Murder on the Turnpike

II

“I didn’t really mean to kill them,” Bogan said a few moments later as they were rolling smoothly along the pike. The young man’s name was Alan Perkins, and Bogan had instructed him to drive in the slow, right-hand lane at about forty-five miles an hour. It was dark and windy outside, with rain spattering through the headlights, but the interior of the car was snug and warm. Bogan felt grateful and at peace with himself as he studied the reflection of his teeth and glasses in the windshield. The young man, Perkins, would be pleasant company. He had a clean, immature face, and was dressed neatly in tweed jacket worn over a sweater. Very polite and obedient, Bogan thought, with his bow tie and glasses, and thin white hands grasping the steering wheel. He drove with care, hunched forward slightly, and never letting his eyes flick toward the gun gleaming in the dashboard light.

In a careful voice the young man said, “If you didn’t mean to kill them, perhaps the best thing would be to tell the police about it.”

Bogan smiled, admiring the sudden emerging brightness of his big, white teeth. “No, that wouldn’t be the best thing. There’s no need to tell the police anything.”

Bogan touched his forehead with his fingertips. This wasn’t what he wanted to talk about; it was the other thing, the red heat of the summer, and watching them night after night from the humid darkness of his room. Yes, that had to be made crystal clear. “They hadn’t been married long,” he said, and was pleased at the low, judicial tone of his voice. “Naturally, they were selfish — it’s something young people can’t help, I know. But it’s evil of them to shut out everyone else,” He paused, aware that his breath was coming quickly. It was really so simple, so obvious, but when he tried to trap his thoughts with words, they skittered away like mice.

The young couple operated a small furniture shop on Third Avenue near Forty-eighth Street. That was accurate, Bogan knew; he had watched them from his room across the street. She was slim and blonde; he was a tall redhead. They laughed a lot, but were serious about their business. They sold unpainted sections of tables and chairs and desks which could be fitted together with glue or a few nails. Frequently they worked at night, and the young man would bring in sandwiches and beer, and they would eat and drink, sitting on the counter, the girl in shorts, bare legs golden in the soft evening tight and the young man grinning up at her.

Bogan felt his breath catch sharply in his throat: the memory of the couple he had killed reminded him of the trooper and the slim, dark-haired girl at the Howard Johnson restaurant. He was rigid with pain. They were the same sort, selfish and greedy, driving everyone else away from the radiance of their love. They drew a magic circle about themselves that no one could pass through.

“Do you have a girl?” he said suddenly, and stared at Perkins’s clean, young profile.

“No,” Perkins said. He groped for something to ease the tension he could feel in the man beside him, “Girls can be a big waste of time. There’s lime for all that later, I guess.”

Bogan nodded approvingly. If they would all just wait a while instead of rushing together to lock themselves in the charmed circle. That was the maddening thing about the couple in the furniture shop. Twice he had stopped to make a trifling purchase, and they had made him feel like an intruder, something gross and ugly profaning their happy isolation. They were polite enough on the surface, quick with a smile and a comment on the weather, but they gave him no warmth or affection. That was too precious to squander on anyone but themselves. He couldn’t remember when he had decided to kill them; the thought must have been there always.

The planning had been a dreary business and strangely confusing — acquiring the gun from a disquietingly jocular pawnbroker, and then the tedious search for a car, which had been the most difficult problem of all But eventually he found what he needed — the Buick used by the corner drugstore for deliveries. The young man who drove it obviously operated on a tight schedule, for he didn’t remove the key when he went inside to pick up his parcels. When the car was parked at the curb, the key was always in the ignition; Bogan established this fact in a week of patient snooping. Thus the timing of his ultimate act was determined by the delivery schedule of the drugstore. And for some obscure reason this pleased Bogan; it lent a whimsical, unpremeditated tone to his plans.

Bogan felt in his pockets for a chocolate bar, then remembered that he had left them in his overcoat. He felt his eyes sting with tears; he needed something sweet, but he had been so pressed and excited that he hadn’t remembered to take the candy bars from his overcoat.

