was about to unleash… even though I knew what it was and what it might do to me. I hadn’t learned. I thought I had but I hadn’t and in a way that was the most terrible truth I had ever had to face about myself.
We arrived in Stockton a little past three-thirty. A cab driver took another three dollars of my money to deliver me to an Avis office, where I rented a Toyota Tercel-the only nonluxury car they had available-that I could drop off at any Avis outlet in northern California. The woman who waited on me examined my driver’s license, wrote down my name on the rental agreement, and ran off my MasterCard without a flicker of recognition.
It felt odd to be behind the wheel of a car again after so long a time. And I was not used to driving small foreign cars like this one. It wasn’t until I got out of Stockton proper and onto Highway 99 that I began to relax. And once I relaxed, I felt a sense of release. I was in control again. From here on in, until the hunt was finished, I would not have to rely on anybody but myself.
EVENING
I ran into rush hour traffic above Elk Grove and 99 stayed jammed all the way through Sacramento, so that it was six-thirty when I finally reached Carmichael. I stopped at a Union station just off the freeway and went to one of two public telephone booths to look up James Lanier. The directory had been vandalized in that booth, the whole middle section ripped out; and in the other booth there was no book at all. Life in the enlightened eighties. I talked one of the attendants into hunting up the station’s private directory, which turned out to be over a year old. Lanier was listed in there, at least, and at the same Roseville Avenue address.
The attendant sold me a Carmichael street map for two of my last five dollars. I sat in the car with it for ten minutes, first locating Roseville Avenue and then tracing a route from where I was. The distance was three or four miles. Just a short hop… but it took me half an hour to get there, because I made a wrong turn somewhere and got lost and had to stop and study the map again to retrace and refigure the route. I was sweating and drawn tight when I finally pulled up in front of 21963 Roseville Avenue.
Nobody was home.
The house was dark, no car under the carport to one side; and nobody answered when I went up and rang the bell.
I sat in the car for a time, still hot and tense, and stared at the house. Typical tract rancher, nothing special about it under its night cover except that the front yard was neatly and lushly landscaped. Not the kind of place you’d expect to find a madman living in, or a link to a madman either. Except that madmen and those who nurture them live in the same places sane people do, from any city’s Skid Row to the stately homes and expensive flats of Washington, D.C., and McLean, Virginia. You can’t always tell a book by its cover, you can’t always tell the lunatics of the world by their cover.
Pretty soon I started the car, drove around until I noticed a Denny’s, went in there and ate something-I don’t remember what-and killed more time over three coffee refills. It was 9:15 when I pulled up in front of the Roseville Avenue house for the second time.
Still dark, still nobody home.
Now what? I could sit here and wait, but there were people in the neighboring houses, lights blazing in the two flanking Lanier’s. A man sitting in a strange car in a neighborhood like this would have a cop asking him hard questions inside of half an hour. A better idea was to drive around some more, keep checking back periodically-for a while, anyway. I was already tired, headachy, gritty-eyed: the long day and the constant tension taking their toll. Make eleven o’clock the cutoff, then. If nobody showed up by eleven, go find a motel and try to get some sleep and then come back early in the morning.
So I drove aimlessly, keeping to major thoroughfares so I wouldn’t get lost again. And I returned to 21963 Roseville Avenue three more times, the last one at five minutes past eleven. And still nobody was home.
I’d seen a motel near the Denny’s where I’d eaten; I went there, took a room. The woman at the desk was fat and middle-aged and friendly, and it was plain that she found me at least a little attractive. She smiled when she handed over my key. I smiled back, turned away-and as I did that I was conscious of the weight of the.22 in my jacket pocket and I found myself thinking, with a flash of self-hatred: No, you can’t always tell a lunatic by his cover.
The Second Day
EARLY MORNING
Someone was home when I returned to 21963 Roseville Avenue at 8:30 A.M. A ten-year-old Buick stood under the carport, and down on his knees among the flowers and shrubs in the front yard was a man in gardening clothes-a bald man who looked to be in his early sixties.
I parked across the street. It was a warmish, sunny morning and there was a good deal of activity along the block: kids on their way to school, men and women backing cars out of driveways, mothers with toddlers in tow and babies in carriages. By daylight, it had the look of an older, once attractive and solidly middle-class neighborhood that was now starting to slide a little; some homes needed cosmetic and structural repairs, some yards had been allowed to deteriorate into weed patches; even the shade trees that lined its sidewalks had a ragged appearance. The middle class was a rapidly diminishing segment of this country’s population; in another ten years, those families that still qualified would have moved elsewhere, upscale or maybe just sidescale, and this neighborhood would be on its way to becoming a suburban slum tract. Another of the Great American Dreams in remission.
Lanier’s was the best kept house on the block. It had been repainted and reroofed not long ago, the lawn was a thick healthy green and well barbered, the flower beds were weed-free. The yard of a meticulous person, one who enjoyed gardening enough to be doing it at 8:30 in the morning.
The bald man was transplanting a nursery tray full of small yellow flowers; and he was so engrossed in the task that he didn’t seem to hear me a. I walked up the brick path toward him. It was only when I stopped a few feet away and said, “Mr. Lanier?” that he straightened on his knees and looked my way.
“Yes?”
No recognition on his face or in his voice; just a small smile and a mild curiosity in mild blue eyes. Everything about him was mild and nondescript: Mr. Average American working in his garden. I reminded myself that you can’t judge a man by his cover-but I had the feeling that if he was involved in what had been done to me, it was in the most peripheral of ways.
“You’re James Lanier?”
“Yes, that’s right?”
“Do you or did you own a summer cabin on Indian Hill Road near Deer Run?”
“Why… yes.” He put down the trowel he’d been using, got slowly to his feet. There was an odd methodical quality about his movements, as if it wasn’t natural to him to move that way; as if he had once been a quick, energetic man who had undergone some kind of physiological or maybe psychological change. “Has something happened?”
“Happened?”
“At the cabin.”
“Then you still do own it?”
“Yes, I do. But I haven’t been there since… in more than three years. Has the new tenant done something to the place?”
“Tenant. Meaning you’ve rented it to someone?”
“I haven’t, no. Richards and Kirk handled the transaction for me, as they always do.”
“Who would Richards and Kirk be?”
