Threepersons Hunt (3 page)

The Weather Bureau's recorded high-temperature for the day, reached just after two in the afternoon, was 104 degrees Fahrenheit. By half-past-four the temperature had not dropped more than two or three degrees and the two horseback guards had posted themselves under the spindly trees that threw a bit of shade alongside the employees' houses, just within the high fence.

The five prisoners were weeding. The rows were planted in sweet corn but the stalks were not yet two feet high; there was no problem of visibility and the horseback guards were reputed to be expert marksmen.

The five prisoners worked five adjacent parallel rows so that the guards could watch them without distraction. Each prisoner dragged a large burlap sack into which the pulled weeds were stuffed. Ordinarily the guards walked their horses around close to the prisoners but it had been a very hot week and these were not especially troublesome prisoners. By the late afternoon when the prisoners were down at the far end of their rows, the guards were separated from them by the full width of the field and the prisoners were separated from U.S. 80-89 by only a twenty-foot strip of ground and the Anchor Fence.

At first it was not clear whether the beige 1968 Chevrolet came along as part of an outside plan or whether the prisoners simply waited until they saw a car approaching from the south, then went over the fence and commandeered the car by standing in the road in front of it and forcing it to stop or run them down.

They went over the fence by tossing their burlaps across the barbwire and vaulting the nine-foot barrier by boosting one another and by monkeying up the woven-wire Anchor steel with fingers and boot-toes. It was no great athletic feat; the burlap protected them from the barbwire and the only real risk came from the rifles of the two guards under the trees. But the guards had the sun in their eyes and the prisoners were in constant motion once they set their plan in operation. The guards reacted slowly and when they did their shooting was poor; all five of the prisoners got away.

The beige Chevrolet stopped, the convicts squeezed into it, doors slammed, the car moved away to the north.

It was several minutes before the facts were sorted out and several more before alarms were issued. By then the escape car had had time to get ten miles from the prison. The warden alerted enforcement agencies and roadblocks were set up on the Pinal Pioneer Parkway to the south, on the highway below Florence Junction to the north, and on State Highway 287 between Valley Farms and the Casa Grande ruins to the west.

Units of the County Sheriff's office and the Highway Patrol met for a briefing at the prison at seven o'clock and the hunt went into operation by seven-fifteen. Local police within the town were already searching all streets and driveways and garages for the missing car; three beige Chevrolets were investigated but all of them were owned locally and quickly cleared of suspicion of involvement. Two ranchers arrived at the prison in horse-vans with packs of hunting hounds, and a helicopter like a bloated mosquito hovered near the prison yard, the setting sun throwing a sharp reflection off its Plexiglas bubble.

Scout planes made ground-search patterns and at Florence the operation was coordinated in the warden's office by the warden, the senior Undersheriff, and Captain Fred Custis of the Arizona Highway Patrol.

Late in the twilight a search plane reported a light-colored car apparently abandoned in a desert draw about a mile off U.S. 80-89 up toward Mineral Mountain. The site was some sixteen miles northeast of the prison and Captain Custis immediately dispatched two Jeeps and a Dodge Power Wagon filled with hounds.

Some time was wasted debating the feasibility of throwing up a cordon of men around the area—the fugitives were on foot now and had only some two hours' jump on the pursuit; they had to be somewhere in the hills within a ten-mile radius. But the logistics were prohibitive and so was the cost; it was decided to entrust the hunt to the dogs. Still the officers were edgy because if the car belonged to confederates of the convicts it was possible the convicts were now armed. A deputy radioed Florence the license number of the car and the information was put through to DMV Phoenix but it would be a while before they would ascertain the identity of the car's owner.

One of the deputies affixed a red battery-lamp to the collar of the leading hound and the dogs were turned loose to follow the spoor, which was given by items of clothing from the escapees' prison cells. The dogs ran baying into the hills and the officers in their Jeeps chased the bobbing red lamp, five men to a Jeep, armed with pump rifles.

