A third curve almost threw the BMW into the trees, but Laura held tight to the shuddering steering wheel. Then there was a long straightaway ahead, and two white lights on it. Laura wiped her bleeding nose with her forearm and let the car wind up, the engine roaring and the speedometer showing eighty. But the van was going fast, too, black smoke billowing from its crumpled exhaust pipe. On both sides of the road the barren trees swept past in a dark blur. Laura got up close enough to read the numbers on the Georgia tag, and then the taillights flashed; Mary was cutting her speed, going into another wicked right-hand curve. Laura had to hit the brakes, too, and she faded back as the tires bit into the curve, wrenched them right, left, and then led them into another straightaway. Now Mary was standing on the accelerator, the van shooting forward with a fishtailing slipslide that made the breath freeze in Laura’s lungs. If the van went off the road, David could be killed. She realized she couldn’t ram the van, force it off onto the shoulder, or fire a bullet at a tire. Any of those things might cause Mary Terror to lose control of the wheel. A bullet aimed at a tire might go through the van’s body, or hit the gas tank. David would die in the flaming wreckage as surely as by one of Mary Terror’s bullets. Laura cut her speed, began to let the van pull away. The speedometer’s needle dropped: through seventy-five seventy…sixty-five…sixty. Mary kept the speed up at seventy and the van was moving away, dark smoke billowing behind. Laura saw a sign on the right: I-94, 6 MI.
The highway west, she thought.
The automatic’s barrel pressed against Laura’s right temple.
Didi had picked the gun up from beside her. “Stop the car,” Didi said.
Laura kept driving, the speed now at a constant sixty.
“Stop the car!” Didi repeated. “I’m getting out!”
Laura didn’t answer, her attention focused on the road and the van ahead. Mary Terror would take the interstate because it was the fastest route to California.
“I SAID STOP THE CAR!” Didi shouted over the wind’s racket.
“No,” Laura said.
Didi sat there, stunned and helpless with the gun in her hand.
Laura’s nostrils were jamming up with blood. She blew her nose into her hand, enduring a savage pain that shot through her cheekbones, and then she wiped the scarlet mess onto her jeans. “I’m not going to lose Mary.”
Didi’s emotions ripped like a ragged flag. “I’LL KILL YOU IF YOU DON’T STOP THE CAR!” she screamed. “I’LL BLOW YOUR DAMNED BRAINS OUT!”
Laura didn’t let up on the pedal. “You’re not a killer anymore,” she said without even glancing in Didi’s direction. “That’s all over. Besides, do you want to go back to your house and try to explain to the police why Edward Fordyce is lying dead in the woods?”
“Stop the car, I said.” Didi’s voice was weaker.
“Where are you going to go if I do?”
“I’ll find somewhere! Don’t you worry about me!”
Laura’s head was pounding fiercely, the blood beginning to thicken in her nostrils. She had to breathe through her mouth to get any air. Bitch knocked the shit out of me, she thought. “I need you,” she said.
“I’ve already ruined my life for you!”
“Then you don’t have anything else to lose. I need you to help me get my baby back. I’m going to keep following Mary Terror all the way to California. All the way to hell if I have to.”
“You’re crazy! She’ll kill the kid before she’ll let you take him!”
“We’ll see about that,” Laura said.
Didi was about to demand to be let out again when a pair of headlights blazed in the rearview mirror. Didi looked back, saw a car gaining fast on them. “Christ!” she said. “I think it’s the cops!” She lowered the gun from Laura’s temple.
Laura watched the car coming. The damned thing was absolutely flying, doing over eighty. No siren or blue lights yet, but Laura’s heart had jammed in her throat. She didn’t know what to do: hit the accelerator or the brakes? And then the car was upon them, its headlights glowing like white suns in the rearview mirror. Laura jinked the BMW to the right as the car veered alongside them and screamed past. It was a big, dark blue or black Buick, maybe six or seven years old but immaculate, and the winds of its passage almost whirled the BMW off the road. The Buick tore on, swerved into the lane ahead of Laura, and kept going. It had a Michigan tag and a sticker that said WHEN GUNS ARE OUTLAWED, ONLY OUTLAWS WILL HAVE GUNS on the rear bumper.
