The van followed, but it dropped back a bit because it couldn't make the turn as quickly as the LTD. It wasn't as maneuverable as the car.
That's what Charlie was counting on.
At the next corner he turned left, cutting his speed as little as possible, almost standing the LTD on two wheels, almost losing control in a wild slide, but somehow holding on, nearly clipping a car parked too close to the intersection. A block later he turned right, then left, then right, then right again, weaving through the narrow streets, putting distance between them and the van.
When they were not just one but two corners ahead of the van, when their pursuers could no longer see which way they were turning, Charlie stopped making random turns and began choosing their route with some deliberation, street by street, heading back toward State, then across the main thoroughfare and into the parking lot of another shopping center.
"We're not stopping here?" Christine said.
" Yeah."
' 'But-"
"We've lost them."
"For the moment, maybe. But they-"
"There's something I have to check on," Charlie said.
He parked out of sight of the traffic on State Street, between two larger vehicles, a camper and a pickup truck.
Apparently, when the second white van had grazed the back of the LTD, tearing off the rear bumper, it had also damaged the exhaust pipe and perhaps the muffler. Acrid fumes were rising through the floorboards, into the car. Charlie told them to crank their windows down an inch or two. He didn't want to turn off the engine if he could help it; he wanted to be ready to move out at a moment's notice; but the fumes were just too strong, and he had to shut the car down.
Christine unhooked her seatbeit and turned to Joey." You okay, honey?"
The boy didn't answer.
Charlie looked back at him.
Joey was slumped down in the corner. His small hands were fisted tight.
His chin was tucked down. His face was bloodless.
His lips trembled, but he was too scared to cry, scared speechless, paralyzed with fear. At Christine's urging, he finally looked up, and his eyes were haunted, forty years too old for his young face.
Charlie felt sick and sad and weary at the sight of the boy's eyes and the tortured soul they revealed. He was also angry. He had the irrational urge to get out of the car right now, stalk back to State Street, find Grace Spivey, and put a few bullets in her.
The bitch. The stupid, crazy, pitiful, hateful, raving, disgusting old bitch!
The dog mewled softly, as if aware of its young master's state of mind.
The boy produced a similar sound and turned his eyes down to the dog, which put its head in his lap.
As if by magic, the witch had found them. The boy had said that you couldn't hide from a witch, no matter what you did, and now it seemed that he was correct.
"Joey," Christine said, "are you all right, honey? Speak to me, baby.
Are you okay?"
Finally the boy nodded. But he still wouldn't-or couldn'tspeak. And there was no conviction in his nod.
Charlie understood how the boy felt. It was difficult to believe that everything could have gone so terribly wrong in the span of just a few minutes.
There were tears in Christine's eyes. Charlie knew what she was thinking. She was afraid that Joey had finally snapped.
And maybe he had.
The churning black-gray clouds at last unleashed the pent-up storm that had been building all morning. Rain scoured the shopping center parking lot and pounded on the battered LTD.
Sheet lightning pulsed across large portions of the dreary sky.
Good, Charlie thought, looking out at the water-blurred world.
The storm-especially the static caused by the lightning-gave them a little more cover. They needed all the help they could get.
"It has to be in here," he said, opening Christine's purse, dumping the contents on the seat between them.
"But I don't see how it could be," she said.
"It's the only place they could have hidden it," he insisted, frantically stirring through the contents of the purse, searching for the most likely object in which a tiny transmitter might have been concealed." It's the only thing that's come with us all the way from L.A. We left behind the suitcases, my car. this is the only place it could've been hidden."
"But no one could've gotten hold of my purse-"
"It might've been planted a couple of days ago, when you weren't suspicious or watchful, before all this craziness began," he said, aware that he was grasping at straws, trying to keep his desperation out of his voice but not entirely succeeding.
If we aren't unwittingly carrying a transmitter, he thought, then how the hell did they find us so quickly? How the hell?
He looked out at the parking lot, turned and glanced out of the back window. No white vans. Yet.
Joey was staring out the side window. His lips were moving, but he wasn't making a sound. He looked wrung-out. A few raindrops slanted in through the narrow gap at the top of the window, struck the boy's head, but he didn't seem to notice.
Charlie thought of his own miserable childhood, the beatings he had endured at the hands of his father, the loveless face of his drunken mother. He thought about the other helpless children, all over the world, who became victims because they were too small to fight back, and a renewed, powerful current of anger energized him again.
He picked up a green malachite compact from the pile of stuff that had been in Christine's purse, opened it, lifted out the powder puff, took out the cake of powder, dropped them both in the litter bag that hung on the dashboard. He quickly examined the compact, but he couldn't see anything unusual about it. He hammered it against the steering wheel a couple of times, smashed it, examined the pieces, saw nothing suspicious.
Christine said, "If we have been carrying a transmitter, something they've been able to home in on, itd need a strong power source, wouldn't it?"
"A battery," he said, taking apart her tube of lipstick.
"But surely it couldn't operate off a battery that small."
"You'd be surprised what modern technology has made possible.
Microminiaturization. You'd be surprised."
Although all four of the windows were down an inch or two, letting in a bit of fresh air, the glass was steaming up. He couldn't see the parking lot, and that made him uneasy, so he started the engine again and switched on the defroster, in spite of the exhaust fumes that seeped in from the damaged muffler and tailpipe.
The purse contained a gold fountain pen and a Cross ballpoint. He took them both apart.
"But how far would something like that broadcast?" Christine asked.
"Depends on its sophistication."
"More specifically?"
"A couple of miles."
"That's all?"
"Maybe five miles if it was really good."
"Not all the way to L.A.?"
"No."
Neither of the pens was a transmitter.
Christine said, "Then howd they find us all the way up here in Santa Barbara?" While he carefully examined her wallet, a penlight, a small bottle of Excedrin, and several other items, he said, "Maybe they have contacts in various police agencies, and maybe they learned about the stolen Caddy turning up in Ventura. Maybe they figured we were headed toward Santa Barbara, so they came up here and started cruising around, just hoping to strike it lucky, just driving from street to street in their vans, monitoring their receivers, until they got close enough to pick up the signal from the transmitter."
"But we could have gone a hundred other places," Christine said." I just don't see why they would've zeroed in on Santa Barbara so quickly."
"Maybe they weren't just looking for us here. Maybe they had search teams working in Ventura and Ojai and a dozen other towns."