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phone, and they d probably get a print off the pizza box, and what conclusion
would they draw? That he d switched cars? That he d switched plates and kept
the same old car?
No, they d almost certainly assume that he d come to the airport because it
was in fact an airport, with the intention of getting on a plane. And they d
have a tough time establishing unequivocally that he hadn t somehow managed to
slip through Security and do just that.
Eventually, of course, the real owner of the Sentra would return. But he
wouldn t find his car, because they d have long since hauled it away and very
likely stripped the thing down to the chassis, until it would be about as easy
to put back together as the cell phone.
So what would he do? After he d looked all over the lot for it, and very
likely cursed a blue streak, what would the guy do?
Report it as stolen, most likely. And the police would add the vehicle to the
national hot car list, where it would have thousands of others for company.
That meant that police officers all over the country would be looking for it,
but it didn t mean they d be looking very hard. If he was in an accident, if
he got stopped for speeding, someone would run the plate and determine that
the vehicle was stolen. But if he was just driving around and minding his own
business, nobody would give him a second glance.
It would be just as well, though, to point them toward the Sentra sooner
rather than later. It would probably be at least a day or two before the owner
returned, but that wasn t the only reason to get things moving. As soon as
they identified the car and followed their noses into the airport terminal,
they d get out the word to stop searching for the car, and all Nissan Sentras,
including the one he was driving, would stop attracting untoward attention.
So should he call it in?
Caller ID, a staple on every 911 line, would immediately pinpoint the pay
phone he called from. He d be long gone before anybody could stop by to ask
questions, but was there a better way?
The station had a toll-free number, and it had imprinted itself on his memory
somewhere in the course of the few hundred times they d announced it. He
picked a pay phone at the far end of a strip mall with all its stores closed
for the night. When a man with a good radio voice said, WHO, Central Iowa s
leader in news and opinion, you re on the air, he took a breath and said,
Hey, is there a reward for spotting that car everybody s looking for? On
account of I just seen it out by the airport.
You should have had your dial set to 740, the fellow said. They found the
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car, and we had it on the air a full five minutes ago. You missed the boat,
hoss.
He said, So do I get the money or not? and heard a short bark of laughter
before the phone clicked in his ear.
I guess that s a no, he said out loud. And got back in the car and started
driving.
9
One moment he was dreaming, some variant on a dream he d had off and on his
whole life, the one where he was naked in public. It wasn t a difficult dream
to interpret, and had been one of the first things he and his therapist
tackled in that long-ago failed experiment in self-discovery. But he still
dreamed it every once in a while, and after all these years a sense of
recognition took a lot of the edge off the dream. Oh, you again, he d think,
and then sink back into the apparent reality of the dream.
This time the dream was suddenly over and he was as suddenly awake, with no
real memory of the dream and no other evidence that he d been asleep. He was
sitting upright behind the wheel of his car, and he kept his eyes closed while
he got his bearings. He had the awful feeling that the car was surrounded by
men with drawn guns, men who were just waiting for him to open his eyes. But
they would go on waiting as long as he pretended to be asleep, so that s what
he had to do, just sit there with his eyes shut, his breathing regular and
shallow.
He opened his eyes. There was nobody standing anywhere near the car. A pickup
truck was parked at an angle half a dozen spaces away, its engine idling, and
there was a big RV clear down at the other end of the strip, which he seemed
to remember from when he pulled off the road and parked. Other than that the
place was deserted.
He was in a rest area off U.S. Route 30 west of Cedar Rapids. He d taken I-80
out of Des Moines, then decided he d rather stay off the interstate, at least
until he was out of Iowa. The map had shown him what looked like a good road
angling northeast toward Marshalltown, and he took it as far as Route 30 and
aimed himself at Cedar Rapids. From there he d have a choice of a few routes
northeast to Dubuque, where he could cross the Mississippi into southern
Wisconsin, or stay on 30 east to Clinton and cross into Illinois, or another
road that angled between those two. He didn t think it mattered much which
route he chose, but the one thing he wanted to do was get out of Iowa and into
either Illinois or Wisconsin as soon as possible. And it looked as though he
could do that without having to fill the gas tank.
What he hadn t taken into account was fatigue. It wasn t that late, and he
hadn t gotten up that early, but the stress he d been under had evidently
taken its toll, and he started yawning and felt himself losing concentration
well before the approach to Cedar Rapids. He tried to shake off the tiredness,
and thought about stopping somewhere for a cup of coffee, but the whole point
was not to stop before he had to and not to expose himself to human eyes if he
could possibly avoid it. Besides, he knew coffee wasn t going to do it. The
last thing his body wanted was a stimulant. What it was crying out for was a
chance to shut down for a while.
The rest area, when he came upon it, was a godsend. A sign announced that it
was closed from two to five A.M., and that violators would be prosecuted. He d
heard somewhere that rules like that were designed to keep prostitutes from
working the area, setting up shop and hailing passing truckers on their CB
radios. Keller, who couldn t imagine how either of the parties involved, the
hookers or the truckers, could be quite that desperate, also couldn t figure
out what business it was of anybody else s. But he gathered that an ordinary
motorist closing his eyes for a couple of hours wouldn t get bothered, and the
presence of the trailer at one end of the rest area and a couple of cars at
the midpoint suggested he wasn t alone in this conclusion. So he d found a
place to park, far away from the others, and he d shut down the engine and
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locked the doors, and then he closed his eyes, figuring twenty minutes or a
half hour would have him as good as new.
He hadn t bothered to check the time when he called it a night, but it
couldn t have been much later than one or two, and it was just past five now,
so he d slept three or four hours. That was time he couldn t afford to spend
standing still, but on the other hand he had clearly needed the rest. Now he
could get back on the road. Or, even better, he could think things through
with a sleep-refreshed brain, and then he could get back on the road.
He looked at the map, decided he d do best to stay on 30. That was the most
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