Bogan sat up straighter. Suddenly he thought of the dark-haired waitress at the restaurant — the one he had bought the coffee from. Why had he been such a fool? The need for something warm and sweet had been powerful, but he should have resisted it; she would tell the police what he looked like — and enjoy doing it, he thought sullenly and unhappily. She would like telling on him, getting him into trouble. He knew that from her face and eyes; there was no warmth there, only meaningless politeness.

“Don’t get excited,” he told himself, his soft lips silently forming the words. The trooper didn’t ask her about me; there was still time.

He said quietly to Perkins, “We’re going to have to make a U-turn.”

“But that’s not legal. We’ll be stopped.”

“We’ll just make sure there are no patrol cars in front or behind us,” Bogan said easily “Anyone else will think we’re an unmarked police car.”

Bogan put the muzzle of his gun against Perkins’s side. “You’re a nice young boy. I don’t want to hurt you. Turn into the left-hand lane, and we’ll watch for one of those openings the police cars use.”

Bogan felt a pleasant excitement running through him; he was almost glad of the way things were working out. It would be very satisfying to have that arrogant girl in his hands. And he realized that he had the bait to lure her to him — the name he had heard from the gas-station attendant: “Dan O’Leary.”

Lieutenant Trask and O’Leary learned nothing from the white Edsel station wagon; it had been driven twelve miles, from Howard Johnson’s No. 1 to No. 2, and then abandoned, the driver disappearing like a phantom. Lieutenant Trask had checked out the waitresses and countermen in the restaurant while O’Leary and a team of troopers searched the grounds and inspected the trucks that were lined up like huge animals in the truckers’ area. They waked the drivers and examined the lashings and tail gates for any sign of forced entry.

After this O’Leary talked to the gas attendants. None of them remembered anything helpful. He did come on a bit of irrelevant information, however; one of the attendants mentioned that someone — a man standing in the shadows of the office — had made some comment about O’Leary’s speed when O’Leary had driven into the area ten or fifteen minutes earlier. The attendant said he told the man Trooper O’Leary knew his business — or something to that effect. The attendant wasn’t exactly sure of what he’d said, but it wasn’t important in any case, O’Leary decided.

He rejoined Trask, who had returned to the Edsel station wagon. Trask had been in contact with Captain Royce. They now had an identification on the owner of the Edsel, the elderly man who had been killed at Howard Johnson’s No. 1.

“He lived in Watertown,” Trask said, flipping his cigarette into the darkness. “Name was Nelson, Adam Nelson, a widower, retired executive at the paint factory there. They got a line on him from the laundry marks in his shirt.”

These markings — in this case a triangle with the digits 356 beneath it — had been relayed to state-police headquarters by radio, where they had been checked against the master file of all laundry marks in the state. The sergeant in charge had established the location of the laundry from the triangle: a telephone call to the manager had established the identity of the customer from the digits 356.

Trask added, “He was on his way to spend a few days with a married daughter in Newbury. None of which helps us a damn bit.”

O’Leary was frowning faintly. He had been trying to fit together a picture of the murderer, and for some reason his guesses about the man bothered him; the portrait was Hawed with inconsistency, and O’Leary had that tantalizing feeling that a significant fact was hidden somewhere in that blurred image.

What in heaven’s name was it? O’Leary tried to analyze the inferences he had drawn from the man’s behavior. The killer was both bold and deliberate. He had killed brutally and swiftly, with no signs of panic. He had made a mistake in taking a conspicuous car, but had corrected it cleverly — which meant he was thinking clearly under pressure And he hadn’t duplicated his first mistake; he had got away from the Edsel without being seen, and by now, safe to assume, was on his way in a less conspicuous car. Also, he seemed to be working according to a plan, time wasn’t important to him, or he’d have taken a chance and tried to get through an exit in the Edsel. After all, he couldn’t have known for sure that the police would identify the missing car. But he hadn’t taken that chance; he was in no hurry. And he’d given the police credit for being as smart as he was.

