Free Anti-man by Dean Koontz Page B

out of its stall, and left the lot at a reasonable speed. Once on the highway, I turned toward Anchorage. Keeping the taxi at top speed as much as possible, I reached that city a little over two hours later, at eleven-thirty.
        I parked on the outskirts at a self-service recharging station for electric cars. There was an automat attached. It was well lighted, but empty. I went in, purchased a synthe-ham sandwich and a carton of chocolate artificial milk, went back to the taxi that I had parked at the edge of the lot. While I ate, I tried to plan the next step. I wanted them to know I was in Anchorage, wanted them to shift their search down here and take the heat off the park. But how to do it? If I moved into someplace where there were a lot of people, I would surely be recognized sooner or later-recognized and trapped.
        I had not come all this way to sacrifice myself. Besides, letting them catch me would be utterly foolish. With the right drugs, they would have me babbling everything inside of half an hour, spouting happily where He was at the moment. There must be some other way. A man in a dark blue sedan pulled up before the building at the charging station, plugged in his car, cleaned his windscreen, and drove away. By the time he left, I knew what I was going to do.
        Walking to the far end of the station and around the corner, I found the phones. I stepped into the last so that I was not visible from the front of the station and punched out Harry Leach's home number.
        There was a little musical set of tones that reminded me of the old-fashioned bells triggered when you opened the door at Harnwockers Book Store back in New York. The tones sounded five times, and I was just beginning to think that Harry was going to fink out on me in my hour of need when the screen rolled once and came back up with his homely, balding head looking out at me.
        "My God, Jake!" he said, his eyes going wide.
        "Harry, I have to talk fast, so don't try to interrupt me."
        "But-" he began.
        "You don't have to help if you don't want to. I am not forcing you to-"
        "Jake-"
        "-do anything you don't want," I said, talking louder and drowning him out. "But I need help. Look, they think we're in that park up at Cantwell. I heard it on the radio. But we're-"
        "Jake, don't you realize they are-"
        "Shut up! We're really here in Anchorage. I'm at a little self-service recharging place right now. Now what I want-"
        "Jake-" he began. It was time to let him tell me what I knew he had been trying to tell me all along. "Jake, this phone is bugged!"
        "Damn!" I said, and I slammed the receiver into its cradle, disconnecting myself. Harry blinked off the screen.
        I stood there for a moment, content with how well it had gone. I had known, of course, that they would tap Harry's phone. He was my best friend, my father image. It was logical that I should contact him if anyone. The trick had been not to let Harry tell me the bad news until after I had spilled our false position. But I had held him off, had gotten in the bit about Anchorage before he could tell me. The WA boys in the investigation Bureau offices must be frantic at this moment, slapping each other on the back and congratulating each other profusely. We'll have that bastard Kennelmen in hours, boys. He can't get away from us now. We have him cornered in goddamned old Anchorage. Then I remembered that they would have me cornered if I didn't beat it the hell out of there.
        I opened the door of the booth, went out and around the front of the building. Across the lot, a local patrol car had pulled up next to the stolen auto-taxi. The cop, in a state uniform, tending toward plumpness, was looking at the yellow letters on the side: Cantwell Port Auto-Taxi Service.
        A WA cop would have pegged it for a hot car as soon as he saw it. This fuzz might be more slow-witted, but he would