Strange Highways

don't understand."
     "If there're only two, then you're way ahead of me.'
     "In the car with P.J. that night-"
     "Tonight. It was twenty years ago ... but also just tonight."
     "-he'd already convinced you to believe him, or at least to go along and get along. Then, after he had you in the palm of his hand, he told you he knew the dead girl. Why would he make a revelation like that when he'd already won? Why would he risk raising your suspicions again and losing you?"
     "You had to know P.J. well to understand. There was always this ... dangerous quality about him. Not recklessness, not anything that anyone found truly scary in any way. Just the opposite. It added to his allure. It was a wonderful, romantic sort of dangerousness, a thing that people admired. He liked to take chances. It was most obvious on the football field. His maneuvers were often so bold and unorthodox - but they worked."
     "They always said he liked to play on the edge."
     "Yeah. And he enjoyed driving fast, really fast - but he could handle a car about as well as anyone in the Indy 500, never had an accident or traffic ticket. In a poker game, he'd bet everything he had on a single hand, even a bad one if the timing felt right to him - and he nearly always won. You can live dangerously, almost to any extreme, and as long as you win, as long as the risks you take pay off - then people admire you for it."
     Standing over him, she put her hand on his shoulder. "I guess that also explains the other thing I didn't understand."
     "The jar in the glove box," he guessed.
     "Yeah. I'm assuming he put it there while you were packing your bags to go back to college."
     "He must've cut out her eyes earlier in the day, kept them as a memento, for God's sake. I'm sure he thought it would be funny to put them in my car and let me find them later. Test the strength of our bond."
     "After he'd convinced you he was innocent, persuaded you to let him dispose of the body, he was crazy ever to let you see the eyes - let alone give them to you."
     "He couldn't resist the thrill. The danger. Walking that thin line along the edge of disaster. And you see - he pulled it off again. He got away with it. I let him win."
     "He acts like he thinks he's blessed."
     "Maybe he is," Joey said.
     "By what god?"
     "There's no god involved."
     Celeste stepped past him onto the altar platform, moved to the far side of the dead woman, pocketed the screwdriver and flashlight, and knelt. Facing him across the body, she said, "We have to look at her face."
     Joey grimaced. "Why?"
     "P.J. didn't tell you her name, but he said she's from here in Coal Valley. I probably know her."
     "That'll make it even harder on you."
     "There's no choice but to look, Joey," she persisted. "If we know who she is, we might have a clue about what he's up to, where he's gone."
     They found it necessary to roll the body on its side to pull free a loose end of the plastic tarp. They eased the dead woman onto her back again before uncovering her face.
     A thick fall of blood-spotted blond hair mercifully veiled her ravaged features.
     With one hand Celeste carefully pushed the hair aside with a tenderness that Joey found deeply touching. Simultaneously, with her other hand, she crossed herself and said, "In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen."
     Joey tilted his head back and stared at the sanctuary ceiling, not because he hoped to get a glimpse of the Trinity, whose names she had intoned, but because he couldn't bear to look into the empty sockets.
     "There's a gag in her mouth," Celeste told him. "One of those things you wash a car with - chamois. I think ... yes, her ankles are tied with wire. She wasn't running from any crazed mountain man."
     Joey shuddered.
     "Her name's Beverly Korshak," Celeste said. "She was a few years older than me. A nice girl. Friendly. She still lived with her folks, but they sold out to the government here and moved into a house in Asherville last month. Beverly had a secretarial job there, at the electric-company office. Her folks are good friends with my folks. Known them a long, long time. Phil and Sylvie Korshak. This is going to be hard on them, real hard."
     Joey still stared at the ceiling. "P.J. must've seen her in