A horn blared nearby.
Leland looked up, surprised to find he had drifted out of the right lane and almost collided with a Pontiac trying to pass him. He wheeled hard right and brought the van back into line.
“How have you been, George?” she asked.
He looked at her, then quickly back at the highway. She was wearing the same outfit she had worn when he saw her last: clunky shoes, a short white skirt, fancy red blouse with long printed collar. When he followed her to the airport a week ago and watched her board the 707, he had been so excited by the way she looked in that trim little suit that he had wanted her more than he had ever wanted a woman before. He almost rushed up to her—but he had realized that she would think it was strange of him to be following her.
“How have you been, George?” she asked again.
She had been worried about his problems even before he recognized that he had any, even before he had seen that everything was going wrong. When she dissolved their two-year-old affair and would only talk to him on the telephone, she had still called him twice a month to see how he was getting along. Of course, she had stopped calling eventually. She had forgotten him completely.
“Oh,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road, “I'm fine.”
“You don't look fine.” Her voice was faraway, hollow, only slightly like her real voice. Yet there she was, sitting beside him in broad daylight.
“I'm doing very well,” he assured her.
“You've lost weight.”
“I needed to lose some.”
“Not that much, George.”
“It can't hurt.”
“And you have bags under your eyes.”
He took one hand from the wheel and touched the discolored, puffy flesh.
“Haven't you been getting enough sleep?” she asked.
He did not respond. He did not like this conversation. He hated her when she badgered him about his health and said his emotional problems with other people must come from a basic physical illness. Sure, the problems had come on suddenly. But he wasn't at fault. it was other people. Lately, everyone had it in for him.
“George, have people been treating you better since we last talked?”
He admired her long legs. They were not transparent now. The flesh was golden, firm, beautiful. “No, Courtney. I lost another job.”
Now that she had stopped nagging him about his health, he felt better. He wanted to tell her everything, no matter how embarrassing. She would understand. He would put his head in her lap and cry until he had no tears left. Then he would feel better . . . He would cry while she smoothed his hair, and when he sat up he would have as few problems as he had had more than two years ago, before this trouble had come along and everyone had gotten nasty with him.
“Another job?” she asked. “How many jobs have you held these last two years?”
“Six,” he said.
“What did you get fired for this time?”
“I don't know,” Leland said, genuine misery in his voice. “We were putting up an office building—two years of work. I was getting along with everyone. Then my boss, the chief engineer, started in on me.”
“Started in on you?” she asked, flat and faraway, barely audible above the buzz of the wide tires. “How?”
He shifted uneasily behind the wheel. “You know, Courtney. Just like all the other times. He talked about me behind my back, set the other men against me. He countermanded my job assignments and encouraged Preston, the steel foreman, to—”
“He did all this behind your back?” she asked.
“Yes. He—”
“If he said all this behind your back, how do you really know he said anything at all?” He could not tolerate the sympathy in her voice, for it was too much like pity. “Did you hear him? You didn't hear him yourself, did you, George?”
“Don't talk to me like that. Don't try to say it was my imagination.”
She was quiet, as ordered.
He looked to see if she was still there. She smiled at him, more solid than she had been a few minutes before.
He looked at the setting sun, but did not see it. He was now only minimally conscious of the highway ahead. Unsettled by her magical presence, he no longer handled the Chevrolet van as well as he could. It drifted back and forth within the right-hand lane, now and then running onto the gravel shoulder.
After a while he said, “Did you know that after I called you that day just to ask for a date, after I found you were already three weeks married—I almost went out of my mind? I followed you for a week, day in and day out, just watching you. Did you know? You had said you were flying to Frisco, that this man Doyle and your brother would follow in a week, and you said you didn't think you'd ever come back to Philly again. That nearly killed me, Courtney. Everything was going so badly for me. I remembered how good we had it once . . . So I called to see if maybe we could get together again. I was going to ask for a date. Did you know that? You didn't, I'll bet. I was all ready to ask for a date . . . And then I find out you're married and running clear across country.” His voice got hard, cold, almost mean. He paused to collect his thoughts. “You were my good luck-two, three, four years ago. When we were together, everything was fine. Now you're going to be out of touch, out of sight . . . I knew I had to be near you, Courtney. When I followed you to the airport and saw you leave on that 707, I knew I'd have to follow Doyle and Colin and find out where you were living.”
She said nothing.
He drove and talked on, hoping to get a positive reaction from her, no longer perplexed by her sudden appearance. “I had lost my job again. There was nothing to keep me in Philly. Of course, I didn't have money to pay movers like this Doyle did. I had to pack and haul my own things. So I'm driving this clumsy van with its poor air conditioning instead of a fancy Thunderbird. I'm not having a run of luck like this Doyle of yours. People aren't treating me as well as they're treating him. But I knew I had to come out to California anyway, to be near you. To be near you, Courtney . . .”
Pretty, quiet, unmoving, she sat there, her slim hands folded in her lap, a nimbus of the day's last light encircling her head.
