It was an indefinable something that led him on, maybe psychic
vibrations, a disturbance in the ether made by the killer’s passage just
as a shark’s fin would carve a trough in the surface of the sea,
although the ether had not repaired itself with the alacrity of water.
“He considered going back for her, knew it was hopeless, so he drove on,
Hatch said, aware that his voice had become low and slightly raspy, as
if he were recounting secrets that were painful to reveal.
“Then I walked into the kitchen, and you were making an odd choking,
gasping sound,” Lindsey said. “Gripping the edge of the counter tight
enough to crack the granite. I thought you were having a heart attack-”
“Drove very fast,” Hatch said, accelerating only slightly himself,
“seventy, eIghty, even faster, anxious to get away before the traffic
behind him encountered the body.” remembering that he was not merely
speculating on what the killer had done, Lindsey said, “You’re
remembering more than you dreamed, past the point when I came into the
kitchen and woke you.”
“Not remembering,” he said huskily.
what?”
“Sensing…”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Somehow.” He simply could not explain it better than that. “Some how,”
he whispered, and he followed the ribbon of pavement across that largely
flat expanse of land, which seemed to darken in spite of the bright
morning sun, as if the killer cast a shadow vastly larger than himself,
a shadow that lingered behind him even hours after he had gone. “Eighty
… eighty-five… almost ninety miles an hour… able to see only a
hundred feet ahead.” If anything had been there in the fog, the killer
would have crashed into it with cataclysmic force. “He didn’t take the
first exit, wanted to get farther away than that . .
.
kept going going….”
He almost didn’t slow down in time to make the exit for State Route 133,
which became the canyon road into Laguna Beach. At the last moment he
hit the brakes too hard and whipped the wheel to the right.
The Mitsubishi slid as they departed the interstate, but he decreased
speed and Immediately regained full control.
“He got off here?” Lindsey asked.
“Yes.”
Hatch followed the new road to the right.
“Did he go into Laguna?”
“I… don’t think so.
He braked to a complete halt at a crossroads marked by a stop sign. He
pulled onto the shoulder. Open country lay ahead, hills dressed in
crisp brown grass. If he went straight through the crossroads, he’d be
heading into Laguna Canyon, where developers had not yet managed to raze
the wilderness and erect more tract homes. Miles of brushland and
scattered oaks Banked the canyon route all the way into Laguna Beach.
The killer also might have turned left or right. Hatch looked in each
direction, searching for… for whatever invisible signs had guided him
that far.
After a moment, Lindsey said, “You don’t know where he went from here?”
“Hideaway.”
“Huh?”
Hatch blinked, not sure why he had chosen that word. “He went back to
his hideaway… into the ground….”
“Ground?” Lindsey asked. With puzzlement she surveyed the sere hills.
….. into the darkness…”
“You mean he went underground somewhere?”
….. cool, cool silence…”
Hatch sat for a while, staring at the crossroads as a few cars came and
went. He had reached the end of the trail. The killer was not there;
he knew that much, but he did not know where the man had gone. Nothing
more came to him-except, strangely, the sweet chocolate taste of Oreo
cookies, as intense as if he had just bitten into one.
9
At The Cottage in Laguna Beach, they had a late breakfast of homefries,
eggs, bacon, and buttered toast. Since he had died and been
resuscitated, Hatch didn’t worry about things like his cholesterol count
or the longterm effects of passive inhalation of other people’s
cigarette smoke. He supposed the day would come when little risks would
seem big again, whereupon he would return to a diet high in fruits and
vegetables, scowl at smokers who blew their filth his way, and open a
bottle of fine wine with a mixture of delight and a grim awareness of