Avenue in the town of Orange, in a pleasant house that Reese had rather
substantially remodeled himself during his days off. Julio had an
apartment in an attractive Spanish-style complex just a block off Fourth
Street, way out at the east end of Santa Ana.
Both of them would be going home to cold and lonely beds. Julio’s wife
had died of cancer seven years ago.
Reese’s wife, Esther’s mother, had been shot and killed during the same
incident in which he had almost lost his little girl, so he had been a
widower five years, only two less than Julio.
On the 57 Freeway, shooting south toward Orange and Santa Ana, Reese
said, “And if you can’t sleep?”
“I’ll go into the office, nose around, try to see if anyone knows
anything about this Sharp and why he’s so damned hot to run the show.
Maybe ask around here and there about Dr. Eric Leben, too.”
“What’re we going to do exactly when you pick me up at ten in the
morning?”
“I don’t know yet,” Julio said. “But I’ll have figured out something by
then.”
They took Sarah Kiel to the hospital in the stolen gray Subarn.
Rachael arranged to pay the hospital bills, left a ten-thousand-dollar
check with Sarah, called the girl’s parents in Kansas, then left the
hospital with Ben and went looking for a suitable place to hole up for
the rest of the night.
By 3,35 Tuesday morning, grainy-eyed and exhausted, they found a large
motel on Palm Canyon Drive with an all-night desk clerk. Their room had
orange and white drapes that almost made Ben’s eyes bleed, and Rachael
said the bedspread pattern looked like yak puke, but the shower and
air-conditioning worked, and the two queen-size beds had firm
mattresses, and the unit was at the back of the complex, away from the
street, where they could expect quiet even after the town came alive in
the morning, so it wasn’t exactly hell on earth.
Leaving Rachael alone for ten minutes, Ben drove the stolen Subarn out
the motel’s rear exit, left it in a supermarket parking lot several
blocks away, and returned on foot. Both going and coming, he avoided
passing the windows of the motel office and therefore did not stir the
curiosity of the night clerk. Tomorrow, with the need for wheels less
urgent, they could take time to rent a car.
In his absence, Rachael had visited the ice-maker and the soda-vending
machine. A plastic bucket brimming with ice cubes stood on the small
table by the window, plus cans of Diet Coke and regular Coke and A&W
Root Beer and Orange Crush.
She said, “I thought you might be thirsty.”
He was suddenly aware that they were smack in the middle of the desert
and that they had been moving in a sweat for hours. Standing, he drank
an Orange Crush in two swallows, finished a root beer nearly as fast,
then sat down and popped the tab on a Diet Coke. “Even with the hump,
how do camels do it?”
As if dropping under an immense weight, she sat down on the other side
of the table, opened a Coke, and said, “Well?”
“Well what?”
“Aren’t you going to ask?”
He yawned, not out of perversity, and not because he wanted to irritate
her, but because at that moment the prospect of sleep was more appealing
than finally learning the truth of her circumstances. He said, “Ask
what?”
“The same questions you’ve been asking all night.”
“You made it clear you wouldn’t give answers.”
“Well, now I will. Now there’s no keeping you out of it.”
She ldoked so sad that Ben felt a cold premonition of death in his bones
and wondered if he had, indeed, been foolish to involve himself even to
help the woman he loved. She was looking at him as if he were already
dead-as if they were both dead.
“So if you’re ready to tell me,” he said, “then I don’t need to ask
questions.”
“You’re going to have to keep an open mind. What I’m about to tell you
might seem unbelievable . . damn strange.”
He sipped the Diet Coke and said, “You mean about Eric dying and coming