He took one more look at his girls, then stepped out of the room and pulled the door shut quietly behind him.
He reaches Topeka at three o’clock in the morning.
He is still drawn toward the western horizon as a migrating creature might be pulled relentlessly southward with the approach of winter, answering a call that is soundless, a beacon that can’t be seen, as though it is the trace of iron in his very blood that responds to the unknown magnet.
Exiting the freeway on the outskirts of the city, he scouts for another car.
Somewhere there are people who know the name John Larrington, the identity under which he rented the Ford. When he does not show up in Seattle for whatever job awaits him, his strange and faceless superiors will no doubt come looking for him. He suspects they have substantial resources and influence; he must shed every connection with his past and leave the hunters with no means of tracking him.
He parks the rental Ford in a residential neighborhood and walks three blocks, trying the doors of the cars at the curb. Only half are locked. He is prepared to hot-wire a car if it comes to that, but in a blue Honda he finds the keys tucked behind the sun visor.
After driving back to the Ford and transferring his suitcases and the pistol to the Honda, he cruises in ever- widening circles, searching for a twenty-four-hour-a-day convenience store.
He has no map of Topeka in his head because no one expected him to go there. Unnerved to see street signs on which all of the names are unfamiliar, he has no knowledge of where any route will lead.
He feels more of an outcast than ever.
Within fifteen minutes he locates a convenience store and nearly empties the shelves of Slim Jims, cheese crackers, peanuts, miniature doughnuts, and other food that will be easy to eat while driving. He is already starved. If he is going to be on the road for as much as another two days—assuming he might be drawn all the way to the coast—he will need considerable supplies. He does not want to waste time in restaurants, yet his accelerated metabolism requires him to eat larger meals and more frequently than other people eat.
After adding three six-packs of Pepsi to his purchase, he goes to the checkout counter, where the sole clerk says, “You must be having an all-night party or something.”
“Yeah.”
When he pays the bill, he realizes the three hundred bucks in his wallet—the amount of cash he
He takes the three large bags of supplies to the Honda and returns to the store with the Heckler & Koch P7. He shoots the clerk once in the head and empties the register, but all he gets is his own money back plus fifty dollars. Better than nothing.
At an Arco service station, he fills the tank of the Honda with gasoline and buys a map of the United States.
Parked at the edge of the Arco lot, under a sodium-vapor light that colors everything sickly yellow, he eats Slim Jims. He’s ravenous.
By the time he switches from sausages to doughnuts, he begins to study the map. He could continue westward on Interstate 70—or instead head southwest on the Kansas Turnpike to Wichita, keep going to Oklahoma City, and then turn directly west again on Interstate 40.
He is not accustomed to having choices. He usually does what he is . . . programmed to do. Now, faced with alternatives, he finds decision-making unexpectedly difficult. He sits irresolute, increasingly nervous, in danger of being paralyzed by indecision.
At last he gets out of the Honda and stands in the cool night air, seeking guidance.
The wind vibrates the telephone wires overhead—a haunting sound, as thin and bleak as the frightened crying of dead children wandering in a dark Beyond.
He turns westward as inexorably as a compass needle seeks magnetic north. The attraction feels psychic, as if a presence out there calls to him, but the connection is less sophisticated than that, more biological, reverberating in his blood and marrow.
Behind the wheel of the car again, he finds the Kansas Turnpike and heads toward Wichita. He is still not sleepy. If he has to, he can go two or even three nights without sleep and lose none of his mental or physical edge, which is only one of his special strengths. He is so excited by the prospect of being someone that he might drive nonstop until he finds his destiny.
Paige knew that Marty half expected to be stricken by another blackout, this time in public, so she admired his ability to maintain a carefree facade. He seemed as lighthearted as the kids.
From the girls’ point of view, Sunday was a perfect day.
Late-morning, Paige and Marty took them to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Dana Point for the Thanksgiving- weekend brunch. It was a place they went only on special occasions.
As always, Emily and Charlotte were enchanted by the lushly landscaped grounds, beautiful public rooms, and impeccable staff in crisp uniforms. In their best dresses, with ribbons in their hair, the girls had great fun playing at being cultured young ladies—almost as much fun as raiding the dessert buffet twice each.
In the afternoon, because it was unseasonably warm, they changed clothes and visited Irvine Park. They walked the picturesque trails, fed the ducks in the pond, and toured the small zoo.
Charlotte loved the zoo because the animals were, like her menagerie at home, kept in enclosures where they were safe from harm. There were no exotic specimens—all the animals were indigenous to the region—but in her typical exuberance, Charlotte found each to be the most interesting and cutest creature she had ever seen.
Emily got into a staring contest with a wolf. Large, amber-eyed, with a lustrous silver-gray coat, the predator met and intensely held the girl’s gaze from his side of a chain-link fence.
“If you look away first,” Emily calmly and somberly informed them, “then a wolf will just eat you all up.”
The confrontation went on so long that Paige became uneasy in spite of the sturdy fence. Then the wolf lowered his head, sniffed the ground, yawned elaborately to show he had not been intimidated but had merely lost interest, and sauntered away.
“If he couldn’t get the three little pigs with all his huffing and puffing,” Emily said, “then I
She was referring to the Disney cartoon, the only version of the fairy tale with which she was familiar.
Paige resolved never to let her read the Brothers Grimm version, which was about seven little goats instead of three pigs. The wolf swallowed six of them whole. They were saved from digestion at the last minute when their mother cut open the wolf’s belly to pull them from his steaming innards.
Paige glanced back at the wolf as they walked away. It was watching Emily again.
Sunday is a full day for the killer.
In Wichita, just before dawn, he gets off the turnpike. In another residential neighborhood rather like the one in Topeka, he swaps the license plates on the Honda for those on a Chevy, making his stolen vehicle more difficult to locate.
Shortly after nine Sunday morning he arrives in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where he stops long enough to fill the tank with gasoline.
A shopping mall is across the road from the service station. In one corner of the huge deserted parking lot stands an unmanned Goodwill Industries collection box, as large as a garden shed. After tanking up, he leaves his suitcases and their contents with Goodwill. He keeps only the clothes he’s wearing and the pistol.
