she thought crazily.
"I knew, and Will knew. But they have to prove it, don't they?"
She could only look at him, amazed.
"Arnie," she said at last, "you're not thinking straight. Maybe your father—"
"Yes," he interrupted. "I'm thinking straight. I don't know what you're doing,
but I'm thinking very straight."
And he looked at her, his gray eyes so horribly blank that she could no longer
stand it and had to leave.
In the small green reception room she walked blindly past her husband, who
had been sitting on a bench with Warberg. "You go in," she said. "You make
him see reason." She went on without waiting for his reply, not stopping until
she was outside and the cold December air was painting her hot cheeks.
Michael went in and had no better luck; he came out with nothing more than a
dry throat and a face that looked ten years older than it had going in.
At the motel, Regina told Warberg what Arnie had said and asked him if
there was any chance he might be right.
Warberg looked thoughtful. "Yes, that's a possible defense," he said. "But it
would be a helluva lot more possible if Arnie was the first domino in line.
He's not. There's a used-car dealer here in Albany named Henry Buck. He
was the catcher. He's been arrested too."
"What has he said?" Michael asked.
"I have no way of knowing. But when I tried to I speak to his lawyer, he
declined to speak with me. I find that ominous. If Buck talks, he puts the onus
on Arnie. I'll bet you my house and lot that Buck can testify your son knew
that secret compartment was there, and that's bad." Warberg looked at them
closely.
"You see, what your boy said to you is really only half-smart, Mrs
Cunningham. I'll be talking to him tomorrow, before they move him back to
Pennsylvania. What I hope to make him see is that there's a possibility this
whole thing could come down on his head."
The first flakes of snow began to swirl out of the heavy sky as they turned
onto Steve and Vicky's street.
Is it snowing in Libertyville yet?
Arnie
wondered, and touched the keys on their leather tab in his pocket. Probably it
was.
Christine was still in Darnell's Garage, impounded. That was all right. At
least she was out of the weather. He would pick her up again. In time.
The previous weekend was like a blurred bad dream. His parents,
haranguing him in the little white room, had seemed to bear the disconnected
faces of strangers; they were heads talking in a foreign language. The lawyer
they had hired, Warley or Warmly or whatever, kept talking about something
he called the domino theory, and about the need to get out of "the condemned
building before the whole thing falls down on your" head, boy—there are
two states and three Federal agencies bringing up the wrecking balls."
But Arnie was more worried about Christine.
It seemed clearer and clearer to him that Roland D. LeBay was either with
him or hovering someplace near he was, perhaps, coalescing inside him.
This idea did not frighten Arnie; it comforted him. But he had to be careful.
Not of Junkins; he felt that Junkins had only suspicions, and that they all lay
in wrong directions, radiating out from Christine rather than in toward her.
But Darnell there could be problems with Will. Yes, real problems.
That first night in Albany, after his mother and father had gone back to their
motel, Arnie had been conducted to a holdin cell, where he had fallen asleep
with surprising ease and speed. And he had had a dream—not quite a
nightmare, but something that seemed terribly disquieting. He had awakened
watchfully in the middle of the night, his body running with sweat.
He had dreamed that Christine had been reduced in scale to a tiny '58
Plymouth no longer than a man's hand. It was on a slotcar track surrounded by
HO-scale scenery that was amazingly apt—here was a plastic street that
could be Basin Drive, here was another that could be JFK Drive, where
Moochie Welch had been killed. A Lego building that looked exactly like
Libertyville High. Plastic houses, paper trees
…and a gigantic, hulking Will Darnell was at the controls that dictated how
fast or how slowly the tiny Fury ran through all of this. His breath wheezed in
and out of his damaged lungs with a windstorm sound.
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