But it was far too public for a man with his picture on the nation’s TV screens. He’d be cooped up for hours with forty or fifty people, and how many of them would take a look at his face? And, even if they didn’t make the connection right away, there he’d be, with no place to hide, and there they’d be, with plenty of time to think about things, and what were the odds that one of them wouldn’t put two and two together?
No bus, no train. A voice on the radio, pondering his apparent escape via the Des Moines airport, had theorized that Montrose/Blankenship might have made his way across the tarmac to the area where the private planes landed and took off. He might have had a plane stashed there, with a confederate to fly it, or he might even have possessed the skills to fly it himself. Or, the fellow had gone on to suggest, the desperate assassin might have hijacked a private plane, taking the pilot hostage and forcing him to fly the plane to parts unknown.
Keller had welcomed the notion, because it was so wonderfully ludicrous that it had given him a laugh when he’d sorely needed one. Now, though, he wondered if it was such a bad idea after all. There were small private airports all over the country, with dinky little planes landing and taking off all the time. Suppose he found one, some single-runway operation out in the boondocks. And suppose he bided his time and waited until some hotshot bush pilot had his plane all fueled and ready to go, only to have Keller, the desperate assassin himself, stick a gun in his face and demand to be taken to the corner of East Forty-ninth Street and First Avenue?
Well, maybe not.
The motel was a Travelodge, on the edge of a town the name of which he hadn’t bothered to notice. He’d pulled around to the rear of the lot like a registered guest on the way to his room, chosen an out-of-the-way parking spot, and cut the lights and engine. He sat behind the wheel, eating one of the cold burgers and drinking water, and watched a man and woman get out of a square-back Honda and walk a short distance to a ground-floor unit. They didn’t have any luggage, Keller noted, and the inference he drew from this was strengthened when the man extended a hand and grabbed the woman by the butt. She swatted his hand away, but when he replaced it she let him keep it there, and the hand stayed in place until he needed it to unlock the door. Then they disappeared into the room.
Keller envied them, and less for what they were about to do than for having a room to do it in. He had no idea what this Travelodge got for a room, but it had to be at least fifty dollars, didn’t it? All that money, and they weren’t even going to sleep there. They were married, he was fairly certain, but not to each other, and they were going to roll around on rented sheets for an hour, two at the most, while Keller was destined to spend another night sleeping in his car.
Was there an opportunity here? Suppose he waited until they finished. Would they lock the door after they left? He somehow doubted it would be their top priority, and they might leave it ajar, in which case he could walk right in the minute they were out of sight.
And even if they locked it, how hard would it be to get in? He had his Swiss Army knife, and if it wouldn’t get him through the lock he could try kicking the door in. This was a roadside motel, not Fort Knox.
As far as the management was concerned, the room was rented for the night. Even if they suspected the room had been vacated, they couldn’t hand it out again until the maid had serviced it. Judging from the number of cars in the lot, the place was half empty, so that left them with plenty of other rooms to rent. Keller could be in and out of this one without anyone ever knowing he was there.
He could catch a couple of hours of real sleep in an actual bed. God, he could take a shower.
Waiting wasn’t that easy. He couldn’t turn his mind off, and it kept telling him he was wasting time, that he ought to be back on the highway knocking off the miles.
And how did he know they’d be leaving anytime soon? Maybe they were travelers, too tired from a long day on the road to bother hauling their luggage inside. She’d been carrying a purse, and that might hold all she needed until they had a chance to go out to the car for their bags in the morning. That seemed a little odd to Keller, but people did odd things all the time.
He went over to their car, and there was nothing in the back seat, but they could have stowed their bags in the trunk, as he’d done with his. Their car carried an Indiana plate, but did that necessarily mean they were local? Indiana was a pretty big state. He couldn’t say exactly how big it was, or where he was in it, because the only maps he had were for Iowa, where he didn’t intend to return, and Oregon, where he wouldn’t be going, either, the considerable allure of Roseburg and Klamath Falls notwithstanding. But he knew Indiana had some size to it. It might not be Texas, but it wasn’t Delaware, either.
He returned to his car. They were probably local, he had to admit, but they might still stay until morning. Say he lived with his parents, and she had a roommate. They’d need a place to be together in private, but they could stay all night in it without making trouble for themselves. And here he was, sitting in his car, staring with eyes that kept wanting to close at a door that might not open until dawn.
When the door did open, he checked his watch and was surprised to note that they’d only been in there for a little under an hour. The guy emerged first, and stood there in the doorway, holding the door for the woman, then giving her another proprietary pat on the rear as she passed. They were dressed as he’d seen them before, and there was nothing in their appearance to indicate they’d spent the preceding fifty minutes doing anything more adventurous than watching Indiana’s own David Letterman, but Keller suspected otherwise.
C’mon, he urged them silently. Leave the door open.
And for a moment he thought they were going to, but no, the son of a bitch had to reach for the handle and pull the thing shut. They walked toward their car, and then the guy held up something, a white card of some sort, and offered it to the woman. She backed away, holding up her hands as if to ward the thing off, and he reached to tuck it into her purse, and she grabbed it away from him and threw it at him. He ducked and it sailed over his shoulder, and they both laughed and walked the rest of the way to their car, his hand on her behind once again, and Keller watched where the white card landed because now he knew what it was.
The room key, of course. Here, honey, a little souvenir of the evening. Let me just tuck it in your purse. Keller picked it up and brushed it off, tried it in the lock, opened the door. Then he went back for his suitcase and wheeled it to his room, just like any legitimate tourist.
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