sacks of food and took off."
"It's gotta be them!" the captain said with a huge smile.
* * *
The Bay County sheriff sipped thick black coffee from a Styrofoam cup and rested his black boots on the executive conference table in the Caribbean Room at the Holiday Inn. FBI agents were in and out, fixing coffee, whispering and updating each other on the latest. His hero, the big man himself, Director F. Denton Voyles, sat across the table and studied a street map with three of his underlings. Imagine, Denton Voyles in Bay County. The room was a beehive of police activity. Florida state troopers filtered in and out. Radios and telephones rang and squawked on a makeshift command post in a corner. Sheriff's deputies and city policemen from three counties loitered about, thrilled with the chase and suspense and presence of all those FBI agents. And Voyles.
A deputy burst through the door with a wild-eyed glow of sheer excitement. "Just got a call from Tallahassee! They've got two positive IDs in the last fifteen minutes! All three of them in a green Ford pickup with Tennessee tags!"
Voyles dropped his street map and walked over to the deputy. "Where were the sightings?" The room was silent, except for the radios.
"First one was at a Texaco Quick Shop. Second one was four miles away at a Burger King. They drove through the drive-in window. Both witnesses were positive and gave identical IDs."
Voyles turned to the sheriff. "Sheriff, call Tallahassee and confirm. How far away is it?"
The black boots hit the floor. "Hour and a half. Straight down Interstate 10."
Voyles pointed at Tarrance, and they stepped into a small room used as the bar. The quiet roar returned to mission control.
"If the sightings are real," Voyles said quietly in Tarranee's face, "we're wasting our time here."
"Yes, sir. They sound legitimate. A single sighting could be a fluke or a prank, but two that close together sound awfully legitimate."
"How the hell did they get out of here?"
"It's gotta be that woman, Chief. She's been helping him for a month. I don't know who she is, or where he found her, but she's on the outside watching us and feeding him whatever he needs."
"Do you think she's with them?"
"Doubt it. She's probably just following closely, away from the action, and taking directions from him."
"He's brilliant, Wayne. He's been planning this for months."
"Evidently."
"You mentioned the Bahamas once."
"Yes, sir. The million bucks we paid him was wired to a bank in Freeport. He later told me it didn't stay there long."
"You think, maybe, he's headed there?"
"Who knows. Obviously he has to get out of the country. I talked to the warden today. He told me Ray McDeere can speak five or six languages fluently. They could be going anywhere."
"I think we should pull out," Voyles said.
"Let's get the roadblocks set up around Tallahassee. They won't last long if we've got a good description of the vehicle. We should have them by morning."
"I want every cop in central Florida on the highways in an hour. Roadblocks everywhere. Every Ford pickup is automatically searched, okay? Our men will wait here until daybreak, then we'll pull up stakes."
"Yes, sir," Tarrance answered with a weary grin.
* * *
Word of the Tallahassee sightings spread instantly along the Emerald Coast. Panama City Beach relaxed. The McDeeres were gone. For reasons unknown only to them, their flight had moved inland. Sighted and positively identified, not once but twice, they were now somewhere else speeding desperately toward the inevitable confrontation on the side of a dark highway.
The cops along the coast went home. A few roadblocks remained through the night in Bay County and Gulf County; the predawn hours of Saturday were almost normal. Both ends of the Strip remained blocked, with cops making cursory exams of driver's licenses. The roads north of town were free and clear. The search had moved east.
* * *
On the outskirts of Ocala, Florida, near Silver Springs on Highway 40, Tony Verkler lumbered from a 7-Eleven and stuck a quarter in a pay phone. He called the Ocala Police Department with the urgent report that he had just seen those three convicts everybody was looking for up around Panama City Beach. The McDeeres! Said he saw their pictures in the paper the day before when he was driving through Pensacola, and now he had just seen them. The dispatcher informed him all patrolmen were on the scene of a bad accident and asked if he would mind driving over