the top of the high stump. Once past, he relaxed his hand and the Tomcat sank back to its previous altitude, eighteen inches above the ground.
'Yes, she just came up with her bit and her hackamore,' Bobbi said, sounding faintly amazed. 'There was a time when she might have taken me, too. As things are now, she never had a chance.'
Gardener felt cold. There were a lot of ways a person could interpret a remark like that, weren't there?
'I'm still surprised that it took you only one evening to convince her,' Gardener said. 'I thought Patricia McCardle was bad, but your sister made ole Patty look like Annette Funicello.'
'I just wiped off some of this makeup. When she saw what was underneath, she screamed and left so fast you would have thought there were rockets in her heels. It was actually pretty funny.'
It was plausible. It was so plausible that the temptation to believe it was almost insuperable. Unless you ignored the simple fact that the lady under discussion couldn't have gone anywhere in a hurry without help. The lady could barely walk without help.
No, Gardener thought. She never left. The only question is whether you killed her or if she's out in the goddam shed with Peter.
'How long do the physical changes go on, Bobbi?' Gardener asked.
'Not much longer,' Bobbi said, and Gardener thought again that Bobbi had never been able to lie worth shit. 'Here we are. Park it over by the lean-to.'
4
The following evening they knocked off early - the heat was still holding, and neither of them felt capable of going on until the last light died. They returned to the house, pushed food around on their plates, even ate some of it. With the dishes washed, Gardener said he thought he would go for a walk.
'Oh?' Bobbi was looking at him with that wary expression which had become one of her main stocks in trade. 'I would have thought you'd gotten enough exercise today for anyone.'
'Sun's down now,' Gard said easily. 'It's cooler. No bugs. And . He looked clear-eyed at Bobbi. 'If I go out on the porch, I'm going to take a bottle. If I take a bottle, I'm going to get drunk. If I go for a long walk and come back tired, maybe I can fall into bed sober for one night.'
All of this was true enough ... but * there was another truth nested inside it, like one Chinese box inside another. Gardener looked at Bobbi and waited to see if she would go hunting for that inner box.
She didn't.
'All right,' she said, 'but you know I don't care how much you drink, Gard. I'm your friend, not your wife.'
No, you don't care how much I drink - you've made it very easy for me to drink all I want. Because it neutralizes me.
He walked along Route 9 past Justin Hurd's place, and when he struck the Nista Road, he turned left and moved along at a good pace, his arms swinging easily. The last month's labor had toughened him more than he would have believed - not so long ago even a two-mile walk such as this would have left him rubber-legged and winded.
Still, it was eerie. No whippoorwills greeted the encroaching twilight; no dog barked at him. Most of the houses were dark. No TVs flickered inside the few lighted windows he passed.
Who needs Barney Miller reruns when you can 'become' instead? Gardener thought.
By the time he reached the sign reading ROAD ENDS 200 YARDS, it was almost full dark, but the moon was rising and the night was very bright. At the end of the road he reached a heavy chain strung between two posts. A rusty, bullet-holed NO TRESPASSING sign hung from it. Gard stepped over the chain, kept walking, and was soon standing in an abandoned gravel pit. The moonlight on its weedy sides was white as bone. The silence made Gardener's scalp prickle.
What had brought him here? His own 'becoming' he supposed - something he had picked out of Bobbi's mind without even knowing he'd done it. It must have been that, because whatever had brought him out here had been a lot stronger than just a hunch.
To the left there was a thick triangular scar against the whiteness of the undisturbed gravel. This stuff had been moved around. Gardener walked over, shoes crunching. He dug into the fresher gravel, found nothing, moved, dug another hole, found nothing, moved, dug a third, found nothing