He walked back toward the courtyard in the center of the motel complex, splashing through puddles rather than walk around them, wary of every velvety shadow, stopping half a dozen times to listen for imagined footsteps following close behind him.
But there were no footsteps other than his own.
At the top of the stairs which led to the second level, in the northeast corner of the courtyard overlook, he leaned against the iron safety rail to catch his breath and to clamp down on the renewed thump of dull pain in his side and chest.
He was cold. Deep-down cold and shivering. The raindrops struck him like chips of ice and melted down his face.
As he sucked the crisp air, he looked at the dozens of identical doors and windows, all of them closed and lightless . . . And he wondered, suddenly, why he had not screamed for help when the stranger had first attacked him with the ax. Even though they had been clear at the back of the motel, and even though the thunder of rain and wind was a blanket over other sounds, his voice would have carried into these rooms, would have awakened these people. if he screamed as loudly as he could, surely someone would have to come to see what was wrong. Someone would have called the police. But he had been so frightened that the thought of crying out for help had never occurred to him. The battle had been strangely noiseless, a nightmare of nearly silent thrust and counterthrust which had not reached the motel guests.
And then, remembering various newspaper stories he had read, accounts of the average man's indifference to the commission of a rape or murder in front of his eyes, Doyle wondered if anyone would have answered his call for help? Or would they all have turned and put pillows over their heads? Would these people in these identical rooms have reacted unemotionally and identically: with reluctance and perhaps apathy?
It was not a nice thought.
Shaking violently now, he tried to stop thinking about it as he pushed away from the rail and walked down the rain-washed promenade toward their room.
Fourteen
When Doyle finished drying his hair, Colin folded the white motel towel and carried it into the bathroom, where he draped it over the shower rail with the rain-soaked clothes. Trying to handle himself in a calm and dignified manner - even though he was wearing only undershorts and eyeglasses, and even though he was obviously quite frightened - the boy came back into the main room and sat down in the middle of his own bed. He stared openly at Doyle's bruised right side.
Alex cautiously explored the tender flesh with the tips of his fingers, until he was satisfied that nothing was broken or so seriously damaged that it demanded a doctor's attention.
“Hurt?” Colin asked.
“Like a bitch.”
“Maybe we should get some ice to put on it.”
“It's just a bruise. Not much to be done.”
“You think it's just a bruise,” Colin said.
“The worst of the pain is gone already. I'll be stiff and sore for a few days, but there isn't any way to avoid that.”
“What do we do now?”
Doyle had, of course, told the boy everything about the ax battle and the tall, gaunt man with the wild eyes. He had known that Colin would recognize a lie and would probe for the truth until he got it. This was not a child whom you could treat like a child.
Doyle stopped massaging his discolored flesh and considered the boy's question. “Well . . . We definitely have to change the route we'd planned on taking from here to Salt Lake City. Instead of using Route 40, we'll take either Interstate 80 or Route 24 and—”
“We changed plans before,” Colin said, blinking owlishly behind his thick, round glasses. “And it didn't work. He picked us up again. ”
“He picked us up again only when we returned to I-70, the road that he was using,” Doyle said. “This time we won't go back to the main roads at all. We'll take the longer way around. We'll figure a new way into Reno from Salt Lake City—then a secondary road from Reno to San Francisco.”
Colin thought about that for a minute. “Maybe we should stay at new motels, too. Pick them at random.”
“We have reservations and deposits waiting for us,” Doyle said.
“That's what I mean.” The boy was somber.
“That sounds like paranoia,” Doyle said, surprised.
“I guess.”
Doyle sat up straighter against the headboard. “You think that this character knows where we intend to stop each night?”
“He keeps picking us up in the mornings,” the boy said defensively.
“But how would he know our plans?”
Colin shrugged.
“He would have to be somebody we know,” Doyle said, not warming to the idea at all, afraid to warm to it. “I don't know him. Do you?”
Colin just shrugged again.
“I've already described him,” Doyle said. “A big man. Light, almost white hair, cut short. Blue eyes. Handsome. A little gaunt . . . Does he sound like somebody you know?”
“I can't tell from a description like that,” Colin said.
“Exactly. He's like ten million guys. So we'll operate under the assumption that he is a total stranger, that he's just your average American madman, the kind you read about in the newspapers every day.”
“He was waiting for us in Philly.”
“Not waiting. He happened to—”
“He started out with us,” Colin said. “He was right there behind us from the first.”
Doyle did not want to consider that the man might know them, might have some real or imagined grudge against them. If that were the case, this whole crazy thing would not end with the trip. If this maniac knew them, he could pick them up again in San Francisco. He could come after them any time he wanted. “He's a stranger,” Alex insisted. “He's nuts. I saw him in action. I saw his eyes. He is not the sort of man who could plan and execute a cross-country pursuit.”
Colin said nothing.
“And why would he pursue us? If he wants us dead—why not kill us back in Philly? Or out on the coast? Why chase us this way?”
“I don't know,” the boy admitted.
