Intensity. Part 7

Earlier, he had reloaded the thirteen-round magazine. Now he unscrews the sound suppressor, because he has no plans to visit other houses this night. Besides, the baffles are probably damaged from the shots that he has fired, diminis.h.i.+ng both the effect of the silencer and the accuracy of the weapon.

Occasionally he daydreams about what it would be like if the impossible happened, if he were interrupted at play and surrounded by a SWAT team. With his experience and knowledge, the ensuing showdown would be thrillingly intense intense.

If there is a single secret behind the success of Edgler Vess, it is his belief that no twist of fate is either good or bad, that no experience is qualitatively better than another. Winning twenty million dollars in the lottery is no more to be desired than being trapped by a SWAT team, and a shootout with the authorities is no more to be dreaded than winning all that money. The value of any experience isn't in its positive or negative effect on his life but in the sheer luminous power of it, the vividness, the ferocity, the amount and degree of pure sensation that it provides. Intensity.

Vess puts the sound suppressor in the console between the seats.

He drops the pistol into the right-hand pocket of his raincoat.

He is not expecting trouble. Nevertheless, he goes nowhere unarmed. One can never be too careful. Besides, opportunities often arise unexpectedly.

In the driver's seat again, he takes the keys from the ignition and checks that the brake is firmly set. He opens the door and gets out of the motor home.

All eight gasoline pumps are self-service. He is parked at the outer of the two service islands. He needs to go to the cas.h.i.+er in the a.s.sociated convenience store to pay in advance and to identify the pump that he'll be using so it can be turned on.

The night breathes. At higher alt.i.tudes, a strong gale drives ma.s.ses of clouds out of the northwest toward the southeast. Here at ground level, a lesser exhalation of cold wind huffs between the pumps, whistles alongside the motor home, and flaps the raincoat against Vess's legs. The convenience store-buff brick below, white aluminum siding above, big windows full of merchandise-stands in front of rising hills that are covered with huge evergreens; the wind soughs through their branches with a hollow, ancient, lonely voice.

Out on Highway 101, there is little traffic at this hour. When a truck pa.s.ses, it cleaves the wind with a cry that seems strangely Jura.s.sic.

A Pontiac with Was.h.i.+ngton State license plates is parked at the inner service island, under the yellow sodium-vapor lamps. Other than the motor home, it is the only vehicle in sight. A b.u.mper sticker on the back announces that ELECTRICIANS KNOW HOW TO PLUG IT IN ELECTRICIANS KNOW HOW TO PLUG IT IN.

On the roof of the building, positioned for maximum visibility from 101, is a red neon sign that announces OPEN OPEN 24 24 HOURS HOURS. Red is the quality of the sound each pa.s.sing truck makes out there on the highway. In the glow, his hands look as if he never washed them.

As Vess approaches the entrance, the gla.s.s door swings open, and a man comes out carrying a family-size bag of potato chips and a six-pack of c.o.ke in cans. He is a chubby guy with long sideburns and a walrus mustache.

Gesturing at the sky, he says, "Storm's coming," as he hurries past Vess.

"Good," Vess says. He likes storms. He enjoys driving in them. The more torrential the rain, the better. With lightning flas.h.i.+ng and trees cracking in the wind and pavement as slick as ice.

The guy with the walrus mustache goes to the Pontiac.

Vess enters the convenience store, wondering what an electrician from Was.h.i.+ngton is doing on the road in northern California at this unG.o.dly hour of the night.

He's fascinated by the way in which lives connect briefly, with a potential for drama that is sometimes fulfilled and sometimes not. A man stops for gasoline, lingers to buy potato chips and c.o.ke, makes a comment on the weather to a stranger-and continues on his journey. The stranger could as easily follow the man to the car and blow his brains out. There would be risks for the shooter, but not serious risks; it could be managed with surprising discretion. The man's survival is either full of mysterious meaning or utterly meaningless; Vess is unable to decide which.

If fate doesn't actually exist, it ought to.

The small store is warm, clean, and brightly lighted. Three narrow aisles extend to the left of the door, offering the usual roadside merchandise: every imaginable snack food, the basic patent medicines, magazines, paperback books, postcards, novelty items designed to hang from rearview mirrors, and selected canned goods that sell to campers and to people, like Vess, who travel in homes on wheels. Along the back wall are tall coolers full of beer and soft drinks, as well as a couple of freezers containing ice cream treats. To the right of the door is the service counter that separates the two cas.h.i.+ers' stations and the clerical area from the public part of the store.

Two employees are on duty, both men. These days, no one works alone in such places at night-and with good reason.

