'We couldn't rent a car without a driver's license. Anyway, we'd have to give up the gun to board a plane.'
Didi drove on a few more miles before she spoke again, bringing up a subject that had been needling her since the incident at the lumberyard. 'What good is a gun going to be, anyway? I mean… how are you going to get David back, Laura? Mary's not going to give him up. Shell die first. Even with a gun, how're you going to get David back alive?' She emphasized the last word.
'I don't know,' Laura answered.
'If Mary finds Jack Gardiner… well, who knows what she'll do? Who knows what he'll do? If she shows up at his door after all these years, he might flip out.' She glanced quickly at the other woman and then away, because the pain had crept back onto Laura's face and latched there in the lines. 'Jack was a dangerous man. He could talk other people into doing his killing for him, but he did his share of murders, too. He was the mind behind the Storm Front. The whole thing was his idea.'
'And you really think that's him? In Freestone?'
'I think that's him in the photo, yeah. Whether he's in Freestone now or not, I don't know. But when Mary gets to him with David as some kind of a… love offering, God only knows how he'll react.'
'So we've got to find Jack Gardiner first,' Laura said.
'There's no telling how far Mary is ahead of us. She'll get to Freestone before us if we don't go by plane.'
'She can't be that far ahead. She's hurt, too, maybe worse than I am. The weather's going to slow her down. If she gets off the interstate, it'll just slow her down more.'
'Okay,' Didi said. 'Even if we do find Jack first, what then?'
'We wait for Mary. She'll give the baby to Jack. That's why she's going to Freestone.' Laura gently touched her bandaged hand. It was hot enough to sizzle, and throbbed with a deep, agonizing pulse. She would have to stand the pain, because she had no choice. 'When my baby is out of Mary's hands… that's why I might need the gun.'
'You're not a killer. You're tough as old leather, yeah. But not a killer.'
'I'll need the gun to hold Mary for the police,' Laura told her.
There was a long silence. The Cutlass's tires hummed. 'I don't think Jack would like that,' Didi said. 'Whatever identity he's built for himself, he's not going to let you call the police on Mary. And once you get David back… I'm not sure I can let you do that either.'
'I understand,' Laura said. She'd already thought about this, and her thoughts had led her to this destination. 'I was hoping we could work something out.'
'Right. Like a presidential pardon?'
'More like a plane ticket to either Canada or Mexico.'
'Oh boy!' Didi smiled bitterly. 'Nothing like starting life over in a foreign country with zilch money and a K- Mart sweater!'
'I could send you some money to help you get settled.'
'I'm an American! Get it? I live in America!'
Laura didn't know what else to say. There was nothing else, really. Didi had started her journey to this point a long time ago, when she'd cast her lot with Jack Gardiner and the Storm Front. 'Damn,' Didi said quietly. She was thinking of a future in which the fear of someone coming up behind her suffocated the days and haunted the nights, and everywhere she walked she carried a target on her back. But there were a lot of islands in the waterways of Canada, she thought. A lot of places where the mail came in by seaplane and your closest neighbor lived ten miles away. 'Would you buy me a kiln?' she asked. 'For my pottery?'
'Yes.'
'That's important to me, to do my pottery. Canada's a pretty country. It would be inspiring, wouldn't it?' Didi nodded, answering her own query. 'I could be an expatriate. That sounds better than exile, don't you think?'
Laura agreed that it did.
The Cutlass passed from Iowa into Nebraska, following I-80 as it snaked around Omaha and on across the flat, white-frosted plains. Laura closed her eyes and rested as best she could, with the wipers scraping across the windshield and the tires a dull roar.
Thursday's child, she thought.
Thursday's child has far to go.
She remembered one of the nurses saying that, at David's birth.
And she hadn't thought of this before, but it came to her between the scrape and the roar: she'd been born on a Thursday, too.
Far to go, she thought. She'd come a long way, but the most dangerous distance still lay ahead. Somewhere on that dark horizon, Mary Terror was traveling with David, getting closer to California with the passing of every mile. Behind Laura's eyes, she saw David lying in a pool of blood, his skull shattered by a bullet, and she shoved the image away before it took root. Far to go. Far to go. Into the golden West, dark as a tomb.
3: He Knows
Three hours ahead of the Cutlass, the snow was whirling before Mary's headlights. It was coming down fast and heavy now from the solid night, a blowing snow that the wipers were straining to clear. Every so often a gust of wind would broadside the Cherokee and the wheel would shudder in Mary's hands. She could feel the tires wanting to slew on the slick interstate, and around her the other traffic – which had thinned out dramatically since nightfall – had slowed to half the posted speed.
'We're going to be fine,' she told Drummer. 'Don't you worry, Mama'll take care of her sweet baby.' But the truth was that the ants of fear were crawling under her skin, and she'd passed two pileups since she'd left a McDonald's in North Platte, Nebraska, twenty minutes before. This kind of driving shredded the nerves and shot the eyes, but the interstate was still clear and Mary didn't want to stop until she had to. Drummer had been fed and changed at the McDonald's, and he was getting sleepy. Mary's injured leg was numb from driving, but the pain in her forearm wound woke up occasionally and bit her hard and deep just to let her know who was really in charge. She felt feverish, too, her face moist and swollen with heat. She had to go on, as far as she could tonight, before her suffering body gave out on her.
'Let's sing,' Mary said. ''Age of Aquarius,'' she decided. 'The Fifth Dimension, remember?' But of course Drummer did not. She began to sing the song, in a voice that might have been pleasant in her youth, but was now harsh and incapable of carrying a tune. ' 'If You're Going to San Francisco,'' she said: another song title, but she couldn't recall the artist's name. She began to sing that, too, but she knew only the part about going to San Francisco with flowers in your hair, so she sang that over and over a few times and then let it go.
The snow blew against the windshield and the Cherokee trembled. The flakes hit the glass and stuck there, large and intricate like Swiss lace, for a few seconds before the wipers could plow them aside and the next ones came.
''Hot Fun in the Summertime,'' Mary said. 'Sly and the Family Stone.' Except she didn't know the words to it, all she could do was hum the tune. ''Marrakesh Express.' Crosby, Stills, and Nash.' She knew almost all of that one; it had been one of Lord Jack's favorites.
' 'Light My Fire,'' the man in the backseat said in a voice like velvet and leather.
Mary looked into the rearview mirror and saw his face and part of her own. Her skin was glistening with fever sweat. His was white, like carved ice.
' 'Light My Fire,'' God repeated. His dark hair was a thick mane, his face sculpted with shadows. 'Sing it with me.'
She was shivering. The heater was blasting, she was full of heat, but she was shivering. God looked just like he did when she'd seen him up close in Hollywood. She smelled the phantom aromas of pot and strawberry incense, the combination like an exotic and lost perfume.
He began to sing, there in the back of the Cherokee, as the snow flailed down and Mary Terror gripped the wheel.
She listened to his half moan, half snarl, and after a while she joined him. They sang 'Light My Fire' together, his voice tough and vibrant, hers searching for the lost chord. And they were on the part about setting the night on fire when Mary saw red flames erupt in the windshield. Not flames, no: brake lights. A truck, its driver stomping on the brakes just in front of her.
