With an Extreme Burning

“She isn't either place. Dix Mallory's nowhere to be found either. They go someplace together?”

“Beats me.”

“Come on now, Amy. You can tell me.”

“I really don't know.”

Which was the truth. Mom had kept her promise to call last night, but she wouldn't say much about Pelican Bay or what she and Dix had decided to do. She'd sounded distracted and in a hurry; she hadn't even mentioned the condoms. “I won't be here tomorrow”—that was all she'd said. It didn't take a genius to figure out they'd gone up to Oregon, to Pelican Bay. Amy was still pissed at being left out, but not pissed enough to do something defiant.

He said, “You've been staying with your grandparents the past few nights. Why is that, Amy?”

“They wanted me to,” she lied.

“It wasn't your mom's idea? So she could be with Dix?”

“No.”

He watched her silently. It was like the other day: She couldn't quite meet his eyes. She looked at his mouth instead. His smile had a little quirk in it and she could see the tip of his tongue in one comer.

When she started to imagine his tongue in her mouth she shook herself and said, “Well, I guess I'd better get going …”

“Are you in a hurry?”

“Um, I've got some errands to run.”

“Errands aren't urgent. How about going for a ride first?”

“A ride? With you?”

He laughed. “Of course with me.”

“Your car's not here.”

“You don't mind driving, do you?”

“No, but— Where?”

“Not far and not long. We'll be back inside of half an hour.”

She wanted to; she didn't want to. It was like being pulled from two sides at once, as if she were a rope in a tug-of-war game. She made herself say, “I'd better not.”

He touched her cheek, stroked it with his knuckles. “Come on, honey,” he said. “Just a short ride. What do you say?”

Honey. That and his touch almost made her give in. She took a breath and said, “No, I really can't,” and tried to move past him to her car.

He stopped her with his body and tight fingers on her arm. He was still smiling, but now it was just a mouth smile. His eyes … they'd changed. They'd gotten cold and hard.

Oh no, she thought, oh no!

“Give me your keys, Amy. Then get in the car on the passenger side. I'll drive.”

Sudden fear held her rooted. Behind him Water Street was still empty—there was never anybody around back there. She could hear the hum of traffic on the cross streets, somebody talking loud in one of the adjacent stores, but it was as if the two of them were alone in the middle of a wilderness.

“Let me go,” she said. “I'll scream,” she said.

“No you won't,” He unbuttoned the front of his suit coat, pulled one flap aside. “You won't scream and you won't argue.”

She stared at the gun tucked into the waistband of his slacks.

“Give me your keys and then get in the car,” he said. “Now there's a good girl.”

Pelican Bay was like most Oregon coastal towns, loaded with picturesque cottages and beachfront condos and motels and seafood restaurants and native craft shops. The inlet that gave it its name extended under an arched highway bridge, forming a sheltered harbor for a fleet of fishing boats and a handful of weathered fish- processing companies. In the height of the summer season, with the sun shining and tourists swarming around, it probably had a certain charm. Now, seen through the bleak curtain of rain, its streets empty and some of its shops already closed, it had a remote and unwelcoming aspect.

Dix pulled into a service station and spoke briefly to the attendant on duty. Pelican Bay was too small to have a library, the man said; the nearest one was in Lincoln City, down the coast a few miles. That was where the nearest newspaper was published, too—the weekly Lincoln City News Guard.

Back in the car, he relayed this information to Cecca, who sat huddled against the passenger door. Then he asked her, “Want to get some coffee before we go on? Warm up a little?”

“No. Let's just get it over with.”

The rain was easing a little when they reached Lincoln City. This was the center of the north-coast resort area, an exceptionally long, narrow town—actually a collection of tiny hamlets strung together—that spread out for several miles along Highway 101. Dix stopped at another service station there to ask directions. Driftwood Library was only a few blocks away, as it turned out. And it was open, Dix saw with relief as he pulled up in front. In these hard times you never knew about library hours.

They had a microfilm file of issues of the News Guard dating back several years. A librarian showed them to the microfilm room, brought the tapes containing the issues for June and July of 1989, and left them alone.

Dix threaded June into the magnifier, cranked it rapidly through to the issue for Wednesday, June 25. The accident was bound to have been front-page news, but there was nothing in that issue about it. “It must have been that Wednesday night that it happened,” Cecca said. She was right. The following week's issue had the account.

Three-column headline and photo on the lower half of the front page. The photo was of a crane lifting a wrecked and fire-ravaged van up the side of the cliff at Pelican Point; two uniformed highway patrol officers stood in the foreground, and visible in the background was a splintered section of guardrail. The headline read:

FIERY CRASH CLAIMS 3 LIVES

The screen on the magnifier was scratched and the newsprint on the accompanying story was small and smeary. Dix worked the focus knob to sharpen the image.

A fiery highway accident last Wednesday evening claimed the lives of three members of a prominent Pelican Bay family. Cheryl Cotter, 36, and her two children, Angela, 5, and Donald, 6, of 289 Barksfield Road, died instantly when the van in which they were riding plunged 120 feet to the rocks at Pelican Point and burst into flames. The driver, Gordon Cotter, a tax accountant with offices in Lincoln City, was thrown clear. He suffered a broken leg and minor injuries and is listed in stable condition at North Lincoln Hospital.

According to highway patrol officer Edmund Deane, Cotter was driving southbound on Highway 101 shortly past nightfall, at an excessive speed and without headlights. He swerved to avoid a rear-end collision with a car that had just exited the parking lot at the Crabpot restaurant, and lost control on the rain-slick highway. The driver of the other car, Kathleen Mallory, of Los Alegres, California, stated that rain and darkness prevented her from seeing the oncoming van. Several witnesses corroborated her account. She was not cited.

There was more, continued on an inside page. Gordon Cotter was a native of McMinnville, had met and married his wife in Pelican Bay, and had lived there for nine years. He belonged to civic and social groups in Pelican Bay and Lincoln City; the head of the Lincoln City Lions Club was quoted as saying, “It's a terrible tragedy. Gordon was totally devoted to his family.” There were no photographs of any of the victims.

A thin excitement pulsed in Dix. They were on the right track; he was convinced of it now. Cecca's expression said that she felt the same way.

He cranked ahead to the next week's issue. One small follow-up story giving funeral information and stating that Gordon Cotter was soon to be released from the hospital. That was all.

Cecca said, “Why didn't they publish a photo of him?”

“Local policy, maybe.”

“Would the McMinnville paper have run one?”

“It's possible. We'll see if the library keeps a McMinnville file.”