much longer, the gas would give out and they'd be coasting. There was something darkly comedic about this, like a twisted Lucy and Ethel on the trail of a celebrity when Ricky went to Hollywood. Don Juan, she thought. Wasn't that the movie Ricky visited Hollywood to film? Or was it Casanova? No, Don Juan. She was almost sure of it. That was the first sign of old age: forgetting details. Who was it that Lucy had gotten a booth next to at the Brown Derby? William Holden? Hadn't she spilled soup on his head? Or was it a salad instead of's –
The blare of an air horn behind her almost lifted Laura out of her seat and caused Didi to yelp like a dog. She jerked the wheel to the right, back into the lane she'd drifted out of, and the huge truck that was looming on her tail roared past like a snorting dinosaur.
'Screw you!' Didi shouted, and shot the truck's driver a bird.
Laura's heart began to pound.
Mary Terror was cutting her speed, and easing over toward an exit ramp that was about a quarter mile ahead.
Laura blinked, wasn't sure if she was walking on the paths of La-La Land again or not.
In the sky was an apparition. A symbol of high karma, as Mark Treggs might have said. Up on stilts on the roadside was a gigantic yellow Smiley Face, and a sign that said HAPPY HERMAN'S! GAS! FOOD! GROCERIES! NEXT EXIT!
Oh yes, Laura thought. That was where Mary Terror was going. Maybe she needed gas. Maybe she needed something to keep her awake. In any case, Happy Herman's Smiley Face was a beacon, drawing Mary Terror off the interstate like a hippie to a be-in.
'Where's she going?' Didi said excitedly. 'She's getting off!'
'I know.' Laura moved into the right lane. The exit ramp was coming up. Mary Terror took it, committing the van to a long curve to the right, and Laura cut the BMW's speed as she followed.
Happy Herman's was on the left. It was a yellow cinder-block combination grocery store, burger joint, and gas station, with full-serve and self-serve pumps. Big yellow Smiley Faces were painted on the windows. A couple of trucks were at the diesel pumps, and a station wagon with an Ohio tag was being fueled with self-serve premium unleaded. Mary Terror slid the van under a yellow plastic awning. As her front tires went over a rubber hose across the concrete, a shrill bell rang. She stopped at the full-serve pumps, her gas port lined up with the regular leaded hose. Then she sat there and watched in the sideview mirror as the BMW came in and went to the self-serve pumps thirty feet away. Laura Clayborne got out, the injured side of her face bruised and swollen and her hair windblown. Was there a gun in her hand? Mary saw the woman start to walk toward the van, and then a man's wrinkled face appeared at the window. He tapped on the glass, and Mary quickly glanced in the rearview mirror at her own face to make sure she'd gotten all of Edward's blood off with her saliva and fingernails. Some blood remained at her hairline, but it would have to do. She cranked the window down. 'Fill 'er up?' the man asked. He wore a yellow, grease-stained Happy Herman cap and he was chewing vigorously on a toothpick.
Mary nodded. The man moved away from the window, and Mary stared at Laura, who stood less than ten feet away. Her hands were empty; no gun. Behind her, Didi was fueling up the BMW. Laura took two steps closer, and stopped when Mary rested her arm on the window frame, the baby's blood-spattered white blanket over her hand and about three inches of the Colt's barrel showing.
The sight of the bloody white blanket transfixed Laura. She couldn't take her eyes off it, and she felt a hot surge of sickness rising in her throat. And then Mary's other arm came into view and there was David, alive and sucking on a pacifier. The Colt's barrel moved a few inches, taking aim in the direction of the baby's skull.
The gas pump's motor was humming, the numbers clicking higher.
Mary sensed the Happy Herman attendant returning before he got there. She slid her arm down beside her, the gun resting against her thigh. He peered in at her, his eye catching for a second or two on the baby. 'Somebody don't like you,' he told Mary.
'What?'
He dug at a molar with the toothpick. 'Got bullet holes in your van. Somebody don't like you.'
'I bought it at a government auction,' she said, her expression blank. 'It used to belong to a drug dealer.'
