trembled shamelessly when she tried to unlock the door of her car. Once it was open, she slid in hastily and locked it behind her without wasting a motion. She sternly resisted the urge to look behind the front seat.
The next time she drew a night assignment, it might be a good idea to bring Lucifer with her. He wouldn’t be a bit of help in an emergency, of course. If danger threatened, he would probably run for his life. But even though Lucifer was an untypical Doberman, the reputation of his breed ought to be enough to discourage muggers.
She was being illogical. A tale of the walking dead had frightened her, not an account of a mugging; and she didn’t believe that the dead could walk. What, then, was she scared of? She had to admit that she didn’t really know.
She started the engine, but first she yielded to the temptation to check the back seat thoroughly. It was empty.
She couldn’t bring Lucy—as he had been so aptly nicknamed—to her night assignments. Ken would make an issue of it, an interminable issue: If you’re afraid to go out alone at night, you’re showing some good sense at last, and you ought to give up this foolish idea of working when you don’t have to, when you have children to take care of, etc., etc., etc.
She had lied to Ron Green. She did take a drink now and then. She felt an urge to have one now; a nice, icy martini, savored somewhere in peace before she went home to face Ken. She considered going back to accept Ron’s offer, but she decided against it. She felt like having the drink in solitude. That sounded suspiciously like the first step toward alcoholism, so she put the idea aside entirely. Once under way, she opened the window to let the warm, damp air of the April night blow in around her. The wind brought something indefinable with it, a memory of youthful restlessness and unfulfilled longings. For a moment the emotion was so strong that her eyes misted.
This was ridiculous. She was heading for a breakdown: first terrified by nothing, then crying at the touch of an April night. She was a happily married woman of thirty-one, the mother of three wonderful children, holder of an interesting job to absorb any excess energies. She recited these facts to herself like the comforting, unexamined litany of a childhood religion. But with a sinking heart she sensed that it was a faith she had outgrown.
Her foot faltered on the accelerator as she saw the ruddy neon of a wayside bar, but she pressed it down firmly. That would be asking for trouble. Asking for company, anyway. She wanted neither. But she might not be able to get that drink when she got home. If she suggested a martini and Ken was sober, he would take it as an invitation to have three; if he was drunk, to have five.
Darkness swallowed the island of neon behind her. The feeble probe of the headlights showed woods on either side of the two-lane highway. The township was booming, as Ken’s income testified, and yet there still existed vast chunks that the developers hadn’t yet chewed up.
She didn’t like the woods. Even this scraggy, suburban forest in the long-tamed East held an echo of the menace she remembered in the Black Hills. There the stars didn’t just twinkle, as they did in New Jersey: they flared. She had been aware of them as self-consuming fires, flaming red and blue and green. Nothing she had heard before had prepared her for the sound that a coyote made. No recording could suggest that maniacal, shrieking cackle, echoing in immensity. A second coyote would answer, and they would scream a duet like two damned souls at opposite ends of hell.
She didn’t want to think about the Black Hills. Most of the memories from that period of her life were hidden, as if by a curtain. She feared what lay behind it, but sometimes she horrified herself by picking and probing absent-mindedly at its edges. The woods had reminded her of that time. She hoped that they would soon be leveled and replaced by the neat little boxes that Ken designed for the omnivorous developers.
She braked suddenly; and now she could see the hitchhiker running up in the glow of her taillights. It wasn’t too late to retract her impulsive act and step on the gas. He would think that she had played a dirty trick on him, but what did that matter? He was at the door before she could make up her mind. She reached out and unlocked it.
“Thanks,” he said. He pushed a shapeless bundle into the back seat, then slid in beside her.
He was emaciated. He might have been forty, but he was more probably nineteen. His long hair and beard looked soft against the craggy lines of his face. None of the usual touches of whimsy relieved the almost Puritanical simplicity of his faded denim outfit.
“Where are you headed?” she asked.
“Blackwood’s Corners.” His voice was resonant. His accent suggested the Far West.
“I can take you most of the way.”
“I’m obliged.”
Why had she picked him up? Because nobody else would have, certainly; and because she couldn’t have stood another minute alone with her thoughts. Neither reason seemed good. But he stared ahead, relaxed, his hands easily at rest on his knees.
“What’s going on out there?”
“Ma’am?”
“I’ve seen a lot of young people in the area lately, strangers in town.” She had been choosing her words with care, but she could only end lamely. “I wondered…a rock concert or something?”
“I wouldn’t know, ma’am. I have friends there.”
His answer was a masterly piece of evasion. It didn’t reveal whether his friends were long-time residents or if they were among the strangers she had observed, but it discouraged further questioning. Marcia wasn’t easily discouraged.
“My name’s Marcia Creighton, by the way.”
Her passenger didn’t answer. She found that he was staring at her. Flustered, she returned her full attention to the road. Maybe he had mistaken her friendly overture for an invitation. No, it wasn’t that. She had read something quite different in his expression: curiosity and surprise, as if she’d just revealed herself as a celebrity.
She decided that she was imagining things. He was shy, that was all, and unskilled in polite conversation. She prompted. “And yours is…?”
“Saul,” he said, and he looked away without acknowledging the smile she intended to be encouraging. She wondered if he had been christened thus, or if the Biblical name was part of his act. The newcomers to the area might be religious nuts.
“Maybe I know some of your friends,” she suggested.
He didn’t respond immediately. From the corner of her eye, she saw that he was again staring at her. At last, with obvious reluctance, he said, “Sarah Goodwin? Abel Hopkins?”
She hesitated before shaking her head. For a moment the names had seemed familiar. Dim faces to match them had wavered elusively at the edges of her consciousness. She came to the dissatisfying conclusion that she didn’t know the people, that she was familiar merely with the type of name, fusing Hebrew and Anglo-Saxon elements, from history books. The names suggested lean figures in black, trudging through the Massachusetts snow to sit painfully erect through a six-hour sermon on the torments of hell by Jonathan Edwards.
She wanted to know more about Saul and his friends. She told herself that her interest was professional, although he probably would have viewed it as frivolous. She was reluctant to identify herself as a representative of the press. She wanted Saul to accept her as an equal, as someone who had also looked for the truth in strange places: she had done plenty of hitchhiking in her time; she had lived
