Spencerville

Keith sat up slowly and looked around the room. It was sparsely furnished, and what there was, was bolted down, including the TV set and the wall-mounted bed lamps. He'd have liked to put something against the door, but there wasn't even a chair in the place. It occurred to him that, if the Westway Motel customers were the sort who would load tacky motel furniture on their pickups, they were also the sort who needed more identification and security than twenty-nine dollars up front. With that in mind, it also occurred to him that the clerk probably went outside and took down license plate numbers, which rarely, or never, matched the ones on the registration form. He hadn't parked the Blazer in front of the door, but there weren't that many vehicles parked outside to begin with. In the plus column, the Blazer hadn't been there more than ten minutes before they'd gotten rid of it. There was no use worrying about it. He'd been taught two mutually exclusive things: never underestimate the police, and never overestimate the police. The bottom line on this situation was not life and death, or the end of the Free World — it was a trip to the local police station, some messiness and embarrassment, and eventually a reasonable and hopefully happy resolution. Keith didn't want a trip to the police station to be part of their memories, but if it happened, it happened. Meanwhile he rather enjoyed outsmarting Baxter and wanted that as part of their history. He looked at his watch on the nightstand. It was eleven thirty-five. So far, so good.

She said to him, "This is the happiest I've been since our last summer together in Columbus."

"Me, too."

"Do you mean that?"

"I do. I really do."

"Do we live happily ever after?"

"Yes, we do."

She stayed silent a moment, then said, "But we have to get through tonight and tomorrow, don't we?"

He didn't reply immediately, then looked at her and told her, "No matter what happens tonight or tomorrow, even if we're separated for a short time, remember that I love you, and know that we'll be together again. I promise."

She sat up and kissed him. "You remember that, too."

"I will."

She put her head on his chest. "I feel like a kid again, like it hasn't been twenty-five years, but twenty-five hours, and everything that happened between that morning you left in Columbus and now, didn't happen."

"That's a nice thought."

"Good. Let's pretend. There's no world outside that door, it's just us again, like it used to be."

"How in the name of God did I let you go?"

"Shhh. You didn't. I'm here. I've always been here..." She patted his heart. "Here, where it counts. I never left your heart, you never left my heart."

Keith nodded and started to reply, but couldn't find his voice, then, for the first time in over two decades, a tear formed in his eye and ran down his cheek.

* * *

Cliff Baxter sat in the front seat of the two-car convoy. Sergeant Blake drove. In the car behind them were Officer Ward and Officer Krug.

Sitting on the dashboard in front of Cliff Baxter was the location finder. It wasn't a state-of-the-art device — the city council hadn't liked the price of the big model that had to be mounted in a van with a big rotating thing on the roof and all kinds of screens and gadgets. This was a simple line-of-sight, VHP radio receiver that just beeped within a mile or so of the planted transmitter and got louder as you got closer. Still, it worked for what he bought it for — keeping track of his wife. The unit came with two small transmitters, and he'd used the second one a few times as sort of a fun thing to keep track of other people, but mostly the spare sat in his desk until he got the idea of putting it in Landry's car on Friday.

Of course, he'd cruised past the Landry farm early in his search for the Lincoln, and since each transmitter had a different channel, he knew long before he pulled into Landry's driveway that the Lincoln was there and the Blazer was not. At that point, he knew exactly what had happened.

They drove into Toledo Airport. This was the logical place to start, he thought, and they cruised the parking lots, but they didn't need the location finder because the place was nearly empty. They drove to the rental lot and cruised up and down the rows of parked cars.

Blake said to him, "I don't see his car."

"Nope. Okay, we go out on the highway and turn right, toward Toledo."

"Right."

The two Spencerville police cars headed east on the airport highway.

Cliff Baxter picked up his mobile phone and called headquarters. Officer Schenley was acting desk sergeant, and Baxter said to him, "Hear anything?"

"No, sir. I would've called..."

"Yeah. You would've called. I'm making a goddamned communications check."

"Yes, sir."

"And like I told you, if anybody calls from the state police, or anyplace, you don't mention where I am."

"Yes, sir."

"Just call me, and I'll get back to them. Don't bullshit with them."

"Yes, sir."

"Stay awake." He hung up and said to Blake, "Hey, pull into that Sheraton."