The guy at the cash register is a redhead in his thirties with freckles and a two-inch-diameter birthmark, as pink as uncooked salmon, on his pale forehead. The mark is uncannily like the image of a fetus curled in a womb, as if a gestating twin had died early in the mother's pregnancy and left its fossilized image on the surviving brother's brow.

The redheaded cas.h.i.+er is reading a paperback. He looks up at Vess, and his eyes are as gray as ashes but clear and piercing. "What can I do for you, sir?"

"I'm at pump seven," Vess says.

The radio is tuned to a country station. Alan Jackson sings about midnight in Montgomery, the wind, a whippoorwill, a lonesome chill, and the ghost of Hank Williams.

"How you want to pay?" asks the cas.h.i.+er.

"If I put any more on the credit cards, the Bank of America's going to send someone around to break my legs," says Vess, and he slaps down a hundred-dollar bill. "Figure I'll need about sixty bucks' worth."

The combination of the song, the birthmark, and the cas.h.i.+er's haunting gray eyes generates in Vess an eerie sense of expectancy. Something exceptional is about to happen.

"Paying off Christmas like the rest of us, huh?" says the cas.h.i.+er as he rings up the sale.

"h.e.l.l, I'll still be payin' off Christmas next next Christmas." Christmas."

The second clerk sits on a stool farther along the counter. He's not at a cash register but is laboring on the bookkeeping or checking inventory sheets-anyway, doing some kind of paperwork.

Vess has not previously looked directly at the second man, and now he discovers that this is the exceptional thing he felt looming.

"Storm coming," he says to the second clerk.

The man looks up from the papers spread on the counter. He is in his twenties, at least half Asian, and strikingly handsome. No. More than handsome. Jet-black hair, golden complexion, eyes as liquid as oil and as deep as wells. There is a gentle quality to his good looks that almost gives him an effeminate aspect-but not quite.

Ariel would love him. He is just her type.

"Might be cold enough for snow in some of the mountain pa.s.ses," says the Asian, "if you're going that way."

He has a pleasant-almost musical-voice that would charm Ariel. He is really quite breathtaking.

To the cas.h.i.+er who is counting out change, Vess says, "Just hold on to that. I need a supply of munchies too. I'll be back as soon as I fill up the tank."

He leaves quickly, afraid that they might sense his excitement and become alarmed.

Although he's been in the store no more than a minute, the night seems markedly colder than it was when he went inside. Invigorating. He catches the fragrance of pine trees and spruce-even fir from far to the north-inhales the sweet greenness greenness of the heavily timbered hills behind him, detects the crisp scent of oncoming rain, smells the ozone of lightning bolts not yet hurled, breathes in the pungent fear of small animals that already quake in the fields and forests in antic.i.p.ation of the storm. of the heavily timbered hills behind him, detects the crisp scent of oncoming rain, smells the ozone of lightning bolts not yet hurled, breathes in the pungent fear of small animals that already quake in the fields and forests in antic.i.p.ation of the storm.

After she was certain that he had left the motor home, Chyna crept forward through the vehicle, holding the butcher knife in front of her.

The windows in the dining area and the lounge were curtained, so she was not able to see what lay outside. At the front, however, the winds.h.i.+eld revealed that they had stopped at a service station.

She had no idea where the killer was. He had left no more than a minute earlier. He might be outside, within a few feet of the door.

She hadn't heard him removing the gas cap or jacking the pump nozzle into the tank. But from the way they were parked, fuel was evidently taken on board from the starboard side, so that was most likely where he would be.

Afraid to proceed without knowing his exact whereabouts, but even more afraid to remain in the motor home, she slipped into the driver's seat. The headlights were off, and the instrument panel was dark, but there was enough backglow from the dining-nook lamp to make her supremely visible from outside.

At the next island, a Pontiac pulled away from the pumps. Its red taillights swiftly dwindled.

As far as she could see, the motor home was now the only vehicle at the station.

The keys weren't in the ignition. She wouldn't have tried to drive off anyway. That had been an option back in the vineyard, when there had been no help nearby. Here, there must be employees-and whoever pulled off the highway next.

She cracked the door, wincing at the hard sound, jumped out, and stumbled when she hit the ground. The butcher knife popped from her hand as if greased, clattered against the pavement, and spun away.

Certain that she had drawn the killer's attention and that he was already bearing down on her, Chyna scrambled to her feet. She spun left, then right, with her hands out in front of her in pathetic defense. But the eater of spiders was nowhere to be seen on the brightly lighted blacktop.