In the van, Mary Terror saw the new arrival coming. Drummer was still crying, his bassinet having overturned on one of the curves. Pigs, she thought. Here come the fucking pigs. Edward’s blood was sticky on her face, bits of his skull and brains spattered on her clothes. She cocked her Colt and rolled down her window, and she eased up on the accelerator as the big car left its lane and started to pull around her.
“Come on,” she said into the wind. “Come on, little piggie!”
The car pulled up alongside her and hung there, both of them doing about seventy on the backwoods road. Mary saw no police or FBI markings, and she couldn’t see the driver’s face either. But suddenly the car whipped to the right, and there was a crash of metal as it slammed against the van. The wheel shuddered. Mary shouted a curse and the van veered toward the right shoulder. She fought its weight, the dark woods reaching out to embrace her and Drummer. Mary got the van back up onto the road again, and again the big car slammed into her side, trying to butt her off the pavement like an enraged bull. The car hit her a third time, and sparks flew into the air as pieces of metal ground together. The van was shoved sideways, the wheel trying to tear itself out of Mary’s grip. She looked to her left, saw the passenger’s window going down, a smooth electric slide. The car pulled up, its driver almost even with her. There was a loud crack, a flare of fire, and something metal clattered in the back of the van.
Bullet, Mary realized. Handgun. Son of a bitch was shooting at her.
It dawned on her, quite suddenly, that whoever was in the big Buick was the bastard who’d killed Edward. This wasn’t exactly pig procedure. The fucker was trying to kill her, that much was certain.
She hit the accelerator again, whipping past a sign that read I-94, 2 MI. The Buick stayed abreast. Another crack and fire flare, and she heard the whine of the slug ricocheting inside the van. The Buick remained with her, touching eighty miles an hour. Mary held on to the wheel with one hand and fired a shot at the car. The bullet didn’t hit, but the Buick backed off a few yards. Then it lunged forward and crashed into the van’s side again, shoving the van toward the shoulder. Mary fired once more, trying to hit the Buick’s engine. The van’s tires slipped on loose gravel, the vehicle’s rear end fishtailing. Two seconds passed in which Mary thought the van was going over, but then the tires found pavement again and the scream died behind Mary’s teeth. The Buick, its right side battered and scraped, started to pull up even with her. Mary’s foot was already on the floor, the van at the limit of its power. The Buick was coming, its long, scarred snout easing up. Mary dropped the Colt, reached into her shoulder bag, and brought out the Compact Magnum.
Before she could get off a shot, the BMW that had come up from behind veered into the left lane and slammed into the Buick’s rear fender. The collision jarred the finger that was squeezing a pistol’s trigger, and the bullet whacked into the van’s side seven inches behind Mary Terror’s skull.
Mary fired downward with the Magnum, the noise explosive and the kick thrumming through her forearm and shoulder. The Buick’s right front tire popped, and as the driver stomped on the brake Laura jerked the BMW’s wheel to the right and cleared the Buick by half a foot, pulling her front fender right up behind the speeding van. The Buick, its tire shredding to pieces, went across the left lane and down a knoll into a copse of trees and bushes.
“Back off! Back off!” Didi was shouting, and Laura hit her brakes just as Mary did the same. Fenders clanged together like swords. Laura veered to the left, saw the interstate’s ramp
just ahead. And then Mary Terror was swinging the van up onto it, black smoke gouting from the exhaust. I-94 WEST, the sign said. Mary swerved off the ramp onto the highway, reached down, and righted Drummer’s bassinet. He was still wailing, but he would have to cry himself out. She glanced into the rearview mirror, saw the BMW about fifty yards behind, cutting its speed. She cut hers, too, down to about sixty. Whoever was in the Buick would have to change the tire, and by that time she’d be long gone.
But Laura Clayborne was in the car behind her. Maybe Bedelia was with her. Traitor, she thought. A bullet wasn’t enough for her; she should be slit open and gutted for the crows, like the lowest kind of roadkill.
