When Knox pulled into the town he decided he’d better hit the first place that looked promising. His prayers were almost immediately answered. The sign of the One T restaurant loomed ahead. He parked, went in, settled himself at the counter and ordered some food. There weren’t many people in the place, but still, Knox figured if Carr had come by to eat after ditching the train someone could remember seeing him. He showed his composite and asked his questions and thirty minutes later he walked out, not knowing much more than when he’d gone in.

Neither the people behind the counter nor the customers were the observant type apparently, or else didn’t like to volunteer any information about anybody. All he got in response to the artist’s comp were dull shakes of the head. Even the flash of Knox’s creds had not helped matters. In fact, it might have hurt. Knox had to keep in mind that around here the federal government was probably only a bit more popular than Osama bin Laden.

There was a bus station, he found, though it was now closed and wouldn’t reopen for a while. Apparently folks up here didn’t need to travel every day.

Knox sat in his truck and studied his map. The terrain around here was rugged and the towns few and far between with the roads connecting them two-lane and serpentine. He decided to find a place to sleep and start anew in the morning. He would have to come back to the bus station when it reopened. He’d asked around about the people that worked there, but they operated on some sort of circuit basis and wouldn’t be back in town for a couple days. Yet Knox was counting on the bus station to pop for him if nothing else turned up in the meantime. There were probably limited ways out of this dump, and a bus was at least one of the more promising ones. Carr might have taken one after losing his ride on the train.

The motel was yellow-painted concrete and crummy, the rates so low they were easily covered by his government per diem. Crackers and a soda constituted room service that he grabbed out of the vending machine outside the tiny office. He showed the artist’s comp to the manager but the man shook his head and went back to his TV and can of Bud. Knox spent another hour roaming the streets, showing the picture to passersby and shop owners. Either no one had seen the man or else they wouldn’t confess to it.

Knox sat fully clothed on the bed in his room, crunching his miniature cheese and peanut butter sandwiches and sipping his diet Coke. He channel-hopped from wars to natural disasters to corruption scandals to ESPN, NASCAR, and finally settled on the TV Land channel watching, of all things, a decades-old episode of Happy Days.