Dana Point for the Thanksgiving-weekend brunch. It was a place they
went only on special occasions.
As always, Emily and Charlotte were enchanted by the lushly landscaped
grounds, beautiful public rooms, and impeccable staff in crisp uniforms.
In their best dresses, with ribbons in their hair, the girls had great
fun playing at being cultured young ladies–almost as much fun as
raiding the dessert buffet twice each.
In the afternoon, because it was unseasonably warm, they changed clothes
and visited Irvine Park. They walked the picturesque trails, fed the
ducks in the pond, and toured the small zoo.
Charlotte loved the zoo because the animals were, like her menagerie at
home, kept in enclosures where they were safe from harm.
There were no exotic specimens–all the animals were indigenous to the
region–but in her typical exuberance, Charlotte found each to be the
most interesting and cutest creature she had ever seen.
Emily got into a staring contest with a wolf. Large, amber-eyed, with a
lustrous silver-gray coat, the predator met and intensely held the
girl’s gaze from his side of a chain-link fence.
“If you look away first,” Emily calmly and somberly informed them, “then
a wolf will just eat you all up.”
The confrontation went on so long that Paige became uneasy in spite of
the sturdy fence. Then the wolf lowered his head, sniffed the ground,
yawned elaborately to show he had not been intimidated but had merely
lost interest, and sauntered away.
“If he couldn’t get the three little pigs with all his huffing and
puffing,” Emily said, “then I knew he couldn’t get me, ’cause I’m
smarter than pigs.”
She was referring to the Disney cartoon, the only version of the fairy
tale with which she was familiar.
Paige resolved never to let her read the Brothers Grimm version, which
was about seven little goats instead of three pigs. The wolf swallowed
six of them whole. They were saved from digestion at the last minute
when their mother cut open the wolf’s belly to pull them from his
steaming innards.
Paige glanced back at the wolf as they walked away. It was watching
Emily again.
Sunday is a full day for the killer.
In Wichita, just before dawn, he gets off the turnpike. In another
residential neighborhood rather like the one in Topeka, he swaps the
license plates on the Honda for those on a Chevy, making his stolen
vehicle more difficult to locate.
Shortly after nine Sunday morning he arrives in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma,
where he stops long enough to fill the tank with gasoline.
A shopping mall is across the road from the service station. In one
corner of the huge deserted parking lot stands an unmanned Goodwill
Industries collection box, as large as a garden shed.
After tanking up, he leaves his suitcases and their contents with
Goodwill.
He keeps only the clothes he’s wearing and the pistol.
During the night, on the highway, he had time to think about his
peculiar existence and to wonder if he might be carrying a compact
transmitter that would help his superiors locate him. Perhaps they
anticipated that one day he would go renegade on them.
He knows that a moderately powerful transmitter, operating off a tiny
battery, can be hidden in an extremely small space. Such as the walls
of a suitcase.
As he turns directly west on Interstate 40, a coal-dark sludge of clouds
seeps across the sky. Forty minutes later, when the rain comes, it is
molten silver, and it instantly washes all of the color out of the vast
empty land that flanks the highway. The world is twenty, forty, a
hundred shades of gray, without even lightning to relieve the oppressive
dreariness.
The monochromatic landscape provides no distraction, so he has time to
worry further about the faceless hunters who might be close behind him.
Is it paranoid to wonder if a transmitter could be woven into his
clothing? He doubts it could be concealed in the material of his pants,
shirt, sweater, underwear, or socks without being detectable by its very
weight or upon casual inspection.
Which leaves his shoes and leather jacket.
He rules out the pistol. They wouldn’t build anything into the P7 that