She put Snapper’s gun on the seat. “Get out of here,” she told Skink and Bonnie. “Go on. I’ll tell him you pushed me down and got away.”
Bonnie looked over at the governor, who said: “Now’s your chance, girl.”
“What about you?”
He shook his head. “I made a promise to Jim.”
“Who the hell’s Jim?” asked Edie Marsh.
Bonnie said: “Then I guess we’re staying.”
Skink encouraged her to make a dash for it. “Go call Augustine. Let him know you’re OK.”
“Nope,” Bonnie said.
“And your husband, too.”
“No! Not until it’s over.”
Edie was exasperated, her nerves worn ragged. Snapper was right; they are nuts. “Fine,” she said, “you two fruitballs stay if you want, but I’m outta here.”
Skink said: “Excellent decision.”
“Tell him I went to use the bathroom.”
“No problem,” said Bonnie.
“I got my period or something.”
“Right.”
Skink leaned forward. “Could you hand me the gun?”
“Why not,” Edie said. Perhaps the smiler would shoot Snapper dead. There were about forty-seven thousand reasons that Edie wasn’t upset at the idea, not including the barrel-shaped bruise on her right breast.
She was passing the .357 to Skink when he waved her off, saying: “On second thought-”
Edie turned and let out a gasp. It was Snapper’s face, dripping wet, pressed to the window of the Jeep. The bent nose and misshapen mouth made him look like a gargoyle.
“Miss me, bay-beeee?” he crooned, pallid lips wriggling like flatworms against the glass.
Jim Tile was tempted to call for backup, though it would spell the end of the governor’s elaborate reclusion.
Long ago they’d made a pact: no cavalry, unless innocent lives were in peril. The trooper was thinking of
the tourist woman as more or less innocent. She and Skink might be dead already.
Glumly Jim Tile watched the rain drench the passing cars on Highway One. Again he castigated himself for letting his emotions get the better of his brain. Brenda was alive. He should’ve thanked God, then let it go.
But he didn’t. And the governor had had little trouble talking him out of the license-tag number.
“Pest control” was what Skink had called it, as they were leaving the hospital.
“Whoever did that to Mrs Rourke is not a viable member of the species. Not a welcome donor to the gene pool. Wouldn’t Darwin himself agree?”
And the trooper had merely said: “Be careful.”
“Jim, we’re infested with these mutant shitheads. Look what they’ve done to the place.”
The trooper, locked in some cold distant zone: “The tag’s probably stolen off another car. It may lead you nowhere.”
The governor, momentarily shaking loose of his friend’s firm grip: “They’re turning it into a sump hole. Some with guns, some with briefcases-it’s all the same goddamn crime.”
“Pest control.”
“We do what we can.”
“Be careful, captain.”
Then he’d flashed those movie-star pearlies, the ones that had gotten him elected. And Jim Tile stood back and let him go. Let him stalk the man in the black Jeep Cherokee.
Which was now parked in a windy drizzle outside the Paradise Palms. The trooper counted three figures inside the truck; two of them, he hoped, were Skink and Bonnie Lamb.
A dark shape near the road caught his attention.
The tall man in the suit was hurrying along the gravel shoulder of Highway One. There was a tippiness to his gait; he seemed well challenged to keep a straight course, clear of the speeding cars. He flinched when the high beams of a gasoline tanker caught him in the face.
This time Jim Tile got a good look at the misaligned jaws.
He watched the man pass beneath the bright electric sign in front of the motel. He saw him walk up to the Jeep, lean close to a window. Then the man ran around to the driver’s side, opened the door and got in. Smoke puffed from the truck’s exhaust: pipe. The brake lights flickered.
Jim Tile said, “Hello,” and started his engine.
Suddenly, all around, the night was diced into blues and [• whites. .
Snapper was backing the Jeep out, chortling about } what had happened to Avila: “Dumb fuck went straight ! off the bridge, you shoulda seen- Hey! Hey, what the hell…”