The gas pump's motor was humming, the numbers clicking higher.
Mary sensed the Happy Herman attendant returning before he got there. She slid her arm down beside her, the gun resting against her thigh. He peered in at her, his eye catching for a second or two on the baby. "Somebody don't like you," he told Mary.
"What?"
He dug at a molar with the toothpick. "Got bullet holes in your van. Somebody don't like you."
"I bought it at a government auction," she said, her expression blank. "It used to belong to a drug dealer."
The man stared at her, his toothpick working. "Oh," he said. Then he sprayed the windshield with cleaning fluid and started to wash it with a squeegee as the gas kept flowing into the tank.
Laura Clayborne was no longer there.
She stood in the dank women's room, where there were no Smiley Faces and the only thing yellow was the toilet water. She glanced in the mirror and saw a fright mask. Then she hurriedly soaked paper towels in water from the sink and cleaned her blood-clogged nostrils. Touching her face sent electric jolts of pain through her cheekbones, but she had no time to be gentle. Her vision was hazed by tears when she finished. She crumpled the bloody towels, dropped them into the wastebasket, and then she relieved the pressure on her bladder. There was a dribble of blood between her legs, too, the stitches popped by Earl Van Diver's knee. When she was done, Laura went out into the cold again, and she saw Mary Terror carrying David into the grocery store, the shoulder bag over her arm and probably both guns in it.
The attendant had finished pumping the gas into the van. Laura walked to it and opened the driver's door. Mary Terror's smell, a heavy, animalish odor, lingered within. No keys in the ignition, of course. Laura reached under the dashboard and gripped a handful of wires. One good yank, and… and what? she asked herself. The situation wouldn't change. Maybe the van wouldn't start, but Mary would still have David, still have her guns, and still kill him as soon as the police arrived. What was the point of disabling the van if David would die as the result?
She released the wires. "Damn it," she said quietly. She'd only waste her strength shouting.
She looked behind the van's front seats. In the back were suitcases and a couple of large paper sacks. Laura reached over and searched in them, finding such items as potato chip bags, cartons of doughnuts and cookies, a box of Pampers, and some baby formula as well as paper cups and a half-full plastic bottle of Pepsi. Traveling food, she thought. Groceries that Mary and Edward Fordyce had bought for their trip. Also amid the clutter in the van's rear was a pillow and a blanket. She took the blanket and one of the sacks containing junk food, the cups, and the Pepsi. She left the diapers and the formula where they were. Something else caught her attention: a pacifier on the passenger seat. She picked it up, intending to keep it. It had her baby's saliva on it, and his aroma. But no, no: if David had no pacifier to ease his crying, the crying might snap Mary Terror's nerves, and then…
Laura put the pacifier down. It might have been the hardest thing she'd ever had to do.
Laura carried the booty to her car. And that was when she realized the gas portal was closed, the pump shut off, and Bedelia Morse was gone.
In the store, as Mary Terror paid for her gas, a box of No-Doz tablets, a jug of pure water, and a package of trash bags, she watched Laura raiding her van. Won't touch the engine or the tires, she thought. Bitch knows what would happen if she did.
"Is that all?" the woman behind the register asked.
"Yeah, I think -" She stopped. Beside the register was a glass bowl. On the glass bowl was written in black Magic Marker Don't Worry! Be Happy! In the bowl were hundreds of little yellow Smiley Face pins. She wouldn't have stopped at Happy Herman's but for the sign, and the feeling that she was invincible under its power. It had proved her right. Laura Clayborne couldn't touch her. "How much are those?"
"Quarter apiece."
"I'll take one," Mary said. "And one for my baby." She pinned one on the light blue sweater she'd bought Drummer in New Jersey, and then she pinned the other on her own sweater, next to what she realized looked like dried oatmeal but were flecks of Edward's brain.
"Somebody get hurt?" the woman asked when the bill had been paid. She was looking distastefully at the splotches of crimson on the blanket nestled around Drummer.
"Nosebleed." The answer came fast and smooth. "I always get them in cold weather."
She nodded, putting Mary's purchases into a sack. "Me, my ankles swell up. Look like a couple a' treetrunks walkin' around the house. They're swole up on me right now."
"Sorry," Mary said.
"Means a storm on the way," the woman told her. "Weatherman says all hell's 'bout to break loose out west."
"I believe it. Have a nice day." Mary took the sack under one arm, cradling Drummer with the other, and she walked out of the store toward her van. She had to pee, but she didn't want to let the van out of her sight so she'd have to hold it until she was desperate. She put Drummer's bassinet on the passenger-side floorboard, and then she made a quick check of what Laura had taken. A sack of groceries and the blanket. No big deal, Mary decided as she put the new supplies and her shoulder bag in the back of the van. She took the Colt out of the bag and put it under the driver's seat. Then she popped the No-Doz open, swallowed two tablets with a drink of the bottled water, and slid behind the wheel. She put the key into the ignition, the engine starting with a throaty roar.
Then she looked over at the BMW, and Laura Clayborne standing beside it, staring at her.
She didn't like the woman's face. You're nothing but a lie, she remembered it saying.
Mary reached under her seat, gripped the Colt, and withdrew it. She cocked the pistol as she brought it up, and she aimed the barrel with a steady hand at Laura's heart.
Laura saw the gun's dull gleam. She inhaled a sharp breath that made the cold sting her nostrils. There was no time to move, and her body tensed for the shot.
The baby began to cry, wanting to be fed.
Mary caught sight of a car in the sideview mirror, pulling up to the pumps behind her. It wasn't just any car, it belonged to the Michigan highway patrol. She lowered the Colt, easing the hammer back into place. Then, without another glance at Laura, she drove away from the pumps and turned back onto the road that led to I-94's westbound lanes.
Laura was looking frantically for Didi. The woman wasn't anywhere in sight. She's left me, Laura thought. Gone back to the gray world of false faces and names. She couldn't wait any longer, Mary Terror was getting away. She got into the car, started the engine, and was about to pull away when a woman shouted, "Hey! Hey, you! Stop!"
The cashier had come outside and was hollering at her. The state trooper, a burly block of a man with a Smokey the Bear hat, devoted his full attention to the BMW. "You ain't paid for your gas!" the cashier shouted.
Oh shit, Laura thought. She put on the parking brake again and reached for her purse from the backseat, where she'd left it. Only her purse wasn't there. From the corner of her eye she saw the trooper walking toward her, and the cashier was coming, too, indignant that she'd had to venture out into the cold. The trooper was almost to the car, and Laura realized with a start that the Charter Arms automatic was lying within sight on the floorboard. Where was the damned purse? All her money, her credit cards, her driver's license: gone.
Didi's work, she thought.
Laura just had time to slide the automatic up under the seat when the trooper looked in, hard-eyed under the Smokey the Bear rim. "Believe you owe some money," he said in a voice like a shovel digging gravel. "How much, Annie?"
"Fourteen dollars, sixty-two cents!" the cashier said. "Tryin' to skip on me, Frank!"