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didn't see you. You called me?”
        “Twice.”
        “I'm sorry,” Leland said. “I didn't hear.” He frowned. “Did I do something wrong? I'm usually a careful driver.”
        The trooper watched him carefully for a moment, searched his blue eyes, took in his sun-darkened face and neatly trimmed hair, then relaxed. He let his hand drop from the gun. He took the last few steps to the van. “It wasn't your driving,” he said. “Just the same, I'd like to have a look at your license and the rental papers for the truck.”
        “Sure,” Leland said. “Always glad to cooperate.” Moving as if he were reaching for his wallet, he took the.32-caliber pistol out of the tissue box on the seat beside him. In one fluid movement he raised it to the window and centered the barrel on the trooper's face and pulled the trigger. The single shot echoed in the copse of pines behind the van and slapped sharply across the highway out front.
        
        Leland sat and watched the traffic on the throughway for several minutes before he realized that he ought to conceal the corpse. Any minute someone could pull into the rest area, see the cop sprawled between the patrol car and the van, and run for help. These days everyone was on his tail. He had stayed alive this long only by keeping one step ahead of them. Now was no time to let his thinking get fuzzy.
        He pushed open the van door and got out.
        The trooper was lying face down in the gravel, dark blood pooled around his head. He looked much smaller now, almost like a child.
        During the past year, when he sensed the conspiracy working against him, Leland had wondered whether he would be able to kill to protect himself. He knew it would come to that. Kill or be killed. And until this moment he had not been sure which it would be. Now he could not understand why he had ever been in doubt. When it was kill or be killed, even a non-violent man could act to save himself.
        Expressionlessly Leland bent down and grabbed hold of the dead man's ankles, dragged him around to the open door of the squad car. The short-wave radio in there was sputtering noisily. Leland heaved the corpse inside, let it slump over the steering wheel. But that was no good. Even from a distance the man looked dead. Aware that he would have to completely conceal it, Leland pushed the body across the vinyl seat and climbed into the car after it.
        He touched the steering wheel, unaware he was leaving fingerprints.
        He touched the back of the vinyl seat.
        Oblivious to the thickening blood, he bent the dead man's ruined face down to his knees, then shoved the compacted hulk onto the floor in front of the passenger's seat.
        Inadvertently he touched the window on that side of the car, pressing all five fingers firmly to the glass.
        He had to force the corpse to slip halfway back into the cavity beneath the dashboard, but when he was done he was confident that no one would find the body unless they opened the door looking for it.
        Climbing out, he touched the bench of the vinyl seat.
        He touched the steering wheel again.
        He closed the door, fingers clasped around the chrome handle.
        It never occurred to him that he ought to take a rag and wipe down everything that he had touched. Already he had half forgotten the dead man crammed in the corner of the official car.
        He went back to the van and got in and closed the door. On the highway, traffic flashed by, casting off a golden shower of late-afternoon sunlight. For ten minutes or more Leland watched the road, waiting for the Thunderbird to pass.
        With his physical attention focused on so small an area, his thoughts drifted until they eventually settled on the young waitress who had served him at the diner, the girl with the rabbits and chipmunks on her uniform. Now he saw why she had confused and upset him. With her long natural-platinum hair and