It was some time before Amanda realized that the pickup’s radio was turned to the police band. What was being said in a monotonous male voice with frequent crackling pauses in between was unintelligible to her, but she supposed that it would alert criminals to the progress of the opposition.
She sat rigidly in the middle, patting the child on her lap now and then as she might have patted a trembling puppy, trying to flinch her shoulders inward from any contact with Dickens, at the wheel, or the silent shape on her other side. She had glanced at him elliptically once, under the pretext of rearranging strayed folds of Rosie’s blanket. His profile was set and queerly blunted, and although he was utterly motionless he gave an impression of being ready to spring. He must have been wearing a dark wig when he took Ellie Peale from the convenience store, because the dim light from the dashboard picked out a smooth edge of blondish hair.
Eeriness being the very fabric of nightmare, it did not seem odd to Amanda that what she had seen in the church, and what they had bundled back into the confessional, was not mentioned in that short and purposeful drive through the snow. She would not have dared, sandwiched in between the killer and his accessory, and they scarcely needed to bring her situation home to her.
The radio muttered. Rosie, lulled by sound and motion, normally oblivious in her crib by six o’clock, had fallen asleep. Amanda held herself so tense in avoidance of the flanking men that her shoulders and the small of her back ached, and began to record with bared nerves the fact that the uncommunicativeness in the truck was more than lack of utterance. It had an explosive quality which she had encountered, watered down a number of times, upon entering a room where there had just been a fierce domestic quarrel. Were they at odds as to what to do about her, the witness? Or was it simply concerted rage over a miscarriage in their plans?
Here was the lighted crossroads and the telephone booth, snow topped, its glass wooled over. Dickens backed the pickup into darkness, pulled on the brake but left the motor running, reached into the glove compartment for the flashlight. He opened the door and got out. “Come on, make your call,” he said, and then, when Amanda maneuvered across the seat with Rosie balanced against her shoulder, “The kid stays.”
With the man who had plunged a knife into Ellie Peale? “I won’t leave her,” said Amanda, trying for calm. You can’t make—”
“You don’t think so?” He didn’t bother to be sardonic; he was brief and matter-of-fact. “She’ll be okay if you do as you’re told.”
And there was the pattern, stark and unbreakable. As long as one of them had Rosie, and a vehicle in which to drive off with her to some unfindable place, she would indeed do as she was told. With a swarm of hatred that burned just under her ribs, Amanda set the sleepily stirring child down on the seat, said gently, “I’ll be right back,” and, because there were times which demanded the deliberate self-infliction of pain, jumped savagely out into the snow.
Her ankle, stiffened and swollen, responded with a searing flash that made her catch her breath. Dickens did not comment on her limp as they walked to the telephone booth. Instead, he asked intently, “What happened to your aunt?”
Amanda was tempted fleetingly to say that thanks to him Mrs. Balsam had been very nearly frightened to death—but that would imply that she had recognized the man in her house as the subject of a police-artist’s sketch. Certainly, given a description, she would be able to put a name to Dickens. He must not be allowed to think himself endangered in that way, with Ellie Peale’s body revealed in the church, because then he would be forced—
“Nobody knows, except that it’s her heart,” said Amanda, sending up an apology because lies of this nature made her very uneasy. “They don’t expect her to regain consciousness.”
With her clear memory of the hospital room she did not have to pretend bleakness, and something about Dickens’ alert glance at her suggested a small easing of tension. He opened the door of the telephone booth, handed her two dimes, squeezed himself in with her. He said, “Tell them the snow is bad up here and the kid’s asleep so you’re staying the night,” adding conversationally, “If you try anything, I blink the flashlight and he takes off.”
How likely was he to let her near a telephone again, even standing so vigilantly close? Heart beating hard, Amanda dropped the coins in, dialed the Lopez number in her time-buying ploy, let it drawl ten times. I can’t understand it,” she said. “They’re never out this late. Maybe the snow . . . I suppose they could have had an accident, but the first thing they’ll do is try to reach—”
“ They must have neighbors, or friends you can leave a message with,” said Dickens. His pleasant voice had acquired a grate. “Don’t tell me—”
“Well, there’s his brother,” said Amanda carefully, stomach tightening. “They don’t get along, but I suppose he’d leave a note on their door.”
At Dickens’ curt order she lifted the chained telephone directory, opened it to the L’s, pretended to seek out one particular Lopez from a double-page spread of them. The type shifted and blurred in front of her eyes. Justin would know her voice no matter how she addressed him, would realize that she was speaking under duress, would—what?
Amanda couldn’t imagine, but neither could she walk away from her one chance at communication having made no effort at all. She retrieved the two dimes, dropped them in, and dialed.
Chapter 11
Oblique distress signals tumbled through her head as she listened to the ringing commence at the other end; she refused to entertain the possibility that it was echoing once more through an
