"But get that license plate light fixed, all right?"

"Right away."

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

I took the car over to the DX station. Luckily, they had a light for the license plate.

After that, tired of riding around, I stopped in at the video store and picked up the 1978 version of Invasion of The Body s.n.a.t.c.hers. I think it's almost as good as the original.

I was pa.s.sing McDonald's, on the way home, when I suddenly got hungry.

I went in and got a fish sandwich and a vanilla shake and some fries. The place was pretty much empty except for a couple of giggling high school girls in the corner.

I sat at the front window and watched the traffic along Hawthorne Street. I figured out once that Hawthorne Street was at least seventy years old. Sometimes I thought of all the different kinds of cars that had driven up and down on this street, from old boxy Model T's to the big-fin jobs of the fifties. Then I thought of all the people who'd come and gone who'd driven up and down Hawthorne. The pa.s.sing parade, generation after generation. Sometimes, it made me sad to think about the way Mom and Dad would have to die someday. Then the way I'd have to die, and Josh, and Cindy, and everybody else.

If I hadn't been in the Army, I probably wouldn't have figured out the gunshot for what it was.

But it was a gunshot, all right.

Big city people always have this notion that small-town folks are used to guns. But except for hunting trips, gunfire is not something you hear very often in a town like ours.

Then there was another; and another.

Three shots in all.

I glanced hack at the high school girls. They were still giggling.

I looked over at the counter. The two boys wiping everything down didn't even glance up.

None of them had any idea that a gun had just been fired. They probably thought it was a car backfiring or something.

I was curious but there wasn't anything I could do about it.

Anyway, I still had a shake and fries I owed some attention to.

I was just tilting the shake back when I saw Fred Wyman running down the sidewalk. He looked as if he was going to run right past me but when he saw me in the window, he ran into the parking lot, and came straight inside.

Fred lived down the block from us. He was about Josh's age.

He was chunky. He wore a Grateful Dead T-shirt. His fleshy face was glazed with sweat. His breath came in gasps.

"You hear what happened?"

"Huh-uh," I said.

"David Myles."

"Myles?"

"He just killed Nancy Tumbler over at the Stop 'n Shop."

"Killed her? What the h.e.l.l're you talking about?"

"Killed her, Spence. Shot her three times in the chest. Blood all over the place. He took off runnin'. They're lookin' for him now."

"Why do you think it was Myles?"

"People seen him. Three eyewitnesses. He took the money and killed her right in front of them. I was just goin' down to the video arcade to tell all the kids." He gave me a half-wave and then turned back to the door.

I sat there.

At the moment, I couldn't think of anything else to do.

Sometimes, things don't quite register in your brain, as if your brain just refuses to accept them.

It was that way with what Fred Wyman had told me. I was ready to believe just about anything terrible about David Myles but I sure couldn't see him as a killer. Maybe in a fist fight; maybe accidentally like that. But robbing a convenience store and then killing the 60-year-old clerk in cold blood? For one thing, Myles came from a wealthy family. He didn't need to rob a convenience store. For another, even if he wanted to kill somebody with a gun, why would he do it with three witnesses?

So I sat there.

I was going to get Cindy back.

That was a lousy thought to have with Nancy Tumbler, a poor, hard-working woman the whole town liked, lying dead on the cold gray tiles of the Stop 'n Shop.

But that was the thought I had: that whatever hold Myles had had on Cindy was now gone.

And she was going to come back to me.

I got up and carried my tray over to the wastebasket, dumped everything and walked out.

On the sidewalk, I looked west down Hawthorne.

Two blocks away, I could see cop cars and an ambulance and a crowd of people. The emergency lights whipped through the November-bare trees.

I wondered where Cindy was, what she was doing.

I thought about calling her at home but decided that that wouldn't be a good thing.

I'd called the Brasher house enough today.

If I was going to win back Cindy, and I was sure I was, I'd need to have her folks on my side. Cindy thought a lot of her folks.

I'd parked my car in the far, deserted corner of the lot. I'd read an article that said you could lose 300 calories a day just by parking at the extreme end of parking lots you were using. I'd put on four pounds since coming home from service.

I peeked in the side window of my junker and saw something weird. The video tape I'd tossed on the back seat had been moved from the corner to the middle of the seat. Had somebody robbed me? Everything else looked all right.

But then I thought that maybe I'd made a mistake. I didn't have the world's greatest memory. Maybe I'd only thought I'd put the video in the corner.

As I was opening the car door, I heard something behind me, something I recognized vaguely as shoes scuffling across small rocks on concrete.

I turned just in time to see David Myles running at me. He had a gun in his hand.

"Get in," he said.

I got in.

He ran around and climbed in the shotgun seat.

"Go," he said, slamming the door.

"They're looking for you."

"I know they're looking for me, a.s.shole. That's why I want you to get the h.e.l.l out of here. I tried hiding in the back seat but Garrett pulled in here and started sniffing around. So I hid behind the dumpsters over there."

"You killed her."

"Drive, you a.s.shole," he said. "Drive."

He had the gun pointed right at my chest.

My bowels did cold and nasty things.

My fingers were trembling so hard I couldn't even turn the ignition on at first.

Was he going to kill me, too?

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

I did what he told me.

He said to go out to the country and that's where we went.

He didn't say much, just mostly stared out the window. There was a full moon painting all the fallen cornfields silver, and glazing the tops of the forest trees.

We didn't see any traffic. The only evidence of human life was in the lighted windows of farmhouses. They looked snug, smug, as if they didn't want to know anything at all about a couple of hick kids riding around in the darkness.

"Why'd you shoot her?"

I had to say something. I couldn't think of anything else to say.

"Just drive."

Then: "You think it was my f.u.c.king idea? You think I'd f.u.c.king do something like that?"

He was crying when he said this.

"You mean you didn't shoot her?"

He didn't look scary now, all the anger was gone from his face, now he just looked scared and sad, football hero sitting there smelling of after-shave and sweat, shaking like a junkie in a bad movie. He had on his letter jacket. It didn't seem to be giving him much solace right now. Being a football hero didn't count for much after you'd murdered somebody in cold blood.

The gun was in his lap.

He wasn't even holding it.

"I need to see her."

"Who?" But I knew who.

"Go back to town."

"Maybe you should turn yourself in."

He glared at me. "Maybe you should keep your f.u.c.king mouth shut."

"You sure? About town, I mean?"

"I have to talk to her."

"We get anywhere near town, the cops are going to see us."

"Can't be helped."

He was looking up at the full moon again, talking to himself.

He started crying. It was hard for him, as if he didn't quite know how and needed some practice.

I wanted to hate him but I couldn't. Not quite.

"Myles?"

"Yeah?" he said between sobs.

"Let me take you to the police station."