Pursuit: A Novel

EPILOGUE

Only about half the seats on the late-night flight to Los Angeles had been sold. Prescott was resting, lying across the seats in row 16 with his eyes closed, so Daniel Millikan had moved to sit alone in row 28. He had turned off the overhead lights as the plane climbed, so he was in the dark beside the plane’s small window, staring down at the rows of tiny yellow lights that formed the traces of streets of one of the towns just west of St. Louis.

He had known that this time would come. It would be over, and he would be alone at night. There was not silence, but the unchanging drone of the airplane’s engines enforced his solitude, keeping him from hearing any sound that was human. It had been months since he had answered the telephone and been surprised by the voice of Robert Cushner. He had been startled, but that could not now, or ever, serve as an excuse. He had decided to give the old man the name and telephone number of Roy Prescott.

How many since then? How many dead? Two police officers and two security guards in L.A., the maid and the clerk at the motel, the ex-husband of Donna Halsey, that woman in Cincinnati and her three sons, the owner of the strip club back there in St. Louis. What was that? Twelve? And possibly more. Prescott had said there was a woman hostage in Minnesota, and this killer would not have let her go. Who else? Of course: the killer himself. He came to Millikan as an afterthought. It was because the decision to call Prescott had included in it the death of the killer. To someone else, Millikan could have protested that it had not been the only possible outcome. But he did not now. He had known it was the best one he could hope for, the ending he had embraced in his imagination at the beginning. That was what you were asking for when you called Roy Prescott. He felt an urge to pray, to seek forgiveness for what he had done. He began silently with “Dear God,” but his mind stalled. The contrition was only a reflex, not real this time. It was only a grasp for certainty, just a reaction to his discomfort at not being able to know he had done the right thing. He stopped, closed down the channel of communication: “Amen,” he whispered. Nobody gets out of this life without doubt.