Shattered

each time that she did appear in the dreams, an imaginary dream - Leland killed her with an imaginary knife. And the murder was, without exception, curiously satisfying.

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    THURSDAY
        

    Fifteen
        
        Interstate 25 ran north from Denver and connected with interstate 80 just inside the Wyoming border. That was all well-paved, four-lane, controlled-access highway that would carry them straight into San Francisco without a single intersection to get in the way.
        But they did not take it, because it seemed like too obvious an alternative to the route which they had originally planned to use. If the madman in the Chevrolet van had become obsessed with them-and with killing them-then he might make the effort to think one step ahead of them. And if he realized that they would now leave their pre-planned route, he would see, with one quick glance at a map, that I-25 and I-80 was their next best bet.
        “So we'll take Route 24,” Doyle said.
        “What kind of road is it?” Colin asked, leaning across the seat to look at the map which Doyle had propped against the steering wheel.
        “Pieces of it are four-lane. Most of it isn't.”
        Colin reached out and traced it with one finger. Then he pointed to the gray-shaded areas. “Mountains?”
        “Some. High plateaus. But there are a good many deserts, alkali and salt flats…”
        I'm glad we've got air conditioning.”
        Doyle folded the map and handed it to the boy. “Belt yourself in.”
        Colin put the map in the glove compartment, then did as he had been told. As Doyle drove out of the Rockies Motor Hotel parking lot, the boy tucked in his orange-and-black Phantom of the Opera T-shirt smoothed the wrinkles out of the phantom's hideously deformed face, and took a couple of minutes to comb his thick brown hair until it fell straight to his shoulders just the way he liked it. Then he sat up straight and watched the sun-scorched landscape whisk past as the mountains drew nearer.
        The electric-blue sky was streaked with narrow bands of gray-white clouds, but it was no longer a storm sky. Last night's downpour had ended as abruptly as it had begun, leaving few traces. The sandy soil alongside the road looked almost parched, dusty.
        The traffic was not heavy this morning, and what there was of it moved so well and orderly that Doyle did not have to pass a single car all the way out of the Denver area.
        And there was no van behind them.
        “You're awfully quiet this morning,” Alex said after fifteen minutes had passed in silence. He glanced away from the twisting snakes of hot air that danced above the highway, looked at the boy. “You feeling okay?”
        “I was thinking.”
        “You're always thinking.”
        “I was if thinking about this-maniac.”
        “And?
        “We aren't being followed, are we?”
        “No.”
        Colin nodded. “I bet we never see him again.”
        Doyle frowned, accelerated slightly to keep up with the flow of cars around them. “How can you be so sure?”
        “Just a hunch.”
        “I see. I thought you might have a theory…”
        “No. Only a hunch.”
        “Well,” Doyle said, “I'd feel a whole lot better if you did have some reasons for thinking we've seen the last of him.”
        “So would I,” the boy said.
        
        Even as he drove into the parking lot that encircled the Rockies Motor Hotel, George Leland knew that he had missed them. The headache had been so damned long and intense… And the period of unconsciousness, afterward, had lasted at least two hours. They might not be too far out in front of him, but they had surely gotten a head start.
        The Thunderbird was not where it had been the night before. That space was empty.
        He refused to panic. Nothing was lost. They had not escaped. He knew exactly where they were going.
        He parked where the Thunderbird had been, shut off the engine. There was a map on top of the same tissue box which held the.32-caliber pistol. Leland unfolded it on the seat and turned sideways to study it, traced the meager system of highways that crossed Colorado and Utah.
        “They don't have many choices,” he told the golden girl in the seat next to him. “Either they stay on the planned route-or they take one of these other two.”
        She said nothing.
        “After last night, they'll change their