Free Meeting Evil by Thomas Berger

Richie, the source of all his troubles, had remained. “We’ve got to get to a phone.”
    With a genial shrug, Richie stepped from the car and walked jauntily to the house, punched a hole in the screen, and opened the door. He forthrightly broke the glass of the inner door with one kick of his formidable running shoes, reached within, and disengaged the bolt.
    John had not meant to break in, but it was small damage compared to running a man down by car. He pushed Richie aside and shouted through the open doorway.
    “We don’t mean any harm! It’s an emergency. A man’s dying, and we need your phone.”
    There was no answer. He saw a telephone on a little table within a few feet of the entrance. He picked up the handpiece.
    The line was in use. “Lock yourself in the room,” said an authoritative voice. “We’re on our way.…
Who picked up that extension?
“
    “Excuse me,” John said. “I have to get through. There’s an emer—”
    “
Who are you?
” The voice was threatening.
    “A man might be dying on the highway!”
    “
Did you kill him?
“
    “No. He was hit by a car.”
    “
Your car?
“
    “Will you get off the line?” John shouted. “He needs an ambulance.”
    “You just stay on the phone, sir,” said the voice, less threatening and with a new note of sympathy, which was suspiciously fake because it took no account of what John had said. “Don’t move from the phone. Are you by yourself in the house, or is somebody else with you?”
    In the
house.
How did this man know where he was calling from? Suddenly he understood. Someone
was
at home, in another room, and from there had called the police!
    “Are you a cop?” John asked, and though he received no answer, continued as if he had. “Then send an ambulance out to Forty-five A northbound, somewhere not too far south of Hillsdale: a man is lying on the shoulder, next to a tractor trailer.”
    “Listen,” the policeman said, “you just keep talking to me. I want to get everything straight. Give me your name, if you don’t mind, and—”
    “You heard me,” said John. “I’m not a criminal. I’m a passerby, and I had to get to a phone. I’m leaving money for new glass and screening.” He was saying this as much for the resident of the house as for the cop. “I’m sorry the damage had to be done, but this guy’s life might be saved.”
    A woman was on the line, moaning. “He’s going to kill me.”
    “No, he is not, ma’am. He’s got too much sense for that.”
    John hung up in desperation. He had not noticed what became of Richie, and now assumed the man returned to the car. But crossing the porch, he could see no one in the front seat of the automobile. He had a wild impulse to leap into the car and drive himself as far from this mess as he could get, leaving Richie to pay the piper—for was not that bastard single-handedly responsible for all of it?
    But whether he would have proceeded further with his impracticable scheme, he had not quite reached the vehicle when he heard the screen door bang behind him. At least he regained the driver’s seat.
    Richie leaped into the passenger’s side. He was carrying a pint bottle of vodka.
    John pulled out to the road in high-speed reverse. No doubt the woman was watching from an upstairs window and would write down the license number and a description of the car. Perhaps she had even seen him and Richie. And only now did it occur to him that there must have been some drivers in the southbound lane of the highway who saw the running-down of the truckdriver. The police were probably already looking for them. By now it had become a virtual crime spree.
    He decided that the cops would expect someone fleeing to use the fastest road at hand—namely, the highway from which they had recently exited. Therefore it made most senseto continue on the county road and, if possible, find an even more modest thoroughfare, and there to slow to a speed that would attract no undue attention. He was