Stewart lived in Philadelphia. He taught classes in pottery. It's amazing what surgical instruments can do, isn't it?'
Didi swallowed thickly. 'What happened to Stewart?'
'Oh,' the voice from the speaker said, 'he drowned himself in the bathtub. He was the tight-lipped type. His wife… well, she must've shot herself in the head when she found him.'
'You son of a bitch!' Didi shouted, and she pressed the gun's barrel against his throat socket.
'Careful,' the speaker's voice cautioned. 'I'm sensitive there.'
'You killed my friends! I ought to blow your damned head off!'
'You won't,' Van Diver said calmly. 'Maybe you could cripple me, but you don't have any killing left in you, Bedelia. How did you put it? 'I didn't need a prison cell. I carry one around with me.' I got into your house to plant a microphone bug. I've been watching your house for almost four years, Bedelia. I even moved from New Jersey to be close to you.'
'How'd you find me if Stewart didn't tell you anything?'
'His wife remembered you. You'd sent her a set of plates. Nice work. She mailed you a check for six cups to go with them. She had the canceled check, made out to Diane Daniells. The First Bank of Ann Arbor's stamp was on the back, and your signature. When I saw you for the first time, Bedelia, I wanted to sing. Do you understand how a person can love someone and hate them at the same time?'
'No.'
'I can. See, you were always a rung on the ladder. That's all. You were a hope – however slim – to find Mary Terror. I watched you come and go, I checked your mailbox, I camped in the woods outside your house. And when you went on your trip, I knew something important was going on. You'd never left Ann Arbor before. Mary was in the news. I knew. I knew.' The voice through the speaker was terrible, and bright tears glistened in Earl Van Diver's eyes. 'This is what my life is about, Bedelia,' he said. 'Executing Mary Terror.'
Laura had been listening with fascinated horror, and at that moment she saw the object of Van Diver's attention emerge from the IHOP with David's bassinet in her arms.
'Mary,' Van Diver's voice whispered. A tear streaked down his cheek, over the gnarled scar tissue of his mouth. 'There you are.'
Mary had just finished her meal of pancakes, eggs, hash browns, and two cups of black coffee. She'd fed Drummer, and changed his diaper in the bathroom. Drummer was content now, sucking on his pacifier, a little bundle of warmth. 'Good baby,' Mary said. 'You're a good baby boy, aren't -' And then she looked up and saw the BMW sitting there in the parking lot, not far from her van, and her legs seized up. She saw Laura Clayborne at the wheel, Didi sitting in the back with a man she didn't recognize. 'Goddamn it!' she snarled. How the hell had they found her? She held Drummer with one arm, and her other hand snaked into her shoulder bag and touched the Colt, the Compact Magnum automatic farther down amid the baby things. Blow out the tires! she thought, enraged. Shoot that bitch in the face, and kill Didi, too! She took a couple of strides toward the BMW, but then she stopped. The sounds of the shots would bring other people out of the IHOP. Somebody would get her tag number. No, she couldn't open fire here. It would be stupid, when she knew at last where Lord Jack was waiting. Smiling thinly, she walked to the BMW and Laura Clayborne got out.
They stood about twenty feet apart, like two wary animals, as the wind swirled around them and sliced to their bones. Laura's gaze found a Smiley Face button on Mary's sweater, pinned over the heart.
Mary brought the Colt out and rested it against Drummer's side, because she saw that Didi was holding a gun. 'You must have good radar,' she said to Laura.
'I'll follow you all the way to California if I have to.'
'You will have to.' She looked at the Go home scratched on the windshield. 'Somebody gave you some good advice. You ought to go home before you get hurt.'
Laura saw the woman's bloodshot eyes, her face lined and weary. 'You can't keep driving without sleep. Sooner or later you'll nod off behind the wheel.'
Mary had been planning on finding a motel to crash in when she reached Illinois. The No-Doz and coffee had charged her up, but she knew she was going to need rest in a few hours. 'I've gone two days straight without sleep before, when I -'
'Was young?' Laura interrupted. 'You can't make it all the way to California.'
'You can't follow me all the way, either.'
'I've got a co-pilot.'
'I've got a pretty little baby boy.' Mary's smile tightened. 'You'd better pray I don't run off the road.'
Laura took another step closer. Mary's eyes narrowed, but she didn't retreat. 'You understand this,' Laura said, her voice husky with rage. 'If you hurt my baby, I'll kill you. If it's the last thing I do on this earth, I'll kill you.'
Nothing was going to be gained standing in this parking lot wasting time, Mary thought. She had to get back on the interstate and head west again. Later on she'd figure out a way to shake her trackers. She began to back toward the van, the Colt still resting against Drummer's side and the baby's cheeks flushed with the sharp cold.
'Mary?'
It was a man's voice. The man in the backseat of Laura's car. But there was something strange and metallic about it: the voice of a steel-throated robot.
She saw the man staring at her, his face carved into a pallid, scarred grin and his eyes the color of midnight. 'Mary?' the robot voice spoke again. 'You made me suffer.'
Mary stopped her retreat.
'You made me suffer. Do you remember, Mary? That night in Linden?'
The voice – almost disembodied, and made directionless by the swirl and sweep of the wind – caused the rise of chill bumps on the back of Mary Terror's neck.
'I killed Edward,' he said. 'I was aiming at you. I got excited after all these years. But I'll get you, Mary.' The volume suddenly cranked up to a soulless shout: 'I'LL GET YOU, MARY!'
She backed quickly to her van as Laura got behind the BMW's wheel. Mary put Drummer down and started the engine. The BMW's engine roared to life an instant later. Then Mary backed out of the parking lot, the black coffee sloshing in her belly, and she wheeled the van in the direction of I-94 West. Laura said to Didi, 'Take his keys and get him out of here.'
Didi worked the Buick's keys from Van Diver's fist, the automatic jammed against his side. 'You'll never take her without me,' Van Diver said. 'She'll kill both of you before the day's over.'
'Get him out!'
'You put me out,' he said, 'and the first thing I'll do is call the Michigan highway patrol. Then the FBI. They'll set a roadblock for her before she makes the Illinois line. You think Mary's going to give your baby up without a fight?'
Laura reached back, grabbed the cord, and yanked the speaker's plug from Van Diver's throat. 'Out!' she told him.
'He can still write,' Didi realized. 'We'd have to break the bastard's fingers.'
There was no time for further argument. Laura let off the parking brake and drove after Mary Terror. Van Diver made a gasping noise, but his attempt to tell Laura about the magnetic homer and the receiver unit in his car was stillborn. Laura stepped hard on the accelerator, leaving the IHOP behind and racing after the van. Didi kept the pistol pressed into Van Diver's side. That was all right with him. Sooner or later she'd have to relax. Both these women had soft white throats, and he had hands and teeth.
Nothing and no one was going to stop him from killing Mary Terror. If he had to dispose of these women to take control of the car, so be it. He had no code now but vengeance, and whoever wandered in the path of its fire would be reduced to ashes.
Laura saw the van ahead, slowing for its turn onto I-94 West. She followed it, and in another moment she veered into the lane behind Mary and let the speed wind up to sixty-five. The car and the van stayed about fifty yards apart, the highway getting crowded with morning traffic. In the van, Mary looked at the BMW's bashed front fender in her sideview mirror. The memory of that metallic voice still chilled her. You made me suffer, it had said. That night in Linden.
Do you remember, Mary?
