Nine The Rockies Motor Hotel, on the eastern edge of Denver, was an
enormous complex in the shape of a two-story tick-tack-toe grid, with
one hundred rooms in each of its four long wings. Despite its
size-nearly two miles of concrete-floored, open-air, metal-roofed
corridors-the place seemed small, for it stood in the architectural
shadow of the city’s high-rise buildings and, more impressively, in view
of the magnificent snowcapped Rocky Mountains which loomed up to the
west and south. During the day the high country sun gleamed on the
ranks of precisely duplicated windows and on the steel rain spouting,
transformed the tops of the long walkway awnings into corrugated
mirrors, shimmered on the Olympic swimming pool in the enclosed center
of the courtyard grid. At night warm orange lamps glowed behind the
curtains in most of the rooms, and there were also lights in the pool
and around the pool; and the front of the motel was a blaze of yellow,
white, and red lights which were there chiefly to draw attention to the
office, lobby, restaurant, and Big Rockies Cocktail Lounge.
At ten o’clock Wednesday night, however, the motel was dim and drab.
Although all the usual lights were burning, they could not cast back the
driving gray rain and the thin night mist which carried a reminder of
the winter chill that had not been long gone from the city.
The cold rain bounced on the macadam parking lot, thundered on the rows
of cars, and pattered against the sheetglass walls of the lobby and
restaurant. It drummed insistently on the roofs and on the rippled
awnings that covered the promenades on every wing, a pleasant sound
which lulled most of the overnight guests into a quick, deep sleep.
The rain chattered noisily into the swimming pool and puddled at the
base of the spruce trees and other evergreens which dotted the
well-landscaped grounds. It sloshed out of the rain spouting and
swirled along curb gutters, and made momentary lakes around drainage
grills. The mist reached what the rain could not, heading on
sheltered windows and on the slick red enamel of the numbered room
doors.
In Room 318, Alex Doyle sat on the edge of one of the twin beds and
listened both to the rain on the roof and to Colin talking on the
telephone to Courtney.
The boy did not mention the stranger in the rented van. The man had not
caught up to them again during the long afternoon. And he had no way of
knowing where they were spending the night . . . Even if this game had
begun to intrigue him enough to send him out of his way in order to keep
it going, he would be discouraged by the bad weather; he would not be
searching all the motels along the Interstate in hopes of locating the
Thunderbird-not tonight, not in the rain. There was no need to worry
Courtney with the details of a danger which had passed and which, Doyle
felt now, had never been much of a danger to begin with.
Colin finished and handed the receiver to Doyle “How did you like
Kansas?” she asked when he said hello.
“It was an education,” Doyle said.
“With Colin as your teacher.”
“That sums it up.
“Alex, is anything wrong with him?”
“Colin?
“Yes.
“Nothing’s wrong. Why do you ask?”
She hesitated. The open line hissed softly between them like a subdued
echo of the cold rain thundering across the motel roof. “Well . . .
He’s not as exuberant as usual.”
“Even Colin gets tired,” Doyle said, winking at the boy.
Colin nodded grimly. He knew what his sister was asking and what Alex
was trying to avoid telling her. When he had spoken to her, Colin had
tried to be natural. But his practiced chatterboxiness had not been
able to fully cover over the simmering fear he’d kept on the back burner
since the van had appeared early this morning.
“That’s all?” Courtney asked Doyle. “He’s just tired?”
“What else?”
“Well-”
“We’re both road-weary,” Doyle interrupted. He knew that she sensed
more to it than just that. Sometimes she was positively psychic. “It’s
true that there’s a lot to see on a cross-country drive-but most of it