the vicinity of my heart. And I am not a political liberal. And I
think your answer is more simplistic than mine.”
“The country’s going to hell in a handbasket, and you’re blaming it all
on psychotics and fruitcakes.”
“Well,” the technician said, finally putting down the salt shaker, “I
almost hope you’re right. Because if this guy is a nut, and if he is
loose another week or two Eighteen By two o’clock Friday morning,
sixteen hours after they had left Denver, Alex felt as if he belonged in
a hospital ward for terminally ill patients. His legs were cramped and
heavy. His buttocks pinched and burned as if they were jammed full of
needles, and his back ached all the way from the base of his spine to
the back of his skull. And these were only the first in a long list of
complaints: he was sweat-damp, rumpled, and unclean from having missed
last night’s shower; his eyes were bloodshot, grainy, and sore; the
crisp black stubble of his one-day beard itched badly; his mouth was
fuzzy and dry and tasted like sour milk; his arms ached dully from
holding the damned steering wheel for hour after hour, mile after mile .
. .
“You awake?” he asked Colin. In the darkness, with the gentle country
music coming out of the radio, the boy should have been asleep.
“I’m here,” Colin said.
“Should try to catch a few winks.”
“I’m afraid the car is going to break down,” Colin said. “I can’t sleep
for worrying about “The car’s okay,” Doyle said. “The body got dented
in a little, but that’s all. The only reason it begins to shake when we
go past eighty-five is that the wheel starts brushing against the
indented metal.”
“I’ll still worry,” Colin said.
“We’ll stop at the next likely place and freshen up,” Doyle said.
“We both need it. And the car’s low on gas.”
Late Thursday afternoon they had headed southwest across Utah on a
series of back roads, then picked up the secondary two-lane Route 21,
which carried them northwest again. The swift desert sunset came, faded
rapidly from a fiery orange-red to solemn purple and then a deep and
velvety black. And still they drove, crossing into Nevada and switching
over to Route 50, which they intended to follow from one end of the
Silver State clear to the other.
Shortly after ten o’clock they stopped to get gasoline and to call
Courtney from a pay phone. They pretended that they were at their
motel, because Alex could not see any good reason to worry her now.
Though they had been through a harrowing ordeal, it was probably all
finished now. They had lost their stalker. There was no need to alarm
her unnecessarily. They could give her the full story when they finally
got into San Francisco.
From ten-thirty Thursday night until two o’clock Friday morning, they
passed through what had once been the heart of the romantic Old West.
The forbidding sand plains lay dark and empty to the left and right.
Hard, barren mountains thrust up without warning and fell sharply away,
out of place even if they had spent millennia here.
Cactus loomed at both sides of the road, and rabbits occasionally fled
across the pavement in the yellow glare of their headlights. If the
trip had gone differently, if there had been no madman on their tail for
the last two thousand miles, perhaps Nevada would have been a pleasure,
a chance to indulge in nostalgia and a few of Colin’s games.
But now it was a bore, just something to be passed through before they
could get to San Francisco.
At two-thirty they stopped at a combination service station and
all-night diner.
While the Thunderbird was topped off with gas and oil, Colin used the
bathroom, freshened up for the next long leg of the marathon drive. In
the diner, they ordered hamburgers and French fries. And while those
were sizzling, Alex went into the men’s room to shave and wash his face.
And to take two caffeine tablets.
He had bought a package of them earlier in the night, at the service
station where they had stopped just before leaving Utah. Colin had been