Manhunt. Volume 14, Number 1, February/March, 1966

At the end of Walker, Cogan turned right onto Terrace Drive. The two-way radio crackled, and Morgan’s voice at the office broke into his thoughts.

“Sheriff? Our friend from the courthouse wonders if we can keep his accident off the blotter.”

Cogan fingered the cold mike at the end of its coiled leash for a few seconds before answering. The goddam city clerk. Cracked up roaring drunk again. And if it wasn’t him, it was his brother-in-law or his grocer wanting something. Everybody wanting the law to be enforced for the other guy, not for him. Put the screws to the other guy, the one without a relative, pal, or debtor with pull.

“OK, leave it off. I’ll fix it up tomorrow.” He dropped the mike onto its hook, then jerked the wheel hard and slithered across the street onto the narrow road leading to his sleeping deputy’s tiny ranch house.

The snow fell a little more thickly now, teasing the windshield wipers as they frantically rushed to and fro, trying to fight the feathery fluff plastering the glass.

Cogan squinted at the clipboard hanging from the instrument panel, trying to read the plate number of the dead girl’s car. Her green and white Ford had disappeared, presumably with the murderer behind the wheel, since she had left the house with it after supper.

Four headlights bore at him through the snow, a blinding whiteness that hid the metal shape behind it. The oncoming car forced Cogan’s to the shoulder as it slipped silently past on the snow-covered road, slewed for a moment, caught hold again and dragged its tail-lights into the night.

It was a green and white Ford.

Cogan slammed to a stop, cutting the wheel sharply with automatic reflexes. The cruiser’s rear wheels let go, and the front ones stood almost still waiting for them to catch up. In a moment, the car was pointed the other way, and the Sheriff tromped on the gas, his hand on the blinker switch, his foot grinding down on the siren button.

He knew the Ford’s driver would have trouble at the end of the road when he had to make the right-angle turn onto Terrace Drive. He was travelling too fast for conditions. Cogan could already picture the fugitive trying to take the corner at speed and spinning out into a utility pole or burying himself in a snowbank. No need to speed after him, really.

Cogan slowed down long before the intersection, peering intently for signs of his man. Just as he spotted the Ford, its nose snuffling deeply into a drainage ditch, he caught a glimpse of the figure racing awkwardly down the wide road that led out of town. The cruiser’s lights caught the short-jacketed, thin back, and a white face turned for a second. Then the lightly-clad runner made a hunched spurt to outrun the car behind him.

Cogan accelerated lightly, passed his prey, then cut the wheel sharply to the right, forcing the runner into the V of car and snow bank. He unlimbered his 38 Special and was out of the car before it had come to a complete stop.

It was just a kid, perhaps seventeen years old. He stared open-mouthed at the Sheriff, then twitched his shoulders as if ready to flee the way he had come.

Cogan closed the gap between them with quick strides. He caught the boy by the arm, whirled him around and drove the gun’s barrel hard into his belly. “Hold it!”

The boy stood still, his mouth still open. Wheezing from the exertion, the big man let go of the tensed arm and fumbled for the flashlight in his belt holster. He caught it in the palm of his hand, flicked it on and poked the beam into the boy’s face.

“You son of a bitch! You goddam rotten kid!”

The kid closed his mouth and let a small, crooked smile show. He said nothing, but caught his thumbs in his wide belt. The probing light caught the bloodstains on his sleeves and pantlegs. He said nothing when the lawman ground the handcuffs hard on his wrists and shoved him into the cruiser.

Familiar with what was in the minds of would-be escapers, Cogan took a large paper bag out of the glove compartment, flapped it open, and dropped it over the boy’s smirking face.

No one got any sleep after that except the boy, shoved into a cell in the basement of the jail. While he stretched his length on the clean-sheeted cot, a look of indifference on his smooth face, the sheriff had to deal with newspapermen from all over the western part of the state. He had to answer the questions of a thousand friends, neighbors, and the many others who always had to know the inside story so they could pass it around — along with their boastful tales of never getting a ticket.

By eleven p.m. the next day, only twenty-four hours after the girl had been found, the initial curiosity had worn off, and Cogan had managed to catch a few hours of sleep at home, while his three deputies basked in the publicity before becoming irritated by the annoyances that went with it.