The man stared at her, his toothpick working. 'Oh,' he said. Then he sprayed the windshield with cleaning fluid and started to wash it with a squeegee as the gas kept flowing into the tank.
Laura Clayborne was no longer there.
She stood in the dank women's room, where there were no Smiley Faces and the only thing yellow was the toilet water. She glanced in the mirror and saw a fright mask. Then she hurriedly soaked paper towels in water from the sink and cleaned her blood-clogged nostrils. Touching her face sent electric jolts of pain through her cheekbones, but she had no time to be gentle. Her vision was hazed by tears when she finished. She crumpled the bloody towels, dropped them into the wastebasket, and then she relieved the pressure on her bladder. There was a dribble of blood between her legs, too, the stitches popped by Earl Van Diver's knee. When she was done, Laura went out into the cold again, and she saw Mary Terror carrying David into the grocery store, the shoulder bag over her arm and probably both guns in it.
The attendant had finished pumping the gas into the van. Laura walked to it and opened the driver's door. Mary Terror's smell, a heavy, animalish odor, lingered within. No keys in the ignition, of course. Laura reached under the dashboard and gripped a handful of wires. One good yank, and… and what? she asked herself. The situation wouldn't change. Maybe the van wouldn't start, but Mary would still have David, still have her guns, and still kill him as soon as the police arrived. What was the point of disabling the van if David would die as the result?
She released the wires. 'Damn it,' she said quietly. She'd only waste her strength shouting.
She looked behind the van's front seats. In the back were suitcases and a couple of large paper sacks. Laura reached over and searched in them, finding such items as potato chip bags, cartons of doughnuts and cookies, a box of Pampers, and some baby formula as well as paper cups and a half-full plastic bottle of Pepsi. Traveling food, she thought. Groceries that Mary and Edward Fordyce had bought for their trip. Also amid the clutter in the van's rear was a pillow and a blanket. She took the blanket and one of the sacks containing junk food, the cups, and the Pepsi. She left the diapers and the formula where they were. Something else caught her attention: a pacifier on the passenger seat. She picked it up, intending to keep it. It had her baby's saliva on it, and his aroma. But no, no: if David had no pacifier to ease his crying, the crying might snap Mary Terror's nerves, and then…
Laura put the pacifier down. It might have been the hardest thing she'd ever had to do.
Laura carried the booty to her car. And that was when she realized the gas portal was closed, the pump shut off, and Bedelia Morse was gone.
In the store, as Mary Terror paid for her gas, a box of No-Doz tablets, a jug of pure water, and a package of trash bags, she watched Laura raiding her van. Won't touch the engine or the tires, she thought. Bitch knows what would happen if she did.
'Is that all?' the woman behind the register asked.
'Yeah, I think -' She stopped. Beside the register was a glass bowl. On the glass bowl was written in black Magic Marker Don't Worry! Be Happy! In the bowl were hundreds of little yellow Smiley Face pins. She wouldn't have stopped at Happy Herman's but for the sign, and the feeling that she was invincible under its power. It had proved her right. Laura Clayborne couldn't touch her. 'How much are those?'
'Quarter apiece.'
'I'll take one,' Mary said. 'And one for my baby.' She pinned one on the light blue sweater she'd bought Drummer in New Jersey, and then she pinned the other on her own sweater, next to what she realized looked like dried oatmeal but were flecks of Edward's brain.
'Somebody get hurt?' the woman asked when the bill had been paid. She was looking distastefully at the splotches of crimson on the blanket nestled around Drummer.
'Nosebleed.' The answer came fast and smooth. 'I always get them in cold weather.'
She nodded, putting Mary's purchases into a sack. 'Me, my ankles swell up. Look like a couple a' treetrunks walkin' around the house. They're swole up on me right now.'
'Sorry,' Mary said.
'Means a storm on the way,' the woman told her. 'Weatherman says all hell's 'bout to break loose out west.'
'I believe it. Have a nice day.' Mary took the sack under one arm, cradling Drummer with the other, and she walked out of the store toward her van. She had to pee, but she didn't want to let the van out of her sight so she'd
