In Cairo, Illinois he visited a grocery store, where he bought a quart of milk (2%) and a spatula.

Three days later I caught up with him in Prospect, Kentucky. He purchased two sticks of dynamite at a hardware store, giving his name as "Spencer Peterson". At the Motel 6 he spent the night in, he was registered as "Marvin McKinley". He departed the next morning. Left behind in his motel room was an empty quart of milk. The carton was sent to the lab, to analyze the residue inside it. It was found to be Elmer's glue.

He didn't turn up for almost a month. The Agency was getting anxious, and I could do nothing but file my expense reciepts. Then a report came in- he was in Memphis, Tennessee. The trail in Memphis was warm; he'd left only a few hours before my arrival. In a pawn shop downtown he'd purchased an old bolt-action rifle and a toaster oven. A worker at the Greyhound depot recognized the photograph: he was taking the bus southwest, to Jackson. In Jackson, I found he had gotten off at a rest stop halfway and hadn't gotten back on.

The highway patrol found the bodies of a family of three just off the road. All three had been shot at close range with a .38 revolver. Their identity was checked and we knew to look for a 1984 Chevy station wagon.

Fifty-two hours later the driverless station wagon plowed into a gas station on the way to the Gulf Coast. The accelerator was braced to the floor, and when it crashed through the front of the station it crippled an attendant behind the counter. I beat the pavement up and down the area; no one knew the man in the picture.

His movements made no sense, had no objective.

A week of silence later, the Agency informed me I was to come in out of the field. Other agents would continue the work; I was to make a report to my bureau chief in Virginia. The order was bullshit. I'd told them everything that had happened as I went along- it was just their way of letting me know that I'd failed.

On the plane, I thought about the last few months. The man I had been chasing had never been caught; his name was not known. His movements were reported, tracked, collated, indexed, charted, analyzed, and investigated. Every action he had taken, every store or motel he had patronized, every personal effect we had recovered, was dutifilly catalogued and filed.

His crime was unknown - to me.

At the Agency's compound in Virginia I was debriefed. My comments were transcribed, and copies found themselves into both my file and that of my target. My opinions and predictions were noted and passed on to the agents in the field who replaced me. I was granted a long-overdue leave of absence. I think they were as glad to see me go for a while as I was to leave.

The next three weeks I spent fishing, swimming, and reading on the South Carolina coast. I didn't think about the man I had pursued, so briefly. The episode was a mark on my Career Summary.

On the first morning of my fourth week, when I was getting cabin fever and considering a trip, the man walked up the steps and knocked on my front door. I opened the door, bleary eyed. My vision sharpened very fast.

"I understand you've been looking for something. Perhaps it was me?"

I stared at him; I'd never seen him in person, but he was as nondescript as he could be. Average height, brown hair, neither fat nor thin, dark eyes, and dressed in comfortable clothing. He spoke again.

"Yes? Is something wrong?"

I made a vague motion and he came in. Without asking he took a seat against the wall. I took a seat myself, thinking that my sidearm was on the closet shelf, a room away.

"You have been looking for me, have you not?"

"I'm not sure I know what you mean."

"Don't be ridiculous. They've taken you off the case, haven't they?"

"What do you want?"

"Very little, very little. But in exchange I will give you something you want, something you want quite a bit."

"Talk."

"No, not talk. Offer. How would you like to see your wife again?"

Charleston was three hours away. He drove; his car was a 1987 Toyota Camry. There were bloodstains on the back seat. I decided not to ask.

Emily had vanished three years before, while I was involved in a case. When I got back, the letter she left was two months old. I hadn't tried to contact home in four - the agency has rules about these things. Lying next to the letter were papers from a lawyer. The papers were cold; the letter was angry, it seemed to flare at me as I read it. There were a lot of things about love and callousness in it, things I remembered that she'd said over and over again to my deaf ears. My time with her was a series of brief intervals, like stops on a train. She decided the train wasn't going anywhere, and got off. I'd tried to find her, to explain, but the agency wouldn't help me and her relatives just hung up the phone.

Now this nameless fugitive was taking me to her. I didn't ask how he knew or who he was or what was going on. We hadn't spoken since we left the house. I still didn't know his price, but that was the last thing on my mind. Emily filled my thoughts; what would I say? what had she been doing these last three years? They'd passed for me in a blur of work and an occasional prostitute. This was the first vacation I'd had in two years, years where my efficiency rating was the highest in the agency. Until this last case, where I spent four months pursuing the man sitting next to me. He drove in silence, with a complacent determination that made me keep my questions to myself. Perhaps he appreciated this, I don't know.

We drove into the outskirts of Charleston. We turned this way and that through the suburbs, until all at once we stopped before a small house.

"She's in there," he said. I stepped out of the car and walked to the front door.

It was closing in on lunchtime. I rang the doorbell, then knocked for good measure. A woman I once knew opened the door.

For a long cold minute she stared at me. I returned the gaze, searching her eyes for a friend.

There wasn't one. "I thought you would have found me before now. I was almost beginning to respect you for not doing this."

"May we talk, please?"

"We have nothing to discuss. I'm happy, something you couldn't make me. Leave it as it is. Don't do this again."

I blinked once, and the door closed.

Back in the car, I sat, dumbfounded. The cipher sitting in the driver's seat turned and smiled slowly.

"Was it worth it?"

I didn't answer, couldn't answer, just stared through the window at suburban bliss out of my reach.

He started the car and pulled out.

"I hope so."

It was a fair trade, I suppose. The only question left in my life had been answered. In exchange, I joined him on the road. Neither of us were wanted for a crime. The agency existed only to pursue us; we existed only to be pursued. Archetypes of cloaks and daggers and shattered men, we made our way through a country of dada, of absurdist actions and pointless wanderings.