“The plan was for you to go back to Washington, and for everyone to go on with their pitiful lives. But that didn’t work out so well, did it? You should thank me for taking out the reporter, no? He begged and sobbed for his life, by the way. Great performance. I believed him. What a wimp he turned out to be.”

I was surprised he knew I was from D.C., and also about Truscott. But then, he was a watcher, a plotter. There was probably a lot that Bell knew.

“So what now?” I asked.

“What do you think? You’re supposed to be the expert, right? So, what happens now?”

“It doesn’t have to go like this.” I was just talking; saying anything that came into my mind.

“You gotta be kidding. What other way do you think it can go? Let me hear all of the choices. I can’t wait.”

Meantime, he had burrowed the barrel of his pistol into my neck. I leaned away, but only so far. I thought it was best if I knew exactly where his gun was. I wondered if he was executing a plan now, or if he was improvising at this point. Mary Smith had been known to do both.

And this was Mary Smith, wasn’t it? I’d finally met the real killer.

We drove for a few miles on an unlit secondary highway. “This looks good here,” he said suddenly. “Go that way. Make a left. Do it.”

I turned off the pavement onto a bumpy dirt road. It sloped upward, winding away into the woods. Eventually, the fir trees closed around the car like a tunnel. I was running out of time, and it didn’t look as if there was any way for me to escape. Mary Smith had me, just the way she’d gotten all the others and killed them without fail.

“Where are we going, Bell?”

“Somewhere they won’t find you right away. Or your pen pal, either.”

“You know, they’re already looking for you in L.A. I made a call.”

“Yeah, well, good luck to them. I’m not exactly in L.A., am I?”

“What about your girls, Michael? What about them?”

He pushed the gun barrel harder into my neck. “Not my fucking girls. Marti was a cheap little whore before I married her. Before I made her into something. I was a good father to those ungrateful kids, all for Marti. She was a runaround when I met her, and she stayed a runaround. Okay, pull over. This is good.”

This was definitely not good. The car headlights showed where the road dropped off to a wooded slope on the right. I had to be real careful not to go over the edge.