Avoiding a swoon, Curtis says, “It’s obvious. Lots of signs.”
“Are we getting out of here this week or next?” asks Polly, who has climbed all the way into the motor home.
She steps aside to let sister-become, then Leilani and Curtis, precede her to the door. The dog bounds out of the motor home, but the radiant girl descends the steps with caution, planting her good leg on the ground first, then swinging the braced leg down beside it, wobbling, but at once regaining balance.
Descending to Leilani’s side, feeling the dog shiver anew at the spoor of evil that lingers around the motor home, Curtis wonders, “Where’s your stepfather, the murderer?”
“He went to see a man about an alien,” Leilani says.
“Alien?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Will he be back soon?”
Suddenly her fine face darkened from within as she surveyed the shaded campground, where a wind had risen to shake showers of loose needles out of the high boughs of the overarching evergreens. “Maybe any minute.”
Having abandoned her post on the overturned trash can beside the motor home, Cass joins them in time to hear this exchange, which she clearly finds disturbing. “Honey,” she says to the girl, “can you run with that thing weighing you down?”
“I can hurry, but not as fast as you. How far?”
“The other end of the campground,” Cass says, pointing past the dozens of intervening motor homes and travel trailers, all battened down for bad weather, warm lights glowing in their windows.
“I can make it easy,” Leilani assures them, starting to limp in a quick hitching gate, in the direction that Cass pointed. “But I can’t hurry at top speed all the way.”
“Okay,” Polly says, moving with Leilani, “if we’re going to do this crazy thing—“
Cass grabs Curtis by one hand and pulls him with her as though he might otherwise roam off in the wrong direction like a Rain Man or a Gump, and as she heads eastward, she continues Polly’s speech in one of their fractured duologues: “—if we’re really going to do it, and risk being chased down—“
“—as kidnappers—“
“—then let’s—“
“—move ass.”
“Curtis, you run ahead with me,” Cass directs, now treating him less like alien royally than like an ordinary boy. “Help me pull up Stakes. We’ll have to hit the road as quick as we can, storm or no storm, and head for the state line.”
“I’ll stay with you, Leilani,” Polly says.
Reluctant to leave the girl’s side, Curtis digs in his heels and holds Cass back, but only long enough to say, “Don’t worry, you’ll like the Spelkenfelters.”
“Oh,” Leilani assures him, “I like nothing better than a good Spelkenfelter.”
This eccentric answer spawns in Curtis several questions.
Cass denies him further socializing when she hisses, “Curtis!” Her tone of voice is not unlike the one that his mother had used on the three occasions when he’d displeased her.
Lightning spears the sky. The prickly shadows of the evergreens leap, leap across the brightened ground, over the walls of the ranked motor homes and trailers, as though running from those hot celestial forks or from the roar of thunder that after two seconds chases them.
The dog sprints for the Fleetwood, Cass sets a pace that argues for the proposition that she has some canine blood in her veins, too, and Curtis follows where duty calls.
He looks back once, and the radiant girl is rocking along on her braced leg faster than he had expected. This world is as vivid as any Curtis has ever seen, and more dazzling than many, but even among the uncountable glories of this place and even with the fabulous Polluxia at her side, Leilani Klonk is the focus of this scene and seems to trail the whole world behind her as if it were but a cloak.
A private investigator’s license reliably received a snappy response anywhere in the country, regardless of the state in which it had been issued. As often as not, women who had a moment earlier looked through you suddenly found you to be a man of dark mystery and magnetic power. Thousands upon thousands of detective novels, episodes of television programs, and suspense films were a magic brush that painted a romantic veneer over many a wart and wattle.
The male registration clerk at the campground office didn’t flutter his eyelashes with desire when Noah Farrel flashed his PI license, but the guy responded, as did most men, with acute interest and a sort of friendly envy. Fiftyish, he had a pale face wider at the bottom than at the top, and a body that matched the proportions of the face, as though the dullness of his life had distorted him and pulled him down more effectively than gravity could ever manage. He wanted all the vicarious thrills he could get from Noah. Convincing him that cows could sing opera would be easier than getting him to believe that a private detective’s work amounted to a boring parade of faithless-husband and disloyal-employee investigations. He knew that it must be a whirl of hot babes, cool gunplay, fast cars, and fat envelopes full of cash money. He asked more questions than Noah, not only about the current case, but also about the Life. Noah lied baldly in response, portraying this investigation as a grindingly tedious hunt for potentially key claimants in a class-action suit against a major corporation, with a legal filing deadline looming so near that he had to track people on their vacations, and he fabricated glamorous details about his prior adventures.
The helpful clerk confirmed that Jordan Banks had rented a prime campsite earlier in the afternoon. The license number and description of the motor home — a converted Prevost bus — matched the information that Noah had obtained, through police contacts, from the California Department of Motor Vehicles. Bingo.
The clerk also recognized Micky when Noah presented a photograph that he’d obtained from her aunt. “Oh, yeah, absolutely, she come around earlier today, before Mr. Banks arrived, asking had he checked in yet.”
Alarm stiffened Noah’s bones and drew him up from a slump to full height. If Maddoc knew that she had come looking for him…
“She’s his sister,” said the clerk. “Pullin’ a surprise for his birthday, so I didn’t say word one to him when he checked in later.” His eyes narrowed. “Say, she is his sister, you think?”
“Yes. Yes, she is. Has she been back since Mr. Banks arrived?”
“Nope. Hope she comes around ‘fore my shift ends. She’s a tonic to the eyes, that girl.”
“Do I need a visitor’s pass?” Noah asked.
“Don’t work that easy. If he didn’t leave your name, which he didn’t, I have to send one of my grounds boys down there to camp-site sixty-two and ask if I should put you through. Problem is, one of ‘em is off sick today, and the other’s run half-crazy doin’ two jobs.
I got to go down there myself and do the askin’ while you wait here.”
The first lightning of the coming storm flared beyond the office windows, and a hammerfall of thunder rattled every pane, sparing Noah the expense of fishing a C-note from his wallet and playing out one of the most cliched scenes in all of detective fiction.
The clerk winced and said, “Don’t like to leave my station in a storm. Got responsibilities here. Hell, anyway, you’re next thing to the cops, aren’t you?”
“Next thing,” Noah agreed.
“Go on, then. Pull your car up, and I’ll raise the gate.”
The first bolt of lightning, thrown open with a crash, had not unlocked the rain. The longer part of a minute passed before another bolt, brighter than the first, slammed out of the hasp of the heavens and opened a door to the storm.
Scattered drops of rain, as fat as grapes, snapped into the oiled lane that served the many campsites, striking with such force that sprays of smaller droplets bounced a foot high from each point of impact.
Leilani’s best speed was behind her. The cyborg leg might appear to be ass-kicking fearsome, but it cramped sooner than she expected, perhaps because she’d done so little walking these past few days when they had been on the road. She lost the smooth hip action necessary to keep swinging along, and she couldn’t reestablish the