“Look, you have to accept some coincidence in this thing,” Doyle said. “By sheer also coincidence, he began his trip the same time we did, from the same block of the same street that we did. And he's crazy. A madman might very well become obsessed with a coincidence like that. He would make more of it than it was, use it as the foundation for some paranoid delusion. And everything that has happened since would explain itself.”
Colin hugged himself and rocked slowly back and forth on the bed. “I guess you're right.”
“But you still aren't convinced.”
“No.
Doyle sighed. “Okay. We'll forfeit the room deposits we've made. We'll pick motels at random the next two nights—if we can find any vacancies.” He smiled, somewhat relieved even though he could not believe Colin's vague hypothesis. “You feel better now?
“I won't really feel better until we're in San Francisco, until we're home,” Colin said.
“That makes two of us.” Doyle slid down in bed until he was flat on his back. The movement made his bruise throb again. “You want to turn out the light so we can catch a few winks?”
“Can you sleep after all this?” Colin asked.
“Probably not. But I'm going to try.” I'm certainly not going to leave the motel now not in the dark. And if we're going to take back roads and add hours of driving time to our schedule, I'll need all the rest I can get.”
Colin turned out the lights, but he did not slip under the covers. “I'll just sit here awhile,” he said. “I can't sleep now.”
“You better try.”
“I will. In a little while.”
As exhausted as he was, Doyle slept, though fitfully. He dreamed of flashing ax blades and gouting blood and maniacal laughter, and he woke repeatedly, sheathed in cold sweat. Awake, he thought about the stranger and wondered who he might be. And he thought, as well, about his own new courage. He realized that it was
his love for Courtney and for Colin that had provided him with the key to this strength. When he had no one to look out for except himself, he could always run from trouble. But now . . . Well, three could not run as easily or as quickly as one. Therefore, he had been compelled to call upon resources which he had not known he possessed. Knowing, he felt more at peace with himself than he had ever been before in his life. Content, he slept. Sleeping, he dreamed again and woke with the shakes and countered the shakes with the knowledge that he could now handle the cause of them.
For two long hours Colin sat up in bed, wrapped in darkness, listening to Doyle breathe. Occasionally, the man woke from a bad dream and turned over and wrestled with the bedclothes until he could sleep again. At least he was dozing. Doyle's equanimity in these dangerous circumstances impressed Colin quite a bit.
Of course, he had always been impressed with Alex Doyle—more than he had ever been able to let the man know. Sometimes he wanted to grab hold of Doyle and hug him and hold onto him forever. He was afraid, all through the courtship, that Courtney would lose Doyle. He knew how much they cared for each other and suspected the intensity of their physical relationship, yet he had been sure Doyle would leave them. Now that Doyle was theirs, he wanted to hug him and be around him and learn from him. But he was not capable of that hug, for it seemed too juvenile a means of expressing what he felt. He had worked too hard and too long at being an adult to let himself slip now, no matter how much he loved, liked, and admired Alex Doyle. Therefore, he had to let his feelings be known in small ways, in hundreds of separate, simple gestures that would say it all as well as that one hug would say it, if less forcefully.
He got off his bed when the first morning light found its way around the edges of the heavy drapes, and he went into the bathroom to shower. With Alex in the room beyond, with the warm water cascading down on him and the yellow soap foaming pleasantly against his thin limbs, Colin worried less and less about the stranger in the Chevrolet van. With just a little bit of luck, everything would be fine. it had to come out all right in the end, because Alex Doyle was here to make certain that nothing really bad happens to him or to Courtney.
By the time George Leland reached the Automover which was parked near the front of the Rockies Motor Hotel, he had forgotten all about Doyle and the boy. He fumbled with his keys, dropped them. He pawed clumsily in an inch-deep puddle until he found them again. Unlocking the cab door, he climbed into the truck, unable to recall the silent chase through the motel corridors or the ax-swinging madness in the maintenance room when he had come within seconds and inches of killing a man. He was too beaten down with pain to care about this sudden amnesia.
It was the worst headache yet. The pain was most fierce in and area around the right eye, but now it also fanned out across his entire forehead and back to the top of his skull. It brought tears to his eyes. He could even hear his teeth grinding together like sandstone wheels, but he could not stop the hard, involuntary chewing motion; it was as if he were possessed, and as if his possessor thought that the pain could be masticated, shredded into fine pieces, swallowed, and digested away.
There had been no warning signs. Usually, at least one hour in advance of the first wave of pain, he grew dizzy and nauseated, and he saw that spiral of hot multicolored light turning around and around behind his eye. But not tonight. One moment he had felt just fine, even exhilarated, and the next, pain had hit him like a hammer blow. It had been an ugly but comparatively small pain to begin with—hadn't it? A small pain at the start? He could not remember exactly where he had been when it first struck him, but he was sure the pain had been only mild, initially. Certainly bearable. However, it had rapidly gotten worse until, now, he despaired of reaching his own motel before he was completely incapacitated.
He drove out of the motel lot, slammed off a four-inch curb and onto the highway, the van's springs squealing beneath him. He did not feel like a part of the vehicle tonight. He was no extension of it. He had lost his usual empathy with machines. He was a stranger in this contraption, and the steering wheel felt like an alien artifact, an inhuman device, under his large hands.
