We made it in a little under two and a half, the Mustang and me, even allowing for a pileup coming over the pass where a truck had run into another truck and the CHPs were still scraping the pieces off the freeway. I hadn’t been up that way in years. On the run north I usually take the coast road because it’s prettier, and it’s a hell of a long way to go just to buy a bushel of grapes. But it was still there, the San Joaquin, as flat as the palm of your hand and a lot richer, also hotter, the towns looking about what they’d always looked like and no sign of that weird morning fog they get up there. The night before, I’d told Mr. Fletcher I was Robin’s doctor. I told him she’d disappeared and that I was worried about her condition and that under no circumstances was he to let her leave till I got there. I told him I was on my way. He was an ineffectual old geezer, closer to seventy than anything else. If he’d believed me over the phone, he sure didn’t in broad daylight, on his front porch, though I suppose it didn’t help that my face looked like the last barber who’d worked on it had had St.