It was a picture of a man who was ruthless and cunning. A man who thought clearly and measured his chances shrewdly. And that was where the inconsistency became apparent; the image was streaked with flaws, something was out of place, something incongruous. Because the killer had done something foolish...

“What’s the matter with you?” Trask said.

O’Leary put both hands over his ears; the traffic on the pike rushed by like a river of noise and light, and he tried to shut out the sound of it, tried furiously to find the truth that was hidden somewhere in this maze of facts and hunches, of inferences and intuitions. Then it was as if a clear and brilliant light had snapped on in his mind; then he had it.

He caught Trask’s arm. “The dead man. Nelson; he’d had his dinner, right? He had left the restaurant and walked to his car. But there was a coffee container beside his body. And one of those little cardboard things they put hot dogs in. Remember?”

“Sure,” Trask’s dark face was impassive; but a flicker of understanding came to his eyes. “Go on.”

“Those containers belonged to the killer,” O’Leary said. “He ate and drank there beside Nelson’s car. Then he dropped them on the ground.”

“Which means he went into the restaurant after all,” Trask said, his voice sharpening. “But you told me you checked out the waitresses. They should have remembered a guy without a hat or coal on a night like this.”

“I didn’t check all of them,” O’Leary said. He suddenly felt sick with guilt and apprehension. “I talked to the hostess. She’d have spotted anybody who wanted a table. Then I went to the take-out counter. But I only questioned one of the girls on duty. I... I forgot about the other one.”

“You forgot?” Trask said sharply. “What do you mean by that?”

“She’s a friend of mine, Sheila Leslie.” O’Leary drew a deep breath. “I was more interested in her than my job, that’s all, lieutenant. But I wasn’t after a murderer then. I was after the owner of a stalled car. Which is no excuse.”

“I guess it’s not,” Trask said. “But you’ve put us back on the right track. We’ll find the girl who sold him that coffee. When we know what he looks like, we’ll seal off this pike till it’s damn near watertight. I’ll call Captain Royce on the way. Let’s go.”

O’Leary ran toward his car. The killer must have bought his coffee from Sheila, he realized; if he hadn’t done that one compulsive, dangerous thing, they might never have got a line on him. He could have drifted through their nets like a wisp of smoke. And then O’Leary remembered something that caused a strange coldness to settle in his stomach; the killer had corrected one mistake. He had got rid of the Edsel. Would he try to correct his other mistake — by getting rid of the only witness who could identify him?

O’Leary snapped on his red beacon and jammed his foot hard on the accelerator.

Harry Bogan sat in the rear seat of Alan Perkins’s sedan, which was now parked close to the entrance of Howard Johnson’s No. 1. He was smiling softly; they had made two U-turns in doubling back to the restaurant, and for all the attention they received they might have been lazily circling about a sleepy village on a Sunday evening. He held his gun so that it pointed at Perkins’s head. “We’ll have to wait until a car pulls in alongside us,” he said. “You remember what you’re to tell the driver?”

“Yes, I remember,” Perkins said.

“You’re a good boy. I don’t want to hurt you.”

They were close enough to the restaurant for Bogan to see the dark-haired girl at work behind the take-out counter. She was slim and cool and swift in her while uniform, her skin smooth and glowing under the bright light, her teeth flashing now and then in quick smiles. They meant nothing, he knew, and felt his heart speeding with anger. A bone thrown to a hungry dog, nothing more. The smile that told of her real feelings wouldn’t be squandered on the lonely and miserable persons lined up at her counter. She would save that for the trooper, inviting him with her eyes and lips into the warm, selfish circle of her love.

They did not have long to wait, A small, middle-aged man in a leather jacket pulled in beside them and climbed from his car.

“All right,” Bogan said quietly.

Perkins rolled the window down and called to the man. “Pardon me, sir, but would you do me a favor?”

The man turned, peering into the darkness toward Perkins’s voice. The shadows blurred Perkins’s face and obscured Bogan completely. The man came a step closer. “Well, if I can, I don’t mind,” he said in a soft Southern accent.

