And theyd managed to give it to the authorities. With what sort of story? I saw this man running away, and then he stopped and turned and I got this picture of him. It might not make much sense, but a picture was a picture, and it was something to hand to the media so they could plaster it all over the public consciousness, and maybe it would lead to something.
Did the bastards know his name? They wouldnt have learned it from Dot, and he couldnt think how else they might have found it out. If hed taken his time in Albuquerque it might have been different, they might have searched his room, might have even tailed him back to New York. Hed flown to Albuquerque via Dallas but took the long way home, through Los Angeles, and it didnt seem likely anyone could have followed him.
If they didnt know his name, or where he lived
But then the TV caught his attention again, and he found out that they the authorities, not Al and his hairy-eared associate knew a little more than they had a few minutes ago.
They had a name to go with the photo.
Leroy Montrose, the announcer said. The screen showed his photograph, then cut to an exterior shot of the Laurel Inn, then to a shot of Room 204, where a forensics unit looked to be hard at work, dredging the carpet for traces of the elusive Mr. Montrose.
While they kept at it, the off-camera voice informed Keller that a member of the Laurel Inns staff had recognized the photo as that of a patron who had checked in several days earlier a neat trick, in Kellers opinion, since hed never checked in at all, or even passed the desk. Hed gone straight to his room from the parking lot in back via a flight of outside stairs, and hed left the same way. Hed never passed Go, never collected two hundred dollars, and had never spotted or been spotted by anyone who worked for the hotel, or anyone who was staying there, either.
But then anyone could make a phone call. Anyone could claim to be a hotel employee with a good memory. The saving grace, it seemed to Keller, was that it wasnt going to lead anywhere. They wouldnt find his fingerprints in Room 204, or his DNA, or indeed anything of his other than the cell phone hed left under the mattress, and who knew if theyd even get that far? And if they did, so what? Hed never used the phone, and had wiped his prints from it, so where could it lead them?
Across the street, he thought.
Across the street to Dennys, where
hed sat at a well-lighted table eating that silly sandwich and fries. He could have used his credit card at Dennys, which would have made things a little bit easier for them, but hed paid cash, and then what had he done?
Hed called a cab from the pay phone inside the restaurant. And waited inside until the cab pulled up. And got in it and told the driver to take him to the airport.
By now theyd be canvassing stores and restaurants in the immediate vicinity of the Laurel Inn. By now, or within a matter of minutes, theyd have shown his picture to the waitresses and cashiers in Dennys, and somebody would have identified it, and somebody would have remembered that hed called a taxi. Theyd check all the cab companies they were the government, for Christs sake, they were the state and local cops and the FBI, they had enough manpower on the case to check everything and theyd find the driver and know hed gone to the airport, and theyd hit the car rental desks, and if theyd checked with them earlier theyd check them again, and theyd have the credit card and drivers license hed used, and theyd lighten up on Leroy Montrose and start looking real hard for Holden Blankenship. That was the name theyd be flashing on TV screens and shouting out over the radio, and the name theyd try on motel clerks throughout the Greater Des Moines metropolitan area.
How long before they got to his Days Inn? How long before they kicked his door in?
By the time they did, hed better be someplace else.
But where?
7
Keller watched him until he disappeared inside the mall. Then he watched somebody else, a woman pushing a shopping cart, and then he watched a kid whose job it was to roam the lot and collect the shopping carts people had abandoned.
Keller wondered what a job like that paid. Minimum wage, he figured. Not a lot of money in a job like that, and not a whole lot of prestige, either, or much in the way of opportunity for advancement. Still, it had its good points. You werent likely to wind up with your picture on national television and every cop in the world hunting for you.
Maybe that was his mistake, one hed made a whole lot of years ago. Maybe he should have picked a career of rounding up shopping carts, instead of one that sent him all around the country killing people.
It was just as well he hadnt driven around too much. The Sentras gas tank was still a little more than half full. He wasnt sure of its capacity, or what kind of mileage the car got, but if you figured ten gallons left at twenty miles to the gallon then that gave him something like two hundred miles before he needed to gas up.