The gray road seemed like a tunnel now, a trap with one exit and no way
to turn back.
Then ahead, another rest area loomed on the right, shielded from the
highway by a double row of pines. Leland braked and drove in there,
went up a slight incline. He parked on the square graveled plateau,
facing the highway so that he could watch the traffic between the thick
brown trunks of the trees.
All he had to do now was wait and watch the road. When the Thunderbird
passed, he could fall in behind it, catch up to it in two or three
minutes. He was enormously relieved.
The trooper was getting out of the patrol car even before George Leland
realized that he had driven into the rest area. Leland had been
watching the highway beyond the pines for a full five minutes, and he
must have been somewhat mesmerized by the bright sunshine and the spurts
of westbound traffic. One moment he thought he was alone-and the next
moment he was aware of the Ohio State Police patrol car angled in beside
the van. Half in the shadows cast by the pines and half in the slanting
sunlight, it looked unreal. The dome light was flashing, though the
siren had not been used. The trooper who got out was in his early
thirties, sober and hard-jawed. He was the same man who had been taking
his lunch in Breen’s, the one who had called to Leland outside the
little diner.
Leland remembered some of the reasons for his previous panic.
Again the world appeared to close in on him. Darkness crept up at the
corners of his vision, inward-spreading ink stains. He felt bottled up
and vulnerable, an easy target for those who meant him harm. These
days everyone seemed to be after him. He was always running.
He rolled down his window as the cop approached.
“You alone?” the lieutenant asked, stopping far enough from the van to
be out of the way of the door if Leland should suddenly swing it open.
He had one hand on the butt of his holstered revolver.
“Alone?” Leland asked. ,Yes, sir. “Why didn’t you stop when I called
to you?”
“Called to me?”
“At the restaurant,” the lieutenant said, his voice crisp and older than
his smooth face.
Leland looked perplexed. “I didn’t see you.
You called me?”
“Twice. ”
“I’m sorry,” Leland said. “I didn’t hear.” He frowned. “Did I do
something wrong? I’m usually a careful driver.”
The trooper watched him carefully for a moment, searched his blue eyes,
took in his sun-darkened face and neatly trimmed hair, then relaxed. He
let his hand drop from the gun. He took the last few steps to the van.
“It wasn’t your driving,” he said. “Just the same, I’d like to have a
look at your license and the rental papers for the truck.”
“Sure,” Leland said. “Always glad to cooperate.”
Moving as if he were reaching for his wallet, he took the .32-caliber
pistol out of the tissue box on the seat beside him. In one fluid
movement he raised it to the window and centered the barrel on the
trooper’s face and pulled the trigger. The single shot echoed in the
copse of pines behind the van and slapped sharply across the highway out
front.
Leland sat and watched the traffic on the throughway for several minutes
before he realized that he ought to conceal the corpse. Any minute
someone could pull into the rest area, see the cop sprawled between the
patrol car and the van, and run for help. These days everyone was on
his tail. He had stayed alive this long only by keeping one step ahead
of them. Now was no time to let his thinking get fuzzy.
He pushed open the van door and got out.
The trooper was lying face down in the gravel, dark blood pooled around
his head. He looked much smaller now, almost like a child.
During the past year, when he sensed the conspiracy working against him,
Leland had wondered whether he would be able to kill to protect himself.
He knew it would come to that. Kill or be killed.