He pulled his hands down, tucked them into his armpits to warm them, and leaned forward with his forehead against the wheel. After a time the worst of the shaking stopped-and he thought of his watch, the time, what was the time? 8:33, he saw when he looked. 8:33 in the morning. Out here all night, he thought.
Out where all night?
Impulsively, he opened the door and got out of the car. Moved away from it, away from the sound of the ocean. The grayness parted, broke up into wisps and streaks, ugly, cold, like strips of something diseased sloughing off in the wind. He was on a rocky lookout, he realized; a short access road connected it with a deserted two-lane highway. What highway? Highway 1? The county road that branched off it and led to Hilliard? He couldn’t tell; none of the terrain was familiar.
He went back to the car, stumbling a little on the uneven surface, his teeth clenched against the pain in his head. The. station wagon, he saw then, was nosed up against a dirt retaining wall at the outer edge of the lookout. Beyond the wall was a steep slope, gouged by the elements into deep fissures, and then the sea hammering, hammering, hammering against a jumble of rocks fifty feet below.
If that retaining wall wasn’t there I might have driven right over the edge. Better if I had. Better for me, better for Alix Alix.
And some of last night came back, with a force that drove him sideways against the car. The rats in the pantry, the rat he’d killed
… the wild rage… the need to do something, fight back, confront Novotny… ignoring Alix’s pleas and driving off in the car like a madman… the road, the dark all around him… and the sudden bulging…
That was all. There was nothing beyond that-a void, an abyss. Where had he gone? What had he done?
Was Alix all right?
Alone at the lighthouse, out there alone all night.
“God!” He said the word aloud, in a voice that seemed to crack in his ears like glass breaking. He dragged the car door open, got back under the wheel, fumbled at the ignition. The keys were still there. But the engine was cold; it whirred, whirred, whirred again before it finally caught. He backed the car, got it turned around, drove along the access road to the two-lane highway. Which way should he go?
Left. Try left.
The fog was so thick at first that his visibility was no more than a few hundred feet in any direction. A pickup trick came hurtling out of it like some kind of phantom, made him swerve in sudden panic, and then disappeared again into the grayness. But then, after a mile or so, the road seemed to angle away from the sea and the mist grew thinner, patchier, letting him see forested hills and sheep graze. Going the right way, he thought. Toward Hilliard, not away from it.
Another mile, and more of the fog burned off. He passed the sheep ranch; in the distance, then, he had a vague glimpse of the bay, the buildings of the village. The cape road would be coming up pretty soon; he began looking for the big sign that marked it.
But it wasn’t the sign that caught his attention first, that made him brake so suddenly the station wagon skidded on the damp pavement. It was the telephone booth in the little rest area on this side of the cape road; it was the woman standing next to it, alone, bundled in a familiar blue coat, a familiar scarf and cap.
Alix.
He veered across the road, into the rest area. But he pointed the car away from where she stood, some distance to one side: he was suddenly afraid of losing control, of hitting her. He jammed on the emergency brake, got out, ran toward her. And then stopped, because she had run a few steps and then stopped herself. She stood rigidly, arms down at her sides, her face… the expression on her face..
“Jan, for God’s sake, where have you been?”
He shook his head; he couldn’t seem to find words. He put a hand out to touch her, but she moved away abruptly-not as if she were rejecting him; as if something had drawn her away.
It was the car. She half ran to it, around to the front, and bent and looked at the grille, the bumper. Thinks maybe I hit something else last night, he thought dully. Then he thought, much more sharply: Did I? He went there himself, looked himself-looked for dents, scrapes, broken headlights, broken signal lights. Looked for blood.
Nothing. There was nothing to see.
Alix faced him again, and some of the rigidity had left her; but the look on her face and in her eyes was still the same. Fear, and something else, something darker, primitive. She put both hands on his arms, as if re-establishing contact between them.
“Where were you all night?”
He found words this time, forced them out of the rusty cavern of his throat. “Down the road a few miles. A lookout… I spent the night there.”
“Another bad headache?”
“Yes. Alix, why are you here? How did you—?”
“I walked. I was worried about you.”
“This morning?”
“Yes. Jan, listen to me—”
“Nothing else happened at the light?”
“Not there, no. On the cape road, a mile or so from here.”
Something began to crawl inside him-a thin worm of dread. “What do you mean? What happened?”
“There’s been another murder. Mandy Barnett. Somebody ran her and her bicycle off the road last night and then strangled her.”
He couldn’t comprehend it at first; refused to comprehend it. All he said was, “No.”
“It’s true, I found the body. I’ve already called the state police. ”
He shook his head. “No,” he said again.
“Now you listen to me,” she said. She gripped his arms more tightly; he could feel the bite of her nails through his coat. “I want you to go out to the lighthouse. Right now, before the authorities come, before anybody sees you here.”
“And leave you alone? Why?”
“The way you look, that’s why. The way you’re acting. I don’t want them to see you like this.”
It was seeping into him now, the full awareness of what she had told him and what she was getting at. A sudden chill wracked him. “You don’t think that I—?”
“I don’t think anything.” She said it urgently, in a tone of voice he had never heard her use before. She kept looking out toward the empty highway, her head cocked to one side, listening. “I don’t want them to think anything either. I don’t want them to see you like this and I don’t want them to know you weren’t home last night.”
“You mean… lie to them?”
“That’s just what I mean. I’ll say you were at the lighthouse all night and you say the same thing. You were with me the whole time. Now go, hurry!”
She was pushing him toward the car as she spoke. He wanted to resist and yet he didn’t, he couldn’t. He opened the door, bent his body in under the wheel.
“Wash your face and change your clothes when you get there,” she said. “Try to get a grip on yourself.”
“I’m all right now. Alix, I didn’t, I couldn’t…”
“I know. Just go, go!”
She slammed the door, and he started the engine and drove away from her, out onto the still-deserted highway. In the rearview mirror he watched her grow smaller, less distinct in the mist; it was as if pieces of her were being consumed by it, so that only diminishing fragments-part of her face, one blue-coated arm, the lower halves of her legs-remained. And then they, too, were gone, and he was turning past the sign that said CAP DES PERES LIGHTHOUSE, 3 MILES, CLOSED TO THE PUB-Llc, jouncing along the rutted cape road, alone again in the darkening gray.
I didn’t, I couldn’t…
Could I? he thought.
Did I?
Alix
She watched Jan closely as they talked with the state homicide detective, Frank Sinclair. He was sitting in the single chair near the woodstove, his head backlit by the side window. The comparative darkness of the room accentuated the paleness of the skin around his beard, made his cheekbones seem more prominent. His face was immobile as Sinclair posed his questions; only his eyes gave any hint of his inner upheaval.