The BMW kept its distance. Mary returned the Magnum to her shoulder bag. She was trembling, but she’d shake it off soon enough. At this time of the morning the interstate was almost empty, just a few trucks hauling freight. Mary began to relax, but her gaze kept ticking to the BMW’s headlights. Should’ve blown out the tires when I had the chance, she thought. Why didn’t the bitch bring the pigs with her? Why had she come alone? Stupid, that’s why. Stupid and weak.
“What are you going to do?” she asked the headlights. “Follow me to California?” She laughed: a harsh, nervous bark.
“Earl Van Diver is his name,” Didi was saying to Laura. “An FBI agent. Mary shot him in the throat in 1972, at the shootout in Linden. I think he found out who I am, but he doesn’t want me.” She nodded toward the van. “He wants Mary.”
Laura had turned the heat up to high, but the BMW’s interior was still uncomfortably cold, the wind shrieking in around them. There was nothing else left to do. Nothing except to keep that van with the broken taillights in sight. Sooner or later Mary would have to stop to get gas. She would get sleepy, hungry, and thirsty. She would have to pull off, sooner or later. And when that happened…what then?
Laura checked her own gas gauge. A little less than half a tank. If she had to stop first, Mary would pull on out of sight. She might turn off the interstate, try to hide until she was sure Laura couldn’t find her again. But Mary was interested in only one direction, and one destination. Between here and there was over two thousand miles, and who knew what might happen in that terrible distance?
“I want out,” Didi said. “I’m not going with you.”
Laura was silent, her nose clogged with dried blood and her injured cheek turning blue-black.
“I swear to God!” Didi told her. “I’m not going with you!”
Laura didn’t answer. She had watched a human being be murdered this morning. His blood was all over her purse, and the smell of death was in the car. She felt the horror of what she’d seen start to consume her mind, take her away from the task she had set for herself, and she did the only thing she could: she just stopped thinking about Edward Fordyce, and thrust the memory of his writhing body back to a place from where it couldn’t easily be summoned. She had to think about one thing and one thing only: David, in the van fifty or sixty yards ahead. Mary Terror at the wheel. Armed and dangerous. Two thousand miles between her and a man who might or might not be Jack Gardiner.
“I want out! First gas station!”
They passed one in a few minutes. It was all lit up.
The van kept going, its speed constant at sixty-five.
Didi was quiet. She put her hands to her ears, to shut out the wind’s scream.
You’ll stop somewhere, Laura thought. Maybe ten miles. Maybe fifty. But you’ll stop, and when you do I’ll be right there behind you.
She glanced at the automatic lying on the seat where Didi had put it down. The grip had a dried smear of scarlet on it. Then she returned her attention to the broken taillights, and she brushed aside the nagging question of how she could possibly get David away from Mary Terror without the woman putting a bullet through his head.
Laura almost cried, but she held back the tears. Her face felt like leather stretched over hot iron. Tears wouldn’t help the pain, and they wouldn’t help get David back alive. She didn’t need her eyes swollen up, that was for sure.
“You’re crazy,” Didi said. A last shot: “Going to get us both killed and the baby, too.”
There was no reply from Laura, but the comment had worked itself in like a thorn. Laura concentrated on keeping a steady fifty yards or so behind the van. No need to spook Mary. Just make her feel nice and comfortable up there in her van with her two guns and the child she called Drummer.
He was going to grow up as David. Laura vowed it, over her dead body.
The van and the BMW, both dented and battered from their first encounter, headed west on the quiet interstate. Mary Terror checked her gas gauge and kept glancing back at Laura’s car, marking its position. As Drummer’s crying dwindled, Mary began to sing “Light My Fire” in a low, wandering voice.
Follow me, she was thinking. Her gaze ticked to the BMW’s headlights again. That’s right. Follow me so I can kill you.
