Garage bays—where buses are parked, cleaned, serviced, and repaired—occupy most of the structure, and the public area is cramped and drab, but tidy.

Although the space is clean, the twentysomething woman at the ticket counter is immaculate and more detailed than her environment. Pleasant to look at, she wears her lustrous blond hair in a ponytail tied with white ribbon. No makeup, no eye shadow, no lipstick. Her well-scrubbed skin is smooth, with a slight pink flush. When she smiles, her teeth look as if they have never made contact with food or drink to sully them, and the whites of her eyes are as clear as purified milk. She wears a spotless white dress with a Peter Pan collar, and as Egon Gottfrey approaches the counter, the woman’s hands glisten with sanitizing gel as she works them together.

He flashes his FBI photo ID. “I need to talk to whoever worked this counter this morning.”

She is Sue Ann McMaster, who never before met an FBI person, who can’t imagine what she could tell him about anything that would be worth his time, who is near the end of her second shift today because Lureen Klaven took a bad fall this morning and couldn’t work the afternoon. She says she loves the smell of Purell hands, and as the last of the gel evaporates, she asks what he needs to know.

When she sees the photo of Ancel and Clare, she smiles broadly. “Oh, yes, they were lovely people, going to Houston for the birth of their first grandchild. Just bubbling with excitement about it.”

“What time did their bus leave?”

“It was supposed to depart at ten twenty-five, and maybe it was five minutes late. We have three buses a day going to Houston, and our on-time departure performance is over ninety percent.”

“What time do they arrive in Houston?”

“Oh, hours ago. Three o’clock is the ETA.” She checks her computer. “Pretty close perfect. They docked in Houston at nine minutes past three.”

“Can you give me the address of the terminal in Houston?”

When Gottfrey comes out of the bus station, Rupert and Vince are leaning against their Jeep Wrangler, staring at the sky. The darkness and the wealth of stars should create a perception of the immensity of the universe and the emptiness between its infinite suns, but it feels no less heavy than before and still seems to be coming down on him—in spite of the fact that it’s only an illusion.

He is beginning to think that this perception of a looming, crushing weight arises from an intuitive sense that somehow he is screwing up, that Ancel and Clare are slipping away in spite of all the resources at his disposal, that he no longer understands the script and is in the process of displeasing the Unknown Playwright.

The Killeen Police Department is within a block of the bus station. The watch commander is pleased to provide three FBI agents with a private office and computer.

Houston is one of the increasing number of cities from which the NSA now receives real-time input of video from airports, train stations, and bus depots.

While Rupert Baldwin back-doors the NSA Data Center in Utah and swims through the immense ocean of digital data, seeking archived video from the Houston terminal to which the passengers from Killeen were delivered hours earlier, Gottfrey bounces some questions off Vince Penn. He expects no useful answers, but this helps him frame his own theory of what Ancel and Clare’s intentions might be.

“At the hour they left the Longrin ranch, say two-thirty in the morning, with hardly any traffic on the roads, they should have been here in Killeen by four-thirty, if not sooner. According to Jim Lee Cassidy they had just parked their Mercury Mountaineer outside his real-estate office at a few minutes after ten o’clock. That leaves five and a half missing hours. Where were they all that time?”

“Maybe a motel. Getting some shut-eye,” Vince suggests.

“After that TV show, they figure they’re targeted, they’ll be injected, so they go on the run—only to stop for some shut-eye?”

“Everybody’s got to sleep. Even Dracula sleeps, and he’s the living dead.”

“When you go on the run, don’t you take essentials, a few changes of clothes, toiletries? Cash?”

“I never been on the run.”

“Jim Lee Cassidy didn’t say anything about them having luggage. If they’d had bags of any kind, when he saw them go two blocks and turn right at the corner, he would have known they were going to the bus depot. He wouldn’t have had to guess.”

“Well, he’s a Realtor,” says Vince.

Gottfrey knows he shouldn’t ask. “What does that mean?”