She pressed the door shut, searched the surrounding pavement for the knife, couldn't immediately spot it-and froze when a man came out of the station about fifty or sixty feet away. He was wearing a long coat, so at first Chyna was sure that he couldn't be the killer, but then immediately she recalled the inexplicable rustling of fabric to which she had listened before he had left the motor home, and she knew knew.

The only place to hide was behind one of the pumps at the next service island, but that was thirty feet away, between her and the store, with a lot of bright exposed pavement to cross. Besides, he was approaching the same island from the other side, and he would reach it first, catching her in the open.

If she tried to get around the motor home, he would spot her and wonder where she had come from. His psychosis probably included a measure of paranoia, and he would a.s.sume that she had been in his vehicle. He would pursue her. Relentlessly.

Instead, even as she saw him leaving the store, Chyna dropped flat to the pavement. Counting on the obstructing pumps at the first island to mask any movement close to the ground, she crawled on her belly under the motor home.

The killer didn't cry out, didn't pick up his pace. He hadn't seen her.

From her hiding place, she watched him approach. As he drew close, the sulfurous light was so bright that she could recognize his black leather boots as the same pair that she had studied from beneath the guest-room bed a couple of hours before.

She turned her head to follow him as he went around the back of the motor home to the starboard side, where he stopped at one of the pumps.

The blacktop was cold against her thighs, belly, and b.r.e.a.s.t.s. It leached the body heat out of her through her jeans and cotton sweater, and she began to s.h.i.+ver.

She listened as the killer disengaged the hose spout from the nozzle boot, opened the fuel port on the side of the motor home, and removed the tank cap. She figured it would take a few minutes to fill the behemoth, so she began to ease out of her hiding place even as she heard the spout thunk into the tank.

Still flat at ground level, she suddenly saw the butcher knife. Out on the blacktop. Ten feet from the front b.u.mper. The yellow light glimmered along the cutting edge.

Even as she was sliding into the open, however, before she could push to her feet, she heard boot heels on blacktop. She glanced back under the motor home and saw that the killer evidently had fixed the nozzle trigger in place with the regulator clip, because he was on the move again.

Frantically and as silently as possible, she retreated beneath the vehicle once more. She could hear gasoline slos.h.i.+ng into the fuel tank.

The killer walked forward along the starboard side, around the front, to the driver's door. But he didn't open the door. He paused. Very still. Then he walked to the butcher knife, stooped, and picked it up.

Chyna held her breath, though it seemed impossible that the killer could intuit the meaning of the knife. He'd never seen it before. He couldn't know that it had come from the Templeton house. Although it was indisputably odd to find a butcher knife lying on a service-station approach lane, it might have fallen out of any vehicle that had pa.s.sed through.

With the knife, he returned to the motor home and climbed inside, leaving the driver's door open behind him.

Over Chyna's head, the footsteps on the steel floor were as hollow as voodoo drums. As best she could tell, he stopped in the dining area.

Vess isn't p.r.o.ne to see omens and portents everywhere he looks. A single hawk flying across the face of the full moon, glimpsed at midnight, will not fill him with expectations of either disaster or good fortune. A black cat crossing his path, a mirror shattering while his reflection is captured in it, a news story about the birth of a two-headed calf-none of these things will rattle him. He is convinced that he makes his own fate and that spiritual transcendence-if such a thing can happen-ensues merely from one's acting boldly and living with intensity.

Nevertheless, the large butcher knife makes him wonder. It has a totemic quality, an almost magical aura. He carefully places it on the counter in the kitchen, where the light lays a wet sheen along the weapon's cutting edge.

When he picked it off the blacktop, the blade had been cold but the handle had been vaguely warm, as if with the antic.i.p.atory heat of his grip.

Eventually he will experiment with this strangely discarded blade to determine if anything special happens when he cuts someone with it. At the moment, however, it doesn't provide him with the advantage that he needs for the work at hand.

He has the Heckler & Koch P7 snug in the right-hand pocket of his raincoat, but he doesn't feel that even it is adequate to the situation.

The two lads behind the cas.h.i.+ers' counter are not in the war zone of a big-city 7-Eleven market, but they are smart enough to take precautions. Not even Beverly Hills and Bel Air, peopled by wealthy actors and retired football stars, are any longer safe at night either for or from from their citizens. These fellows will have a firearm for self-protection and will know how to use it. Dealing with them will require an intimidating weapon with formidable stopping power. their citizens. These fellows will have a firearm for self-protection and will know how to use it. Dealing with them will require an intimidating weapon with formidable stopping power.

He opens a cabinet to the left of the oven. A Mossberg short-barreled, pistol-grip, pump-action, 12-gauge shotgun is mounted in a pair of spring clamps on the shelf. He pops it loose of the clamps and lays it on the countertop.

