black moods of his made her uneasy.
She was still scared of him. When he said “Go,” she went. She knew
better than to argue. The thoughtless bitch had betrayed him by
marrying this Doyle, and now she would do anything to stay in his good
graces.
He smiled at the darkening highway.
In the last light of day, with the land drenched in almost eerie orange
radiance, Ohio State Police officer Eric lames Coffey drove off
Interstate 70 into a picnic and rest area on the right-hand side of the
road. He went up the slight incline to the pineshielded clearing, and
he saw the empty squad car at once. The dome light still swiveled,
transmitting a red pulse to the trees on all sides.
Since four o’clock, when Lieutenant Richard Pulham had been one hour
late returning his cruiser to the division garage at the end of his
shift, more than twenty of his fellow troopers had been scouring the
Interstate and all the secondary access roads leading to and from it.
And now Coffey had found the car-identified it by the numerals on the
front door-at the extreme west end of Lieutenant Pulham’s patrol
circuit.
Coffey wished he had not been the one to find it, for he suspected what
he would discover. A dead cop. So far as Coffey could see, there was
no other possibility.
He picked up the microphone, thumbed the button. “This is 166, Coffey.
I’ve found our cruiser.” He repeated the message and gave his position
to the dispatcher. His voice was thick and quavery.
Reluctantly he shut off the engine and got out of his own car.
The evening air was chilly. A wind had sprung up from the northwest.
“Lieutenant Pulham! Rich Pulham! ” he shouted. The name came back to
him in whispered imitations of his own voice. He received no other
answer.
Resignedly Coffey went to Pulham’s cruiser, bent and stared into the
passenger’s window. With the sun down, the car was full of shadows.
He opened the door. The interior light came on, weak and insufficient
because the dome flasher had nearly drained the battery.
Still, dim as it was, it illuminated the blackening blood and the body
jammed rudely into the space before the front seat.
“Bastards,” Coffey said quietly. “Bastards, bastards, bastards.”
His voice rose with each repetition. “Cop killers,” he told the
onrushing darkness. “We’ll get the sons of bitches.”
. . .
Their room at the Lazy Time Motel was large and comfortable. The walls
were an off-white color, the ceiling a couple of feet higher than it
would be in any motel built since the end of the fifties. The furniture
was heavy and utilitarian, though not spartan by any means.
The two easy chairs were well padded and upholstered, and the desk, if
surfaced with plastic, gave plenty of knee room and working space. The
two double beds were firm, the sheets crisp and redolent of soap and
softener. The scarred mahogany nightstand between the beds held a
Gideon Bible and a telephone.
Doyle and Colin sat on separate beds, facing each other across the
narrow walk space between them. By mutual agreement, Colin was the
first to talk to his sister. He held the receiver in both hands. His
thick eyeglasses had slipped down his nose and now rested precariously
on the very tip of it, though the boy did not seem to notice. “We were
followed all the way from Philadelphia! ” he told Courtney as soon as
she came on the line.
Alex grimaced.
“A man in a Chevrolet van,” Colin said. “No. We couldn’t get a look at
him. He was much too smart for that.” He told her all about their
imaginary FBI man. When he tired of that, he told her how he had won
a dollar from Doyle. He listened to her for a moment, laughed. “I
tried, but he wouldn’t make any more bets.”
Listening to the boy’s half of the conversation, Doyle was momentarily
jealous of the warm, intimate relationship between Courtney and Colin.
They were entirely at ease with each other, and neither one needed to
pretend-or disguise-his love. Then the envy passed as Doyle realized