reassuringly to her daughter, stroked her hair, held her tight.
The air-conditioning had been off ever since the killers had parked and
gone to check the wrecked Camaro. The bedroom was growing hotter by the
second, and it stank. He smelled stale beer, sweat, what might have
been the lingering odor of dried blood rising from dark maroon stains on
the carpet, and other foul odors that he dared not even try to identify.
“Come on, let’s get out of here.”
Lisa did not appear to be a strong woman, but she lifted her daughter as
effortlessly as she would have lifted a pillow. With the girl cradled
in her arms, she moved toward the door.
“Don’t let her look to the left when you go out,” he said. “One of
them’s dead just beside the door. It isn’t pretty.”
Lisa nodded once, with evident gratitude for the warning.
As he started to follow her through the doorway, he saw the contents of
the narrow closet that had come open when he’d backed against it:
shelves of homemade videotapes. On the spines were titles hand-printed
on strips of white adhesive tape. Names. The titles were all names.
CINDY. TIFFANY.
Joey. Cissy. TOMMY. KEVIN. Two were labeled SALLY. Three were
labeled WENDY. More names. Maybe thirty in all. He knew what he was
looking att, but he didn’t want to believe it. Memories of savagery.
Mementoes of perversion. Victims.
The bitter blackness welled higher in him.
He followed Lisa through the motor home to the door, and out into the
blazing desert sun.
Lisa stood in the white-gold sunshine on the shoulder of the highway
behind the motor home. Her daughter stood at her side, clung to her.
Light had an affinity for them: it slipped in scintillant currents
through their flaxen hair, accented the color of their eyes much the way
a jeweler display lamp enhanced the beauty of emeralds on velvet, and
lent an a most mystical luminosity to their skin. Looking at them, it
was difficult to believe that the light around them was not within them,
too, and that darkness had entered their lives and filled them as
completely as night filled the world in the wake of dusk.
Jim could barely endure their presence. Each time he glanced at then he
thought of the dead man in the station wagon, and sympathetic grief
twisted through him, as painful as any physical illness he had ever know
Using a key that he found on a ring with the motor home ignition key he
unlocked the iron rack that held the Harley-Davidson.
It was a FXRS-SP with a 1340cc. single-carburetor, two-valve, push-rod
V-tw with a five-speed transmission that powered the rear wheel through
a toothed belt instead of a greasy chain. He’d ridden fancier and more
powerful machines. This one was standard, about as plain as a Harley
could get. But all he wanted from the bike was speed and easy handling;
and if it was in good repair, the SP would provide him with both.
Lisa spoke worriedly to him as he unracked the Harley and looked over.
“Three of us can’t ride out of here on that.”
“No,” he said. “Just me.”
“Please don’t leave us alone.”
“Someone’ll stop for you before I go.”
A car approached. The three occupants gawked at them. The driver put
on more speed.
“None of them stop,” she said miserably.
“Someone will. I’ll wait until they do.”
She was silent a moment. Then: “I don’t want to get into a car with
strangers.”
“We’ll see who stops.”
She shook her head violently.
He said, “I’ll know if they’re trustworthy”
“I don’t. . .” Her voice broke. She hesitated, regained control.
“I don’t trust anyone.”
“There are good people in the world. In fact, most of them are good.
Anyway, when they stop, I’ll know if they’re okay.”
“How? How in God’s name can you know?”
“I’ll know.” But he could not explain the how of it any more than he
could explain how he had known that she and her daughter needed him out
here in this seared and blistered wasteland.
He straddled the Harley and pressed the starter button. The engine