“Neither did I.”
“We’ll find out who they are, and then we’ll find them and we’ll kill them, both of them. Then we’ll go back to Binghamton. We have three weeks. I think we can find them and kill them in three weeks.”
Up ahead, on the right, there was a motel. He slowed the car. As he pulled off the road he glanced at her face, quickly. Her jaw was set and her eyes were dry and clear.
“Three weeks is plenty of time,” she said.
Chapter 3
In the diner the waitress said, “Mondays, how I hate ’em. Give me any other day, but Monday, just never mind. Coffee?”
“One black, one regular,” he told her.
There were two men at the counter who looked like truckers and one who looked like a farmer. The waitress brought the coffee and he carried the two cups over to a table on the side. Some of the coffee in her cup spilled out onto the saucer. He took a napkin from the dispenser and wiped up the coffee. She added sugar, one level spoonful. He drank his straight black.
When the waitress came over he ordered toast and a side order of link sausages. Jill wanted a toasted English muffin, but the diner didn’t have any. The waitress said there would be some coming in around nine-thirty. Jill had a cheese Danish instead and managed to eat half of it.
He spread a road map on the table and studied it, marking a route with a pencil. She sipped her coffee and looked across the room while he traced the route they would take. By the time he was finished, she had drunk her coffee. He looked up and said, “This is how we’ll do it. We’re on 590 now. We take it to Ford — that’s just across the state line — and pick up 97. We go about five miles on 97 to Route 55. That’s at Barryville. Then 55 runs just about due north to something called White Lake, where we get 17B. Then we hook up with 17 at Monticello. That carries us all the way to the throughway at Exit 16, and then we just drive down into New York.”
“I never heard of those towns,” she said.
“Well, Monticello you’ve heard of.”
“I mean the others.”
He sipped his coffee, checked his watch with the electric clock over the counter. “Twenty to eight,” he said.
“Should we get going?”
“Pretty soon.” He got to his feet. “I’m having another cup of coffee,” he said. “How about you?”
“All right.”
He carried the two cups back to the counter. The waitress was busy telling one of the truckers what a terrible day Monday was. She was a heavyish woman with stringy hair. When she finished talking to the truck driver Dave got two fresh cups of coffee and carried them back to the table.
They passed through the town, a small one, and a sign told them to resume their normal speed. He bore down on the accelerator. The sun was bright on the road ahead. The sky had been overcast when they got up, but the clouds were mostly gone now.
“That was Forestine,” she said. “White Lake in three miles.”
“And then what?”
“Then right on 17B.”
He nodded. So far, in close to an hour of driving, they had talked only about the route and the road conditions. She had the road map open on her lap, the map with their route penciled in, and she told him when to slow down and where to turn. But most of the time passed in long silences. It was not for lack of things to say to each other, or because any distance had sprung up between them. Small talk did not fit and larger talk came hard.
The night before they had stayed at a motel called Hillcrest Manor. They slept in a double bed. After he checked in, they left their suitcases in the locked car and went inside. They undressed with the lights on, then he turned off the lights, and they got into the large bed. She took the side near the windows, and he had the side nearer to the door. He waited, and she came to him and kissed him once, on the side of the face. Then she went back to her side of the bed. He asked her if she thought she would be able to sleep and she said yes, she thought so. After about fifteen minutes he heard her easy rhythmic breathing and knew that she was sleeping.
He couldn’t fall asleep. The beating had tired him, and his body wanted sleep, but it didn’t work. He would manage to relax and would start drifting off and then the memory would come, racing in at his mind, and he would suck in breath and shake his head and sit up in the bed, his heart beating fast and hard. From time to time he got out of the bed and sat in a chair at the window, smoking a cigarette in the darkness, then putting out the cigarette and returning to bed.
Around four, he dozed off. At a quarter to six he heard a frightened yelp and was instantly awake. She lay on her back, her head on a pillow, her eyes closed, and she was crying in her sleep. He woke her up and soothed her and told her that everything was all right. After a few minutes she fell asleep again, and he got up and put clothes on.
Now he talked to her without looking at her, his eyes conveniently fixed on the road ahead. “When we get to Monticello,” he said, “you’re going to see a doctor.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
He looked at her. She was worrying her lip with her teeth. “I don’t want anyone, oh, touching me. Now. Examining me.”
“Is that all?”
“I just don’t want it. And if a doctor could tell anything, wouldn’t he have to report it? Like a gunshot wound?”
“I don’t know. But if they injured you—”
“They didn’t hurt me,” she said. “I mean, they didn’t do any damage. I checked, I know. There were no cuts or bleeding.” Her voice, flat until then, came alive again. “Dave, those policemen were stupid.”
“Why?”
“They figured it all out. The mess in Carroll’s cabin, the way everything was turned upside down. They think Carroll fought with his murderers and then they dragged him outside and shot him.”
“I didn’t even think about that. That’s what they figure?”
“They were talking outside, before you got out of the shower. Dave, they didn’t hurt me. I don’t have to see any doctor.”
“Well—”
“There wasn’t even that much pain,” she said. “The doctor I saw, before we were married—”
He waited.
“He told me about some exercises. To make it easier for us to—” She stopped, and he waited, and she caught hold of herself and started in again. “—to consummate our marriage.”
He kept his eyes on the road. He swung to the left, passed a station wagon, cut back to the right again. He looked at his hands on the steering wheel, the knuckles white, the fingers locked tight around the wheel. He moved his hands lower on the steering wheel so that she would not see them.
Suddenly he was grinning.
“Is something funny?”
“I was just picturing you,” he said. “Doing your exercises.”
He laughed then, and she laughed. It was the first time either of them had laughed since Carroll was murdered.
A little later he said, “There’s another reason you ought to see a doctor.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know how to say it well. Suppose you’re pregnant?”
She didn’t say anything.
“It’s no fun to think about,” he said. “But it could be. Jesus.”
“Oh, Dave—”
He slowed the car. “It’s nothing to worry about,” he said. “They can always do something about it. The legal question varies from state to state, but I know a dozen doctors who wouldn’t worry about the law. If a... rape victim is pregnant, she can get an abortion. There’s no problem.”
“Oh, God,” she said. “I didn’t even think. You’ve been worrying about this, haven’t you? All night, probably.”