Desperation

“Oh.” she said coolly. “Tell me something, Mr. Big Texas Roadie—have you read anything your boss has written.”

“Well, he gave me a copy of Harper’s with a story of his in it. ‘Heaven-Sent Weather,’ it was called. I read that, sure did. Ever’ word.”

“Did you understand ever’ word.”

“Uh, no. Look, what I said was snotty. I do apologize. Sincerely.”

“Okay,” she said, but her tone suggested that he was going to be on probation, at least for awhile.

He opened his mouth to say something that might be fu

“What’s what.” She turned her head to look out through the windshield as Steve coasted the Ryder truck to a stop on the shoulder, just behind the RV. It was one of the middle-

sized ones, bigger than Lassie but smaller than the Godzillas he’d been seeing ever since Colorado.

“Guy must have run over some nails in the road, or something,” Steve said. “Tires look like they’re all flat.”

“Yeah. So how come yours aren’t.”

By the time it occurred to him that the people in the RV might have been public-spirited enough to pick up the nails, the girl with the punky tu-tone hair was out of the cab and walking up to the RV, hallooing.

Well, she knows a good exit-line when she gets one off give her that, he thought, and got out on his side. Wind struck him in the face hard enough to rock him back on his heels. And it was hot, like air blown over the top of an incinerator.

“Steve.” Her voice was different. The prickly pertness, which he thought might have been the girl’s way of flirting, was gone. “Come over here. I don’t like this”

She was standing by the side door of the RV. It was unlatched, banging back and forth in the wind a little even though this was the lee side, and the steps were down It wasn’t the door or the steps she was looking at, though At the foot of the stairs, half-buried in sand that the wind had blown beneath the RV, was a doll with blond hair and a bright blue dress. It lay face-down and abandoned Steve didn’t care for the look of this much, either.

DoIls—z with no little girls around to mind them were sort of creepy under any conditions, that was his opinion, at_ least, and to come upon one abandoned by the roadside,r—. half-buried in blowing sand—He opened the unlatched door and poked his head into—7 the RV. It was brutally hot, at least a hundred and ten degrees. “Hello.

Anybody.”

But he knew better. If they’d been here, the people who—owned this RV, they would have been ru

“Don’t bother.” Cynthia had picked up the doll and was—. brushing sand from its hair and the folds of its dress. “This is no dimestore dolly. Not huge bucks, but expen-sive.

And someone cared about her. Look.” She pulled out _ the skirt with her fingers so he could see where a small—neat patch had been sewn over a rip. It matched the dress almost exactly in color. “If the girl who owned this doll was around, it wouldn’t have been out lying in the dirt I practically guarantee you that. The question is, why didn she take it with her when she and her folks left. Or at least put it back inside.” She opened the door, hesitated went up one of the two steps, hesitated again, looked back at him.

“Come on.”

“I can’t. I have to find the boss.”

“In a minute, okay. I don’t want to go in here by myself. It’s like the Andrea Doria, or something.”

“You mean the Mary Celeste. The Andrea Doria sank “Okay, smarty-britches, whatever.

Come on, it won’t take long. Besides She hesitated.

“Besides, it might have something to do with my boss. Is that what you’re thinking.”

Cynthia nodded. “It’s not that big a reach. I mean, they’re both gone, aren’t they.”

He didn’t want to accept that, though—it felt like a complication he didn’t deserve. She saw some of that on his face (maybe even all of it; she sure wasn’t dumb) and tossed up her hands. “Oh shit, I’ll look around myself.”

She went inside, still holding the doll. Steve looked thoughtfully after her for a moment, then followed. Cyn-thia glanced back at him, nodded, then put the doll down in one of the captain’s chairs. She fa

She walked into the RV’s cabin. Steve went the other way, into the driver’s area, ducking his head so as not to bump it. On the dashboard in front of the passenger seat were three packs of baseball cards, neatly sorted into teams—Cleveland Indians, Cinci

“There was a boy, too,” Cynthia called. “Unless the girl was into G.I. Joe and Judge Dredd and the MotoKops as well as dollies in blue dresses. One of the side-carriers back here is full of comic books.”

“Yeah, there’s a boy,” Steve said, putting Albert Belle and Andy Van Slyke back into their respective decks. He just brought the ones that were really important to him, he thought, smiling a little. The ones he absolutely could not bear to leave home. “His name is David.”

Startled: “How in the hell do you know that.”

“Learned it all watching X-Files.” He picked up a gas credit-card receipt from the wad of papers jammed into the dashboard map-receptacle, and smoothed it out. The name on it was Ralph Carver, the address somewhere in Ohio. The carbon had blurred across the town name, but it might have been Wentworth.

“I don’t suppose you know anything else about him, do you.” she asked. “Last name.

Where he came from.”

“David Carver,” he said, the smile widening into a grin.

“Dad’s Ralph Carver. They hail from Wentworth, Ohio. Nice town. Next door to Columbus. I was in Columbus with South-side Joh

She came forward, the doll curled against one mos—quito-bump breast. Outside the wind gusted again, throw ing sand against the RV. It sounded like hard rain “You’re making that up!”

“No’m,” he said, and held out the gas receipt. “Here s the Carver part. David I got from the kid’s baseball cards He’s got some high-priced ink, tell you that.”

She picked the cards up, looked at them, then put them back and turned slowly all the way around, her face sol emn and shiny with sweat. He was sweating himself, and plenty.

He could feel it ru

“Nearest town, to get help,” he said. “Probably some one gave them a lift. Do you remember from your map what’s around here.”

“No. There is a town, I think, but I don’t recall the name. But if that’s what they did, why didn’t they lock up their place when they left. I mean, all their shit is here She waved one hand toward the cabin. “Know what s back there by the studio couch.”

“Nope.”

“The wife’s jewelry caddy. A ceramic frog. You put your rings and earrings in the frog’s mouth.”

“That sounds tasteful.” He wanted to get out of here and not just because it was so nasty—hot or because he had to track down the boss. He wanted to get out because the RV was like the fucking Mary Celeste. It was too easy to imagine vampires hidden away in the closets, vampires in Bermuda shorts and tee-shirts saying things like i SURVIVED HIGHWAY 50, THE LONELIEST HIGHWAY IN AMERICA!

“It’s actually cute,” she said, “but that’s not the point There’s two sets of earrings and a finger-ring in it. Not real expensive, but not junk, either. The ring’s a tourma line, I think.