The thing up ahead, off the road with its tinted wind-shield pointed in the direction of Fallon and Carson City and Lake Tahoe, wasn’t a truck after all; it was an RV. Not one of the real dinosaurs, but still pretty big. Cream—colored, with a dark green stripe running along the side. The words FOUR HAPPY WANDERERS were printed in the same dark green on the RV’s blunt nose. The vehicle was road-dusty and canted over in an awkward, unnatu-ral way.
As they neared it, Peter saw an odd thing: all the tires in his view appeared to be flat. He thought maybe the double set of back tires on the passenger side was flat, — too, although he only caught the briefest glimpse of them. That many flat shoes would account for the land-cruisers funny, canted look, but how did you get that many fla—shoes all at once.
Nails in the road. A strew of glass.
He looked at Mary. but Mary was still looking passion ately up into the rearview minor.
“If we’d put that bag o dope under the tire,” she was saying, “if it was ours, then why in God’s name would Peter have taken the spare out so you could see it. I mean, he could have reached around the spare and gotten the toolkit, it would have been a little awkward but there was room.”
They went past the RV. The side door was closed but unlatched. The steps were down.
There was a doll lying in the dirt at the foot of them. The dress it was wearing flut tered in the wind.
Peter’s eyes closed. He didn’t know for sure if he had closed them or if they had closed on their own. Didn t much care. All he knew was that Officer Friendly had blown by the disabled RV as if he hadn’t even seen it.
Or as if he already knew all about it.
Words from an old song, floating in his head: Somethin happenin here… what it is ain’t exactly clear…
“Do we impress you as stupid people.” Mary was ask ing as the disabled RV began to dwindle behind them—to dwindle as Deirdre’s Acura had done. “Or stoned. Do you think we’re—”
“Shut up,” the cop said. He spoke softly, but there was no way to miss the venom in his voice.
Mary had been sitting forward with her fingers curled into the mesh between the front and back seats. Now her hands dropped away from it, and she turned her shocked face toward Peter. She was a faculty wife, she was a poet who had published in over twenty magazines since her first tentative submissions eight years ago, she went to a women’s discussion group twice a week, she had been seriously considering piercing her nose.
Peter wondered when the last time was she had been told to shut up. He wondered if anyone had ever told her to shut up.
“What.” she asked, perhaps trying to sound aggressive, even threatening, and only sounding bewildered. “What did you tell me.”
“I’m arresting you and your husband on a charge of possession of marijuana with intent to sell,” the cop said His voice was uninflected, robotic. Now staring forward Peter saw there was a little plastic bear stuck to the dash board, beside the compass and next to what was probably an LED readout for the radar speed-gun. The bear was small, the size of a gumball machine prize. His neck was on a spring, and his empty painted eyes stared back at Peter.
This is a nightmare, he thought, knowing it wasn’t. It’s got to be a nightmare. I know it feels real, but it’s got to be.
“You can’t be serious,” Mary said, but her voice was tiny and shocked. The voice of someone who knew better. Her eyes were filling up with tears again. “Surely you can’t be.”
“You have the right to remain silent,” the big cop said in his robot’s voice. “If you do not choose to remain silent, anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. I’m going to kill you. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand your rights as I have explained them to you.”
She was looking at Peter, her eyes huge and horrified, asking him without speaking if he had heard what the cop had mixed in with the rest of it, that robotic voice never varying.
Peter nodded. He had heard, all right. He put a hand into his crotch, sure he would feel dampness there, but he hadn’t wet himself. Not yet, anyway. He put an arm around Mary and could feel her trembling. He kept thinking of the RV back there. Door ajar, dollbaby lying face-down in the dirt, too many flat tires. And then there was the dead cat Mary had seen nailed to the speed—limit sign.
“Do you understand your rights.”
Act normally. I don’t think he has the slightest idea what he said, so act normally.
But what was normal when you were in the back seat of a police-cruiser driven by a man who was clearly as mad as a hatter, a man who had just said he was going to kill you.
“Do you understand your rights.” the robot voice asked him.
Peter opened his mouth. Nothing came out but a croak. The cop turned his head then. His face, pinkish with sun when he had stopped them, had gone pale. His eyes were very large, seeming to bulge out of his face like marbles. He had bitten his lip, like a man trying to sup-press some monstrous rage, and blood ran down his chin in a thin stream.
“Do you understand your rights.” the cop screamed at them, head turned, bulleting blind down the deserted two—lane at better than seventy miles an hour. “Do you under—stand your fucking rights or not. Do you or not. Do you or not. Do you or not. Answer me, you smart New York Jew!”
“I do!” Peter cried. “We both do, just watch the road, for Christ’s sake watch where you’re going!”
The cop continued staring back at them through the mesh, face pale, blood dripping down from his lower lip. The Caprice, which had begun to veer to the left, almost all the way across the westbound lane, now slid back the other way.
“Don’t worry about me,” the cop said. His voice was mild again. “Gosh, no. I’ve got eyes in the back of my head. In fact, I’ve got eyes just about everywhere. You’d do well to remember that.”
He turned back suddenly, facing front again, and dropped the cruiser’s speed to an easygoing fifty-five. The seat settled back against Peter’s knees with painful weight, pinning him.
He took Mary’s hands in both of his own. She pressed her face against his chest, and he could feel the sobs she was trying to suppress. They shook through her like wind. He looked over her shoulder, through the mesh. On the dashboard, the bear’s head nodded and bobbed on its spring.
“I see holes like eyes,” the cop said. “My mind is full of them.” He said nothing else until they got to town.
The next ten minutes were very slow ones for Peter Jackson. The cop’s weight against his pinned knees seemed to increase with each circuit of his wristwatch’s second hand, and his lower legs were soon numb. His feet were dead asleep, and he wasn’t sure that he would be able to walk on them if this ride ever ended. His bladder throbbed. His head ached. He understood that he and Mary were in the worst trouble of their lives, but he was unable to comprehend this in any real and meaningful way. Every time he neared comprehension, there was a short circuit in his head. They were on their way back to New York. They were expected. Someone was water-ing their plants. This couldn’t be happening, absolutely could not.
Mary nudged him and pointed out her window. Here was a sign, reading simply DESPERATION. Under the word was an arrow pointing to the right.
The cop slowed, but not much, before making the right. The car started to tip and Peter saw Mary drawing in breath. She was going to scream. He put a hand over her mouth to stop her and whispered in her ear, “He’s got it, I’m pretty sure he does, we’re not going to roll.” But he wasn’t sure until he felt the cruiser’s rear end first slide, then catch hold.
A moment later they were racing south along narrow patched blacktop with no centerline.
Amile or so farther on, they passed a sign which read DESPERATION’s CHURCH & CIVIC ORGANIZATIONS WELCOME YOU! The words CHURCH & CIVIC ORGANIZATIONS were readable, although they had been coated with yellow spray-paint. Above them, in the same paint, the words DEAD DOGS had been added in ragged caps. The churches and civic organizations were listed beneath, but Peter didn’t bother to read them. A German Shepherd had been hanged from the sign.