No Immunity

come in and make sure you’re okay.”
    Tchernak slipped his hand around the side of the door. The chain jangled. The chain had been snapped.
    Tchernak stepped to the side of the door and reached in till he felt the light switch. The light stung his eyes. He blinked a couple of times, then staying clear of the doorway, pushed the door hard and waited.
    Seconds later he eased his head into the doorway. And stared. He was looking at a nightmare. He couldn’t tell what color the room had been; it was blotched with the most disgusting colors, with gut-wrenching smells. It looked like a body had been turned inside out and splattered all the hell over.
    A full minute passed before he noticed Grady Hummacher’s body lying half off the bed.

CHAPTER 41

    “ You don’t get picked up for speeding in Nevada,” Kiernan said aloud. Two hours and she would be in Vegas, the sun would be coming up, she’d be on the phone to the CDC and ready to beard Reston Adcock.
    Two hours. Suddenly it seemed an eon, and the straight, dark road, a soporific. She recalled the lines of birds, dead beneath the power lines. How many noctural drivers joined them? As she came over a rise, yellow and red lights glowed in the distance. CAFE, the yellow sign shrieked. Did she dare stop? Just for the bathroom? And food. Food! How long would it take to grab a Hershey’s?
    Long enough.
    She could see the cafe more clearly now—and the motel beside it. Even at this distance she could tell it was not exactly four-star. But still, the urge to turn in to the comforting light, to sit among normal people, where the biggest decision to be made was cherry or pecan pie—it was almost more than she could resist.
    Suddenly she realized why she hadn’t smacked into the sheriff on the winding up-country roads or the corner of First Street in Gattozzi. Fox didn’t need to watch those spots. The Doll’s House was the place she had to pass to reach Las Vegas. A sheriff, of all people, would know the allure of the only twenty-four-hour cafe in hundreds of miles. No need for Fox to chill his derriere surveilling First Street when he could park it by the Doll’s House’s warm, fogged window and check out the half-dozen vehicles that passed. And if he was in the middle of a burger when she passed, well, plenty of time for a line-tuned patrol car to catch the rickety truck before Vegas.
    As she neared the cafe/motel, she eyed the parking lot. Yellow light paled down on the barren macadam. But patrol cars can be parked behind buildings. She checked the far side of the road. Nothing there. Dragging her attention from the seductive thought of food, she reached for the radio knob and had the power on before she realized what she was doing—mental wandering from exhaustion. If Tchernak were here, he’d have caught that mental disarray way before she admitted it. “You’re too tired to decide to stop,” he would say. Moving inertia, he’d labeled it. The last time had been heading home from L.A. after a long day following a lead that dead-ended and a longer evening explaining to the client. Tchernak had been driving. “Come on,” Tchernak had said as he stretched his long arm across the back of the seat, “think with your eyes closed for a minute.” Her head had nested so easily in the pocket of his shoulder, her own shoulder wedged against the cushioning muscles of his chest, her hand flopped comfortably on his thigh; the fresh smell of wintergreen he’d been using on a strained muscle soothed her, and the sound of her breathing—or was it his?—sucked her into sleep.
    She shook off the memory. Maybe she was too tired back then, but now she was just fine. She was almost abreast of the yellow lights of the cafe. She slowed slightly—anyone would do that-—and eyed the cafe for a telltale hood or fender poking out from behind. There was only one vehicle, too big and bright for a law enforcement vehicle, and it was parked not outside the cafe but by a motel door.
    Reluctantly she stepped harder on the gas. She checked the rearview mirror for sudden headlights and a flashing red bar above. But all she saw were the tan buildings and yellow lights shrinking farther away until there was nothing but shapes and colors, tan and yellow and the dot of gold from the vehicle by the motel, till the whole oasis was a tiny amber bead on a black velvet table.
    She crested a rise and it was gone.

CHAPTER 42

    Tchernak heard the whoosh of a car on the interstate. In the