“There’s a waitress inside I want to send a message to.” Perkins said. “You can see her from here — she’s the dark-haired one at the take-out counter.”

The man glanced toward the restaurant, nodding slowly. “I see her all right. Just what kind of a message is it?”

“Just tell her Trooper O’Leary wants to see her outside for a second.”

Bogan smiled in the darkness; the trooper’s name had been a gift, a priceless bit of luck, and he accepted it as a talisman of success.

“Trooper O’Leary, is that it?” the man said. “Well, I’ll tell her for you.” He laughed softly. “Man taking messages to pretty girls can get in a fix of trouble sometimes. But this is kind of different.”

“Listen to me, for heaven’s sake,” Perkins said to Bogan, as the stranger walked with a leisurely gait toward the restaurant. “It won’t work. She’ll be frightened; she’s liable to scream or something.” He turned his head slowly, cautiously, until he could see the shine of Bogan’s glasses. “Please, there’s no need — to hurt anybody I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. You can ride in the trunk. I give you my word of honor.”

“I don’t need your help to get off the turnpike,” Bogan said, laughing softly. “Now you just do as I told you. When she gets that message, you drive up and stop in from of the entrance. Keep the motor running. That’s all you’ve got to worry about.” He prodded the boy’s cheek with his gun, sharply, cruelly. “Do you understand?”

“Yes, all right.” Perkins barely whispered the words.

They watched the man in the leather jacket make his way through the crowded restaurant to the take-out counter. He removed his hat and raised a hand to get the dark-haired girl’s attention.

The girl smiled at him, and when he spoke she leaned forward slightly, her head tilted slightly to one side. She glanced toward the windows; the man had gestured in that direction, obviously telling her where he had received the message. The girl gave him a quick, warm grin then and came swiftly around the counter and walked toward the revolving doors of the restaurant, one hand pushing at a stray curl on her forehead. She stopped briefly to speak to the hostess. Asking permission to step outside for a moment or so, Bogan thought, smiling faintly. A very proper little girl, obedient and responsible. She was moving again, walking toward the entrance.

“All right,” he said quietly.

Perkins backed his Ford out of line, then cut the wheels and drove toward the entrance, which was marked as a no parking area. The revolving doors glittered as they spun around, and the girl came out onto the broad sidewalk. An awning protected her from the rain, but the cold wind whipped the skirts of her white uniform about her slim legs.

Perkins stopped, and Bogan reached forward and opened the front door. The girl came toward the car, bending to look into the dark interior. “Dan, is that you?” she said, in a clear, unworried voice.

Bogan glanced quickly out the rear window. A family was hurrying toward the restaurant, a mother, father and four small children, but the parents were involved in shepherding their charges and paid no attention to the stopped car and the girl standing beside it.

“I have a message from Dan,” Bogan said.

“What is it?” She put her head in the car, bracing herself with a knee against the front seat. The family with the four children had filed out of sight, and when she said, “What is it?” the second time, a bit sharply now, Bogan caught her arm and pulled her into the front seat, “Go!” Bogan said to Perkins, and before she could scream, he had the gun in her face, and the car was leaping forward, the door swinging shut with a bang.

She would have screamed, regardless of the gun, but Perkins’s voice cut through her terror. “Don’t!” he cried. “Please do what he says. He’ll shoot.”

“That’s true,” Bogan said, pleased with the young man. “Now drive over to where the trucks park.” He still held the girl’s arm and could feel the tremors shaking her body.

“Now what do you want with me?” she said in a dry, careful voice.

“That will have to wait a bit. We’ll have time to talk later.” The fear in her eyes and face satisfied something deep inside him; and he remembered how the girl in the furniture shop had looked when he raised the gun, her face blank with panic, eyes wild and frantic. Once as a child he had seen a horse trapped in a burning barn; and the girl’s eyes were like those of the poor horse, crazed and helpless. The sight of her fear had been almost unendurably exciting.

The area reserved for the big trucks was a hundred yards beyond the gas station, an unlighted expanse of concrete the size of a football field, with parking spaces indicated by lines of while paint Bogan directed Perkins to the far end of the lot.