“It wasn't easy staying on their trail,” he told her. “I had to be smart. When they were eating breakfast, I realized they must have a marked map in the car, something that would show me which way they were going. I checked.” He gave her a quick glance, grinning, looked at the road again. “I put a wire coat hanger through the rubber seal between the windows and popped the lock button. The maps were on the seat. An address book, too. Your man Doyle is extremely efficient. He'd written down the names and addresses of the motels where he had reservations. I copied them. And I studied the maps. I know every road they're taking and every place they'll stay overnight between here and San Francisco. Now I can't lose them. I'll just trail along behind. I don't have them in sight this minute, but I'll connect with them later.” He talked very fast, running his words together. He was eager for her to understand the trouble he had gone to so that he might be near her.
She surprised him. “George, did you ever see a doctor about your headaches, about your other problems?”
“I'm not sick, damn you!” he shouted. “I've got a healthy mind, healthy brain, healthy body. I'm in good shape. I don't want to hear anything more about that. Just forget about that.”
“Why are you following them?” she asked, changing the subject as ordered.
Perspiration ran off his brow in several steady streams, fat crystal droplets that tickled his cheeks and neck. “Didn't I just tell you? I want to find out where you'll be living. I want to be near you.”
“But if you copied the addresses in Alex's book, you have our new home address in San Francisco. You don't have to follow them to find me. You already know where I am, George.
“Well . . .”
“George, why are you following Alex and Colin?
“I told you.”
“You did not.”
“Shut up!” h
e said. “I don't like what you're implying. I won't listen to any more of this. I'm healthy. I'm not sick. There's nothing at all wrong with me. So just go away. Leave me alone. I don't want to have to look at you.”
The next time he looked, she was gone. She had vanished.
Although he had been momentarily confused by her unexpected and unexplained appearance, he was not at all surprised by her disappearance. He had told her to go away. Toward the end of their affair, just before she broke off with him two years ago, Courtney had said that he frightened her, that these recent black moods of his made her uneasy. She was still scared of him. When he said “Go,” she went. She knew better than to argue. The thoughtless bitch had betrayed him by marrying this Doyle, and now she would do anything to stay in his good graces.
He smiled at the darkening highway.
In the last light of day, with the land drenched in almost eerie orange radiance, Ohio State Police officer Eric lames Coffey drove off Interstate 70 into a picnic and rest area on the right-hand side of the road. He went up the slight incline to the pine-shielded clearing, and he saw the empty squad car at once. The dome light still swiveled, transmitting a red pulse to the trees on all sides.
Since four o'clock, when Lieutenant Richard Pulham had been one hour late returning his cruiser to the division garage at the end of his shift, more than twenty of his fellow troopers had been scouring the Interstate and all the secondary access roads leading to and from it. And now Coffey had found the car—identified it by the numerals on the front door—at the extreme west end of Lieutenant Pulham's patrol circuit.
Coffey wished he had not been the one to find it, for he suspected what he would discover. A dead cop. So far as Coffey could see, there was no other possibility.
He picked up the microphone, thumbed the button. “This is 166, Coffey. I've found our cruiser.” He repeated the message and gave his position to the dispatcher. His voice was thick and quavery.
Reluctantly he shut off the engine and got out of his own car.
The evening air was chilly. A wind had sprung up from the northwest.
“Lieutenant Pulham! Rich Pulham!” he shouted. The name came back to him in whispered imitations of his own voice. He received no other answer.
Resignedly Coffey went to Pulham's cruiser, bent and stared into the passenger's window. With the sun down, the car was full of shadows.
He opened the door. The interior light came on, weak and insufficient because the dome flasher had nearly drained the battery. Still, dim as it was, it illuminated the blackening blood and the body jammed rudely into the space before the front seat.
“Bastards,” Coffey said quietly. “Bastards, bastards, bastards.” His voice rose with each repetition. “Cop killers,” he told the onrushing darkness. “We'll get the sons of bitches.”
Their room at the Lazy Time Motel was large and comfortable. The walls were an off-white color, the ceiling a couple of feet higher than it would be in any motel built since the end of the fifties. The furniture was heavy and utilitarian, though not spartan by any means. The two easy chairs were well padded and upholstered, and the desk, if surfaced with plastic, gave plenty of knee room and working space. The two double beds were firm, the sheets crisp and redolent of soap and softener. The scarred mahogany nightstand between the beds held a Gideon Bible and a telephone.
Doyle and Colin sat on separate beds, facing each other across the narrow walk space between them. By mutual agreement, Colin was the first to talk to his sister. He held the receiver in both hands. His thick eyeglasses had slipped down his nose and now rested precariously on the very tip of it, though the boy did not seem to notice. “We were followed all the way from Philadelphia! “ he told Courtney as soon as she came on the line.
Alex grimaced.
“A man in a Chevrolet van,” Colin said. “No. We couldn't get a look at him. He was much too smart for that.” He told her all about their imaginary FBI man. When he tired of that, he told her how he had won a dollar from Doyle. He listened to her for a moment, laughed. “I tried, but he wouldn't make any more bets.”
