C H A P T E R Twelve Carl Oakley sat in the Cadillac behind rolled-up tinted windows, wearing a hat and dark glasses and hoping he looked enough like Earle Conniston from a distance to pass the test. He twisted in his seat to sweep the picnic area and the cottonwood-sycamore copse that surrounded it; nothing stirred except a few birds and a few leaves, roughed up by the wind. He looked at his watch, because the dashboard clock like all dashboard clocks did not work—almost three hours since he had arrived. The engine had begun to overheat and he had switched it off, killing the air-conditioner; he had started it up at fifteen-minute intervals to cool down the interior. In these hills the heat wasn’t too bad but he was covered with a nervous glaze of oil-sweat. He chewed a cigar and felt an acid pain in his gut—the sense that it was already too late. They had likely murdered Terry long since: he ought to call in the police. But the police would insist on talking to Earle. Forty-eight hours ago Oakley had considered himself an honest man, within the acknowledged flexibility of business morals.