In the silence that settled when Perkins cut the motor, Bogan heard the girl’s shallow, uneven breathing. The sound was satisfying; no longer laughing and confident, he thought, no longer warmed by the admiring eyes lingering on her slim body. Now she would pay attention to him. In a quiet, deliberate voice Bogan explained what he wanted them to do, and they obeyed carefully and quickly, like children trying to appease a fearsome, unpredictable adult. It wasn’t the gun they responded to, but the tension coiling beneath his surface calm. They knew with a primitive instinct that he was hoping they might disobey him; they knew he would relish the excuse to throw his self-control to the winds.

They got out of the car on the girl’s side and stood motionless until he joined them. Then the girl, on order, climbed into the rear-seat section and lay face down on the floor. Bogan had already removed his tie and belt. He gave them to Perkins, who knotted the tic about the girl’s wrists and looped the belt about her ankles, buckling it with trembling fingers. When he straightened up, Bogan inspected his work, then closed the rear door. “Now climb into the front seat.” he told Perkins, but when Perkins turned to obey, Bogan struck him heavily with the barrel of his gun, the blow landing just above his right ear. Perkins pitched forward, moaning in pain, but Bogan caught him before he struck the ground and carried him into the field adjoining the parking lot. He rolled the limp body into a ditch and returned to the car.

Safely lay on him like a balm, filling him with a warm complacence. Perkins wouldn’t recover consciousness for hours, if at all; and the only other witness who might identify him was trussed up in the back of his car. Now there was nothing left but to get off the turnpike. And he knew how to solve that problem.

He started his car and drove along the wide, curving lane that led to the turnpike, laughing as he merged smoothly with the swift, southbound traffic. The rain was coming down harder, bouncing on the shining concrete, and the Ford was swiftly lost in the dark streams of cars, with no more identity than a leaf in a storm or a chip swirling down a stream. The beams of oncoming headlights broke on his thick glasses and glittered against the excitement in his eyes.

“Are you all right?” he said in a high, pleased voice. “Are you comfortable?”

The girl lay with her wrists bound at the small of her back, her cheek flat against the car’s rough carpeting. She was trembling with cold and with fear, but she said evenly, “Where are you taking me?”

“Well, I’m not sure,” Bogan said. In truth, he didn’t know; but when they left the turnpike he would make up his mind. He would find a place that was dark and quiet. A field, he thought, or the bank of a stream, where he could rest, where they might talk for a while.

He glanced quickly over his shoulder: she lay with her knees bent, her feet raised in the air, and he saw the soles of her small white shoes, and the shine of his belt looped about her ankles. For the lime being everything was all right. “Just don’t worry about anything,” he said.

In the manager’s office of Howard Johnson’s No. I, Trask and O’Leary questioned the man in the leather jacket who had delivered the message to Sheila Leslie. “Let’s try it once more,” Trask said evenly, after the man told his story for the third time. They had checked his identification and knew he was a family man, steadily employed by a construction company in Philadelphia. He had a gasoline credit card in his wallet, snapshots of his wife and children, and seemed to be a responsible citizen. But Trask said, “Let’s go over it again from the start — every detail, everything you saw and heard and said.”

The man sat in a straight-backed chair under clear, soft overhead lights. He was about fifty, with thinning hair, work-roughened hands, and he wore jeans and a woolen shirt under his leather jacket “Well, like I told you.” he said, blinking his eyes nervously. “First the man called to me, speaking nice and polite, and asked me to do him a favor. The car he was sitting in was one of the popular makes, but I can’t rightly say which one. It wasn’t new. Maybe a ’Fifty or ’Fifty-one. It was a dark color, like I already told you. So he asked me to tell this girl that’s missing that Trooper O’Leary wanted to talk to her.”

O’Leary closed his eyes and ran a hand over his face. She was gone, helpless in a killer’s hands, and it was his fault He hadn’t done his job; instead of questioning her swiftly and impersonally, he had blushed and simpered like a fool, letting his feelings for her come between him and his work.