The van and the car passed on. Back at the entrance ramp about thirty minutes later, Earl Van Diver tightened the last lug nut and released the air from the inflatable jack. He was wearing a black woolen cap and a jump suit in camouflage green and brown, his pallid, bony face scratched by foliage. He returned his tools to their proper niches in his trunk, where the sniper’s rifle and boxes of ammunition were stored along with his SuperSnooper listening dish and tape recorder. He removed a palm-size black box from the trunk, which he mounted with adhesive pads on the underside of the dashboard. Then he plugged a connection into the cigarette lighter, started the engine, and turned a switch on the black box. A little blue light pulsed, but no numerals showed up yet on the display. On his rear windshield was an antenna that resembled that of a cellular phone, but was for a different purpose. Van Diver made another connection, the antenna’s jack into the black box. Still no numerals. That was all right. The magnetic homing device he’d planted in the right front wheel well of Mary Terror’s van wouldn’t pick up on the display until he was within about four miles. It had been a precaution, for such a case as this.
Beneath his seat was a hiding place where his Browning automatic pistol could slide in and out. It would be used well before he was finished with Mary Terror.
And if the other two women got in the way, they were dead meat, too.
Earl Van Diver backed the Buick up the embankment to the road and then drove onto the interstate’s ramp. West to California, he thought. Looking for Jack Gardiner. It was all on the tape, their voices caught by the SuperSnooper dish and the wireless amplification bug he’d planted inside a pottery vase in Bedelia Morse’s front room. Going to California, the land of nuts and fruits.
It was a good place to kill a nightmare.
The Buick’s speed hung between seventy and seventy-five, the pavement singing beneath the new tire. Van Diver, an executioner on a mission long awaited, hurtled toward his target.
VI
ON THE STORM
1
Happy Herman’s
THE SUN WAS COMING up, into a pewter sky. The warning light on the BMW’s gas gauge had begun blinking. Laura tried not to pay any attention to it—tried to will it begone— but the light kept snagging her eye.
“Low on gas,” Didi said over the wind’s scream.
The heater was purring merrily, warming their feet and legs while they froze from the waist up. The positive side of this, though, was that neither Laura nor Didi could be lulled to sleep with the cold and the wind singing them a banshee symphony. Didi kept her hands in her pockets, but every so often Laura had to unclench one hand from the steering wheel, flex the blood back into it, put it back where it was and do the same to the other. Ahead of them, between fifty and sixty yards away, was the olive-green van, its left side scraped to the bare metal and the rear looking like a sledgehammer had been taken to it. Traffic had picked up on the interstate: more trucks, zooming past in defiance of the legal limit. Twenty minutes or so before, Laura had seen a patrol car speed past on the other side of the median, blue li
ghts flashing. She wondered if the sight had given Mary Terror as much of a start as it had herself. Beyond Mary’s van, the sky was still dark and ominous, as if night refused to recede from the shore of dawn.
“Gas is almost gone,” Didi said. “Hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“Well, what’re you going to do? Wait until we have to push the damned thing?”
Laura didn’t answer. She really didn’t know what she was going to do; this was a wing-it-by-the-seat situation. If she pulled into a gas station first, then Mary Terror might turn off I-94 at the nearest exit. If she waited much longer, the gas would give out and they’d be coasting. There was something darkly comedic about this, like a twisted Lucy and Ethel on the trail of a celebrity when Ricky went to Hollywood. Don Juan, she thought. Wasn’t that the movie Ricky visited Hollywood to film? Or was it Casanova? No, Don Juan. She was almost sure of it. That was the first sign of old age: forgetting details. Who was it that Lucy had gotten a booth next to at the Brown Derby? William Holden? Hadn’t she spilled soup on his head? Or was it a salad instead of s—
The blare of an air horn behind her almost lifted Laura out of her seat and caused Didi to yelp like a dog. She jerked the wheel to the right, back into the lane she’d drifted out of, and the huge truck that was looming on her tail roared past like a snorting dinosaur.
“Screw you!” Didi shouted, and shot the truck’s driver a bird.
Laura’s heart began to pound.
Mary Terror was cutting her speed, and easing over toward an exit ramp that was about a quarter mile ahead.
Laura blinked, wasn’t sure if she was walking on the paths of La-La Land again or not.
In the sky was an apparition. A symbol of high karma, as Mark Treggs might have said. Up on stilts on the roadside was a gigantic yellow Smiley Face, and a sign that said HAPPY HERMAN’S! GAS! FOOD! GROCERIES! NEXT EXIT!