more than a dry throat and a face that looked ten years older than it had going in.
At the motel, Regina told Warberg what Arnie had said and asked him if there was any chance he might be right.
Warberg looked thoughtful. 'Yes, that's a possible defence,' he said. 'But it would be a helluva lot more possible if Arnie was the first domino in line. He's not. There's a used-car dealer here in Albany named Henry Buck. He was the catcher. He's been arrested too.'
'What has he said?' Michael asked.
'I have no way of knowing. But when I tried to I speak to his lawyer, he declined to speak with me. I find that ominous. If Buck talks, he puts the onus on Arnie. I'll bet you my house and lot that Buck can testify your son knew that secret compartment was there, and that's bad.' Warberg looked at them closely.
'You see, what your boy said to you is really only half-smart, Mrs Cunningham. I'll be talking to him tomorrow, before they move him back to Pennsylvania. What I hope to make him see is that there's a possibility this whole thing could come down on his head.'
The first flakes of snow began to swirl out of the heavy sky as they turned onto Steve and Vicky's street. Is it snowing in Libertyville yet? Arnie wondered, and touched the keys on their leather tab in his pocket. Probably it was.
Christine was still in Darnell's Garage, impounded. That was all right. At least she was out of the weather. He would pick her up again. In time.
The previous weekend was like a blurred bad dream. His parents, haranguing him in the little white room, had seemed to bear the disconnected faces of strangers; they were heads talking in a foreign language. The lawyer they had hired, Warley or Warmly or whatever, kept talking about something he called the domino theory, and about the need to get out of 'the condemned building before the whole thing falls down on your' head, boy - there are two states and three Federal agencies bringing up the wrecking balls.'
But Arnie was more worried about Christine.
It seemed clearer and clearer to him that Roland D. LeBay was either with him or hovering someplace near he was, perhaps, coalescing inside him. This idea did not frighten Arnie; it comforted him. But he had to be careful. Not of Junkins; he felt that Junkins had only suspicions, and that they all lay in wrong directions, radiating out from Christine rather than in toward her.
But Darnell . . . there could be problems with Will. Yes, real problems.
That first night in Albany, after his mother and father had gone back to their motel, Arnie had been conducted to a holdin cell, where he had fallen asleep with surprising ease and speed. And he had had a dream - not quite a nightmare, but something that seemed terribly disquieting. He had awakened watchfully in the middle of the night, his body running with sweat.
He had dreamed that Christine had been reduced in scale to a tiny '58 Plymouth no longer than a man's hand. It was on a slotcar track surrounded by HO-scale scenery that was amazingly apt - here was a plastic street that could be Basin Drive, here was another that could be JFK Drive, where Moochie Welch had been killed. A Lego building that looked exactly like Libertyville High. Plastic houses, paper trees . . .
. . . and a gigantic, hulking Will Darnell was at the controls that dictated how fast or how slowly the tiny Fury ran through all of this. His breath wheezed in and out of his damaged lungs with a windstorm sound.
You don't want to open your mouth, kiddo, Will said ' He loomed over this scale-model world like the Amazing Colossal Man. You don't want to frig with me because I'm in control; I can do this -
And slowly, Will began to turn the control knob over toward FAST.
No! Arnie tried to scream. No, don't do that, please! I love her! Please, you'll kill her!
On the track, the tiny Christine raced through the tiny Libertyville faster and faster, her rear end switching on the curves as she shimmied on the far edge of centrifugal force, that dish-shaped mystery, Now she was simply a blur of white-over-red, her engine a high, angry wasp-whine.
Please! Arnie screamed. Pleeeeeaaaaase!
At last, Will had begun to turn the control back, looking grimly pleased. The little car began