“Well. I went into the restaurant and told her.” the man in the leather jacket said. “And she smiled real nice and thanked me and went outside. I sat down to my dinner, where I was when you got here and began asking for who gave her the message.” One of the waitresses had remembered that someone had spoken to Sheila just before she went outside; and Trask and O’Leary had shouted for silence in the restaurant, and when they explained what they wanted, the man in the leather jacket had got uneasily to his feel. “I didn’t think I’d done nothing wrong,” he said now, eyes swinging quickly from Trask to O’Leary. “I was just doing a man a favor.”

“You’re sure he used my name?” O’Leary asked him sharply. “You’re sure he said O’Leary?”

“Yes, I’m positive about that.”

“Let’s go back to the start.” Trask said. “It was a young man who gave you the message?”

“Nearly as I could make out, yes.”

“And he was alone in the car?”

“Well, there seemed a kind of shadow in the back, but I didn’t see anybody.” The man hesitated, then said. “The young guy sounded kind of funny, he talked fast, I mean, like he was speaking words he’d memorized.”

O’Leary forced himself to think; his emotions were roiling inside him, blunting his memory and judgment. While Trask went over the man’s story again, O’Leary paced the small office, the overhead lights shining on his pale, set features He got himself in hand with a conscious effort. It occurred to him once again that the killer’s pattern of action suggested a generous time schedule; twice he might have got off the pike — once in the white Edsel, again in the car he had commandeered to pick up Sheila. But he hadn’t made a break for it. This might mean he had some special plan for getting off the turnpike, that he had found a loophole in the pike’s defenses. But how to account for the fact that he had used the name O’Leary to lure Sheila outside? How had he known the name? And that Sheila would respond to it? Then O’Leary recalled the irrelevant bit of information he had gleaned from the gas-station attendant at Howard Johnson’s No. 2. Someone had mentioned O’Leary’s driving, and the attendant had told him that O’Leary was safer at a hundred than most people were at fifty. Or something to that effect. But had the attendant actually used his name?

Trask completed his questioning of the man in the leather jacket, thanked him and excused him. When the man had gone. O’Leary told Trask of the conversation with the attendant at Howard Johnson’s No. 2.

“You get back there,” Trask said. “We’ve got to get a lead, and fast.”

“He’s got the girl in his car,” O’Leary said desperately. “That’s a lead, isn’t it? We can search every damn car on the pike.”

Trask looked away from O’Leary, pained by what he saw in the big trooper’s face. He gestured impatiently at the flash of the turnpike traffic which they could see through the windows of the manager’s office.

“There’s twenty-five or thirty thousand cars rolling out there tonight. Doctors on emergency calls, pregnant women, businessmen making plane and train connections, parents hurrying to sick kids. How can we tie up that traffic? And where would we get the men to search the cars? The pike would be stalled bumper to bumper in a matter of minutes. We’d block the highways coming in from three states Maybe we could stop all cars of a certain kind — like we stopped those Edsels. Or pick up men answering to a fairly general description. But we can’t bring that traffic to a halt without something to go on, Dan. Now you get back to Number Two. Maybe that attendant can give us the lead we need.”

O’Leary covered the twelve miles in eight minutes, with his beacon flashing and siren screaming. The attendant he had talked with earlier recalled the incident. “I was just coming out of the office, and a man standing there said something about it looking like you were in a hurry. Well, I told him you knew how to handle your car, that’s all.”

“Think hard.” O’Leary said. “Did you use my name?”

“Well, sure, I thought I told you. I said Trooper O’Leary or maybe Dan O’Leary, but I know I mentioned your name.”

“What did this man look like?”

“He was standing kind of in the shadows. I just glanced over my shoulder at him; you know, the way you do when something doesn’t mean much. He was pretty big. I’d say. And he was wearing glasses. I saw ’em flash when he turned his head.”

A big man with glasses, O’Leary thought with despair; a description that might tit half the men driving the pike tonight. He questioned the other attendants then, hoping someone might have seen the man leaving the shadows of the office. But he drew blanks; none of them had seen him or noticed any unusual activity around the pumps.

