“I don’t know. A few hours,” he said. “I’m stopping because the sign said there were restaurants up here, and gas stations.” She was ready for him to look at her now, but he still had his eyes ahead. She knew that was what he was supposed to do, but it would have made her feel reassured if he had just sneaked a glance at her now.
He stopped the car on a blacktop surface facing the back of the restaurant and far out of the glow of its overhead lights. She said, “Can I change your bandage before I go in?”
He nodded, “Okay.”
She took out the bandages and the antibacterial salve and got everything ready before she opened his shirt and took off the old dressings. She could see well enough in the dim light to tell that when she changed the gauze this time, there was no new blood. He was incredible. Over months she had gotten used to his ability to lift things, his ability to keep on running or exercising without seeming to get winded or tired. Those were things that seemed to her to be impossible to evaluate, because his body was so different from hers. But this—hurt and bleeding and healing—was something that everyone had, and it must be the same for everybody. It didn’t seem to be the same for Jimmy.
The way he lived had made him into such a healthy animal it was almost frightening. He was beginning to recover from a gunshot wound in just twenty-four hours.
Mae put the new bandages on. She liked the business of touching him like this, ministering to him. She felt as though she was putting good feelings in his mind for later. When he felt better, he was going to know who had gotten him through this. She said, “I’ll bring us something to eat. What do you want?”
“I’ll go in with you.”
They went inside the restaurant, and she was amazed to hear what he ordered, and more amazed to see him eat it. He was healing, all right. Otherwise, he couldn’t have eaten all that steak and the potatoes and vegetables, and then order pie and milk too. She had to cut his steak for him, but after that, if his left arm hadn’t been resting in his lap while he ate, she would not have known.
When they were finished, he paid the bill in cash and they went out to the car again. It made Mae feel a tiny bit sad to leave the place where there were lights and cheerful voices and the smells of food cooking, and come out here where it was dark and the air was beginning to take on the late-night chill, and the smell of gasoline was so strong while Jimmy filled the tank. It was easy to be lonely when she was with Jimmy. He had started talking a little more before things had gone all wrong the other night, but that had died out.
Varney said, “You ready to drive some more?”
She drove while he slept, but she found as she drove that the night didn’t bother her much, because she forgot about it for long periods. She was thinking about Jimmy while he slept. She could tell during dinner that he had become more settled in his mind. It was as though he had been shocked and confused at first, but had finally made some sense of what had happened. To Mae, that was a very good sign. It meant he was going to be all right. He had not lost his health, and he had not lost his nerve. She drove through the night devising ways to make this work. She considered getting him to marry her, but there were too many reasons why that would be unwise. He would have a responsibility to give her money, but he would also have a right to some of hers, including the money Tracy had been paying her to be with him. And that would stop. He wouldn’t pay Tracy for his own wife. Mae would have no income at all. No, marriage was not for her.
In the morning, Jimmy took the wheel and drove into Cleveland while she rested. They turned in the car at the airport, and rented a new one at another lot. Mae was preparing to drive on again, but he stopped at noon and checked into a hotel.
Mae was delighted. It was a nice hotel, with room service and a beautiful lobby with a marble floor. She determined to make this phase of the trip the very best for him. He might have been distracted and inattentive while he was scared and in pain, but he had recovered enough now so she believed he would remember what she did next. She made herself devote every moment to him. Now that they were in good light, she could examine the wound better and see that it had no signs of infection. She bathed him, changed the dressing, brought him food from the restaurant downstairs, massaged him. On the second day, he asked her to dye his hair again. “The guy who shot me saw that it’s light brown,” he said. “Darken it.”
This time, Mae did something more radical, a gesture for him. After she had colored his hair, she waited until he slept again, and colored her own too. She made it the same as his, but with lighter highlights. When he awoke, he looked at her for a long time without speaking. Then he wordlessly took off her clothes and made love to her.
At ten the next morning, they left the hotel and drove toward Cincinnati. At noon, Jimmy stopped at a restaurant and bought a picnic lunch. They drove for a time looking for a place to stop, until he found a secluded grove of trees near a river. It was quiet and empty and beautiful, and she smiled at him as she ate.
Mae was fascinated by the sight of three birds high up in the sky, circling one another. They seemed to be playing. She couldn’t tell what kind they were. She was just about to turn toward Jimmy to ask if he could tell, but she didn’t, because that was when he brought the blade of the knife across her throat.
A bit later, as Varney dragged her body into the ditch he had dug, he felt himself getting angrier. It was outrageous that Tracy and her stupid sons had done this to him, so that he had needed to kill Mae. He felt this betrayal more strongly than the rest of their offenses. Mae was the part that he held against them most bitterly.
Tracy had let herself get suckered. She was so greedy that all she had needed to hear was a high number, and she was in. He supposed that he should not have been surprised. He had even suspected there was something wrong with the way she was thinking about the job at the moment he had heard of it. Varney had not imagined that Prescott was behind the offer, but that was not the point. A man didn’t have to be clairvoyant to survive, if only people would take reasonable precautions. Well, she was going to have to make reparations.
38
When Prescott was still four blocks away from the office building in Cincinnati, he knew that something had already happened.
The sidewalk in front of the building was roped off with yellow POLICE LINE—DO NOT CROSS tape. There were three blue-and-white patrol cars parked on the opposite side of the street, three more at the curb just past the tape. There were a number of plain cars, a couple with small insignia on their doors. There were plainclothes cops walking in and out of the building, some of them with tackle boxes that held forensics kits. Prescott turned his car to the right at the next corner so he didn’t have to drive past. He found a gas station where he could see a couple of pay phones, and pulled up to the fence and parked.
He picked up the nearest phone, pumped in some change, and dialed the Los Angeles number. “Millikan,” he said. “I’m in Cincinnati. There’s a crime scene here, and there’s no way the police are going to let me near it. One of us needs to get a look at it.”
It was nearly twelve hours later that Millikan came out of the building, ducked under the tape, and walked down the block to the car where Prescott sat watching.
Prescott walked with him back up the sidewalk, under the police tape, and to the front entrance. A uniformed policeman inside the door nodded to Millikan, then turned his eyes toward Prescott, but Millikan foreclosed the question. “He’s with me.” The two went up the stairs quickly instead of waiting for the elevator, so the cop didn’t have time to stare at Prescott and wonder whether being with a visiting professor from some college was enough to make a man welcome in this particular spot.