Muir Road was to the west, Laura realized.
She turned away from Nick Hudley and ran to the Cutlass. She started the engine and left rubber on the pavement as she sped west along Overhill, looking for Muir Road. Somehow, Mary Terror was only fifteen minutes ahead of her instead of three or four hours. There was still hope of getting David back… still hope… still…
A dark blue vehicle roared around a curve in front of Laura, hugging the center line, and Laura saw the face of the woman behind the wheel. At that same instant Mary Terror recognized Laura, and the Cherokee and the Cutlass slid past each other by no more than three inches.
Laura fought the wheel with her hand and elbow, taking the car up onto somebody's lawn, skidding it around and back onto Overhill but now going east. She put her foot to the floorboard, the Cutlass coughing black smoke but gaining speed. The Cherokee was flying in front of her, and in another few seconds they passed Nick Hudley's house, the scream of engines scaring birds out of the birdbath.
On the next curve the Cherokee went up over the curb and knocked a mailbox into the air. Laura got forty feet behind Mary and stayed there, determined not to lose her again. She didn't know if David was in the vehicle or not, or why the police car was on its way toward Muir Road, or if Jack Gardiner was in Freestone, or how Mary's lead had dwindled to forty feet, but she knew Mary Terror would not get away from her. Never. No matter how long it took, no matter where she went. Never.
The Cherokee and the Cutlass swerved onto Parkway, roared under the caution light and past the WELCOME TO FREE. STONE sign. Mary's eyes ticked back and forth from the winding road to the car in her rearview mirror. The shock of seeing Laura had been only a further kink in the warp of Mary's mind. Everything was karma, after all. Yes, Mary had decided, it was karma, and karma could not be denied. Let the bitch come. Before Mary took the baby's life and her own, she would execute the bitch who had killed Edward and Bedelia.
Mary's tears had stopped. Her face was a ruin of smeared makeup, her eyes bloodshot and deep-sunken. Her heart had reached its final evolution. It was empty now; there was nothing to dream on anymore. She was the last survivor of the Storm Front, and she would end it where it had begun.
Six miles out of Freestone, she turned onto a country road that led west to the Pacific. Laura kept with her. The miles flashed past, the road deserted. Mary took a turn to the left, following the route on her map, and Laura stayed close. Mary smiled to herself and nodded. The baby was quiet, his hands grasping the air.
The road wound through dense woods. A sign said POINT REYES RANGER STATION, 2 MI. But before a mile had passed, Mary whipped the Cherokee to the right onto another narrow dirt road. She put on speed, dust billowing back into the windshield of the Cutlass as Laura took the turn, too. "Come on!" Mary said, her voice a husky rattle. "Follow me! Come on!"
Laura sped after the Cherokee, her tires bouncing and jubbling over potholes. After a mile or so there was no more dust, but the woods on either side of the road were cob-webbed with mist. Laura could smell the salt air of the Pacific leaching into the car. She followed Mary Terror around a curve, mist swirling between them, and suddenly she saw the taillights flare.
Mary had just stomped on the brake. Laura wrenched the wheel to the right, her shoulder muscles shrieking. The Cutlass missed a collision, but went off the road into the pine woods. The tires plowed through a mossy bog, blue mist hanging between the trees. Laura's foot was on the brake, and the Cutlass grazed a treetrunk and stopped in swampy, rim-deep water.
Laura picked up her pistol. Through the mist she could see the Cherokee sitting there, its taillights no longer flared. The driver's seat was empty. Laura opened the door and stepped out into a bog that claimed her to her ankles. The Cherokee's engine wasn't running. In the silence, Laura heard the thudding of her heart and the cries of sea gulls.
Where was Mary? Was David still with her, or not?
Laura crouched down, moving through the muddy water, and got a treetrunk between herself and the Cherokee. She was expecting a shot at any second. None came.
"I want my baby!" she shouted. Her finger was poised on the trigger, her broken hand throbbing with renewed pain. "Do you hear me?"
But Mary Terror didn't answer. She was too smart to give herself away so easily.
Laura would have to move from where she was. She scurried behind another tree, closer to the Jeep wagon, and waited for a few seconds. Mary didn't show herself. Laura worked her way closer to the Cherokee, mist drifting around her and the sunlight gray through its canopy in the treetops. She gritted her teeth and ran to the vehicle's rear, where she hunkered down and listened.
She could hear distant thunder.
Waves, she realized in another moment. The Pacific, beating against rocks.
The air was cool and wet, moisture dripping from the trees. Laura peered around the Cherokee's side. The driver's door was open. Mary was gone.
Laura stood up, ready to crouch again if she saw movement. She looked into the wagon, saw the clutter of Mary's journey, the smell of sweat and urine and soiled diapers.
Laura walked past the Cherokee, following the dirt road. She went at a slow, careful pace, her senses sharp for any hint of an ambush. The flesh rippled on the back of her neck, the smell of salt in her nostrils. The sound of thunder was getting louder.
And then the woods fell away from both sides of the road, and a house stood before her overlooking the Pacific and its wave-gnawed rocks.
7: The Thunder House
It was a two-story wooden house with a cabled roof, a widow's walk with broken railings, and a wide porch that went around the lower floor. A path of fieldstones, overgrown with weeds, led from the road to the porch steps. The house might have been beautiful once, a long time ago. It was past saving now. The salt breeze and Pacific spray had long ago scoured off what paint there had been. The house was dark gray, its walls covered with green moss and lichens the color of ashes. What looked like cancers had taken hold on the wood, grown tendrils and linked with other tumors. Part of the porch's supports had collapsed, the floor sagging. Vandals had shown their hand: every window in the house was shattered, and spray-painted graffiti was snarled like gaudy thorns between the lichens.
Laura started up the steps. The second one was already broken, as was the fourth. Laura touched the banister, and her hand sank into the rotten wood. There was no front door. Just beyond the threshold there was a hole in the floor that might have been the size of Mary's boot. Laura walked inside, the smell of saltwater thick and the inner walls dark with growths. Moss hung from the ceiling like garlands. The decorations for a homecoming, Laura thought. She walked toward the staircase, and her left foot slid through the floor as if into gray mud. She pulled free, little black beetles scurrying out of the hole. The first riser of the stairs had given way. So had most of the others. The house was decayed to its core, and the walls were about to fall.
"I know you're there," Laura said. The saturated walls muffled her voice. "I want my baby. I'm not going to let you have him, and you know that by now."
Silence but for the thunder and the noise of dripping.
"Come on, Mary. I'll find you sooner or later."
No answer. What if she's killed him? Laura thought. Oh Jesus, what if she killed him back in Freestone and that's why the police were –
She stopped herself before she cracked. Laura walked carefully into another room. Its bay windows, long broken out, gave a majestic view of the ocean. She could see waves crashing against the rocks, spume leaping high. Mist, a silent destroyer, was drifting into the house. On the cratered floor lay beer cans, cigarette butts, and an empty rum bottle.