“They’re like surgeons. They work with real things, so if they can’t be certain, they won’t say they are. They’ll only guess.”

“Surgeons and Realtors, huh?”

“And astronauts,” Vince adds.

“Here we go,” Rupert Baldwin says. “Their bus, pulling into the terminal in Houston earlier today.”

The three of them huddle before the computer, watching as one by one the travelers disembark. The camera provides a clearer image than is sometimes the case. Ancel and Clare are not on the bus.

49

THE NIGHT FEATHERED by palms and ferns, perfumed by jasmine, now by burgers on a barbecue … the blood-red blooms of a trumpet vine in a lighted arbor … young women’s laughter so innocent that it seems to come from another world in which no degradation of any kind exists … and one block later Glenn Miller’s softly swinging “String of Pearls” issuing from the open window of a house …

After dinner, Jane walked residential streets. In the velvet shadows and subdued lighting, she gazed at a diamonded sky as mysterious as always it would be.

Every ordinary thing was in this moment extraordinary and precious beyond valuation, rich with meaning, but the meaning ineffable, all of it endangered in these darkening times.

Eventually, in a pocket park, she stood watching the motel across the street, where she’d taken a room. A few people came and went, but none concerned her. She focused on the window of her room, where she’d left the lights on, waiting to see the drapery panels part slightly or tremble as someone moved against them. Nothing.

She crossed the street and let herself into the room. She was alone. Wherever death might come for her, it wasn’t here or now.

50

THE WATCH COMMANDER at the Killeen Police Department happens to know the manager of the bus station, Dennis van Horn. He calls him at home and introduces Egon Gottfrey, who then takes the phone.

According to van Horn, the bus driver from Killeen, Lonnie John Bricker, has finished his day by driving another coach that departed Houston at 4:00 P.M., scheduled to arrive in San Antonio at 7:10. Now at 7:26, it is likely that Bricker is still at the terminal in San Antonio, filling out his trip report.

At 7:39, again in the office provided by the watch commander, Gottfrey sits at the computer—Vince standing to his left, Rupert to his right—and conducts a Skype interview with Lonnie John Bricker.

The bus driver is a burly, balding man of about fifty. His round and rubbery face has a perpetual look of sweet bewilderment that underlies his every other expression. It is a face that makes him likable on sight and no doubt is comically expressive when he tells jokes to his buddies at the local bar.

Bricker frowns and leans warily toward the screen out there in San Antonio, as though Gottfrey might be a tiny man hiding inside that distant computer. “Well, no offense intended, but I still can’t know for sure you’re in Killeen. And when you held your badge thing to the camera, I couldn’t see it clear enough to know was it real FBI or from some Junior G-Man play set.”

In instances like this, Skype is a time-saving convenience; however, it’s harder to intimidate the hell out of the subject of an interview when you are not in the same city with him. You can’t loom over the guy or accidentally knock a mug of hot coffee into his lap.

Gottfrey says, “The head of security at the terminal there, Mr. Titus, has confirmed my identity to you.”

“No offense intended to him, either, but he’s near as much a stranger to me as you are. Don’t I need myself a lawyer here?”

“You’re not a suspect, Mr. Bricker. You’re a witness who might have seen something in regards to a case of national importance.”

“What I’ve been doin’ all day is hump one bus to Houston and hump another bus to San Antone, so all I’ve seen is highway and some asshole drivers. The true FBI isn’t after speeders and tailgaters.”

According to the laws of physics established by the Unknown Playwright, when the urge to pistol-whip some idiot overcomes you, that is also not possible via Skype.

“I’m just stating for the record,” says Bricker, “you told me I’m not a suspect and I don’t need to lawyer up. So whatever I say here, it can’t be used against me in a court of law”—he raises one hand in a pledge—“so help me, God.”

Lonnie John Bricker has opened his own law practice.

“All right then,” says Gottfrey. “I sent Mr. Titus two photos, and he printed them out for you.”