The Instant Enemy by Ross MacDonald

tasted of highway fumes, while he phoned his wife. Then he phoned the Power Plus station in Santa Teresa.
    “They’re open till midnight,” he told me. “And the man remembered Sandy.”
    My watch said nine fifteen. It had been a long day, and I expected to be up most of the night. I climbed into the back seat and went to sleep.

chapter
12
    T HE TURNING OFF of the engine woke me from dreams of supersonic flight. My car was standing beside the pumps in the hard white glare of the Power Plus station. A young man in coveralls came out of the office. He had one thin leg and wore a special boot. He moved with great rapidity, though it was late and his face was drawn.
    “What can I do for you?” he asked Sebastian.
    “I called you earlier. About my daughter.” His voice was low and uncertain, like a beggar’s.
    “I see.” The pain and fatigue in the attendant’s face turned into sympathy, and altered the quality of the transaction. “Is she a runaway, something like that?”
    “Something like that.” I got out of the car to talk to him. “Was she driving a green compact?”
    “Yeah. She stopped it right where your car is standing, asked me to fill the tank. It was nearly empty, it took over nineteen gallons.”
    “Did you see the others?”
    “There was only the one other, the big fellow with the crew cut. He stayed in the car until he saw her phoning. She
said
she wanted to go to the ladies’ room. I left the pump running and went to the office to get the key for her. Then she asked me if she could use the phone for a distance call. I said, if she made it collect, which she did. I stayed there to monitor her, like. Then the other one came charging in and made her quit.”
    “Did he use force?”
    “He didn’t hit her. He put his arms around her, more like a hug. Then she broke down and cried, and he took her back to the car. She paid for the gas and drove away herself, in the direction of town.” He gestured toward Santa Teresa.
    “You didn’t see a gun?”
    “No. She acted afraid of him, though.”
    “Did he say anything?”
    “Just when he came charging into the office. He said she was crazy to call her folks, that they were her worst enemies.”
    Sebastian muttered something inarticulate.
    “Hers, or his?” I said.
    “Both of them. I think he said ‘
their
worst enemies.’ ”
    “You’re a good witness. What’s your name?”
    “Fred Cram.”
    I offered him a dollar.
    “You don’t have to pay me.” He spoke with gentle force. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more. Maybe I should have tried to stop them, or called the police or something. Only I didn’t think I had the right.”
    An old Chevrolet painted with brown undercoat rolled in from the street and stopped beside the pumps. A couple of teen-age boys occupied the front seat. The bare feet of two others projected from the rear window. The driver honked for service.
    I asked Fred Cram again: “Are you sure there wasn’t a third person in the car?”
    He pondered the question. “Not unless you count the dog.”
    “What kind of a dog?”
    “I don’t know. It sounded like a big one.”
    “You didn’t see it?”
    “It was in the trunk. I could hear it breathing and kind of whining.”
    “How do you know it was a dog?”
    “She said so.”
    Sebastian groaned.
    “You mean it was a human being in there?” the young man said.
    “I don’t know.”
    Fred Cram gave me a long questioning look. His face saddened as he realized the depth of the trouble he had dipped into. Then the teen-ager honked again, imperiously, and he swung away on his mismatched legs.
    “Jesus,” Sebastian said in the car. “It really happened. We’ve got to get her back, Archer.”
    “We will.” I didn’t let him hear my doubts, the doubt that we could find her, the graver doubt that the law would let him keep her if we did. “The best contribution you can make is to get in touch with your wife and stay by a telephone. Sandy phoned home once, she may