Book Five - Part Nine - Raging Evil: Chapter Nine

Friday – November 2nd

The Squad Room – 8:39 a.m.

“One final note. Since Jimmy Brewster has reopened for business last month; Stanhouse’s PD results are in. You will all be happy to know we will be eating in one of their finer restaurants. We outgunned them by six-tenths of a point!”

“I thought it was winner’s choice,” said J.W.

“Nope. The Mayor of each city decides the place. Captain Page is meeting with Mayor Marsh this morning and we should know something by the end of the day where times and dates can be posted where everyone can take advantage of a free meal.

“Excellent job, everyone. I’m proud of all of you and not just because we won a free meal. It’s the plain fact that you guys, and the other’s on different shifts know the risks you take each and every day out there to serve, protect, and defend our city and the people who live in it.

“Now, speaking about that very thing, get out there and stay safe and keep our streets safe.”

Attica State Penitentiary – 9:16 a.m.

A truck rolled through the opened gates that said, ‘Fischer’s Plumbing.’ Once they were ten miles away, the truck pulled over to the side of the road.

“All right, guys. This is it. Time to roll.”

Three men in the back had been changing from a white prison uniform to civilian clothing: long-sleeve shirts, jeans, baseball caps and tennis shoes.

“You’re okay, Mickey.”

Mickey looked at Ralph.

“I’ll be okay once we get in the car over there and are gone, but what about the other two?"

“We take’em with us until we head north, then drop’em off. They’ll be on their own after...."

Sirens could be heard in the distance, and it was enough to tell the four men they had to move faster. Two minutes later after huge stacks of brush were tossed aside, a dark blue, Chevy Impala was spitting rocks and dust behind them as Ralph floored the gas and spun off.

Mickey set up the escape plan with the help of Ralph, so Mickey had no arrest record. On the other hand, Ralph had killed one too many men in his life and was looking at over a thousand years. Ralph knew that would never be served.

Simple plan: plumbing issue. Call in a service the prison does business with. Take a few inmates to transport materials from the truck and assist with setting things in place. No plumbing issue. Take and overpower three guards, bind, and gag them tight. Slip into the truck underneath a bunch of plumbing material and be gone. All told: seven minutes. Three minutes under schedule.

Mickey sat in the front with Ralph. In the back sat Brian Adams, barely twenty, in for a double murder. Life. No parole. The other, a black man, Bobby “Butch” Anders, in for multiple assaults. The last one resulted in beating his wife and her lover to death with his bare hands. Another lifer with no parole.

Ralph drove as quickly as he could without drawing too much attention up Highway 98. The object was to get to the Interstate before roadblocks were posted in the first twenty miles and that was crucial. Get past that first twenty, and their chances for escape went from one percent to ninety.

They did it. Hitting Interstate 90, they headed west toward Buffalo. Ralph and Mickey were headed to Canada. They had a place waiting for them to live, with people and money waiting on them.

Just before they hit the city limits of Buffalo, they pulled into a truck-stop in Depoe. Once they gassed up, Ralph told B rad and Butch they were on their own from that point.

Each man wished the other good luck and five minutes later, Brad and Butch had decisions to make. They each had a hundred dollars in their pocket and a destination to get to as well. They both agreed to stay together until Brad got to where he wanted to be which was close to New Philadelphia, about eighty miles straight south of Cleveland.

As for Butch, he had further to travel. Home for him was between Unionville and Deacon, outside Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

Though uncuffed, like the movie ‘The Defiant Ones,’ they became the modern-day Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier, except this wasn’t a movie.

Their first move was to hot-wire a car, get into the city, and lay low for a day or two. As they were working on transportation, Ralph and Mickey’s journey was almost finished. Just as they were about to leave the city before crossing into Canada, Ralph looked over his driver’s license and was satisfied. It looked as real as it could get.

They were almost out of Ogdensburg before the police stopped them. After a standard procedure verifying the driver was who his driver’s license said he was, things were going great at that point. It was when they checked Richard Harrington’s background (aka: Mickey), they found that Richard had been deceased over three years.

Backup support was called in, and the police had asked both men to step out of the car. Ralph knew he had to do something, so he stepped on the gas, but had forgotten he had shut off the engine as requested by the police.

Seeing another police car approaching, Ralph swung the door open hard, knocking one policeman back and then he jumped out. Ralph pulled out a gun and shot one officer, fired at the other one and started running toward the Border. Four miles away.

Mickey was too scared to move but Ralph’s feet were blazing a trail. On the run, Ralph turned and fired two more shots.

Three miles to go.

He kept running. Breath labored. He looked back. Two miles left.

A bullet hit him in the lower left leg and Ralph tumbled after he hit the asphalt, but he pulled himself up, his hand still clutching the gun and fired back at an oncoming police car.

He turned, struggling to get across the Border, when less than a quarter mile away, he could see the woman he loved, standing under a streetlamp all aglow waving at him when another bullet caught him between the shoulder blades. That pitched him forward where he fell, his body sprawled on both U.S. and Canadian soil.

Brad and Butch had no idea what had happened and wouldn’t until later that night. For the time being, they found a car they hot-wired that got them into Buffalo and from there they found a cheap hotel for the night. It was across the street from a Greyhound bus station.

Both men bought a ticket to their destination and at 4:30 in the morning their journey would begin.

And it would take one of them right through Montie.