The state of Missouri was less like a war zone due to more covert body snatching. Agents and civilian employees had been gathering here for hours. He planned to address his troops en masse tomorrow. He would deliver an uplifting line of bull, impressions of progress in the hunt for a serial killer also known by a song title, “Mack the Knife.”

Dale Berman’s favorite rendition of that fine old standard was sung by Bobby Darin, and it conjured up Las Vegas nights, smoky rooms and the clink of ice in a glass of booze. It was the only murder song he knew. Once, the boxer’s c hild had been able to hum more of it for him. But these days, Dodie Finn only had a few notes left in her crazy little brain. He had recently issued memos to the agents who traveled with him and to those flung out along Route 66: Anyone caught singing that song, humming or whistling that song, would be dismissed or shot at the discretion of the SAC, the special agent in charge-himself.

The phone was ringing in his pocket. He responded while waving his guest to a chair and a waiting glass of rye. He held up a bottle. “Your favorite brand, right?”

After listening to his caller, Berman sighed and tossed the cell phone on the bed. Turning to face the civilian forensics man, he feigned a smile. “The Illinois situation just keeps getting better and better. Could I have any more shit on my plate today, Eddie? I don’t t hink so.”

The forensics man, Eddie Hobart, held a sheaf of papers in one hand and a half-empty glass in the other. He was clearly waiting for his reprimand and probably wondering why it was taking so long. “I guess you’ve seen Agent Cadwaller’s report already.”

“No, Eddie, can’t s ay I have. The paperwork caught fire while the man was still holding it in his hand.” Dale Berman clicked his butane lighter and lit a cigarette. “He’s rewriting it now.”

Brad Cadwaller’s new report would not lay blame on any member of the forensics team. No one in Dale Berman’s c o mmand ever made mistakes-not on paper.

How could Riker possibly sleep through the noise of the portable siren perched on the roof of the Mercedes?

Charles Butler quite enjoyed the racket-so invigorating-and most of all he loved the sensation of speed. Following Riker’s instructions, he had taken the interstate highway, the quicker to close the gap between themselves and Mallory. Ninety miles an hour was his personal best lawbreak-ing in this evening traffic, and he hoped that his passenger, upon awakening, would not be too disappointed in their progress.

His eyes strayed to the sleeping rider. Should he awaken Riker to tell him that something was not quite right? No, he lacked the heart to disturb this man who had driven eight hundred miles in one mad flight. Still, the problem of time and distance would not go away. The dashboard was littered with Riker’s notes on Mallory’s g asoline purchases between New York and Chicago. If the detective had not been bone tired at the outset of this journey, he would have worked it out for himself with only the times listed at every stop. A V o lkswagen could not have covered that distance so quickly. Even the Mercedes could not do it.

Might she be driving a different type of car?

Charles’s mind was full of maps and distances. When Mallory had suggested an onboard navigation computer for this car, his eidetic memory had enabled him to recite a virtual atlas of roads for her. She had grudgingly admitted that he was an onboard navigator. As a quasi-Luddite, he had relished that rare win in his ongoing battle against all things computerized and sanitized. He missed those arguments. He missed Mallory.

So he argued with her in absentia.

How could you outstrip the performance of a superior automobile?

No explanation would work with hard logic and geography, time and space.

Oh, fool, I.

The mechanical paradox linked him back to another odd thing: Mallory was totally immersed in high technology, and yet she was traveling without a computer. Perhaps she had exchanged the love of one machine for another. Had she tinkered with her car? Over the years of their friendship, he had never known her to take an interest in automotive engineering. Well, what was an automobile anymore but a mass of computer chips that ate gasoline? Ah, but no amount of tinkering would change the fact that, in comparison to his own car, her V o lkswagen had a smaller, relatively low-performance engine.

Or not.

He wondered if it was possible to blend a Beetle with a race car?

Twenty-five years after the letters were written, it was nearing the end of another blue-sky day, and a low-riding sun shone warm and bright. Mallory barreled down the Mother Road playing vintage rock ’n’ roll. Twenty miles later, the sky was clouding over, and she was searching for the next landmark along this stretch of road.

It was the right day in May, the right hour, but decades late.

The letter had described a line of trees, and there was none. She stared at the stark acreage and a row of thick stumps. Only the cement foundation of the old county store remained. And there were no brilliant colors in the sky, not today. The sun was just a patch of lighter gray on the overcast horizon line, a sign that the regional drought would soon end.

However, this stop had not been a complete waste of time. Music selections in the letters made more sense to her now. The current song, an upbeat tune, was all wrong for a sky that promised rain. She flicked one finger around the wheel of her iPod until the car stereo played a ballad to match the cloudy day of another letter, and now Bob Dylan sang to her:

“-and you better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone-”

With the push of a button, the convertible’s black ragtop rose to give her cover, and Mallory latched it but left the windows open. She unfolded a letter, taking great care lest it fall apart with one more reading. She was seeking the description of the way the world used to be at this time of day, that time of life.

“-the present now will later be past-”

A hit-and-run gust of wind stole her letter, ripped it from her hand and escaped through the passenger window. She left the car at a dead run to chase the airborne sheet of paper across the open land, teased by the rise and fall of it as she ran toward it. Her angry eyes turned upward, as if to pin the blame on a Sunday-school God, Whom she had abandoned when she was six, going on seven, the year her mother died.

But she would not believe in such beings anymore. Kathy Mallory was a child of high technology and cold logic. Her nemesis of the moment was only the wind that carried her letter away, farther now and faster. Done with anger, on came panic-a novel emotion for a woman who carried a very large gun, someone who lacked a normal, healthy sense of fear. She was afraid of nothing until she heard the rumble of thunder. A storm was coming. As the letter rose higher and higher in the air, she was afraid it would be lost or wrecked by rain. And now her race was run against time.

The first drops fell. More panic. And then her anger returned in a twisted form of faith that her old enemy was truly up there, hiding from her, stealing from her again.

That Great Bastard in the sky, Mother Killer.

“God damn it!” she yelled into the wind, hands balling into fists, just six years old again, going on seven, and maddened by events beyond a child’s control. “Give it back !”

In that moment, the letter hovered in the air, motionless, levitating there, as birds do when they fly against the wind. Slowly, it drifted to earth. She ran toward it, heart a banging, as if this bit of paper meant more to her than life.

The laptop was open, and Special Agent Dale Berman scanned recent communiqués from Chicago. Staring at the photographs, he moved his head slowly from side to side. He had only finished half of Eddie Hobart’s field report, but everything was clear. At last he understood how the team of snatch-and-run gravediggers had wound up in a confrontation with a state trooper in the borderlands of Illinois.