Strangers

Schellenhof began to turn them away.
        "For the love of God, man, move your tired butt!" Father Wycazik roared, slamming one fist into the top of Schellenhof's desk. He was flushed from his hairline to his backwards collar. "This is a matter of life or death for us. Call American Express." He raised his hand high, and the salesman's shocked gray eyes followed its swift upward are. "Find out if they'll authorize the purchase. For the love of God, hurry!" the priest shouted, slamming his fist down again.
        The sight of such fury in a clergyman put some speed into the salesman at last. He took Parker's card and nearly sprinted out of his small office, across the showroom to the manager's glass-walled domain.
        "Good grief, Father," Parker said, "if you were a Protestant, you'd be a famous fire-and-brimstone evangelist by now."
        "Oh, Catholic or not, I've made a few sinners quake in my time."
        "I don't doubt it," Parker assured him.
        American Express approved the purchase. With hasty repentance, Schellenhof produced a sheaf of forms and showed Parker where to sign. "Quite a week!" the salesman said, though he was still drab and gray in spite of his new enthusiasm. "Late Monday a fella walks in, buys a new Cherokee with cash - bundles of twenty-dollar bills. Must've hit it big in a casino. Now this. And the week's hardly started. Something, eh?"
        "Fascinating," Parker said.
        Using the telephone on Schellenhof's desk, Father Wycazik placed a collect call to Michael Gerrano in Chicago and told him about Parker and about the closing of I-80. Then, when Schellenhof popped out of the room again, Wycazik said something that startled Parker: "Michael, maybe something'll happen to us, so you call Simon Zoderman at the Tribune the minute I hang up. Tell him everything. Blow it wide open. Tell Simon how Brendan ties in with Winton Tolk, the Halbourg girl, Calvin Sharkle, all of it. Tell him what happened out here in Nevada two summers ago, what they saw. If he finds it hard to believe, you tell him I believe it. He knows what a hard-headed customer I am."
        When Father Wycazik hung up, Parker said, "Did I understand you right? My God, you know what happened to them on that July night?"
        "I'm almost certain I do, yes," Father Wycazik said.
        Before the priest could say more, Schellenhof returned in a gray blur of polyester. Now that his commission seemed real to him, he was obviously determined not to exceed Parker's time limit.
        "You've got to tell me," Parker said to the priest.
        "As soon as we're on our way," Father Wycazik promised.
        

        
        Ned drove Jack's Cherokee eastward across the snowswept slopes, moving at a crawl. Sandy and Faye rode up front with him, leaning forward, peering anxiously through the windshield, helping Ned spot the obstacles in the chaotic whiteness ahead of them.
        Riding in back - crowded in with Brendan and Jorja, with Marcie on her mother's lap - Ernie tried to convince himself that he would not succumb to panic when the last light of the storm-dimmed dusk gave way to darkness. Last night, when he'd snuggled under the covers in bed, staring at the shadows beyond the reach of the lamp's glow, his anxiety had been only a fraction of what he'd come to expect. He was improving.
        Ernie also took hope from Dom's resurrected memory of jets buzzing the diner. If Dom could remember, so could Ernie. And when the memory block crumbled away, when at last he recalled what he'd seen that July night, he would stop being afraid of darkness.
        "County road," Faye said as the Jeep came to a stop.
        They had indeed reached the first county road, the same one that ran past the Tranquility and under I-80. The motel lay about two miles south, and Thunder Hill lay eight miles north along that ribbon of blacktop. It had been plowed already, and recently, because the federal government paid the county to keep the approach to the Depository open at all times.
        "Quickly," Sandy urged Ned.
        Ernie knew what she was thinking: Someone going from or to Thunder Hill might appear and accidentally discover them.
        Gunning the engine, Ned drove hurriedly across the empty road, into the foothills on the other side, traversing a series of ruts with such haste that Brendan and Jorja were thrown repeatedly against Ernie, who sat between them. Once more, they took cover