“Derek!”
“Mr. Crowe!”
He had come out onto a balcony overlooking the dance floor. Etienne and Nina stood in the center of the room, in the mouth of the black mandala, waving to him.
“What do you think?” Nina called.
Derek’s grin, unforced and unbidden, surprised even him. He spread his arms to encompass the club, as if it and all within it were his doing.
“Wonderful!” he called. And then, unsure exactly what he meant, but giving in for once to spontaneity, he added: “Let them come!”
28
America, Michael had decided, was mostly wasteland.
They had been driving through flat arid deserts for an eternity. The last woods he’d seen were in western Oklahoma, and since then it had been flat and rocky, windswept, bare; red rock and white rock, orange, green, and black rock. When they’d gained altitude in Arizona there had been the freshness of pine trees in the night, but that hadn’t lasted long, and they came down once again into desert, past cacti draped with snow, under a starry sky so vast that it mocked the emptiness of the desert. Now here they were in California, land of sunny beaches and orange groves and lush green mountains; but the sun was dawning on another endless reach of desert. The mountains were black and alien as a scorched satellite; the rocks themselves looked burned. They skirted the edge of a crusted lakebed that looked as if it had been set on fire in ages past. It reminded him of an early science-fiction dream of Mercury, a desert world whirling close to the sun, only barely inhabitable. He was always amazed when he saw the winking lights of some settlement or other. Who would ever live out here?
A sign flew past, and he saw the offramp up ahead: GAS, FOOD, LODGING. gas, food, lodging. What wouldn’t he have given for the latter? A night in a spring-shot motel bed would have felt like a week in a luxury hotel. He had been so exhausted for so long that he could hardly remember any other mode of consciousness. He had always wondered how humans could whip themselves to feats of great endurance, and now he knew. All it took was desperation.
He figured they could reach San Francisco tonight, if the car held out. If he held out. It was always a temptation to let Lenore drive, but each time he seriously considered it, he remembered their near-disaster outside of Memphis.
He followed the off ramp down to a gas-station minimart, an oasis of fuel and junk food. The pump was self-service. He left Lenore sleeping and went into the market to pay in advance for the gas. He went out and started the pump, then went back in. Lenore wasn’t eating much these days, but he needed constant replenishment. He picked through pastries and beef jerky, considered a microwave burrito but decided against it when his stomach rebelled at the thought. A pint of milk, cigarettes. He poured himself a cup of black coffee and swigged; it was scorched and bitter, and he could feel the grounds swirling between his teeth. The old man at the register took his money without looking, too busy watching a small TV set on the counter—a morning program, traffic and weather and fragments of news. Michael was scooping up his change and tucking the paper sack into the crook of his arm when he heard the announcer mention ritual murder.
He couldn’t see the screen from where he stood, and the sound wasn’t up very loud. He worked his way around the counter past the slush machines and the magazine rack, until he could see the screen. A fuzzy, blurry video image, attributable not to poor camerawork but to lousy reception. A scrubby vacant lot with candles and broken glass and a body covered with a bloody sheet; and on the brick wall above, a large dark circular pattern that made his pulse quicken—then the picture was gone. Fucking media tidbits—never a fully developed thought, or even an image. Everything was subliminal these days. Was it a mandala, or wasn’t it? He couldn’t hear the talking head, and could barely read his title of “Occult Crime Expert.” Then came another picture, painted in wavering, washed-out video tones. He almost dropped his coffee. As the image wavered in and out, he recognized their house. Tucker’s house. A woman in a bright red coat stood in the driveway, next to Lenore’s Cutlass, holding a microphone.
“No,” he whispered. The man looked over at him, and Michael snatched up a copy of Guns and Ammo.
“I’ll take this too,” he said, holding it up. The man looked suspiciously at him now, as if he were waving an actual gun. As he rang up the sale, he blocked Michael’s view of the TV. Michael gave him the money, trying for another clear shot of the screen. But the story was over, and now there was nothing on but advertisements. He looked down at the rack, but there was nothing on the cover of any newspapers he could see, nothing about occult murders.
He rushed out with his purchases, trying to see if the North Carolina plates were visible from the market. He hooked the pump back into the machine, dripping gasoline over his shoes, twisting the cap into place with his other hand. He drove away in a panic, nearly taking the wrong off ramp, which would have carried them east again.
Are they looking for us now? he wondered. Could they possibly know we’ve gotten this far? Do they have a description of our car? Wouldn’t every highway patrolman who’s passed us, all the way across the country, remember this Beetle in an instant?
Are we suspects?
How could we not be?
Michael’s temple room, directly under the murder scene, was full of ceremonial knives, everything the North Carolina cops knew a black magician needed for his sacrificial killings. And on his altar, Jesus, Derek Crowe’s Mandala Rites lay open wide, probably to the very mandala that was splattered on Tucker’s wall.
Should he ditch the car somewhere out here in the desert? Find a dirt road and drive it over the edge of some ravine? They could hitchhike into the next town, catch a Greyhound going to San Francisco. But how long would all that take? Maybe he could get some spray-paint, paint the car black.
Ridiculous.
The only thing to do was to get to San Francisco as swiftly as possible and hope the cops were still treating this as a local thing, checking North Carolina and the immediate states. People got away with murder all the time—actual murderers. They turned up weeks or months or years later, far from the crime scenes, having lived anonymously and without being recognized until their story was featured on Unsolved Mysteries or America’s Most Wanted.
That’s us, he thought. We’ll be on both shows. Our faces will be everywhere eventually.
But in the meantime, they had a chance to get to San Francisco. Certainly the mandalas would be doing their part to keep the way open, keep the cops off their backs.
The main thing was to get to Derek Crowe. To get help for Lenore from the one man who might understand her condition. Once she had been cared for, then they could worry about the law—figure out whether to run or turn themselves in with some story that sounded less than utterly insane.
The car whined as it climbed toward the sinister serrations of a coal-black range. He decided to tell Lenore nothing. Headlights appeared behind him, pulling out of the sun; approaching quickly, then passing in a rush that rocked the car. It was a trooper, bent on other business. He could hardly have passed the Beetle without recognizing it, if he was looking for such an unlikely vehicle. But the taillights turned to tiny beads and vanished up ahead.
It didn’t help. He couldn’t relax. They still had the length of the state to travel. Anything could happen.
PART 6
In us all is shattered and twisted. And never forget that we hold you in our jaws.