The hitchhiker drops the folded pages with a wheeze. He traces in his mind their trail of blood. It leads right up to and beyond the dual murders in Nebraska. It follows this bus across the industrial flatland of central Illinois; and somewhere out there it follows the driver.

He wonders, with an uneasiness that is made all the worse for seeming so out of place, if and how their two paths will reconvene. If he’s correct in assuming that the driver had Mr. Warshansky on the other end of the line in the truck stop, then the odds are good that he still lives in that brick bungalow on Clayton Street.

As it grows darker, the hitchhiker gets a clearer view of his reflection in the window. It looks less like himself than he remembers. The face reminds him of another man completely. The angle is exactly that of the driver’s, as the hitchhiker witnessed it from the passenger seat for nearly two days on the road. He sinks back into the seat until the landscape takes over. The surreal vision of cows standing in snowy fields sloping up towards factory smokestacks sees him off to sleep. As he goes, the woman next to him is still yammering on.

“You just don’t know what kind of crazies are running around out there. They’re everywhere.”