`How the hell did you find me?’ he asked.
I shrugged at him again.
`Easy,’ I said. `I’ve had a lot of practice. I’ve found a lot of guys. Spent years picking up deserters for the army.’
I was threading through the grids, working my way back to the highway. I could see the line of lights streaming west, but the on-ramp was like the prize at the centre of a maze. I was unwinding the same jagged spiral I’d been forced around on the way in.
`But how did you do it?’ he said. `I could have been anywhere.’
`No, you couldn’t,’ I said. `That was the exact point. That’s what made it easy. You had no credit cards, no driver’s licence, no ID. All you had was cash. So you weren’t using planes or rental cars. You were stuck with the bus.’
I found the on-ramp. Concentrated on the lanechange and nudged the wheel. Accelerated up the ramp and merged with the flow back toward Atlanta.
`That gave me a start,’ I said to him. `Then I put myself in your shoes, psychologically. You were
terrified for your family. So I figured you’d circle around Margrave at a distance. You’d want to feel you were still connected, consciously or subconsciously. You took the taxi up to the Atlanta bus depot, right?’
`Right,’ he said. `First bus out of there was to Memphis, but I waited for the next one. Memphis was too far. I didn’t want to go that far away.’
`That’s what made it easy,’ I said. `You were circling Margrave. Not too close, not too far. And counterclockwise. Give people a free choice, they always go counterclockwise. It’s a universal truth, Hubble. All I had to do was to count the days and study the map and predict the hop you’d take each time. I figure Monday you were in Birmingham, Alabama. Tuesday was Montgomery, Wednesday was Columbus. I had a problem with Thursday. I gambled on Macon, but I thought it was maybe too close to Margrave.’
He nodded.
`Thursday was a nightmare,’ he said. `I was in Macon, some terrible dive, didn’t sleep a wink.’
`So Friday morning you came out here to Augusta,’ I said. `My other big gamble was you stayed here two nights. I figured you were shaken up after Macon, maybe running out of energy. I really wasn’t sure. I nearly went up to Greenville tonight, up in South Carolina. But I guessed right.’
Hubble went quiet. He’d thought he’d been invisible, but he’d been circling Margrave like a beacon flashing away in the night sky.
`But I used a false name,’ he said. Defiantly.
`You used five false names,’ I said. `Five nights, five hotels, five names. The fifth name was the same as the first name, right?’
He was amazed. He thought back and nodded.
`How the hell did you know that?’ he said again.
`I’ve hunted a lot of guys,’ I said. `And I knew a little about you.’
‘Knew what?’ he said.
`You’re a Beatles guy,’ I said. `You told me about visiting the Dakota building and going to Liverpool in England. You’ve got just about every Beatles CD ever made in your den. So the first night, you were at some hotel desk and you signed Paul Lennon, right?’
`Right,’ he said.
`Not John Lennon,’ I said. `People usually stick with their own first name. I don’t know why, but they usually do. So you were Paul Lennon. Tuesday, you were Paul McCartney. Wednesday, you were Paul Harrison. Thursday, you were Paul Starr. Friday in Augusta, you started over again with Paul Lennon, right?’
`Right,’ he said. `But there’s a million hotels in Augusta. Conventions, golf. How the hell did you know where to look?’
`I thought about it,’ I said. `You got in Friday, late morning, coming in from the west. Guy like you walks back the way he’s already seen. Feels safer that way. You’d been on the bus four hours, you were cramped up, you wanted the air, so you walked a spell, maybe a quarter-mile. Then you got panicky and dived off the main drag a block or two. So I had a pretty small target area. Eighteen places. You were in number fifteen.’