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Does it have any bullet holes in it?"
    "I don't know," Charboneau said. "Nobody's checked it over yet."
    thj l!111!! Sergeant Rutherford headed away from Springfield, along nu [ I ||j Mohawk Boulevard, following Diane's directions. At the intersec-ie; |;| tion of Nineteenth and Marcola Road, he turned right. They^ le j || moved away from the sprinkling of city lights, past empty houses ^ Hill with lawns that had long since become do-it-yourself junkyards,
    past the man-made mountain of sawdust that loomed through the night at the Kingsford Charcoal Briquet plant. Beyond the grubby
    northeast outskirts of Springfield, the innate beauty of the land took over, although it was shrouded now in the black of night. The squad car rumbled across Hayden Bridge. Beneath them.

SMALL SACRIFICES 29
    the McKenzie River narrowed itself into a chute of turbulent froth as it raced by the power plant.
    "This is where Christie stopped choking," Diane remembered.
    "Right here on the bridge ..."
    Rutherford shivered involuntarily.
    They came off the bridge to a crossroads of sorts. To the right, Camp Creek Road, barricaded for resurfacing, meandered off, forking again and again into a series of dead ends; to the left, two-laned Old Mohawk Road cut away from the main road to attach itself again to Marcola Road a few miles north. It was only a local access road, well off the regular route between Springfield and Marcola.
    Rutherford looked questioningly at Diane and she nodded. Old Mohawk was the road where it had happened. She had driven across the railroad tracks and then over Hayden Bridge as she raced to the hospital with her children.
    "I never should have bought the unicorn," she murmured softly, almost to herself.
    "What did you say?" Rutherford asked.
    "The unicorn," she answered. "I bought the kids a beautiful brass unicorn, and I had their names engraved on it--just a couple of days ago. It was . . . you know ... It meant we had a new life. I shouldn't have bought it."
    They passed by the patrol units that were stopping all cars entering or leaving Old Mohawk--not a busy job, since the road was sparsely traveled late at night. Rutherford drove slowly past darkened homes. It was very quiet; the Little Mohawk flowed more gently than her big sisters. Occasionally there was the sound , of a dog barking, or the soft whinny of horses behind the barbed-I
    ^re fences along the road. The air smelled sweet--cottonwood ^ees just budding out. Old Mohawk seemed the most peaceful of
    country roads. It was hard to believe that four people had been wot here less than two hours earlier.
    As they approached the far end of Old Mohawk just before it reconnected with Marcola Road, the road narrowed, with no 'shoulders or turning-off places. Every so often, a thin white '""epost protruded through the black beside the road. ,,, "Here," Diane said. "We're getting close. It happened just
    about here."
    ba i111^ were hard ^ the river-The current had nibbled at the wk so hungrily that it fell away only a few feet beyond the
    s-hne at the edge of the road. The underbrush was thick, clotted 30 ANN RULE
    Iwith blackberry vines; firs and bulky dark maples loomed over the road.
    What a lonely place it was, Rutherford thought, and how
    frightening it must have been for a young woman and her three children to come upon a maniac with a gun out here. It was the most isolated spot along Old Mohawk. The river pushed by in the dark on one side; on the other, a field of wild phlox trembled in the wind as if the blossoms were woven into a solid sheet of white. |
    Diane and Wes Frederickson stared out of the squad car's windows, and Rutherford followed their gaze. He saw nobody human out there in the darkness.
    Of course there wouldn't be. The gunman had had ample
    time to get away by now, and good reason to be long gone. Still, the trio peered into the night, searching for some quick movement in the fields, some separation of shadows within a clump of evergreens as a figure moved