She was leaning against her mother for warmth, her head pulled
turtlelike into the collar of her coat.
Marty had the heater turned up as high as it would go. The interior of
the BMW should have been suffocatingly hot. It wasn’t.
Even Paige was cold. She said, “Maybe we should go back and try to talk
sense to them anyway.”
Marty was adamant. “Honey, no, we can’t. Think about it.
They’ll sure as hell take the Beretta. I shot at the guy with it.
From their point of view, one way or another, there’s been a crime, and
the gun was used in the commission of it. Either somebody really
attempted to kidnap the girls, and I tried to kill him. Or it’s still
all a hoax to sell books, get me higher on the bestseller list. Maybe I
hired a friend to drive the Buick, shot a bunch of blanks at him,
induced my own kids to lie, now I’m filing another false police report.”
“After all this, Lowbock won’t still be pushing that ridiculous theory.”
“Won’t he? The hell he won’t.”
“Marty, he can’t.”
He sighed. “Okay, all right, maybe he won’t, probably he won’t.”
Paige said, “He’ll realize that something a lot more serious is going
on–”
“But he won’t believe my story either, which I’ve got to admit sounds
nuttier than a giant-size can of Planters finest. And if you’d read the
piece in People . . . Anyway, he’ll take the Beretta. What if he
discovers the shotgun in the trunk?”
“There’s no reason for him to take that.”
“He might find an excuse. Listen, Paige, Lowbock’s not going to change
his mind about me that easily, not just because the kids tell him it’s
all true. He’ll still be a lot more suspicious of me than of any guy in
a Buick he’s never seen. If he takes both guns, we’re defense less.
Suppose the cops leave, then this bastard, this look-alike, he walks
into the house two minutes later, when we don’t have anything to protect
ourselves.”
“If the police still don’t believe it, if they won’t give us protection,
then we won’t stay at the house.”
“No, Paige, I literally mean what if the bastard walks in two minutes
after the cops leave, doesn’t even give us a chance to clear out?”
“He’s not likely to risk–”
“Oh, yes, he is! Yes, he is. He came back almost immediately after the
cops left the first time–didn’t he? just boldly walked up to the
Delorios’ front door and rang the damn bell.
He seems to thrive on risk. I wouldn’t put it past the bastard to break
in on us while the cops were still there, shoot everyone in sight. He’s
crazy, this whole situation is crazy, and I don’t want to bet my life or
yours or the kids’ lives on what the creep is going to do next.”
Paige knew he was right.
However, it was difficult, even painful, to accept that their situation
was so dire as to place them beyond the help of the law. If they
couldn’t receive official assistance and protection, then the government
had failed them in its most basic duty, to provide civil order through
the fair but strict enforcement of a criminal code. In spite of the
complex machine in which they rode, in spite of the modern highway on
which they traveled and the sprawl of suburban lights that covered most
of the southern California hills and vales, this failure meant they were
not living in a civilized world. The shopping malls, elaborate transit
systems, glittering centers for the performing arts, sports arenas,
imposing government buildings, multiplex movie theaters, office towers,
sophisticated French restaurants, churches, museums, parks,
universities, and nuclear power plants amounted to nothing but an
elaborate facade of civilization, tissue-thin for all its apparent
solidity, and in truth they were living in a high-tech anarchy,
sustained by hope and self-delusion.
The steady hum of the car tires gave birth in her to a mounting dread, a
mood of impending calamity. It was such a common sound, hard rubber
tread spinning at high speed over blacktop, merely a part of the
quotidian music of daily life, but suddenly it was as ominous as the