She was truly alone now, journeying into frightful country.
At the end of the road was Freestone, fifty miles north of San Francisco. What was she going to do when she found Jack Gardiner? What would she do if none of those three men was Jack Gardiner? What kind of man would he be now? Would he shun Mary Terror or embrace her? Surely he'd read about her in the papers or seen the story on TV. What if – and this thought sickened her – he was still a killer at heart, and he took David as an offering and he and Mary fled together? What if… what if… what if. Those questions were unanswerable. All she knew for sure was that this road led to Freestone, and Mary was on it.
The Cutlass shuddered.
She smelled something burning. She looked at the dashboard and saw the temperature gauge's needle almost off the dial. Oh Jesus! she thought as panic chewed at her. "Don't quit on me!" she shouted, looking for an exit. There wasn't one in sight, and Deeth was two miles behind. The Cutlass's engine was rumbling like a concrete mixer. "Don't quit on me!" she repeated, her foot pressed down on the gas pedal. And then the hood burst upward, steam spewed out with a train-whistle shriek, and she knew the radiator was finished. The car, like her own body, had been pushed past its threshold of pain. The only difference was, she was stronger. "Keep going! Keep going!" she shouted, tears of frustration in her eyes. The Cutlass had given up. Its speed was falling, whips of steam flailing back from the overflowing radiator. The truck in front of her kept going; the world was short of shining knights. "Oh Christ!" Laura yelled. "Damn it to hell! Damn it!" But cursing would produce no cure. She guided the wounded car over off the interstate, and it rolled to a stop in gravel next to a vulture-picked jackrabbit.
Laura sat there as the radiator bubbled and moaned. She could feel Mary moving farther away from her with every passing second. She balled up her fist and slammed the wheel, and then she got out to survey the carnage. Whoever said the desert was hot had never visited it in February, because the chill pierced her bones. But the radiator was a little spout of hell, rusty water flooding out and the engine ticking like a time bomb. Laura looked right and left, saw desolation on both sides. A car flashed past, then another a few seconds later. She needed help, and fast. A third car was coming, and Laura lifted her right arm to flag it down. The car left grit stinging her face. Then the interstate was empty, just her, the busted Cutlass, and a jackrabbit chewed down to the rib cage and ears.
Deeth was too far to walk. What the next exit was, and where a service station might be, she had no idea. Mary was on her way to Freestone, and Laura wasn't going to wait here all day for a Samaritan. She walked out into the interstate and faced east.
Maybe a minute passed. And then sunlight glinted off glass and metal. The car – a station wagon, it looked to be – was coming fast. She put her hand up under her double sweaters and touched the automatic's grip. If the car didn't start to slow down in five seconds, she was going to pull the gun and do a Dirty Harry. "Stop," she whispered, the wind raw in her face. "Stop. Stop." Her hand tightened on the grip. "Stop, damn it!"
The station wagon began to slow down. There was a man at the wheel, a woman on the passenger side. They both looked less than eager to be helpful, and Laura saw a child's face peering up over the front seat. The man was driving as if he still hadn't decided whether to lend a hand or not, and the woman was jabbering at him. Probably think I look like a hard case, Laura thought. It occurred to her that they would be correct.
The man made his decision. He pulled the station wagon over behind the Cutlass and rolled down his window.
Their names were Joe and Cathy Sheffield, from Orem, Utah, on their way to visit her parents in Sacramento with their six-year-old son Gary. AH this Laura learned on the way to the next exit, which was a place called Halleck four miles up the highway. She told them her name was Bedelia Morse, and she was trying to get to San Francisco to find an old friend. It seemed right. Gary asked why her hand was all bandaged up and why there was a boo-boo on the side of her face. She said she'd had a bad fall at home. She didn't answer when he asked where her home was. Then, after another minute or two, Gary asked her with all innocence if she ever took a bath, and Cathy shushed him and laughed nervously but Laura said it was okay, she'd been on the road a long time.
Joe took the Halleck exit. It wasn't much of a town, just a few cinderblock buildings, some weatherbeaten houses, a diner made from an old train car, and a stucco post office with an American flag snapping in the wind. But one of the cinderblock buildings bore a crudely painted sign that identified it as Marco's Garage, with a row of gas pumps out front and a couple of cars sitting around that looked as if they'd been stripped by pack rats. Behind the garage was a dump of old car hulks and a mound of bald tires. There was a bright orange towtruck, though, and Joe Sheffield pulled his station wagon up beside it.
A man emerged from inside one of the two garage bays. He was short and stocky as a fireplug, and he wore grease-stained overalls and a T-shirt, his muscular arms covered with tattoos from wrists to shoulders. His hands were black with grime. He was also slick bald, and had on yellow-tinted goggles.
"Well!" Joe said cheerfully. "Here's somebody!"
Laura had a moment of knowing what she should do. She should pull her gun, order the Sheffields out of the station wagon, and leave them there while she sped on after Mary. Marco's Garage was an armpit, and getting her car fixed here was going to be a trial by frustration. She should pull the gun and take the station wagon, and she should do it right now.
But the moment passed. They were good people. There was no need to mark their lives with the barrel of a gun even though she never would dream of using it as anything but a bluff. Some hard case, she thought.
"Thanks for the lift," she told them, and got out.
The station wagon pulled away. Gary waved at her through the rear window. And then Laura turned to face the bald-headed grease monkey who stood about three inches shorter than her and stared up at her through his yellow goggles like a bullfrog.
"You fix cars?" she asked stupidly.
"Naw." He laughed like a snort. "I eat 'em!"
"My car's broken down a couple of miles from Deeth. Can you tow it here?"
"How come you didn't go to Deeth, then?"
"I was heading west. I came here. Can you tow it?" She realized the tattoos on the man's arms were interlocked figures of naked women.
"Busy right now. Got a car in both bays and two waitin'."
"Okay. When can you tow it?"
"An hour, give or take."
Laura shook her head. "No. I can't wait that long."
"Sorry, but that's the breaks. "See, I'm all alone here. I'm Marco, like the sign says."
"I want you to go get my car right now."
He frowned, deep lines furrowing across his broad forehead. "Got wax in your ears, babe? I said I -"
Laura had the gun in her hand. She placed it against his bald skull. "What did you say?"
Marco swallowed, his Adam's apple bulging. "I… said… I'm ready when you are, babe."
"Don't call me babe."
"Okay," he said. "Whatever you say, chief."
On the subject of baths, Marco had a lot to learn. Laura knew she didn't smell like roses, but Marco exuded an odor of stale sweat and dirty underwear that made one wish for a whiff of Limburger cheese. At the Cutlass, Marco peered into the radiator and whistled. "Hey, chief! You ever heard of puttin' coolant in this thing? You got enough rust in here to sink a battleship!"