John Floyd's

LAW AND DAUGHTER SERIES 

Escaping from prison is never easy, and staying escaped is especially difficult. But staying escaped while in the vicinity of self-professed crimefighter Frances Valentine . . . well, that’s almost impossible.

It was Sheriff Lucy Valentine’s first time at the Burchfield family reunion. Not that she’d been invited. She wasn’t even a Burchfield. Sheriff Valentine was there because of the food.

Her paper plate was empty and she was on her third slice of pecan pie when her mother Fran plopped down beside her at a picnic table. Lucy wasn’t overly surprised to see Fran here, thirty miles from home, bearing a loaded plate and a glass of iced tea. Not much about her mother surprised her anymore.

“If I’m not related to these folks,” Lucy said, chewing, “that means you’re not either.”

Fran spread a napkin across her lap and picked up a plastic fork and knife. “I taught most of their kids, though. That’s an automatic invitation. Besides, I brought a chicken casserole. What about you?”

“Special guest.” Lucy tapped her badge. “Peace officer.”

“Oh, give me a break. And don’t talk with your mouth full.”

Lucy swallowed and looked around at the gathering. Several dozen Burchfields of all ages, shapes, and sizes were spread out over this end of the campground. “Sparse crowd today.”

“It’s the gloomy weather,” Fran grumbled. “I prefer sunny reunions.”

“To match your disposition?” Lucy was about to take another bite when she heard a racket, and not a good one: screams, tires spraying gravel, car doors slamming. And then—unmistakably—gunshots.

She dropped her fork and jumped to her feet. On the far side of the campground, she spotted a highway patrolman shouting into a car radio. Another was sprinting down the dirt road holding a shotgun. Two empty cruisers stood nearby, lights flashing. Lucy and Fran hurried over just as the first cop—his nametag said PURVIS—signed off and hung up his mike.

According to Officer Purvis, an escaped convict had been sighted in the woods close by. The patrolmen had arrived just as he stole a car parked at the campground and roared away.

“But where would he go?” Fran asked. “The only road leads back east, toward the prison.”

“He headed west,” Purvis said, pointing. They all knew the gravel road dead-ended just down the hill, at Sinking Dog Creek. It was rumored that there had once been a wooden bridge there, but nobody was still around who remembered it. “If he gets across the creek we’ll never catch him.”

Several more shots rang out. Officer Purvis left at a run, and Lucy and her mother followed.

“This doesn’t make sense, Lucy,” she heard Fran say, puffing along beside her. “Purvis said the escapee’s familiar with the area. If it’s the creek he wanted, it’s only two hundred yards away, and if he knows there’s no bridge—why steal a car and make all that noise?”

“Who knows. You and me don’t think like criminals.”

“You and I,” Fran corrected.

After a moment the water came into view, along with a huge oak tree and a late-model Toyota sitting at the road’s end. The car’s back window was shattered, three separate finger-sized bulletholes dotted the trunk lid, and both rear tires were flat. The driver’s-side door hung open.

Purvis and three cops with pump shotguns stood in a row just past the car, gazing at the thick forest on the other bank. The rain-swollen Sinking Dog Creek, thirty yards wide at this point, rolled past them.

“Car’s empty, and he wouldn’t have had time yet to swim across,” Purvis said, to his men. None of them paid the slightest attention to Sheriff Valentine and her mother.

Fran, never one to keep silent, said, “Some of the shots I heard were POPs. They didn’t all sound like shotgun blasts.”

“He’d stolen a pistol from a guard,” Purvis explained. He looked impatient; their fugitive was getting further away every minute.

But where had he gone?

“Maybe he sank,” someone suggested.

“More likely, he’s still on this side,” Purvis said. “You and Ross cover those woods to the north. Lewis and me will go south.”

“Lewis and I,” Fran murmured.

“Good grief, Mother,” Lucy said.

They stood and watched the four patrolmen march away, shoes squishing through the mud. Soon Lucy and Fran were alone on the creekbank. The only sound was the soft gurgle of the current.

“Guess we go back to the picnic,” Lucy said. She was still breathing hard.

But Fran didn’t budge. She appeared to be deep in thought, staring at the swirling brown water.

“Wait a minute,” she said, in a hushed voice.

“What?”

“Come with me.”

“Why are we whispering?” Lucy asked.

“I want to show you something.”

“Show me what?”

Fran turned to look at her. “You want these fancy state cops to notice you, Luce? Want them to know who you are?”

“Forget it, Mother. They’re all married.”

“For once that’s not what I’m talking about.”

“What, then?”

“I told you, follow me,” Fran said.

“Where to?”

Fran smiled. “To put a feather in your cap.”

Twenty minutes later, Sheriff Valentine and her mother hiked back up the dirt road to the campground. But this time they weren’t alone. Trudging ahead of them, covered by Lucy’s revolver, was a scowling man in an orange jumpsuit. His stolen pistol was now tucked into Lucy’s belt. The reunion crowd applauded and cheered.

The sheriff used her car radio to call in, and within minutes guards from the prison arrived to take the fugitive back into custody. Officer Purvis and his men were nowhere to be seen. Apparently they were still searching the boggy woods along the creekbank.

“That oak tree was a good choice,” Lucy said to her mother. “Big enough for us to hide behind, and close enough for us to wait for him to come out.”

“That was the plan,” Fran agreed.

“But how’d you know he was hiding in the trunk?”

Fran grinned. “Remember when I asked why someone would steal a car to drive such a short distance?”

“Yeah. So?”

“And remember that I said not all the shots we heard came from shotguns?”

“Yeah . . .”

“Well, not all the holes in the car came from shotguns either,” Fran said.  “Some were made by bullets. Notice that? Neat little holes.” She raised one eyebrow. “Why would the crook shoot at his own stolen car?”

Suddenly Lucy understood.

“Airholes,” she said.

Fran nodded. “He’d fired holes into the trunk lid before he got in, so he’d be able to breathe while he waited until the cops left. What he didn’t figure on—”

“Is that we didn’t leave.”

“We didn’t,” Fran said. “But the state cops did.”

“Maybe they need more training,” Lucy said, straightfaced. “We should teach a seminar.”

“Why don’t you suggest that to Purvis, when he wades out of the swamp?”

Lucy laughed aloud. Then, with a grim look at the departing prisoner: “That was good work, Mother. Good thinking. I owe you one.”

“Don’t forget you said that.” Fran smiled and headed off toward the picnic tables. “And tell Purvis the trunk was your idea.”

“But . . . wait a minute. Where are you going?”

“To make sure nobody steals my casserole dish,” Fran said, over her shoulder. “Any objections?”

“Not from me,” Lucy said, grinning. “One arrest per day is my limit.”