“Lawyer from Davenport. Yesterday. Heart attack while bow-hunting for carp.”
Barney was running for reelection, also on the GOP slate, and so when he finished the autopsy, for the first time in his career Clyde actually gained some benefit from being affiliated with the Republican party: he was the first person to know about the coroner’s report, which stated that Marwan Habibi had probably died as the result of having his head staved in by several blows from a heavy bladelike implement, not unlike an oar. Clyde announced this fact to a waiting camera crew when he exited the building. But it probably did him as much harm as good; it just reminded everyone about the rowboat.
Clyde drove to Lincoln Way, headed east through the industrial flatlands of east Nishnabotna and through the strip malls on the periphery of town. The colored lights seemed to hold Maggie’s attention and stun her into momentary silence, or maybe she was simply looking straight out the windshield at the galactic magnificence of the Star-Spangled Truck Stop, whose giant electronic signboards could be seen for miles away; they had been specifically engineered to wake up even deeply slumbering truckers on I-45 and give them ample time to decelerate and take the Nishnabotna exit.
Once past the Star-Spangled Truck Stop, they were plunged instantly into total darkness. The boundary between city and farm was abrupt in this part of the world, and strip-mall parking lots typically ended in cornfields.
Heading south on I-45, they clipped through the southern extremity of Nishnabotna before crossing the Iowa River. Almost immediately, Clyde took the exit for New 30, which took off west-northwest across empty cornfields and the occasional tiny cluster of houses until it joined up again with Old 30, aka Lincoln Way. At this point Clyde would veer off onto a ramp, slow the Murder Car way down, and hang a hard right, bringing it all the way around to an easterly heading on Lincoln Way. This intersection was shared by a used-car dealership, a Casey’s minimart, and a down-at-the-heels roadhouse that seemed to change ownership every few months. Or at least that had been the pattern until last year, when a couple of women had bought it and turned it into a cowgirl bar—the sort of cowgirl bar where cowboys were about as welcome as diamondback rattlesnakes. The place was popular among women affiliated with the university. But Nishnabotnans had heard about it and liked to titillate themselves by gossiping about who had been sighted there.
One night, finding that the gas needle was on empty and that Maggie was not sleeping anyway, Clyde stopped at the Casey’s for a fill-up and a cup of coffee. As he topped off the tank, squeezing the trigger to fire additional quart or half-gallon bursts of gasohol down the pipe, he heard loud Patsy Cline music spilling out of an open door on the side of the cowgirl bar. Looking up at the sound, he saw a couple of cowgirls sharing an amorous moment against the side wall of the building. One of them had her back to Clyde; she had long blond hair and looked like a college student. Her friend was leaning back against the wall of the bar and had grown-up hair, frosted and set. It was Grace Chandler, who, along with her husband—local sports legend and defrocked broadcaster Buck Chandler—had sold Clyde his apartment building. She was a vivacious and pleasant woman, smarter than her husband. She had always seemed sad to Clyde, until now.
From the Casey’s, Clyde could drive all the way through the middle of Wapsipinicon and Nishnabotna on Lincoln Way, a stretch of road lousy with stoplights. At this time of night no cars were active to trip the sensors buried in the road, and so the lights were running on automatic program. As long as he hewed to the speed limit, Clyde could drive all the way through those thirty-two stoplights without stopping or even slowing down. When he sensed that he was riding a wave, he would simply set the vehicle’s cruise control at thirty-five and keep the station wagon aimed straight down the center of the road.
But occasionally some nocturnal driver would pull up on a cross street and trip the sensor, throwing the entire chain of traffic lights into a state of chaos. Since the land was flat and Lincoln Way was straight, all of the lights, for miles into the distance, were visible at once. The results were almost palpable. Clyde could see the headlights of the interloper, lurking in the side street, and he could watch the lights turning red in chain reaction up and down the length of the street.