maybe the kid's dangerous, so I decided I ought to call you, just to be safe.'
'Did he threaten you with the machete?'
'No, nothing like that. I asked him to leave, and he left. I just thought maybe you might want to check him out.'
'Where did you drop him off?'
'Outside of Toledo, right near the airport. He made a joke about hijacking a plane with the machete.'
'On Airport Highway?'
'Yes. Outside a convenience store.'
'Can you describe him, please?'
'He was young, maybe eighteen or so. Thin. Kind of weird looking, like he was sleepy or drugged out...'
'Caucasian?'
'Yes. Red hair, pale skin, freckles. He was wearing a gray sweatshirt, the kind with a hood on it.'
'Height?'
'Average. Maybe six feet, a little less.'
'And may I have your name?'
'I'd rather not,' I said. 'I live in Florida. I'm on my way back there now. I'd prefer not to get involved in anything up here.'
'I understand,' the woman said, her voice clipped, officially precise. 'Thank you for calling. I'll have the dispatcher alert our patrolmen.'
I SPENT the next twenty minutes sitting in my car, right there on Main Street. St. Jude's rang the hour, a little melody of bells, then five heavy strokes. The sun closed in on the western horizon, the sky around it taking on a pinkish tint. It had turned into a stunning afternoon, the air so crystalline it seemed like it wasn't there. Objects -- the cars lining the street, the storefronts, the parking meters, the church steeple -- seemed more clearly defined than usual, as if they had thin, black lines drawn around their edges.
The town was quiet, abandoned looking.
I knew there was a 90 percent chance that the bill Sarah had used was untraceable. Perhaps this should've been enough for me, but it wasn't. I thought about it, debated it in my head. If only one of the bills had been marked, or ten of them, or even a hundred, I think I might've acted differently, I might've just let it go. There were five thousand of them, though, one out of ten, and that was too much. I couldn't take the risk.
Fremont and Renkins came down the town hall steps shortly after five. They didn't notice me; they walked off to the right, up the sidewalk, Fremont talking in an animated manner, Renkins nodding emphatically to everything he said. They climbed into their car and pulled out, heading east, toward Toledo. Renkins drove.
I waited until my watch said five-ten. Then I started my own car, eased it away from the curb, and, also heading east, the setting sun large and red in my rearview mirror, made my way carefully out of town.
It was a thirty-minute drive to the airport.
12
IT STAYED farm country until right before I hit the airport. Then the highway broadened to four lanes, and buildings started to pop up -- convenience stores, video arcades, taverns, cheap hotels, pool halls, fast-food restaurants -- growing denser and taller and brighter the farther east I went. Traffic thickened, cars exiting and entering, blinkers flashing. This was the edge of Toledo, a long boulevard of neon and fluorescent light reaching out like a tentacle from the city's core.
Alexander's was a dingy-looking store, bunkerlike, with low, concrete walls and a flat roof. Iron bars crisscrossed its windows, and a sign flashed BEER on and off in pink and blue letters above its door. There was only one car in its tiny lot, a black, mud-spattered Jeep, sitting out near the road.
I drove past, then circled back.
There was a greenhouse a hundred feet beyond Alexander's. It was closed for the weekend, dark. I pulled into its gravel lot and parked facing the street, to facilitate my getaway.
Across the highway, running parallel to the road, was a chain-link fence topped with a double coil of razor wire. Beyond it lay the airport. I could just make out the control tower in the distance, could see the slow spiral of its spotlight through the night sky, and, below it, the vague red-and-green glow of the runways.
I climbed out, walked around to the rear of my station wagon, and swung open the tailgate. Jacob's trunk was there; it'd been the last thing I loaded when I cleaned out his apartment. Quickly, I lifted its lid and reached inside, my hand moving over the stack of bath towels, the tackle box, and the fielder's mitt, groping for the cool, metallic edge of the machete's blade.
It was off to the right, exactly where I'd left it. I took it out and set it on the bumper. Then I began searching through the other boxes. I found Jacob's ski mask in the first one I opened, his hooded sweatshirt in the second.
I exchanged my jacket for the sweatshirt. It was much too big for me -- the sleeves hung down to my fingertips and the hood draped itself across my face like a monk's cowl -- but that was exactly what I wanted: it would cover my hair and forehead, disguising my features long enough for me to enter the store and make sure that it was empty. Then I could put on the ski mask.
I slid the machete up my right-hand sleeve, handle first. Its point rested in the center of my palm, a sharp pinprick of pain. I jammed the ski mask into my pants pocket, swung the tailgate shut with my hip. Then I headed off toward the store.
It was quarter till six, and the sun had just disappeared. Drivers were switching on their headlights.
As I entered the parking lot in front of Alexander's, a plane thundered overhead, shaking the air, a huge mass of steel less than a hundred feet above me. Its landing lights threw a moment's glare onto the asphalt, like a flashbulb popping, then it was gone, shooting across the highway, its engines whining as they decelerated, its flaps coming down, its wheels stretching toward the ground. I watched it until it landed.
When I pushed open the store's front door, a bell rang above my head, alerting the cashier to my presence. He was sitting behind a counter off to the left, reading a newspaper. There was a radio playing beside him, tuned to an evangelical station, its volume turned up high.
'You got to be careful what you listen to,' a man's voice said from the radio. 'Just like there's the word of God, there's also the word of Satan. And it sounds the same. It sounds exactly the same.'
The cashier glanced up at me, nodded, then returned to his paper. He was exactly as Sarah had described him: large, muscular, bearded. He was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, and he had a tattoo on his arm, black and green, of a bird in flight.
I moved past him and into the store's center aisle. I kept my right arm clamped against my side as I walked, holding the machete in place. The store was longer than it was wide, and by the time I reached its rear, I was safely out of sight.
I pulled off the hood and looked around.
The back wall was lined with sliding glass doors, behind which sat cans of soda and beer, tubs of ice cream, boxes of frozen food.
I walked quickly to the left, then back to the right, scanning the other two aisles. They were empty; there was no one else in the store.
The radio continued to preach, reading now from the Bible: ''There is great gain in godliness with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world; but if we have food and clothing, with these we shall be content.''
Beyond the refrigerated display case, in the far-right-hand corner of the building, was a door. It was cracked partway open, its interior lost in darkness. I assumed that it led to a storeroom.
''But as for you, man of God, shun all this; aim at righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness,