Listening to the boy's half of the conversation, Doyle was momentarily jealous of the warm, intimate relationship between Courtney and Colin. They were entirely at ease with each other, and neither one needed to pretend—or disguise—his love. Then the envy passed as Doyle realized his own relationship with Courtney was much the same-and that he and the boy would soon be as close as they both were to the woman.
“She says I'm costing you too much,” Colin said, passing the receiver to Doyle.
He took it. “Courtney?”
“Hi, darling.” Her voice was rich and full. She might have been beside him instead of at the other end of twenty-five hundred miles of telephone wire.
“Are you okay?”
“Lonely,” she said.
“Not for long. How's the house coming?”
“The carpets are all down.”
“No hassles?”
“Not until the bill arrives,” she said.
“Painters?”
“Been and gone.”
“Then you just have the furniture deliveries to worry about,” he said.
“I can't wait for our bedroom suite to get here.”
“Every bride's greatest concern,” he said.
“That's not what I mean, sexist. It's just that this damn sleeping bag gives me a backache.”
He laughed.
“And,” she said, “have you ever tried camping out in the middle of an empty, lushly carpeted twenty-by-twenty master bedroom? It's eerie.”
“Maybe we should have all flown out,” Alex said. “Maybe a furnitureless house would be easier to endure if you had company.”
“No,” she said. “I'm okay. I just like to gripe. How are you and Colin getting along?”
“Famously,” he said, watching Colin as the boy pushed his glasses up on his pug nose.
“What about this guy following you in the Automover?” she asked.
“It's nothing.”
“One of Colin's games?”
“That's all, he assured her.
“Hey, did he really take you for a dollar?”
“He really did. He's a sneaky kid. He's a lot like you.”
Colin laughed.
“How's the car handling?” Courtney asked. “Is six hundred miles a day too much for you, by yourself?”
“Not at all,” he said. “My back's probably not aching as much as yours. We'll be able to stay right on schedule.”
“I'm glad to hear you say that. I'm a little bit of a sexist myself—and I can't wait to get you in that new bed.”
“Likewise,” he said, smiling.
“I've had several nights to appreciate the view from this damn bedroom window,” she said. “It's even more spectacular tonight than it was last night. You can see the city lights on the bay, all distorted and glimmering.”
“I'm homesick for a home I've never slept in,” Doyle said. He was also lovesick, and he was made more feverish by the sound of her voice.
“I love you,” she said.
“Likewise.”
Say it.”
“I've got an audience,” Doyle said, looking at Colin. The boy was listening, rapt, as if he could hear both sides of the conversation.
“Colin won't be embarrassed by that,” she said. “Love doesn't embarrass him at all.”
“Okay,” he said. “I love you.”
Colin grinned and hugged himself.
“Call tomorrow night.”
“As scheduled,” he promised.
“Say goodnight to Colin for me.”
“I will.”
“Goodbye, darling.”
“Goodbye, Courtney.”
He missed her so profoundly that breaking the connection was a little bit like drawing a sharp knife across his own flesh.
When George Leland pulled the rented Chevrolet van into the macadamed lot in front of the Lazy Time Motel the NO VACANCY sign was on, large
green neon letters. He was not disturbed by that, for he had never intended to stay there. He was not as flush as Alex Doyle, not as lucky; he was unable to afford even the Lazy Time's prices. He just drove slowly along the short arm of the L, then down the long branch until he saw the Thunderbird.
He smiled, satisfied with himself. “Just like in the address book,” he said. “Doyle, you're nothing if not efficient.”
He drove away from the Lazy Time, then, before he might be seen. He went on down the road, past two dozen other motels, some of them like the Lazy Time and some much fancier. At last he came to a shabby wooden motel with a small vacancy sign out front and a spare, undecorated neon sign at the entrance: DREAMLAND. It looked like an eight dollar-a-night dive. He drove in and parked near the office.
He rolled down the window and turned the rear-view mirror so that he could get a look at himself. As he took his comb from his pocket, he noticed several dark streaks on his face. He rubbed at the stains, sniffed the residue, then put it on his tongue. Blood. Surprised, he opened the door and examined himself in the glow of the ceiling light. Dried blood was spattered over his trousers and smeared all over his short-sleeved shirt. The soft white hairs on his left arm were now stiff and purple with dried blood.
Where had it come from?
And when?
He knew he had not hurt himself, yet he could not understand whose blood this was if not his own. Thinking about it, he sensed the approach of one of his fierce migraine headaches. Then, in the back of his mind, something ugly stirred and turned over heavily; and although he still could not recall whose blood had been spilled on him, he knew that he dared not attempt to rent a room for the night while he was wearing the stuff.
Praying that his headache would hold off for a while, he readjusted the mirror, closed the door, started the truck, and drove away from the motel. He went half a mile down 78 the road and parked in front of an abandoned service station. He opened his suitcase and took out a change of clothes. He undressed, washed his face and hands with paper tissues and his own spittle, then put on the clean clothes.