He squinted at the wet pavement as he drove, tried to push back the rain and the ghostly tendrils of fog.
A low, sleek car approached from the opposite direction, flashed past in a violent spray of water. Its four headlights were much too bright; they sliced into Leland's eyes like a quartet of knives and drew a painful wound across his forehead.
Unconsciously he pulled the wheel hard to the right, away from the light which so offended him. The van crunched onto the shoulder of the road, nosed down, bounced in a rut, came up again with a prolonged shudder. In the cargo hold, furniture shifted noisily. Suddenly, immediately ahead, a waist-high brown-brick wall loomed out of the night, stark and deadly, Leland cried out and wheeled hard to the left. The right front fender nicked the bricks. Then the Chevrolet jumped back onto the pavement, sliding in the rainwater for a long, dangerous moment before it finally, reluctantly came back under his control.
He reached the motel only because he encountered no other traffic. If even one other car had passed him, he would have demolished the Chevrolet and killed himself.
At the door of his room, rain beating against his back, he had trouble inserting the key in the lock, and he cursed nearly loudly enough to wake the other guests.
Inside, as he closed the door, the pain abruptly worsened, driving him to his knees on the stained carpet. He was sure that he was dying.
But the new pain passed, and the agony became merely unbearable pain.
He went to the bed and almost lay down before he realized that he had to get out of his clothes first. They were wet clear through. If he passed the rest of the night in them, he would be ill in the morning . . . Slowly, with exaggerated movements, he undressed and dried himself on the tufted bedspread. Even then, he was chilled to the bone. Trembling, he got into bed and pulled the cover up to his chin. He gave himself over to the unrelenting pain and tried to ride with it.
It lasted more than twice as long as usual. And when, well after dawn, it was finally gone, the nightmares which always followed it were also worse than they had ever been. The only lovely thing in that parade of grisly images was Courtney. She kept popping up. Nude and beautiful. Her full, round breasts and delightfully long legs were welcome relief from the other visions . . . Yet, each time that she did appear in the dreams, an imaginary dream - Leland killed her with an imaginary knife. And the murder was, without exception, curiously satisfying.
THURSDAY
Fifteen
Interstate 25 ran north from Denver and connected with interstate 80 just inside the Wyoming border. That was all well-paved, four-lane, controlled-access highway that would carry them straight into San Francisco without a single intersection to get in the way.
But they did not take it, because it seemed like too obvious an alternative to the route which they had originally planned to use. If the madman in the Chevrolet van had become obsessed with them—and with killing them—then he might make the effort to think one step ahead of them. And if he realized that they would now leave their pre-planned route, he would see, with one quick glance at a map, that I-25 and I-80 was their next best bet.
“So we'll take Route 24,” Doyle said.
“What kind of road is it?” Colin asked, leaning across the seat to look at the map which Doyle had propped against the steering wheel.
“Pieces of it are four-lane. Most of it isn't.”
Colin reached out and traced it with one finger. Then he pointed to the gray-shaded areas. “Mountains?”
“Some. High plateaus. But there are a good many deserts, alkali and salt flats . . .”
I'm glad we've got air conditioning.”
Doyle folded the map and handed it to the boy. “Belt yourself in.”
Colin put the map in the glove compartment, then did as he had been told. As Doyle drove out of the Rockies Motor Hotel parking lot, the boy tucked in his
orange-and-black Phantom of the Opera T-shirt smoothed the wrinkles out of the phantom's hideously deformed face, and took a couple of minutes to comb his thick brown hair until it fell straight to his shoulders just the way he liked it. Then he sat up straight and watched the sun-scorched landscape whisk past as the mountains drew nearer.
The electric-blue sky was streaked with narrow bands of gray-white clouds, but it was no longer a storm sky. Last night's downpour had ended as abruptly as it had begun, leaving few traces. The sandy soil alongside the road looked almost parched, dusty.
The traffic was not heavy this morning, and what there was of it moved so well and orderly that Doyle did not have to pass a single car all the way out of the Denver area.
And there was no van behind them.
“You're awfully quiet this morning,” Alex said after fifteen minutes had passed in silence. He glanced away from the twisting snakes of hot air that danced above the highway, looked at the boy. “You feeling okay?”
“I was thinking.”
“You're always thinking.”
“I was if thinking about this—maniac.”
“And?
“We aren't being followed, are we?”
“No.”
Colin nodded. “I bet we never see him again.”
Doyle frowned, accelerated slightly to keep up with the flow of cars around them. “How can you be so sure?”
“Just a hunch.”
“I see. I thought you might have a theory . . .”
“No. Only a hunch.”
“Well,” Doyle said, “I'd feel a whole lot better if you did have some reasons for thinking we've seen the last of him.”
“So would I,” the boy said.
Even as he drove into the parking lot that encircled the Rockies Motor Hotel, George Leland knew that he had missed them. The headache had been so damned long and intense . . . And the period of unconsciousness, afterward, had lasted at least two hours. They might not be too far out in front of him, but they had surely gotten a head start.