The escape car had been abandoned here because the country began to buckle and heave almost immediately beyond it; this was as far as a car could go. The Jeeps ran with full headlight beams but it was hard going; the deputies almost pitched out on some of the hills and several times the dogs got too far ahead and the trainers had to whistle them in. Frequently the headlight beams swept wildly across the sky like air-raid searchlights. Probably the fugitives could see them coming but it couldn't be helped: a Jeep with a broken axle was useless.

At nine-fifteen the baying changed in volume and tone and the trainers knew the dogs had closed.

The Jeeps stopped on a hillside and one man remained on guard, moving the Jeeps periodically to play the headlights against the opposite slope where the dogs circled a high clutter of boulders.

The police fanned out to cross the canyon on foot, carrying flashlights and weapons, moving slowly with their muscles braced against half-expected bullets. But the convicts weren't shooting the dogs and this led the police to believe that perhaps after all they weren't armed.

When the police approached within flashlight range they found the convicts in a tight knot around a middle-aged couple and the blade of a pocketknife was pressed against the woman's throat.

The man and woman were being held by four convicts—a fact which only became important later. The immediate problem for the police was how to handle the situation and it looked like a stalemate. The convicts had two vulnerable and innocent hostages. They wanted free passage out, they wanted one of the Jeeps.

One of the deputies went back across to the Jeeps to radio Florence for instructions. On receipt of them he returned to the flashlit tableau and stalled for time with a series of arguments which were sensible but did not reach receptive ears.

The police might not try to stop the convicts as long as they kept their hostages, the deputy said, but this would not prevent the police from shadowing the convicts everywhere they went and if the convicts tried to harm the hostages to discourage their followers, the police would kill them.

At this point a rifle spoke. One of the deputies had slipped up the hill to one side and taken careful aim on the most exposed of the four convicts, a Mexican-American named Ruiz. The orders were to wound, not to kill. In this case either the shooting was imprecise or the deputy exceeded his orders; the convict Ruiz received the bullet through the bridge of his nose and dropped dead.

The other three convicts huddled close behind their frail human screen. The pocketknife drew a drop of blood from the woman's throat but the convicts were not yet ready to destroy their only means of protection. They began to scream demands at the deputies and step by step the deputies gave ground, retreating across the canyon toward the Jeeps with the convicts in strange pursuit. From the darkness another rifle shot exploded but this one missed and after that the convicts began to move the hostages back and forth around them so that there was too much risk of hitting them.

Guided by the Jeep headlights the warden, the Under-sheriff, Captain Custis and their retinue of pilot fish arrived in a Land Cruiser and the Dodge Power Wagon. There was a whispered conference. Over on the dark hillsides several deputies were practicing psychological warfare by loudly working their bolts to throw cartridges into the chambers of their rifles.

The warden knew his convicts. He could see they were uncertain. He felt that time and resistance would abrade them into surrender.

The warden walked out into the blaze of headlights and offered to exchange himself for the civilian hostages. The offer was refused.

In sibilant Spanish the warden told the prisoners that they were cowards, that they had no
macho
, no
cojones
, that they would cook in hell like frying bacon for all eternity because of the unforgivable mortal sin they were committing against innocent bystanders. He spoke at some length and not without eloquence, and because the convicts listened to him he felt he had them.

In the meantime the dead Ruiz was carried over to the Power Wagon and the dogs were set to sniffing out the trail of the fifth escapee—the missing one—but they scented no spoor.

The warden was an effective talker, his Spanish was first-rate. He spoke of mercy and leniency, he tried to impress upon them that if they voluntarily released the hostages he would see to it that federal kidnapping charges were not pressed against them and that they would be liable for trial only on a charge of jailbreak; since they were all lifers the conviction would add nothing to their sentences.

Unfortunately this information had an effect opposite to that which the warden desired. It reminded the convicts of how little they had to lose. They seemed to be arguing and the warden suspended his sermon.

