the layered shadows on the ceiling.
He is not sleepy. His mind is restless, and his thoughts jump from
subject to subject with such unnerving rapidity that his hyperactive
mental state soon translates into physical agitation. He fidgets,
pulling at the sheets, readjusting blankets, pillows.
Out on the interstate highway, large trucks roll ceaselessly toward far
destinations. The singing of their tires, the grumble of their engines,
and the whoosh of the air displaced by their passage form a background
white noise that is usually soothing. He has often been lulled to sleep
by this Gypsy music of the open road.
Tonight, however, a strange thing happens. For reasons he can’t
understand, this familiar mosaic of sound isn’t a lullaby but a siren
song. He cannot resist it.
He gets out of bed and crosses the dark room to the only window. He has
an obscure night view of a weedy hillside and above it a slab of
sky–like the halves of an abstract painting. Atop the slope,
separating sky and hill, the sturdy pickets of a highway guardrail are
flickeringly illuminated by passing headlights.
He stares up, half in a trance, straining for glimpses of the westbound
vehicles.
Usually melancholy, the highway cantata is now enticing, calling him,
making a mysterious promise which he does not understand but which he
feels compelled to explore.
He dresses, and packs his clothes.
Outside, the motor courtyard and walkways are deserted.
Faced toward the rooms, cars wait for morning travel. In a nearby
vending-machine alcove, a soft-drink dispenser clicks-clinks as if
conducting repairs upon itself. The killer feels as if he is the only
living creature in a world now run by–and for the benefit of-machines.
Moments later, he is on Interstate 70, heading toward Topeka, the pistol
on the seat beside him but covered with a motel towel.
Something west of Kansas City calls him. He doesn’t know what it is,
but he feels inexorably drawn westward in the way that iron is pulled
toward a magnet.
Strange as it might be, none of this alarms him, and he accedes to this
compulsion to drive west. After all, for as long as he can remember, he
has gone places without knowing the purpose of his trip until he has
reached his destination, and he has killed people with no clue as to why
they have to die or for whom the killing is done.
He is certain, however, that this sudden departure from Kansas City is
not expected of him. He is supposed to stay at the motel until morning
and catch an early flight out to . . . Seattle.
Perhaps in Seattle he would have received instructions from the bosses
he cannot recall. But he will never know what might have happened
because Seattle is now stricken from his itinerary.
He wonders how much time will pass before his superiors-whatever their
names and identities–will realize that he has gone renegade. When will
they start looking for him, and how will they ever find him if he is no
longer operating within his program?
At two o’clock in the morning, traffic is light on Interstate 70, mostly
trucks, and he speeds across Kansas in advance of some of the big rigs
and in the blustery wakes of others, remembering a movie about Dorothy
and her dog Toto and a tornado that plucked them out of that flat
farmland and dropped them in a far stranger place.
With both Kansas City, Missouri, and Kansas City, Kansas, behind him,
the killer realizes he’s muttering to himself, “I need, I need.” This
time he feels close to a revelation that will identify the precise
nature of his longing.
“I need . . . to be . . . I need to be . . . I need to be . ..”
As the suburbs and finally the dark prairie flash past on both sides,
excitement builds steadily in him. He trembles on the brink of an
insight that, he senses, will change his life.
“I need to be . . . to be . . . I need to be someone.” At once, he
understands the meaning of what he has said. By “to be someone,” he