That did not bear thinking about. Music came on, and from its nature this was the station that had news breaks at frequent intervals. Amanda went back to the door again. Now there was a faint neutral sound, which might have been someone talking steadily or water running at full force; it seemed to have no variation.
The music stopped, and a woman disk jockey said smoothly, “Wasn’t that pretty? Oh-hhh, my. At the top of the local news, the second of two state penitentiary escapees at large for nearly forty-eight hours has been captured by police. That bulletin just in, no details as yet. In the search for Ellie Peale, the clerk abducted from a convenience store also two nights ago, a Corrales man was questioned but has been released. State Representative David Esquibel, under pressure because of his stand on wilderness—”
Amanda’s shocked hand went out and snapped the radio voice into silence. Who, then, did the cellar hide? A man with an even more desperate need for sanctuary because he had taken a young girl with whose face the whole city was now familiar? Had Amanda herself, earlier, been pan-broiling steak and mushrooms and tomatoes obliviously while under her feet Ellie Peale was being prevented from crying out? Or could no longer cry out?
Quivira Road, the location of the convenience store, was a good eight miles away. This house was isolated, and two nights ago Mrs. Balsam had been summoned out of it because the palomino mare was loose. Set loose? With another decoy call tonight?
Amanda moved on trembling legs to the bedroom door. From the other part of the house was the sound of a sudden sharp impact, and now, at last, Rosie began to cry.
Chapter 8
As of late that afternoon, there was one fresh piece of information in the background of the Peale case. It was far from reassuring.
The girl’s mother and stepfather had disapproved strongly of her working at the Speedy-Q because of the late hours and the vulnerability of such places, and it was to a high-school friend since moved to Denver that Ellie had confided by letter certain drawbacks to her new job. The Denver papers had carried the story of her abduction in capsule form, because it was possible that she had been transported over a state line, and the friend, Joanne Faber, had seen it on her return from a skiing vacation and telephoned the Albuquerque police.
What she had to report wasn’t much, but it was sinister. Early in December Ellie had written to say that she had an admirer who gave her the creeps by cruising up in a van, usually at about ten or ten-thirty, and simply parking there and staring into the store. He was always alone. In a following letter he had come inside, not to buy anything but to ask her for a date.
Here, where there should have been physical details, there were none, but Ellie Peale could not have known how important they would be. Joanne Faber still had the letter, and read from it: “ ‘He’s really weird. He reminds me of George Anderson, remember him?’ ”
Again, what sounded promising was not. Joanne Faber explained that the only memorable feature of this boy had been his preoccupied way of crossing the high-school campus, so that when he tripped or bumped into other students he never looked down or back to see what had caused the impediment to his progress.
Singleminded, indrawn, taking no heed of obstacles in his path. It brought back memories of a case, a dozen years ago but vivid in its unpleasantness, in which a quiet, bespectacled sophomore, after admiring a classmate from afar for most of a semester, had waylaid the girl a half mile from her home, made unsuccessful advances, beaten her to death with a brick and buried her body. The psychiatric report had said, “Inability to cope with real or imagined rejection,” which to the people who had to deal with the results seemed something of an understatement.
They were dealing here with weeks instead of months, but also with a man instead of a boy. In view of the unbalanced nature of the act, and the time elapsed, the prospects for Ellie Peale did not look bright.
On the other hand, the police now had hold of a slender thread. The convenience store would have its regular customers, people living nearby who depended on it for cigarettes or a loaf of bread, and someone must have been curious about the frequently parked van with its single occupant. It was true that no one had come forward in spite of the extensive television and newspaper coverage of the case and the appealing quality of the girl herself, but the number of people who said defensively, “Well, I Wasn’t sure,” or “I might be getting an innocent person in trouble” or even, “Nobody asked me,” was astonishing.
In the morning, concentrate on that.
“There must be something here, goddamn it!” Claude had convinced himself that there would be penicillin or an equivalent in the refrigerator; finding none, he spun and hurled ajar of mustard shatteringly against the far living room wall. The shelf from which he had taken it looked as though it had been pawed by a foraging bear. The terrified Afghan bounded up on the couch to seek protection from the small child who, unnerved by the explosion of glass and not at all sure of the large dog’s intentions, began to cry.
“Get it clean for now,” said Sweet economically. He had filled the steel sink with scaldingly hot water while the other man used the electric shaver he had brought, and produced a cake of soap from the cabinet beneath. “There’ll be an all-night drugstore on the way. Hurry up, Claude. This guy won’t wait.”
His half brother, startlingly transformed by the neat, deep-blond wig concealing the dark hair he had