O’Leary returned to his patrol car and flashed Sergeant Tonelli at headquarters. He told him what he had learned, but his heart sank as he repealed the meager description — a big man with glasses.

“Check,” Tonelli said in his hard, impersonal voice, “You’ll proceed south now, O’Leary. Report to Sergeant Brannon at Interchange Five and take further orders from him. You’re going to be working the presidential convoy.”

O’Leary was filled with bitter guilt and despair; the plans being made to find the killer obviously didn’t include him. He wouldn’t have even the solace of trying to save Sheila. His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Look, sergeant, just one thing. The killer isn’t in any hurry to get off the pike. Have you noticed that?”

O’Leary’s question was considerably out of line, but Sergeant Tonelli was a man who understood a number of things that weren’t spelled out in the department’s training manual and training directives. He said quietly, “We’ve noticed it. Dan. But we don’t know yet what’s behind it. You get moving now.”

“Check,” O’Leary said and turned his car into the curving approach to the dark turnpike. He felt helpless and miserable, consumed with a leaden fear.

Sheila had fought down her first panic, which had been like the fear or smothering she had known as a child. Once when she was very small her brother and his friends had locked her in a trunk during some game or other and had gone off and forgotten about her. For a long time afterward she couldn’t bear anything that threatened her breathing — swimming under water, a dentist’s wad or cotton in her mouth, even the slight pressure of a locket at the base of her throat was enough to make her heart pound with terror. But she had finally conquered that dread; she had faced the issue with hard common sense, refusing to pity herself, refusing to let herself be shackled by morbid fears.

Now, lying helpless in the rear of Bogan’s car, she tried to apply the same therapy to her straining nerves. So tar nothing had happened to her; her body was cold and cramped, and dust from the carpeting had made her eyes water, but that was all. She knew she was safe as long as they were on the turnpike. After that she would be completely helpless. He could take her anywhere, do anything he wanted with her. She faced that fact clearly. It meant she must get away from him before he drove off the pike. Somehow she must make him stop. Dan had told her any stopped car would be quickly checked by the police, with the trooper concealed by his own headlights and emerging from their brightness with a hand on his gun.

It seemed a hideous irony that she had been amused by his earnest discussion of the various methods used in policing the turnpike — and just a tiny bit bored by his enthusiasm for his work — when that skill and energy might be the only thing that could save her life. She tried to stop thinking about Dan O’Leary. It would make her cry, she knew, and there was no time now for that kind of self-pity. She could think of him later; of his tall, alert way of walking, and the fine, dark hair on the backs of his big clean hands, and the way he got a joke a split second after she did and grinned a bit sheepishly at her swifter understanding.

Now she must make this madman bring the car to a stop. “Please,” she said in a weak voice. “I’m going to be sick. I feel dizzy.”

“Well, that’s too bad. But it’s not much longer.” Bogan glanced at his watch and then at a numbered milepost that gleamed ahead of him in the darkness. He was a bit behind schedule, but not seriously so. The rain had made him lose time. He smiled.

“Please,” she said again. “I’m freezing. There’s no circulation in my arms and legs. Please stop and untie my ankles.”

“You’re Trooper O’Leary’s girl, I know,” he said. “I saw the way you smiled at each other, Are you going to marry him?” He was still smiling. “Answer me. Are you going to marry him?” he said coldly.

She was silent; the changed tone of his voice sent a chill through her cramped body. She tried to guess at his thoughts, to form some picture of his needs and compulsions; but it was as hopeless as attempting a jigsaw puzzle blindfolded. “I’m not sure,” she said at last.

“You’re not sure,” he said, mocking her in a high, petulant voice. The lying little beggar. They would get married, all right, and buy a little house and pull all the blinds down so no one could see them. And keep everyone outside their little circle of pleasure.

