Spencerville

"Come on, son. Man's wanted for kidnapping, and I ain't got all night, and I got fifty bucks for your time."

"Well, I had a guy in here... did this guy have glasses and a mustache?"

"Not the last time I saw him. Give me the registration card."

The clerk flipped through a stack of cards and found the one he thought the police officer wanted. "Here. This guy came in about..."

"Let me read, son." Baxter read the card. "John Westermann of Cincinnati, driving a Ford Escort. You seen his car?"

"Well, after he checked in, I poked my head out the door and there was a Ford Escort there, but that one had been there for a few hours. I'm supposed to take the license numbers..."

"I know how you run a fuck place. Did you see a green Blazer?"

"Don't know... I saw a dark four-wheel-drive outside, but it was hard to see, and it wasn't in front of the room I gave this guy Westermann. I hadn't seen it before, and I was going to go out later and get the license number, but when I went out about ten minutes later, it was gone."

Baxter nodded. "Okay, what room did you give this guy?"

"Room seven."

"He still there?"

"I guess. He took it for the night. I just checked the key drop, and it isn't there."

"Okay..." Baxter rubbed his chin. "Okay... and you never saw a woman?"

"No. Never do."

Baxter opened his file case and took out a book. It was his wife's high school yearbook, one of the few things he'd allowed her to keep, mostly because it had a picture of him in it, in his junior year, at a dance. He turned to the graduation photos and said, "Flip through this, son, and keep in mind it's over twenty years old, and imagine a mustache and glasses on the guys who don't have any. Take your time, but be quick."

The young man flipped through the pages of the small graduating class, then stopped.

"You see him?"

"I..."

Baxter took a pen out of his pocket and gave it to the man. "Draw the glasses and the mustache you saw."

The man took the pen and drew glasses and a mustache on the photograph of Keith Landry. The clerk said, "Yes... that's the guy... I think that's the guy..."

"I think you're right, son. Give me the key."

The clerk hesitated, and Baxter leaned over the counter. "The fucking key."

The clerk gave him the key to room 7.

Baxter said, "You just sit tight and everything's gonna be fine. Be outa here before you know it."

"Yes, sir... uh, you mentioned..."

"Check's in the mail."

Baxter went outside to the patrol car and leaned into the window. He said to Blake, "Call the boys. We got him."

"Jesus..."

Chapter Thirty-four

Keith Landry and Annie Baxter lay in each other's arms. They were half-asleep, but every now and then she'd say something to him, and he replied.

He was fighting off sleep, and he suspected she was doing the same. Finally, she turned on the lamp and rolled over on top of him, nestling her head beside his neck, and bit his ear. She said, "Am I getting on your nerves?"

"No. I like that." He put his hands on her buttocks and massaged.

"Feels good." After a minute, she said, "Keith, I can't sleep."

Try.

"I can't." She reached between them and fondled him until he got hard, then put it inside her. "That's my pacifier. Can you keep it hard until I fall asleep?"

He smiled. "I guess. Never tried it before."

"I love you."

"I adore you."

"I snore."

"Me, too."

"I drool. I absolutely drool all over everything. I'm going to drool on you."

"You're funny."

"I eat barbecued chicken and potato chips in bed, and I wipe my mouth on the sheets, and I burp."

He laughed. "Stop it."

"I have wet dreams and screaming orgasms all night."

"Good..."

She moved her hips up and down. "I'm about to have one now."

"Oh, that feels..." He heard something at the door, then, before he could react, he heard the door crashing in, the bolt splintering through the wood.

A second later, Cliff Baxter was charging into the room with a shotgun in his hands.

Annie screamed as Keith pushed her off him. He jumped out of bed and, at the same time, grabbed his K-bar knife, which was lying under the phone book on the nightstand.

Baxter rammed the rubber-padded butt of the shotgun toward Keith's face, and Keith deflected it with his forearm, but it grazed his forehead and left him momentarily stunned. Baxter raised the stock of the shotgun again and brought it down hard on Keith's shoulder, paralyzing his arm and causing him to drop the knife. Baxter was about to swing again when Annie sprang from the bed and landed on Baxter, her arms and legs encircling him and causing him to stagger backward.

Keith, still dazed, his right arm hanging limp at his side, retrieved the knife with his left hand. His vision was blurred from the blow to his head, but he could see Annie hanging onto Baxter while Baxter tried to break her loose. Keith lunged along the floor and plunged the knife upward at Baxter's femoral artery, but the man was still staggering around, with Annie hanging onto him, and Keith didn't see the gush of arterial blood where the knife penetrated.