Darling shook his head. “I don’t know. But goddamn women, are we sure that Dora threw away her main phone, or left it behind? Sure she didn’t call any relatives that the cops would know about?”
“She said she didn’t.”
“Yeah, but you know about women and cell phones,” Darling said. He chewed for a while. “She probably had all kinds of information on her main phone—e-mails and shopping stuff and phone numbers. Websites. If she turned it off, figuring that it wouldn’t hurt to take it with her...”
“I could call her back,” Poole said.
Darling thought about that for a moment, then shook his head. “Suppose something else...”
“Go ahead.”
“What if some federal agency figured out the burner she was using and started monitoring it...”
“Okay. I don’t know how they’d do that, but okay,” Poole said.
“She was talking to you about hiding the money and the copswere chasing her, and we figured they’d catch her. Then she said one was up ahead, on the road, and there was a helicopter overhead, and she threw the phone out the window. We know that much for sure. Now suppose one of the cops saw her do that. Or suppose they didn’t see her, but when they found out she didn’t have a phone, they figured she’d thrown it away, and they started calling that number until they heard it ringing. If they found that phone, it’d have the number of your burner on it. We’ve still got it and it’s still turned on.”
“Well... shit,” Poole said, glancing around the restaurant. There weren’t many patrons, and none looked like cops. “If all that happened, then why haven’t they grabbed us?”
“Because they wouldn’t know exactly where we’re at. We’ve been dropping service all the time. They might know more or less that we’re on I-90, heading west. If that’s what’s going on, we’ll run into a checkpoint that we can’t get out of.”
Poole rubbed his nose, picked up a french fry and shook it at Darling, and said, “All right. Goddamnit, I’m going to finish eating, I don’t care what they know. Then I’m going to buy some water and some snacks and gas... and then I’ll worry about it.”
“And we might be worried about nothing,” Darling said. “They might not have any idea of where we’re at.”
“Better safe,” Poole said.
When they finished eating, Poole drove the truck to a gas station and when they’d finished gassing up, he looked across the lot at an RV, stuck his head in the truck door and said to Darling, “Write down the phone number we got from the lesbos, then erase it from the burner and gimme the phone.”
Darling did that, and passed the phone to Poole. “What are you going to do?”
“Watch.” Poole ambled past the RV, where the owner was putting in diesel. “Nice vehicle,” he said. “Heading for California?”
“Yeah, and maybe up through Phoenix to the Grand Canyon and so on.” The RV had Michigan plates; the owner was a Midwesterner fleeing the oncoming winter, Poole thought.
“Good trip. Hotter than hell out here, though,” Poole said.
“Not a place I wanted to stop,” the man agreed.
“Well, take ’er easy,” Poole said. He walked around the back of the trailer, which had an exterior spare tire in a rack. He wedged the burner behind the tire and out of sight and then continued on into the store. He bought peanut butter crackers and water and orange soda, and a paper road map, carried them out to the truck.
“Saw that,” Darling said. “I like it.”
“They still got my picture, if we run into a checkpoint,” Poole said. He unfolded the map and traced his finger down to the south. “We go this way. Away from El Paso. Cross the border, then go up to El Paso on the other side, cross back over.”
“Oughta work, unless they’ve set up the checkpoint on the other side of town, right here.”
Poole looked at the map. “You know, they could have done that.” A young woman was gassing up a beige Nissan Cube at one of the other pumps, and Poole said, “Give me one more minute.”
“What are you doing?”
“Girl’s got Florida plates,” he said.
He got out of the truck again, walked over to the woman, and said, “You’re not heading eastbound on I-10, are you?”
She nodded, a little reserved talking to this man, and said, “Yes, me and my boyfriend. He’s inside.”
“We’re heading west, but we heard part of the westbound highway was closed off because of a wreck. You see anything like that?” Poole asked.
