listened to a recorded message to the effect that service had been
temporarily interrupted.
Wind moaned and shrieked against the store’s plate-glass windows, and
rain drummed furiously on the roofwhich was all the explanation he
required for AT&T’s troubles.
He was scared. He had been badly worried ever since finding the ax
propped against the refrigerator in the kitchen of Eric’s mountain
cabin. But now his fear was escalating by the moment because he began
to feel that everything was going wrong for him, that luck had turned
entirely against him. The encounter with Sharp, the disastrous change
in the weather, his inability to reach Whit Gavis when the phones had
been working, now the trouble with the lines to Vegas, made it seem as
if the universe was, indeed, not accidental but was a machine with dark
and frightful purpose, and that the gods in charge of it were conspiring
to make certain he would never again see Rachael alive.
In spite of his fear, frustration, and eagerness to hit the road again,
he paused long enough to grab a few things to eat in the car. He’d had
nothing since breakfast in Palm Springs, and he was famished.
The clerk behind the counter-a blue-jeaned, middleaged woman with
sun-bleached hair, her brown skin toughened by too many years on the
desert-sold him three candy bars, a few bags of peanuts, and a six-pack
of Pepsi. When Ben asked her about the phones, she said, “I hear tell
there’s been flash flooding east of here, out near Cal Neva, and worse
around Stateline. Undermined a few telephone poles, brought down the
lines. Word is, it’ll be repaired in a couple of hours.”
l never knew it rained this hard in the desert,” he said as she gave him
change.
“Don’t rain-really rain, I mean-but maybe three times a year. Though
when we do get a storm, it sometimes comes down like God is breaking his
promise about the fire next time ,an,d figures to wipe us out with a
great flood like before.
The stolen Merkur was parked half a dozen steps beyond the exit from the
store, but Ben was soaked again during the few seconds needed to get to
the car.
Inside, he popped open a can of Pepsi, took a long swallow, braced the
can between his thighs, peeled the wrapper off a candy bar, started the
engine, and drove back toward the interstate.
Regardless of how terrible the weather got, he would have to push toward
Vegas at the highest possible speed, seventy or eighty miles an hour,
faster if he could manage it, even though the chances were very high
that, sooner or later, he would lose control of the car on the
rain-greased highway. His inability to reach Whit Gavis had left him
with no alternative.
Ascending the entrance ramp to 1-15, the car coughed once and shuddered,
but then it surged ahead without further hesitation. For a minute,
heading east-northeast toward Nevada, Ben listened intently to the
engine and glanced repeatedly at the dashboard, expecting to see a
warning light blink on. But the engine purred, and the warning lights
remained off, and none of the dials or gauges indicated trouble, so he
relaxed slightly. He munched on his candy bar and gradually put the
Merkur up to seventy, carefully testing its responsiveness on the
treacherously wet pavement.
Anson Sharp was awake and refreshed by 7,10 Tuesday evening. From his
motel room in Palm Springs, with the background sound of hard rain on
the roof and water gurgling through a downspout near his window, he
called subordinates at several places throughout southern California.
From Dirk Cringer, an agent at the case-operation headquarters in Orange
County, Sharp learned that Julio Verdad and Reese Hagerstrom had not
dropped out of the Leben investigation as they were supposed to have
done. Given their well-earned reputation as bulldog cops who were
reluctant to quit even hopeless cases, Sharp had ordered both of their
personal cars fitted with hidden transmitters last night and had
assigned men to follow them electronically, at a distance from which
Verdad and Hagerstrom would not spot a tail. That precaution had paid
off, for this afternoon they had visited UCI to meet with Dr. Easton