questions the mouth seemed too small and as rigid as a coin slot. He had extraordinarily thin lips.
He did not listen to the dialogue; he remembered clearly what had been asked and answered; he had comported himself well. But television was not a vehicle for words. He watched the mobile face as though he were a patient being counseled: would I have confidence in this practitioner?
He decided that he probably would. But there was something about that mouth that troubled him.
When the program ended he switched on the light above his chair, extinguished the television set and walked back into the bathroom. He faced the mirror and spoke loudly to himself and watched his mouth move: he tried to do it without punctuating each phrase with that prim grimace.
Quickly he realized that it was going to be a very hard habit to break.
A shadow loomed behind him in the mirror.
My dear sweet God.
6
There wasn’t room for a fourth on the bunk. Mackenzie watched Duggai bundle the trembling Dana into the truck and heard the swift intake of Shirley Painter’s breath. Beside him Jay Painter had gone absolutely still and was watching Duggai surreptitiously out of the corners of his vision-as one might watch a poisonous reptile poised above one’s chest.
Now he’ll be having his fun with us, Mackenzie thought; bleakly he wondered just what form it would take.
Earle Dana sat down on the floor at Duggai’s bidding. Mackenzie watched their captor pull the noose tight around Dana’s ankles. Dana’s wrists like the others’ were wired behind his back and now Duggai fastened them to a leg of the cookstove; the gag in his mouth and the clothesline were identical to theirs.
San Jose, Mackenzie thought. Now where?
The truck started up and he heard Earle Dana’s sudden grunt; then there was an awkward scrabbling as Earle moved around trying to wedge himself into some position in which he wouldn’t get battered.
Mackenzie was thinking: If Duggai only knew-confining the four of us together is punishment enough.…
Somewhere in the timeless run of the night the truck stopped and Duggai let them out one at a time, freeing their mouths, feeding them sandwiches, giving them a little water to drink, allowing them two minutes to relieve themselves. It was a roadside rest area-a back road deserted in the starlight, California hills heavy on the horizons. Mackenzie found it impossible to guess their location.
Within a quarter of an hour they were on their way again, four people confined in blind fear. Jay Painter kept banging against Mackenzie’s shoulder as the truck pitched them around. Each time Jay would draw away quickly as if he were trying to avoid a contaminating contact. In his pain Mackenzie almost smiled.
The skill with which Duggai had worked it all out impressed him. Clearly Duggai had a very specific destination in mind for them. He could have told them where he was taking them; it would have made no difference to their helplessness. But by keeping them ignorant he was fueling their terrors. His refusal to explain was more hideously sinister than any specified threat.
The gags on their mouths, the tying of hands and feet, the closing of curtains in the camper-these were matters of elementary security, to be sure, but they were also instruments of psychic torment. It was not accident; it was part of a scheme that had been honed down to the least factor. Incarcerate four surprised people in darkness, bind them painfully, prevent them from communicating with one another-and you had gone a good part of the way toward driving them into madness.
He heard the sighing sobs of Earle Dana’s hysteria; Earle was flinging himself about in a panic-stricken effort to get loose. Now and then some part of him would carom off Mackenzie’s knee.
Finally in half-strangled exhaustion Earle gave it up. Mackenzie heard beside him Jay Painter’s disgruntled snort.
Daylight penetrated the curtains. He was able to see their faces, distorted by the ropes and gags. Shirley watched him for a time; he couldn’t make out her expression and when Jay realized she was locking glances with Mackenzie he scowled at her and Shirley looked away. On the floor at Mackenzie’s feet Earle seemed only half conscious. There was a dried trickle of blood on his upper lip.
The truck was going at a good clip up a smooth highway; the tires howled. As the morning advanced the sun made an oven of the aluminum camper body. Sweat formed on Mackenzie’s face, under his arms, in his crotch. His eyes were gritty.
He tried to occupy himself with vague mental exercises. Nothing did much good; the discomfort was too acute. He was sure his hands were damaged by now-except for a very brief unstrapping eight hours ago they had been wired together continuously nearly three times the clock around.
Thoughts of the dog crossed his mind.
The truck went off the interstate once; he guessed it to be around noon. The camper stopped. He heard the clank of a filler-hose nozzle going into the fuel funnel. Mackenzie desperately bounced up and down, jiggling the camper, until Duggai’s voice growled at him through the aluminum: “Shut up in there. Ain’t nobody can see it.” So it was a self-service pump.
Finally they were moving again. The heat was intense. His clothing became sodden with sweat. The enclosed airless cabin began to stink; he worried about carbon monoxide poisoning but there was nothing they could do about it. Actually there were probably cracks in the camper’s construction; concerned, he felt currents of air on his ankles; it was only the heat that made it seem sucked empty of oxygen.
His mind performed an idle calculation. Duggai had come down off the Sierra with Mackenzie alone in the camper yesterday morning and they had stopped once to fuel the tank, probably at eleven o’clock or so. Then they had driven perhaps two and a half hours and stopped in Palo Alto. Most of that section of the drive had been on a freeway: assume a hundred miles.
Then they had waited through the afternoon and the waning evening. An hour or so before dark Duggai had left the truck parked on the street. During the ensuing hour Mackenzie had torn his wrists trying to free himself but had got nowhere against his shackles. Some time after dark Duggai had returned with the Painters and put them in the truck. Then they’d ridden for an hour or an hour and a half, a good part of it on freeways again, down to San Jose to collect Earle Dana. That hadn’t taken long-Duggai had left the truck for no more than fifteen minutes and returned with the fourth prisoner.
They’d left San Jose not later than half past ten at night. They’d gone slowly for the next two hours or so- traveling back streets and country roads from the feel of it. Some time after midnight they’d entered a freeway; no telling which one-California was scarred everywhere with them.
And for the past twelve hours Duggai had been driving steadily except for the brief interval when he’d let them out of the truck one at a time.
Even assuming they’d been traveling no faster than fifty miles an hour on the freeways it meant Duggai had put at least 750 miles on the truck since he’d last refueled.
A three-quarter-ton truck of this kind couldn’t make better than eighteen or twenty miles to the gallon. It would need a forty-gallon tank to have gone that long without refilling. Mackenzie hadn’t heard of any pickup truck with a tank bigger than twenty-five gallons’ capacity.
There must be a reserve tank, something added to the truck’s normal capacity. Mackenzie had known a few ranchers who’d had reserve tanks installed under the passenger seats of their pickups. It made the vehicle into a death trap if there were an accident-the driver and his passengers rode directly on top of the added fuel-but it extended the range of the truck to as much as a thousand miles.
It meant Duggai could be taking them anywhere.
It was after dark when the truck left the freeway. Mackenzie had been asleep; the lurching brought him awake. Against his shoulder Jay Painter’s weight was tipped un-caringly; Jay was snoring softly against his gag; in his sleep his hatred had dissipated and he was leaning against Mackenzie as a welcome pillow. Mackenzie didn’t wake him. Jay was welcome to his resentment but there’d be little point compounding it now.
Mackenzie heard the roar of a souped-up car. Shortly afterward the truck eased to a stop, waited briefly and started moving again. Probably a traffic light: they were in a town. He heard more traffic intermittently. Streetlights
