thwart Sam Wilkins McLeod. She thought, And this is how the rest of my life slipped away, drifting in extreme reality. A movement in the parking lot, glimpsed through the plate-glass window, caught her eye, and she saw a pickup truck parking in a row of cars. The driver took down a rifle from the gun rack. Teresa remembered the LIVER mnemonic.
She was in Bulverton, June 3, a hot day, brilliant sunshine. On the sidewalk outside the White Dragon. A car had collided with a bollard on the traffic island, while the driver slumped over his steering wheel with blood flooding out of a head wound. Gerry Grove was on the other side of the road, carrying a rifle in both hands at chest height. He kept working the action, firing at anyone he saw. Teresa could see three people lying in the road. Grove saw her, turned the rifle towards her. Teresa stepped back in horror, but at that moment an elderly man rushed out of the door of the hotel, and yelled something at the gunman. Grove immediately fired several shots at the man, who fell back with blood spurting from his face. A stray bullet slammed into one of the large windows of the bar, shattering it and throwing the broken pieces inside. Again, Grove was turning towards her, so Teresa ducked away, hurrying towards the open door of the hotel. An elderly woman, covered in blood, was standing there, half blocking the way. 'Is Jim ... ?' she said softly. Teresa pushed past her as Grove opened fire, throwing the woman to the floor, shrieking and dying. Teresa recalled LIVER.
A bank in Camden, New jersey; a university campus in Austin, Texas. Both filled her with remembered horrors. Sao Paulo, Brazil, a knife fight in a salsa club; Sydney, Australia, a young drug addict running amok; Kansas City, Missouri, the McLaughlin siege ... 1 should have realized that not all these would be relevant. My life is slipping away from me, as before it did, while 1 never saw how pointless it was. LIVER.
lt was a blisteringly hot day, and the Duke ElIington Orchestra was on the radio playing
'Newport Up'. Teresa backed the Chevy station wagon away from the sidewalk, did a Uturn, and drove south along 30th Street. She eased herself more comfortably on the wide bench seat, and glanced up into the rearview mirror, straining to see herself Along the soft old bench seat, on the passenger side, was an elderly black woman. Her face was full of mild concern.
'Hi, Elsa!' Teresa said aloud, smiling across at her. 'What's doing?'
' 1 do what you want to do, honey.'
'Do you know where we're going?'
'I do what you want to do, honey.'
'Well, 1 want to tell you, I'm trying to find my husband. I've got to work towards him. 1 call it contiguity, where these stones overlap. lt was you who showed me that, out there on the highway, when we drove towards the mountains and the landscape flattened out and we never reached the edge. Do you want to do that again, Elsa?'
11 do what you want to do, honey.'
'You don't know anything about this, do you, Elsa?'
'I do what . . .'
They rounded a corner between two hills, and as the road straightened out again they saw that a police roadblock lay ahead, with cops crouching down behind their cars. They were pointing their guns into the distance. Teresa said, 'It was along this road! Not the other! I've been going the wrong way!'
She slowed a little, and glanced again at the old lady sitting across from her. She was grinning, beating her fingers lightly against the dash in time with the music.
Teresa slowed even more, then steered carefully between the two police units. One of the cops shouted at them, and waved his arms. Ahead, a blue Pontiac had come into sight.
'You know what to do here, Elsa?'
'I do what you want to do, honey.'
'I'm going to leave you now. 1 love you, Elsa. Take care!'
She was in Eastbourne Road, Bulverton, June 3. Hot day of blood and broken glass, and Gerry Grove still on the loose. A kid screaming in a car, with his parents lying dead or wounded in the front seats. The engine was still running. The kid was pointing upwards, towards the roof of one of the buildings beside the road. There were scaffolding poles up there, surrounding the chimney stack and the tiles by the roof's ridge. A man's foot had been caught in a joint of the scaffolding as he tumbled backwards from his work. His leg was bare where his trouserleg had ridden up towards his knee, but no more of him was visible. The child kept shouting, 'On the roof!
Teresa recalled the LIVER mnemonic.
She was following a gendarme on night patrol in the immigrant quarter of the city of Lyon; it was January 10, 1959. No time for this. LIVER. She was with Sergeant Geoffrey Verrick, a uniformed traffic policeman, passenger in a patrol car LIVER. She was in the cramped rear seat of an opentop car, steering through the curves of Highway 2, north of Los Angeles, through the mountains ... Teresa was impatient to get on, she should have researched this better, she had been in such a damned hurry to get to Andy-LIVER.
She was standing in a long room, unused but for a small film set at one end. lt had been made to look like a western saloon bar. A young woman, dressed as a cowgirl, wriggled uncomfortably in clothes that were obviously too tight.
A woman carrying a powder puff stepped through the ring of lights.
Teresa walked past the set and out through the door that led to the showers. At the far end of a narrow passageway was one of those emergency exits with a steel bar that had to be pushed down. Teresa pressed hard on the bar, but the door seemed to be stuck. She put her weight on it, and in a moment it grated open.
A small enclosed yard was outside, piled with black plastic garbage sacks, crates of brown bottles, and bales of paper bound up with wire. Traffic roared by somewhere close at hand, but out of sight.
Teresa retraced her steps along the passageway, opening every door that she passed, finding only small unused offices or closets. She saw a flight of steps leading down, and at the bottom there was another barred emergency exit. When she pushed this open, she emerged into the dry blazing heat of Arizona. The immense sky exploded into being.
