Homer Simpson had set him apart, even while it made his face less recognizable. The Saints cap did every bit as much to conceal his face, but did so by bonding him with the people among whom he walked.
He grinned, gave the brim a tug.
The street he was on was called Euterpe. The first time he saw the street sign hed been unsure how to pronounce it, though he could have narrowed it down to a couple of likely choices. Then he encountered other parallel streets with names like Terpsichore and Melpomene and Polymnia, and they didnt quite do it, but then Erato and Calliope turned up and he worked it out. He knew from crossword puzzles that Erato was one of the nine muses, and it seemed to him that Calliope, in addition to being a steam instrument you might encounter on a carnival midway, was another. And that was why Euterpe had been faintly familiar, because shed turned up in a crossword puzzle once or twice herself, and that meant you pronounced it You-Tour-Pee, with that long e on the end of the word, as in all those Greek names, Nike and Aphrodite and Persephone and, well, Calliope.
Imagine naming streets after the nine muses. Where else would it ever occur to them to do that? Well, Athens, maybe, but where else?
He walked along Euterpe and came to Prytania, who as far as he knew wasnt a muse at all. Rule, Prytania, Prytania rules the waves He crossed Prytania and walked another block to a street called Coliseum, which was Roman, not Greek, and which bordered a small park that might have been two football fields laid end to end. Except Coliseum, which had been laid out either by a drunk or by someone imaginative enough to name streets after the muses, or both, meandered like the mighty Mississippi itself, making the resultant park wider than a football field in some parts and narrower in others.
Which was just as well, Keller thought, because in order to play football there youd have to cut down a couple dozen live oak trees, and anyone whod do that ought to be hanged from one of them instead. They were magnificent trees, and while it might not be the best route back to his car, it was worth a few minutes just to walk on the greensward among these majestic oaks, with the light fading and the day drawing to a close and
A woman screamed.
22
Stop! Oh, God! Somebody help me!His first thought was that someone had screamed at the sight of him, recognized him as the Des Moines Assassin and cried out in terror. But the thought was gone before the scream had ceased to echo in the still air. It had come from fifty yards away, off to the left and halfway across the little park. Keller saw movement, screened partly by a tree trunk, and heard another cry, less distinct this time, and cut short.
A woman was being attacked.
Not your problem , he told himself, immediately and unequivocally. He was the object of a nationwide manhunt, and the last thing he was going to do was get involved in somebody elses problem. And it was probably just a domestic quarrel, anyway, one of Natures noblemen kicking the crap out of his slattern of a wife, and if the cops came shed decide not to press charges, and might even take her husbands side and go after the cops then and there, which was why cops hated responding to calls of that sort.
And he wasnt a cop, and didnt have a dog in this fight, as they would put it in the states hed been spending time in lately. So what he would do now was turn around and leave
the park and walk back up Euterpe pronounced You-Tour-Pee and figure out a route that would get him back to his car, and then find his way out of this town as quickly as he possibly could.
That was the only course of action that made the slightest bit of sense.
But what he was doing, even as he was working all of this out in his mind, was racing full speed toward the source of the screams.
No question what was going on. There was nothing remotely ambiguous about the scene that confronted Keller. Even in the dim light, it was unmistakable.
The woman, dark-haired, slender, was sprawled out on the grass, one hand braced against the ground, the other held up to ward off her attacker. And the guy was your stereotypical mad rapist from central casting, his hair a ragged dirty-blond mop, his broad flat mug sporting a weeks growth of patchy beard, and a teardrop jailhouse tattoo on one cheekbone to let you know he wasnt just another pretty face. He was crouched over her, tearing at her clothes.
Hey!
The man whirled at the sound, bared his teeth at Keller as if they were weapons. He came up out of his crouch, light glinting off the blade of his knife.
Drop it, Keller said.
But he didnt drop the knife. He moved it from side to side as if trying to hypnotize a subject, and Keller looked not at the knife but at the mans eyes, and reached behind his own back for the gun in his waistband. But of course it wasnt there, it was tucked away in the glove compartment of a locked car, damn it all, and hed be lucky if he ever saw it again. He was facing a man with a knife, and all he had was a plastic bag from Walgreens. What was he going to do, give the guy a haircut?