The magazine tube of the 12-gauge is already loaded. Although he doesn't belong to the American Automobile a.s.sociation, Edgler Vess is otherwise always prepared for any eventuality when he travels.

In the cabinet is a box of shotgun sh.e.l.ls, open for easy access. He takes a few and puts them on the counter next to the Mossberg, though he is not likely to need them.

He quickly unb.u.t.tons the raincoat but doesn't take it off. He transfers the pistol from his right-hand exterior pocket to an interior, right-hand breast pocket in the lining. This is also where he places the spare sh.e.l.ls.

From a kitchen drawer, he withdraws a compact Polaroid camera. He tucks it into the pocket from which he just removed the Heckler & Koch P7. From his wallet, he removes a trimmed Polaroid snapshot of his special girl, Ariel, and he slips it into the same pocket that contains the camera.

With his seven-inch switchblade, which is tacky from all the work for which it was used at the Templeton house, he slashes the lining of the left coat pocket. Then he rips away these tattered fragments of fabric. Now, if he were to drop coins into this pocket, they would fall straight to the floor.

He puts the shotgun under his open coat and holds it with his left hand, through the ruined pocket. The concealment is effective. He does not believe that he looks at all suspicious.

He quickly paces back to the bedroom, then forward, practicing his walk. He is able to move freely without banging the shotgun against his legs.

After all, he can draw upon the nimbleness and the grace of the spider from the Templeton house.

Although he doesn't care what damage he does to the birthmarked cas.h.i.+er with the ashen eyes, he'll have to be careful not to destroy the face of the young Asian gentleman. He must have good photographs for Ariel.

Overhead, the killer seemed to be occupied in the dining area. The floor creaked under him as he s.h.i.+fted his weight.

Unless he had drawn open the curtains, he couldn't see outside from where he was. With luck, Chyna could make a break for freedom.

She considered remaining under the vehicle, letting him tank up and drive away, and only then going inside to call the police.

But he had found the butcher knife; he would be thinking about it. Though she could see no way that he could grasp the significance of the knife, by now she had an almost superst.i.tious dread of him and was irrationally convinced that he would find her if she remained where she was.

She crawled out from under the motor home, rose into a crouch, glanced at the open door, and then looked back and up at the windows along the side. The curtains were closed.

Emboldened, she got to her feet, crossed to the inner service island, and stepped between the pumps. She glanced back, but the killer remained inside the vehicle.

She went out of the night into bright fluorescent light and the tw.a.n.g of country music. Two employees were behind the counter on the right, and she intended to say Call the police, Call the police, but then she glanced through the gla.s.s door that had just closed behind her, and she saw the killer getting out of the motor home and coming toward the store, even though he hadn't finished filling the fuel tank. but then she glanced through the gla.s.s door that had just closed behind her, and she saw the killer getting out of the motor home and coming toward the store, even though he hadn't finished filling the fuel tank.

He was looking down. He hadn't seen her.

She moved away from the door.

The two men stared at her expectantly.

If she told them to call the police, they would want to know why, and there was no time for a discussion, not even enough time for the telephone call. Instead, she said, "Please don't let him know I'm here," and before they could reply, she walked away from them, along an aisle with goods shelved six feet high on both sides, to the far end of the store.

As she stepped out of the aisle to hide at the end of a row of display cases, Chyna heard the door open and the killer enter. A growl of wind came with him, and then the door swung shut.

The redheaded cas.h.i.+er and the young Asian gentleman with the liquid-night eyes are staring at him strangely, as if they know something they shouldn't, and he almost pulls the shotgun from under his coat the moment that he walks through the door, almost blows them away without preamble. But he tells himself that he is misreading them, that they are merely intrigued by him, because he is, after all, a striking figure. Often people sense his exceptional power and are aware that he lives a larger life than they do. He is a popular man at parties, and women are frequently attracted to him. These men are merely drawn to him as are so many others. Besides, if he whacks them immediately, without a word, he will be denying himself the pleasure of foreplay.

Alan Jackson is no longer singing on the radio, and c.o.c.king one ear appreciatively, Vess says, "Man, I like that Emmylou Harris, don't you? Was there ever anyone could sing this stuff so it got to you that way?"

"She's good," says the redhead. Previously he was outgoing. Now he seems reserved.

The Asian says nothing, inscrutable in this Zen temple of Twinkies, Hershey bars, beer nuts, snack crackers, and Doritos.

"I love a song about home fires and family," Vess says.

"You on vacation?" asks the redhead.