The three prisoners decided it was not fair to kill the innocent. They therefore shoved the two hostages away from them. In the same motion they made their runs.

The three convicts ran in three directions toward holes in the surrounding cordon and although the rifles began to chatter none of the convicts was hit in the first volley; the deputies had to avoid shooting the hostages and their own companions across the circle and therefore they had to aim low, and shooting at the feet of a running man requires an extraordinary degree of marksmanship.

The second volley caught one of the convicts point-blank. Four bullets entered his body almost simultaneously from four directions and he fell, critically wounded.

Another convict made it to the cordon but by the time he reached it the hole had closed. He was swatted across the face by a swinging rifle. It broke his jaw and knocked him down.

The third man, the Papago, was a good sprinter and made it through the lines and was thirty feet beyond when a bullet broke his spine and dropped him.

One deputy was wounded in the foot by a stray bullet and there was a tired sigh as air leaked out of a Jeep tire.

Of the four convicts only one ultimately survived—the man with the broken jaw. One was already dead; the other two died of injuries within forty-eight hours of the incident. The surviving convict after intense questioning in the prison hospital was tried, convicted and sentenced to an additional twenty years, the sentence to run concurrently with his existing life term.

2.

Two-and-a-half days later it began for Sam Watchman. He drove into the lot against the morning sun with his hat brim pulled down to his nose in lieu of a sun visor. He left his dusty Volvo in a slot that said
OFFICIAL CARS ONLY, VIOLATORS WILL BE TOWED AWAY AT THEIR EXPENSE.
It was seven o'clock and hotting up for a scorcher in Phoenix.

Rush-hour traffic crawled past the front of the AHP building, enough sunlight hitting the chrome to blind a pedestrian. Watchman kept his hat brim down until he was inside the glass doors.

There was a hush of ducted air. At the desk the bald sergeant was interviewing a complainant, looking him over closely as if inspecting him for bodily signs of Communism or felonious character. The sergeant waved Watchman through without giving any evidence he had ever looked up to see who he was.

A bilious green hallway lit by wire-netted bulbs; he passed the canteen room where two patrolmen were drinking coffee and a third was on the phone: “What's the squeal?… All right, who catches?… Shit, all right.” When Watchman continued on his way the patrolman was reaching for his hat and kit.

Captain Fred Custis had a corner office with a view of the parking lot. From the desk he gave Watchman a bleak glance across his steepled fingers.

The size of Custis was a tribute to the breweries and his white mustache was stained to amber by cigar smoke. He decided to be hearty. “How're they hangin,' Sam?” Then he tugged out a crumpled handkerchief and blew his nose. “God damn summer cold.”

It looked as if it had been two days since the captain had been near a razor. His uniform looked lived-in. You had to credit his industry. He would work an eager twenty-four-hour day and that was mostly the reason for his success in the department; certainly it wasn't his brains.

He uttered a grinding snort to clear his nasal passages and scraped a sleeve across his mustache.

Watchman said, “You told me to report in for assignment.”

“That slot where you parked just now. I was watching. It's for official cars only—can't you read?”

“I'm an official, Captain.”

“Your car isn't. I ought to send Dancey out there to put a summons on your windshield. Ought to have the damned foreign crate towed away.”

“I'll move it, Captain.” In a minute he was sure Custis would ask him sarcastically if he couldn't afford a native American car.

The desk was covered with green linoleum and the walls were illustrated with framed citations and news-photo clippings, crowded together like medical diplomas in a doctor's office. Most of the pictures featured Custis with his pale-eyed, clenched-teeth public smile, holding a prisoner by the elbow or looming above a podium or shaking hands with celebrities.

Captain Custis blew his nose. “How would you like a lateral promotion?”

It pricked Watchman's interest and he brought his eyes back to Custis.

“Sit down a minute.” It wasn't a courtesy; Custis didn't want to have to look up at him. Watchman sat.

“Lateral to where?”

“Investigations Division.”