I got out of the trunk and stretched, looking around. We were parked by a small dirt road or lane, under some cottonwoods that apparently got their water from the underground seepage of a muddy stock pond nearby. Some bored-looking Herefords stood around the pond, watching us suspiciously. The lane ran on up across the open range to a house over a mile away, sheltered by more trees, the only other trees in sight.
In the opposite direction, the ground sloped down gently to the distant horizon. The highway was out there, a straight streak across the plain, infested with cars and trucks looking like ants crawling both ways along an endless twig. It was wide-open country, but it didn't have the spectacular, desolate vistas you find farther west, and there were no faraway, wind-eroded buttes and mesas to add interest to the flat landscape.
"Where are we?" I asked.
"We're still in Texas. I thought there might be a roadblock at the Oklahoma border, and I'd better check on you before we hit it."
I said, "I doubt very much the police will be stopping cars on the highway, particularly cars heading into Oklahoma. Hell, they can't go searching every car in the state for old banjo strings, or a saw and what's left of a broomstick. It's not the cops I'm worrying about; it's Leonard's people, some of whom probably know us by sight from Mexico and Arizona, or think they do. Let's hope they're all looking for a couple in a dark green station wagon with a boat towing along behind, so hard they'll pay no attention to a lone blonde in an unencumbered white sedan."
I glanced at the big car, another Chevy that Martha had rented that morning in Amarillo, Texas. It didn't have as much power as the wagon we'd left behind temporarily at a motel, but then it didn't have as much to pull, either. Actually, she'd picked it, on my instructions, not for speed, but for its heat-reflecting color or lack of color, for its large trunk, and for its efficient cooling system that included some ventilating louvres in the trunk lid that might help a man survive back there on a bright summer day. I stretched once more, trying to untie the knots in my back and neck. While the car trunk was about as big as they come, it hadn't really been designed for comfortable occupancy by gents six-feet-four.
Martha was checking her reflection in 'the car window, touching her bright new hair into place.
I said, "Stop fussing with it, Goldilocks. It's all right. You're beautiful."
"Am I?" She turned to look at me. There was quick mischief in her eyes. "You didn't act as if I were last night. All you did was snore."
"Make up your mind," I said. "Yesterday evening you were mad because you thought I was going to rape hell out of you. This morning you're mad because I didn't."
She smiled. "I'm not mad. But you didn't have to sleep quite so soundly. A little insomnia would have been more well, diplomatic." Embarrassed, she stopped smiling abruptly and said, "Well, if you're all right, we'd better hit the road again."
An endless time later I realized that we'd left the interstate freeway for a secondary road: the pavement was rougher, the speed was less, and there was a lot of the braking and accelerating that goes with driving a two-lane highway. Now and then there'd be a series of stops and starts indicating that we were passing through a town. Once I picked up some bruises when she took a set of bumps too fast, presumably a railroad crossing. Then there was a final town, more country roads, and a stop. The trunk opened.
"I hope you survived all that," Martha said.
"Everything except that damned railroad track you hit at ninety miles per hour," I said, crawling out of my metal womb. I looked around. The country had changed. The view was not as big as it had been. This was more rolling farmland with a stream running through it. "Did you find the sheriff's house?" I asked.
"Back down the road three point seven miles," she said precisely. "I thought of stopping near a kind of knoll nearby from which you could have seen the layout for yourself, if you didn't mind climbing a little, but then I thought somebody else might have the same idea."
"Smart girl." I reached into the back seat to get a beer out of the cheap plastic-foam icebox we'd picked up in Amarillo, along with the rental car and the address of Sheriff Thomas M. Rullington, obtained from a friendly telephone operator. "Beer or coke for you… Okay, let's go sit on the riverbank while you tell me what it looks like."
Martha laughed. "In these ladylike clothes you've put me into? My nylons wouldn't last two steps in that brush. Maybe I can make it to that log over there without casualties." She made it to the log, and I opened the coke she'd indicated and handed it to her. She said, "Thanks. Actually, it's a small farm just outside the town, with a shiny new Cadillac in the yard. You go through some brand new ticky-tacky suburbs, real crackerbox stuff, and just as you reach open country, there it is, with a mailbox out front that says 'Rullington, Route ~3' and a number I didn't have time to read as I drove by. The house is white clapboard that could use another coat of paint. In front, a kind of sad-looking, fenced-in flower garden and mangy-looking lawn with a tricycle and a set of swings. At the side, as I said, a big Caddy sedan. In back, a barn and corral with a couple of horses in the corral. Farther back, some fields with cattle in them. That's about all I could see going by, except that there was a man sitting on the corral fence looking at the horses as if he didn't like horses much. And fifty yards down the road was a parked pickup truck-blue, if it matters-with a man in the cab smoking a cigarette as if he'd had so many they were beginning to taste awful."
"Good enough," I said. "We'll make a secret agent of you yet."
"I certainly hope not." Martha's tone was dry. After a moment, she went on. "What are you going to do, Matt?"
I said, "The real question is what Carl's going to do, and what Sheriff Rullington's going to do-or hopes he's going to do-about what Carl's going to do."
"You're certain the sheriff is next on the list."
"It figures that way," I said. "Apparently nobody knows just whose bullet hit Emily Janssen in all that shooting, but it's well established who gave the order to fire. But just how Carl plans to reach him… Wait a minute! You said there were some kids' playthings in the Rullington yard?"
"Yes. Why?"
"Because, damn it, Carl is a pro. He can figure the opposition as well as we can. The first killing was easy. Nobody was expecting it. The second was probably almost as simple; nobody was really looking for an encore. But now the whole state's alert, knowing there's a systematic cop-killer loose who's more than likely to strike again. Carl can't help but know he hasn't got a chance of sneaking up on another policeman, let alone the sheriff himself. What will he do? Hell, it's obvious. He'll make the sheriff come to him, assuming he can get his hands on the proper bait. Let's find out just how many kids the Rullingtons have and where… "I stopped, seeing that she was about to go into one of her righteous seizures. I said, "Shut up, Borden! Just keep your Goddamned high-minded disapproval to yourself, so I can get on with my work."
"But kidnaping children-"
"We don't know that's how he'll work it. Anyway, don't forget, Carl is short one child. Maybe he figures he's got one coming. If Rullington can shoot them, why can't he kidnap them?"
"You can't be serious!"
"I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about the way Carl's mind is working. The more I think of it, the more I'm convinced that's the way he'll do it: poetic justice or something… You said there was a natural vantage point from which we could have studied the sheriff's farm, only you were afraid somebody might have beat us to it. Well, suppose you're right. Suppose Carl's keeping the place under observation while he learns the Rullington family's daily routine. It's a long shot, but it's worth trying. Let's go."