time how much courage was required to make their journey in those rickety vehicles, trusting their lives to the health and stamina of dray horses.
Movies. California. He is in California, home of the movies.
Move, move, move.
From time to time, an involuntary mewling escapes him. The sound is like that of an animal dying of dehydration but within sight of a watering hole, dragging itself toward the pool that offers salvation but afraid it will perish before it can slake its burning thirst.
Paige and Charlotte were already in the garage, getting in the car, when they both cried, “Emily, hurry up!”
As Emily turned away from the breakfast table and started toward the open door that connected the kitchen to the garage, Marty caught her by the shoulder and turned her to face him. “Wait, wait, wait.”
“Oh,” she said, “I forgot,” and puckered up for a smooch.
“That comes second,” he said.
“What’s first?”
“This.” He dropped to one knee, bringing himself to her level, and with a paper towel he blotted away her milk mustache.
“Oh, gross,” she said.
“It was cute.”
“More like Charlotte.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”
“She’s the messy one.”
“Don’t be unkind.”
“She knows it, Daddy.”
“Nevertheless.”
From the garage, Paige called again.
Emily kissed him, and he said, “Don’t give your teacher any trouble.”
“No more than she gives me,” Emily answered.
Impulsively he pulled her against him, hugged her fiercely, reluctant to let her go. The clean fragrance of Ivory soap and baby shampoo clung to her; milk and the oaty aroma of Cheerios were on her breath. He had never smelled anything sweeter, better. Her back was frightfully small under the flat of his hand. She was so delicate, he could feel the beat of her young heart both through her chest—which pressed against him—and through her scapula and spine, against which his hand lay. He was overcome with the feeling that something terrible was going to happen and that he would never see her again if he allowed her to leave the house.
He had to let her go, of course—or explain his reluctance, which he could not do.
He dared say nothing of the sort. He would only scare her.
He kissed her soft, warm cheek and let her go.
At the door to the garage, she paused and looked back at him. “More poem tonight?”
“You bet.”
She said, “Reindeer salad . . .”
“. . . reindeer soup . . .”
'... all sorts of tasty ...”
“. . . reindeer goop,” Marty finished.
“You know what, Daddy?”
“What?”
“You’re
Giggling, Emily went into the garage. The
He stared at the door, willing himself not to rush to it and jerk it open and shout at them to get back into the house.
He heard the big garage door rolling up.
The car engine turned over, chugged, caught, raced a little as Paige pumped the accelerator before shifting into reverse.
Marty hurried out of the kitchen, through the dining room, into the living room. He went to one of the front windows from which he could see the driveway. The plantation shutters were folded away from the window, so he stayed a couple of steps from the glass.
The white BMW backed down the driveway, out of the shadow of the house and into the late-November sunshine. Emily was riding up front with her mother, and Charlotte was in the rear seat.
As the car receded along the tree-lined street, Marty stepped so close to the living-room window that his forehead pressed against the cool glass. He tried to keep his family in view as long as possible, as if they were certain to survive
His last glimpse of the BMW was through a sudden veil of hot tears that he barely managed to repress.
Disturbed by the intensity of his emotional reaction to his family’s departure, he turned away from the window and said savagely, “What the hell’s the matter with me?”
After all, the girls were merely going to school and Paige to her office, where they went more days than not. They were following a routine that had never been dangerous before, and he had no logical reason to believe it was going to be dangerous today—or ever.
He looked at his wristwatch. 7:48.
His appointment with Dr. Guthridge was only slightly more than five hours away, but that seemed an interminable length of time. Anything could happen in five hours.
Needles to Ludlow to Daggett.
Move, move, move.
9:04 Pacific Standard Time.
Barstow. Dry bleached town in a hard dry land. Stagecoaches stopped here long ago. Railroad yards. Waterless rivers. Cracked stucco, peeling paint. Green of trees faded by a perpetual layer of dust on the leaves. Motels, fast-food restaurants, more motels.
A service station. Gasoline. Men’s room. Candy bars. Two cans of cold Coke.
Attendant too friendly. Chatty. Slow to make change. Little pig eyes. Fat cheeks. Hate him. Shut up, shut up, shut up.
Should shoot him. Should blow his head off. Satisfying. Can’t risk it. Too many people around.
On the road again. Interstate 15. West. Candy bars and Coke at eighty miles an hour. Desolate plains. Hills of sand, shale. Volcanic rock. Many-armed Joshua trees standing sentinel.
As a pilgrim to a holy place, as a lemming to the sea, as a comet on its eternal course, westward, westward, trying to out-race the ocean-seeking sun.
Marty owned five guns.
He was not a hunter or collector. He didn’t shoot skeet or take target practice for the fun of it. Unlike several people he knew, he hadn’t armed himself out of fear of social collapse—though sometimes he saw signs of it everywhere. He could not even say that he
He had purchased the weapons one by one for research purposes. As a mystery novelist, writing about cops and killers, he believed he had a responsibility to know whereof he wrote. Because he was not a gun hobbyist and had a finite amount of time to research all of the many backgrounds and subjects upon which each novel touched, minor mistakes were inevitable now and then, but he felt more comfortable writing about a weapon if he had fired it.
