“Albert Lee, why are you doing this?” Sister asked. “You’re just going to get yourself into more trouble.”

“Not if you just disappear off the face of the earth.” He got in the car and pulled away from the curb.

“What is it you think we know anyway? We don’t know a damn thing except you’re kidnapping us,” Sister said.

“You know I killed Susan.”

“I don’t know you killed Susan. Do you know he killed Susan, Patricia Anne?”

“I don’t know it.”

“Of course you do. You’d been through my wallet. You saw all the pictures, the receipt.”

“You’re jumping to conclusions, Albert Lee,” I said.

“And so did you. The right one.” He had turned right onto Valley Avenue by this time.

“Let us out,” I said. The danger of the situation was just registering with me. We were being kidnapped by a murderer with a gun who was going to make us disappear off the face of the earth. “Let us out, Albert Lee. I don’t know what happened to Susan, but kidnapping us is just going to compound your troubles.”

“Shut up. Just shut up. I need to talk to Mama.”

“The crack in Vulcan’s butt is really getting wider, Patricia Anne. Look,” Sister said, apropos of nothing. “He could fall right down here on Valley Avenue.”

I wasn’t interested in sightseeing or Vulcan’s plight. I was trying to see if I could get my ankles loose. If I could, I could kick Albert Lee’s leg, make him wreck. But we were going down steep and busy Twentieth Street now. If he swerved, it would be a terrible wreck. Chances were that we would hit another car head-on, a car full of innocent people.

“Why are you turning on First Avenue, Albert Lee?” Sister asked when he turned on his right signal. “Aren’t we going to Chandler Mountain?”

“Goddamn interstates.”

I looked over at Albert Lee. He didn’t look good. He was pale and sweat was beaded on his forehead.

“Let us out, Albert Lee,” I pleaded. “You’re not a murderer. You’re an English teacher.”

“And you’re crazy.”

We crossed the viaduct over the Sloss Furnace Museum.

“Remember the big outdoor ad that used to be here for years?” Sister asked. “The one for dog food where the cute little puppy’s tongue wagged? It always smelled like ham here. I guess it was the dog food plant.”

I swear my sister never fails to amaze me. Here we were, kidnapped, on the verge of extinction, and she was carrying on a casual conversation about dog food.

“Penny dog food,” Albert Lee said. He wiped his forehead with his right arm leaving a wet spot on the sleeve of his denim jacket. The butt of the pistol was clearly visible in the shallow jacket pocket.