He remembered how it had been in his own home, the long nights that belonged only to his father and mother, and finally his guilty relief and happiness after his father’s death. There was just his mother and brother then, and it was very nice. She baked sweet cookies and told them stories. It went on for such a long and pleasant time. Until his brother brought home a girl. They had fought about that; Bogan had warned him of the terrible thing he was doing, but his brother had got married anyway, and then there was just his mother and himself, and that was the best time of all. He worked as a night watchman because the sunshine hurt his weak eyes. She kept their apartment shaded in the daytime, and they watched television together, and she made his meals and took care of his clothes. When she died he asked his brother if he could live with him, but there were children now and no room for him. That was when he had got the tiny place on Third Avenue and begun to watch the couple in the furniture shop.

Bogan shook his head sharply; his thoughts were distracting him, flickering brightly and erratically against the quiet darkness of his mind.

“Please!” the girl cried again. “Fumes are coming up through the floor boards. I can’t breathe.”

“I’ll roll down the window,” he said, smiling. “I’m not going to slop, so you might as well forget your little tricks.”

The cold damp wind swept over her chilled body. She was suddenly close to panic; this was what excited him, to toy with her in a cat-and-mouse fashion, relishing her helplessness. If she couldn’t get him to stop, there was no hope — unless a patrol car flagged him down. But the police obviously had no way of identifying him. Otherwise he wouldn’t be driving along so confidently. How could she attract the attention of the police? To herself or to the car, it made no difference.

But she could do nothing at all while she was helpless. She began to strain at the bands about her wrists, twisting her hands until the skin was raw, exerting all her wiry strength against the silken fabric. The young man hadn’t done too efficient a job, and she blessed him for it. Perhaps he’d given her this chance deliberately. The knots were loose, and her struggles produced a precious half inch of slack. That was almost enough, for her hands were quite small. She tried again, twisting her wrists silently and desperately until the knots slipped again. This was enough. She freed her hands and put them over her mouth to silence the sounds of her rapid, shallow breathing.

But there was still not much she could do. She could unlatch the rear door, but to push it open against the wind stream would be almost impossible in her cramped position. And it wouldn’t serve any purpose unless she intended to throw herself from the car. That thought instantly led to another — if not herself, what else was there to throw from the car? Specifically, through the opened window — beside the driver’s seat? The crumpled silk tie that had bound her wrists probably wouldn’t attract anyone’s attention. She felt cautiously about the floor of the car, but found only a folded newspaper and what seemed to be an empty cigarette package. No good. It had to be something that would point to her.

She thought of removing a shoe but after a painful effort realized that it wasn’t possible. She could arch her back and grasp her ankles in her hands, but she couldn’t unbuckle the bell or untie the shoelaces in that position. And she couldn’t risk turning over and sitting up. He would be sure to see the top of her head in the rearview mirror. But the thought of shoes prompted her to take a personal inventory. Ring, small comb, hair ribbon, a pencil clipped in the pocket of her uniform. Thai was all; and none of these had any special significance. They would mean nothing to whoever found them.

“That’s enough air,” Bogan said, and began to roll up the window.

“No, please!” Her heart was beating wildly; she had just remembered the apron she was wearing, the short, white tea apron with the restaurant’s distinctive emblem emblazoned on it. Everybody associated the emblem with Howard Johnson’s; it was as identifiable as a signature “Please don’t close the window. I’m suffocating.” The terror in her voice was genuine; if he closed the window now her only chance would be gone.

“Well, we don’t want that,” he said and rolled the window down again. “We want you nice and healthy for your handsome trooper. You wouldn’t be pretty if you smothered to death.”

Lying bound in the rear of Harry Bogan’s car, Sheila Leslie tried to control her nerves. She worked in a turnpike restaurant. Bogan, a maniacal killer, had kidnaped her because she could identify him. She knew she was safe as long as they were on the Tri-State Turnpike, but after that she would be helpless. Bogan had murdered three people, and he wouldn’t hesitate to kill again.

Sheila’s only chance was to attract attention by throwing something out of the open window, something that would cause the finder to call the turnpike police. She finally freed her hands, but she couldn’t think of anything to throw.

Then she remembered the apron she was wearing, the short white tea apron with Howard Johnson’s emblem on it.