"That so, lady?"
"No! I've -" Claw your way out, she thought. Mary Terror was getting farther away! "I've got a friend around here somewhere. She took my purse."
"Not much of a friend, then, huh? I guess that means you don't have a license, either."
"It's in my purse."
"I suspected so." The trooper looked at the windshield, and Laura knew he was taking in the Go home carved there. Then he looked at her bruised cheek again, and after a few seconds of deliberation he said, "I believe you'd better step out of the car."
There was no point in pleading. The trooper retreated a couple of paces, and his hand touched his hip near the big pearl-handled pistol in his black holster. My God! Laura thought. He thinks I might be dangerous! Laura cut the BMW's engine, opened the door, and got out.
"Walk to my car, please," the trooper said, a clipped command.
He would ask for her name next, Laura figured as she walked. He paused to take a look at her tag, memorizing the numbers, and then he followed behind her. "Georgia," he said. "You're a long way from home, aren't you?"
Laura didn't answer. "What's your name?" he asked.
If she made up a name, he'd know soon enough. One call on his radio to check the tag would tell him. Damn it to hell! Mary was getting away!
"Your name, please?"
There was no use in resisting. She said, "Laur -"
"What's going on, sis?"
The voice made Laura stop in her tracks. She looked to her left, at Didi Morse standing there with the purse over her shoulder and a bag with grease stains on it in her hand. "Any trouble?" Didi asked innocently.
The trooper gave her his hard glare. "Do you know this woman?"
"Sure. She's my sister. What's the problem?"
"Tryin' to steal fourteen dollars and sixty-two cents worth of gas, that's what!" the cashier replied, her swollen ankles aching in the bitter cold and the breath pluming from her mouth.
"Oh, here's the money. I went over there and bought us some breakfast." Didi nodded toward the burger-joint section of Happy Herman's, which had a sign announcing their trucker's breakfast special of sausage and biscuits. She took the wallet out, counted a ten, four ones, two quarters, and two dimes. "You can keep the change," she said as she offered the cashier her money.
"Listen, I'm sorry." The woman brought up a nervous smile. "I saw her startin' to drive away, and I thought… well, it happens sometimes." She took the cash.
"Oh, she was probably just moving the car. I had to go to the bathroom, and I guess she was coming to pick me up."
"Sorry," the cashier said. "Frank, I feel like a real dumb-ass. You folks take it easy, now, and watch the weather." She began walking back to the grocery store, shivering in the frigid wind.
"You ready to hit the road?" Didi asked Laura brightly. "I got us some coffee and chow."
Laura saw the shine of fear deep down in Didi's eyes. You wanted to run, didn't you? Laura thought. "I'm ready," she said tersely.
"Hold on a minute." The trooper planted himself between them and the car. "Lady, it might not be any of my business, but you look like somebody gave you a hell of a knock."
A silence stretched. Then Didi filled it. "Somebody did. Her husband, if you want to know."
"Her husband? He did that?"
"My sister and her husband were visiting me from Georgia. He went crazy and punched her last night, and we're on the way to our mother's house in Illinois. Bastard took a hammer to her new car, broke the window out and cut up the windshield, too."
"Jesus." The hardness had vanished from the trooper's eyes. "Some men can really be shits, if you'll pardon my French. Maybe you ought to get to a doctor."
"Our father's a doctor. In Joliet."
If she weren't about to jump out of her skin, Laura might have smiled. Didi was good at this; she'd had a lot of practice.
"Mind if we go now?" Didi asked.
The trooper scratched his jaw, and stared at the darkness in the west. Then he said, "All men ain't sonsabitches. Lemme give you a hand." He walked to his car, opened the trunk, and brought out a tarpaulin of clear blue plastic. "Go in there and get some duct tape," he told Didi, and he motioned toward the grocery store. "It'll be back on the hardwares shelf. Tell Annie to put it on Frank's tab."
Didi gave Laura the breakfast bag and strode quickly away. Laura was fighting a scream; with every second, Mary Terror was getting farther away. Frank produced a penknife and began to cut out a fair-sized square of blue plastic. When Didi returned with the silver duct tape, Frank said, "Long way to Joliet from here. You ladies need to keep warm," and he opened the BMWs door, slid across the driver's seat under which the automatic pistol rested, and taped the plastic up over the window frame. He did a thorough job of it, adding strip after strip of the silver tape in a webbing pattern that fixed the plastic securely in place. Laura drank her coffee black and paced nervously as Frank finished the job, Didi looking on with interest. Then Frank came back out of the car, the duct tape reduced to about half its previous size. "There you go," he said. "Hope everything works out all right for you."
"We hope so, too," Didi answered. She got into the car, and Laura was never so thankful in her life to get behind a steering wheel.
"Drive carefully!" Frank cautioned. He waved as the patched-up BMW pulled away, and he watched as it sped up and swerved onto I-94 West. Funny, he thought. The lady from Georgia had said her "friend" had her purse. Why hadn't she said "sister"? Well, sisters could be friends, couldn't they? Still… it made him wonder. Was it worth a call in to get a vehicle ID or not? Should've checked her driver's license, he decided. He'd always been a sucker for a hard-luck story. Well, let them go. He was supposed to be looking for speeders, not giving grief to battered wives. He turned his back to the west, and went to get himself a cup of coffee.
"Fifteen minutes on us," Laura said as the speedometer's needle climbed past seventy. "That's what she's got."
"Thirteen minutes," Didi corrected Laura, and she began to tear into a sausage and biscuit.
The BMW reached eighty. Laura was even passing the massive trucks. The wind flapped the plastic a little, but Frank had done a good job and the duct tape held. "Better hold it back," Didi said. "Getting stopped for a ticket won't help."
Laura kept her speed where it was, on the high side of eighty. The car shuddered, its aerodynamics spoiled by the caved-in passenger door. Laura's gaze searched for an olive-green van in the gloomy light. "Why didn't you leave me?"
"I did."
"You came back. Why?"
"I saw him rousting you. I had your purse. I knew it was about to be over for you."
"So? Why didn't you just let him arrest me and you take off?"
Didi chewed on the tough sausage. She washed it down with a sip of hot coffee. "Where was I going to go?" she asked quietly.
The question lingered. To it there was no answer.
The BMW sped on, toward the steel-gray West while the sun rose in the East like a burning angel.
2: The Terrible Truth
Laura had to cut her speed down to sixty-five again when she saw another state trooper car heading east. After almost half an hour, there was still no sign of Mary Terror's van. "She's turned off," Laura said. She heard the desperation rising in her voice. "She took an exit."
"Maybe she did. Maybe she didn't."
"Wouldn't you?" Laura asked.
Didi thought about it. "I'd turn off and find a place to wait for a while, until you had time to pass me," she said. "Then I could get back on the highway whenever I pleased."
"Do you think that's what she's done?"
Didi looked ahead. The traffic had picked up, but there was no sign of an olive-green van with broken taillights. They had passed the exits to Kalamazoo a few miles before. If Mary Terror had turned off at any one of those, they'd never find her again. "Yes, I think so," Didi answered.