Page 33 of The Girl from Devil's Lake
“Neighbor’s dog bit me,” he said.
“Any chance he’s rabid?”
“No, the guy who owned him claimed he’d had his rabies shots, but I can promise you this, that dog sure as hell won’t be biting anyone else.”
“You take care now,” the pharmacist added as Steve walked away. “Whatever you do, don’t let that thing get infected.”
After leaving the drugstore, Steve treated his injured hand and wrapped it properly before tracking down a do-it-yourself car wash. By then he was beyond exhausted. He located a nearby motel, checked in, and showered, all the while managing to keep hisbandaged hand out of the water. After that he went straight to bed without even bothering to go looking for something to eat.
His hand was still aching once he got into bed. Lying there, he couldn’t help regretting that he hadn’t been able to watch the light go out of the little bitch’s eyes, but at least he had her necklace. That counted for something.
Chapter 16
Mesa, Arizona
June 1972–1976
Steve’s throbbing hand kept him awake much of thenight. When he awakened the next morning, it was already after ten. He cleaned the wound on his hand, dosed it with more peroxide, and applied a new bandage. By then it was dangerously close to his designated checkout time of eleven a.m.
Stepping out of his room into the parking lot, it felt as if he’d walked into an oven. People might claim it was “only a dry heat,” but this kind of scorching was ridiculous. When he stopped by the office to let them know he was leaving, he asked the desk clerk if there were any decent restaurants nearby.
“There’s a Bob’s Big Boy just up the street,” she said. “Will that do?”
“As long as their air-conditioning works.”
Steve located the restaurant, managed to park in a small patch of shade, and bought a newspaper from a machine on his way inside. Thankfully the AC in the restaurant worked just fine.
“How hot is it out there?” he asked his waitress when she came to take his order.
“It’s a hundred and six right now,” she answered, “but it’s supposed to get up to a hundred eleven by later today.”
In other words, Steve thought,I’m not sticking around Mesa or Phoenix for a minute longer than necessary.
Once Steve opened the newspaper, he went looking for the weather map of Arizona. Studying it, he was astonished to see the wide disparity in temperatures throughout the state. While Phoenix was predicted to top out at 111 degrees that day, Tucson, a hundred miles to the south, was expecting 101, while Bisbee, another hundred miles south of Tucson, would clock in at only 92. North of Phoenix, a place called Sedona was set to hit 90, while Flagstaff wasn’t expected to exceed 85.
Before departing the restaurant, Steve made up his mind that Flagstaff was his next destination. Using directions from his waitress, Steve made his way to the Black Canyon Freeway. In addition to providing directions, the waitress had also explained that Flag, as she called it, was only a hundred fifty miles or so from Mesa, and that the road was “pretty good.” Pretty good meant that part of it was four lanes with controlled access, but a lot of it wasn’t. For one thing, long swaths of what was destined to be Interstate 17 were still under construction. For another, most of those hundred and fifty miles were entirely uphill. On this ridiculously hot Friday, even though it was only late morning, it seemed as though everyone in Phoenix was determined to get out of Dodge and head for the mountains.
Trucks passing other trucks didn’t necessarily get the hell out of the way in a hurry, so for much of the time, traffic slowed to a crawl. Not only that, the shoulder of the road was dotted with overheated stalled vehicles with their hoods open and their radiators steaming. Luckily, Steve’s Camaro managed the steep grades with no hitches and no overheating.
Once in Flagstaff, Steve had a hell of a time finding a place to stay. By two o’clock in the afternoon, No Vacancy signs were everywhere. He finally ended up in a scuzzy downtown hotel that reminded him of that old Roger Miller song about “no phone, no pool, no pets.” It wasn’t especially clean, either, but even without air-conditioning in the room, with the window open and a slight breeze, it was tolerable.
Whenever Steve was on the road, he made it a point to call his mother on Saturday morning, because now he was all she had. After her divorce from Jackson Roper, she had never remarried. As far as she was concerned, Frederick Chalmers had been the love of her life, and she had never gotten over losing him.
These days she wasn’t in the best of health, either. Decades of standing on her feet, first waiting tables and later managing the restaurant, had taken their toll. Her legs were a mess of varicose veins, and she’d worn compression stockings for years. In the last six months or so, things had gotten so bad that she’d finally been forced to sell the restaurant. As the only game in town, the Country Inn had been a going concern, and she’d gotten good money for it. The proceeds from the sale combined with living mortgage-free in the house Gramps had bought after liquidating his properties meant she was in good financial shape, but her lifelong dreams of traveling the world in retirement were now on hold.
After breakfast the next day, Steve rounded up a fistful of change and located the nearest payphone. Once he placed the call, he was surprised when it was answered not by his mother, but by Becky Thompson, his mother’s next-door neighbor.
“Oh, Stephen,” she said. “I’m so glad you called. Your mother asked me to wait here at the house this morning in case you did.”
“Mom’s not home?” he asked. “Where is she?”
“In the hospital in Bemidji. They took her there by ambulance the day before yesterday. She told me you were traveling and that she had no way to reach you.”
“Took her in by ambulance?” Steve repeated. “How come? What’s wrong?”
“She has a DDT,” Becky said breathlessly.
“You mean a DVT?” Steve asked. “A deep vein thrombosis.”
