
That sounded better; held more the ring of truth.
“A jury found him guilty. It wasn’t my call. I obey the law.”
Better, yet.
I am not a moralist.
His eyes and his mind shifted back to Monica Welles. He tried to guess whether she was putting on a good show, then decided it didn’t matter. People saw what they wanted to see. She was there, she was dressed in black and she looked stricken. No, “stricken” wasn’t the word. She appeared… distracted. The front of her mind was on the situation at hand but she was walking through it by rote. The back of her mind was somewhere else.
On what might have been.
Getting out of the police sedan, Gerard followed at a respectable distance, stopping at the perimeter of the gathering to make him less conspicuous. She and the boy went ahead, to stand by the grave. Gerard paid the child no heed. He was not a player; ne was nothing more than a peripheral who did what he was told. There was nothing to be gathered from him.
It never occurred to him to equate Mark with Phillip, Junior, if little Phil had been brought to the cemetery to stand before his father’s site of interment. They were apples and oranges, not boys who might have shared a common grief. Mark’s father had died from the intervention of a man on the run; a man who had no right interjecting his life with those innocent persons with whom he came in contact. Phil, Jr. would have mourned a father killed in the line of duty.
Apples and oranges.
Phillip, Sr. saw only what he allowed his locked mind to see.
Phillip, Sr. was a man who had never been put to the test. He had no way of knowing he was being tested. Therein lay his weakness.
Ironically, he considered it his strength.
Link to Chapter 11