traffic before crossing the road and taking off behind her. Something had to be up. He tried Evon’s cell, but she was out of coverage on the ferry.
On the two-lane road, he could keep pace. The land began to roll here and every time he hit a rise he could see the Lexus several hundred yards ahead of him. Outside Decca, a hay wagon pulled by a pickup swung on in front him, doing no more than twenty-five. At his age, it froze his heart solid when he pulled into the oncoming lane to pass, but he needed to get closer. He fell in with two cars between Sofia and him.
When Evon called, he didn’t even let her talk.
“I think I got him,” Tim told her. “Never saw a surveillance the damn Feebies didn’t muck up.” He just wanted to make her laugh, and she did. The Feds, in fact, were usually better at the cloak-and-dagger. Talking it over now, she and Tim decided Evon should get on the highway on the other side and meet him at the Indian Falls Bridge about fifty miles north, the next point to cross the Kindle.
Near Bailey, the two vehicles that filled the gap between Sofia and Tim exited, and a few miles on, the speed limit lowered to thirty, as the road passed through Harrington Ridge. Tim now recognized the second figure in the back of the car. It was the dog.
“They could have had a second car up there at the ferry,” Evon said, when he told her he still didn’t see Cass.
“But Sofia’s headed away from home,” Tim said. “And she ran out on a reception room full of patients. Odds are she’s running somewhere we wanna go.”
Here, the footprint of the glacier had left undulant farmland, a picture from the
As he expected, when 141 intersected with the highway, Sofia got back on 83. She took off north on the interstate, driving faster than Tim was willing to go, doing at least seventy-five. Before she disappeared, Tim thought he could make out another head beside her in the passenger seat. If it was Cass, he must have been reclined before, sleeping or hiding.
“If they don’t take the bridge at Indian Falls, we’re probably going to lose them,” Tim told Evon over the phone.
There was nothing to do about that. Tim put his audiobook back on. The narrator, with a plummy, Anglicized voice, recited several versions of the story of the Gemini, the identical twins Castor and Pollux, born to Leda after she was raped by the swan. Driving along, Tim found his mind drifting from the book to the imponderable details of Dita’s case. When things suddenly clicked, he nearly swerved off the road.
“I’m an idiot,” he told Evon, when he reached her. “It’s right in front of our faces.” He reminded her about Father Nik telling Georgia that he’d seen Cass on TV, or Dickerman saying Paul’s prints matched those of the man who’d entered Hillcrest. Eloise, the attendant at St. Basil’s, said that when Lidia’s son visited her, sometimes she called him Cass and sometimes Paul. “This little masquerade we’ve been watching. What says it hasn’t been going on for twenty-five years?”
Tim had driven past the entrance to the roadside rest area, which was slightly elevated from the highway, when he caught sight of the gold Lexus parked there. He braked and pulled to the shoulder. Looking back, he saw Sofia rushing toward the one-story brick square that housed the restrooms. A plume of air shimmered behind each exhaust pipe, meaning her need was too urgent even to bother cutting the engine.
The ramp exiting the rest area was ahead of him. Tim inched his way along the gravel shoulder. The egress was posted on both sides with the red circle of the DO NOT ENTER signs. Tim waited for two campers to depart, then swung a hard right and drove in. A guy in an SUV with his family had seen the stunt and waited, but he hung his head out the window as Tim passed. “If you’re too old to read, you shouldn’t drive.”
Tim nodded humbly and continued. In the meantime, he finally saw Cass, who alighted from the passenger’s side, circling to the driver’s door. He’d abandoned the disguise-the prosthetic was gone, and he’d recombed his hair and changed glasses. Sofia was on her way back now, and with one foot in the car, Cass called out to her, probably to say he was ready to drive. But the Lab took the opportunity to squeeze past him and flew out in a blur, charging over to the dog walk, where she tried to frisk around with the other hounds, one of whom reared up on its leash and began barking ferociously. Both Cass and Sofia gave chase.
While they were gone, Tim pulled in beside the Lexus. Its motor remained running. Tim went around to the open door, killed the engine and grabbed the car key. He threw it under the mat in the trunk of his rental car, a blue Chevy Impala, then called Evon for just a second. “I got them,” he told her and hung up, because he could see the two strolling back, with the dog now leashed. Sofia caught sight of Tim first and stopped dead about ten yards away.
“Tim, please,” she said.
“How about the three of us sit down at one of those tables over there and have a conversation? Won’t take long.”
“We don’t owe anyone any explanations,” Cass said. He was a pace ahead of Sofia. “Least of all Hal.”
“Well, I’m not sure about that. My best guess is that you pled guilty to a crime you didn’t commit.”
Cass took that in, then motioned to Sofia to proceed.
“I don’t think you’re going very far,” Tim said. “I have your key.”
Cass charged past and peered through the Lexus’s driver’s side window. When he turned back, his expression was hateful.
Tim said, “You don’t really want to beat up an old man with all these people around.”
“I was thinking more about calling the police.”
“Cass, that would be the wrong move. I’d have to give them the whole story, at least what I know. They’d take your fingerprints, and then they’d go over to Paul’s law office, and his senatorial office, and you’d end up arrested for fraud, and false personation of a public official, impersonating a lawyer-God knows what else. Why don’t we talk first?”
Sofia reached for Cass’s hand, and Tim could see him slump in resignation. The three proceeded to a picnic table near the low brick building that housed the bathrooms and vending machines. The tabletop was a smooth speckled plastic meant to inhibit graffiti, but that still hadn’t hindered the gangs from engraving their signs, probably with cordless Dremel tools. There was also a huge white splash of hardened bird poop, beside which several kids had used permanent markers to draw hearts containing their initials. Youth.
The dog continued to bounce around at the end of her lead, and was soon wound up in the steel legs that bowed under the table. Tim played with her a second. In his house, Maria and he had always owned dogs, mutts, but they’d been some of the best friends of his life. Part of his daughters’ sales pitch for moving to Seattle was that with so many people to help him, Tim would be able to get another pup. Living here, he’d hesitated, unsure how his leg would do with three long walks a day in every kind of weather.
“She’s a good one,” said Tim. “How old?”
“Eighteen months,” said Sofia. “She hasn’t read those books that say she’s supposed to have stopped acting like a puppy.”
“Whatta you call her?”
“Cerberus. Paul named her.”
“Cause she’s such a ferocious watchdog,” said Cass, and shook his head at the folly.
“That was the dog that kept people from escaping from Hades, right? With three heads?”
“I’m waiting for her to grow the first one,” Cass answered. “But she’s definitely got the part down about keeping us in hell.”
“She’ll settle down,” Tim said. “Just like kids. They all grow up, just at their own rates.”
None of them said any more then, so that the great humming roar of the highway surrounded them-the engines’ throaty growl and the tires singing on the pavement and the spumes of rushing air spilling off the vehicles speeding along. The dog had actually taken a seat at Tim’s feet as he scratched her ears.
“Cass, how about you tell me what happened the night Dita died?”
“Why are you so sure I didn’t kill her?”
“Well, she was hit on the left side of the face, for one thing, which means the assailant was probably right- handed. You’re a lefty.”
