From the car trunk he had a limited view of the world, but in that wedge he perceived far more this night than he would have been capable of perceiving previously.
The silvery road receded from him but also approached, offering him a choice of opposite horizons.
Some stone formations contained chips of mica that sparkled in the moonlight, and where the rock rose in silhouette against the sky, the stars appeared to have salted themselves upon the earth.
Out of the north, southbound, on its feathered sails, a great horned owl, as pale as it was immense, swooped low and silent across the road, then rowed itself higher into the night, much higher and away.
Mitch sensed that what he seemed to be gaining for what he had lost, what so quickly healed the hole in him, was a capacity for awe, a deeper sense of the mystery of all things.
Then he pulled back from the brink of awe, to terror and to grim determination, when the gunman returned with an intention that had not been foreseen.
Chapter 32
So stealthily had the killer returned that Mitch was unaware of his presence until he heard one of the car doors click open and swing wide with the faintest creak.
The man had approached from the front of the Chrysler. Risking exposure in the brief glow of the car's interior lights, he got in and pulled the door shut as softly as it could be closed.
If he had gotten behind the wheel, he must intend to leave the scene.
No. He wouldn't drive away with the trunk lid open. And surely he wouldn't leave the corpse.
Mitch waited in silence.
The gunman was silent, too.
Slowly the silence became a kind of pressure that Mitch could feel on his skin, on his eardrums, on his unblinking eyes, as if the car were descending into a watery abyss, an ever-increasing weight of ocean bearing down on it.
The gunman must be sitting in the dark, surveying the night, waiting to learn whether the throb of light had drawn attention, whether he had been seen. If his return inspired no response, what would he do next?
The desert remained breathless.
In these circumstances, the car would seem as sensitive to motion as a boat on water. If Mitch moved, the killer would be alerted to his presence.
A minute passed. Another.
Mitch pictured the smooth-faced gunman sitting up there in the car, in the gloom, at least thirty years old, maybe thirty-five, yet with such a remarkably soft smooth face, as if life had not touched him and never would.
He tried to imagine what the man with the smooth face was doing, planning. The mind behind that mask remained inaccessible to Mitch's imagination. He might have more profitably pondered what a desert lizard believed about God or rain or jimsonweed.
After a long stillness, the gunman shifted positions, and the movement proved to be a revelation. The unnerving intimacy of the sound indicated that the man wasn't behind the wheel of the Chrysler. He was in the backseat.
He must have been sitting forward, watchful, ever since getting into the car. When at last he leaned back, the upholstery made a sound like leather or vinyl does when stressed, and the seat springs quietly complained.
The backseat of the car formed the back wall of the trunk. He and Mitch were within a couple feet of each other.
They were almost as close to each other as they had been on the walk from the library to the car pavilion.
Lying in the trunk, Mitch thought about that walk.
The gunman made a low sound, either a stifled cough or a groan further muffled by the intervening wall of upholstery.
Perhaps he had been wounded, after all. His condition wasn't sufficiently serious to persuade him to pack up and leave, although it might be painful enough to discourage a lot of roaming.
Clearly, he settled in the car because he hoped that eventually, in desperation, his quarry would return to it. He figured Mitch would be circumspect in his approach, thoroughly scoping out the immediate surrounding territory, but would not expect death to be waiting for him in the shadows of the backseat.
In this makeshift learning room, Mitch thought about that walk between the library and the car pavilion: the moon like a lily pad floating in the pool, the muzzle of the pistol pressed into his side, the songs of the toads, the lacy branches of the silver sheens, the pistol pressed into his side….
A car of this vintage would not feature a fire wall or a crash panel between the trunk and the passenger compartment. The back of the rear seat might have been finished with a quarter-inch fiberboard panel or even just with cloth.
The backrest might contain six inches of padding. A bullet would meet some resistance.
The barrier wasn't bulletproof. No one armored with a mere sofa cushion would expect to walk unscathed through a barrage often high-velocity rounds.
Currently Mitch half lay and half sat on his left side, facing the night through the open trunk lid.
He would need to roll onto his right side in order to bring the pistol to bear on the back wall of the trunk.
He weighed a hundred and seventy pounds. No degree in physics was required to figure out that the car would respond to that much weight shifting position.
Turn fast, open fire — and maybe he would discover that he was wrong about the partition between trunk and passenger compartment. If there was indeed a metal panel, he might not only be nailed by a ricochet but also fail to hit his target.
Then he would be wounded and out of ammunition, and the gunman would know where to find him.
A bead of sweat slipped along the side of his nose to the corner of his mouth.
The night was mild, not hot.
An urge to act pulled his nerves as taut as bowstrings.
Chapter 33
As Mitch lay in indecision, he heard in memory Holly's. scream, and the sharp slap of her being hit.
A real sound refocused his attention on the present: his enemy, in the passenger compartment, stifling a series of coughs.
The noise had been so effectively muffled that it wouldn't have been heard beyond the car. As before, the coughing lasted only a few seconds.
Maybe the gunman's cough related to a wound. Or he was allergic to desert pollen.
When the guy coughed again, Mitch would seize the opportunity to change positions.
Beyond the open trunk, the desert seemed to darkle, brighten, darkle rhythmically, but in fact the acuity of his vision sharpened briefly with each systolic thrust of his pounding heart.
A sudden illusion of snow, however, had a basis in reality. Moonlight frosted the phosphorescent wings of swarming moths that whirled like flakes of winter across the road.
Mitch's cuffed hands gripped the pistol so fiercely that his knuckles began to ache. His right forefinger hooked the trigger guard, rather than the trigger itself, because he feared that a nervous twitch would cause him to fire before he intended.
His teeth were clenched. He heard himself inhale, exhale. He opened his mouth to breathe more quietly.
Even though his heart raced, time ceased to be a river running and became a creeping flow of mud.
Instinct had served Mitch well in recent hours. Likewise, a sixth sense might at any moment alert the
