“I must,” said Mouse, “but I would help anyway.”
Frank paused in the doorway to look back at Burnfingers. “You?”
“Of course I am coming, Frank. What can they do but kill me again?”
“Yeah. Only maybe this time they’ll cut off your ears so you won’t be able to hear her songs.” He headed for the driver’s seat, Mouse’s response ringing in his head.
“You don’t need your ears to hear my songs, Frank. You don’t need even a tympanum.” She sat down next to him. Burnfingers settled himself between the front seats.
It should be Alicia sitting there, Frank told himself. Gentle, understanding Alicia, who was now being dragged God knew where by the hands of unmentionable things.
Mouse brought him out of his sorrowful lethargy, her hand on his arm, the contact as electrifying as before. “Drive, Frank Sonderberg, and no matter where they have been taken, we will track your family.”
“Sure you know what you are getting into?” Burnfingers asked him.
“No.” He turned the key in the ignition, heard the engine respond. “I don’t.” He nodded out into the not-quite-Utah night. “But that’s my wife and kids out there. Money, security, success—nothing means much without ’em. You wouldn’t understand. You aren’t married; you don’t have kids.”
“It is true I am not married, but I do have children. My sense of family is as strong as yours. Now shut up and drive.”
“Yeah. Right!” Frank almost wrenched the gear lever loose as he put the motor home in drive.
He pulled out into the main drag, turned toward the interstate. As he did so, a blue and white police cruiser pulled into the parking lot behind them. Frank followed its progress in the rearview mirror.
“Just drive,” Mouse instructed him, sensing his uncertainty.
“What if they could help?” His foot let up on the accelerator. The motor home slowed. “This reality line is almost identical to ours.”
“Where we are going they cannot follow, and if they did they would not long survive.”
“They would not follow, Frank,” said Burnfingers, “but they will ask questions you do not want to have to try to answer. They will delay you with reports. They will kill your hopes with bureaucratese. Do not stop for them.”
Frank considered the advice of his friends. Resolutely, he turned his gaze away from the rearview and back to the road ahead.
The officers who entered the motel lot didn’t quite know what to expect, but when they saw the pool of blood where Burnfingers Begay had lain, their early morning lethargy was swept aside by professional concern. The motel owner was standing nearby, staring up the road.
“You the guy who called?”
“Yes.” The old man didn’t turn to look at the policeman. He was muttering to himself. “That fella was dead. I’m sure of it.”
The corporal pushed his cap back on his head. “What man? Who was dead?”
“There was a man lying here and he was dead. His friends said he was dead. Then he got up and walked away.”
Suddenly leery of what he’d walked into at four in the morning, the cop walked around to where he could see the speaker’s face. “Then I guess he wasn’t dead after all, was he?”
“No,” said the manager slowly, “I guess he wasn’t.” He looked down at his feet. “But there’s the blood.”
“Somebody’s blood.” The corporal turned to his partner. “Guess we better check it out. Where are these people?”
“Gone.”
“Gone? Whaddaya mean, ‘gone’?”
“They left. With the dead man who wasn’t dead. In their motor home.”
The other officer spoke up. “Must be that big rig that was leaving as we were coming in.”
“Yes. Yes, that’s the one.”
The corporal turned back to his car in disgust. “Let’s go, Jake. Maybe the people in the motor home will make some sense.”
They pulled out into the road, burning rubber as they drove off in pursuit of the vehicle they’d passed on arrival. The motel owner was left alone in his quiet parking lot. After a while he looked back down at the rapidly drying pool of blood. Then he went to get a hose to wash it away.
Frank saw the rotating red lights swing into sight in the rearview mirror. “Cops. What do I do now?”
“Keep driving,” said Burnfingers.
“Keep driving,” said Mouse. “We cannot waste time here, certainly not to answer questions.”
“That’s what I thought.” He put his foot to the gas. “We won’t lose ’em on the interstate. They’ll catch up and pull us over.”
“It depends which on ramp we take,” Burnfingers told him.
“We must go the way your family has gone, and they have been taken to a different line. I sense it.” Mouse had turned to observe the progress of the pursuing police cruiser. They weren’t going all out. Not yet.
Beneath the hood the big engine rumbled. “They’re catching up already.”
“Relax, Frank.” Burnfingers smiled confidently. “We will lose them.”
