Chapter 45: Day 35 — Summary, Analysis, and Key Themes
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Summary
The chapter opens at 8:19 p.m., 47 hours after Grace's disappearance. Anna is running home, pursued by the rolling head she has seen before. She tries to convince herself the sounds are just branches or bugs, but she knows the gnashing teeth are real. The head circles her, vanishing into the brush, then reappearing behind her. She makes it to the porch steps, but the head nips at her ankle just as she slams the front door.
Inside, her sudden entrance startles Chris, who drops his beer; Robbie, who was slumped against the coffee table; Dorothy, who is chain-smoking on the couch; and Gran, who rushes out of her room. Anna is breathless and trembling. She tells them she saw the head, and for the first time she isn't embarrassed to say it. Robbie tries to reassure her that it was probably a raccoon, but Anna insists it chased her and rolled around her. Chris warns her about rabid raccoons, but Anna then reveals something more urgent: she saw a car down the road with blood on it, and she identifies it as belonging to the fat man from the hotel.
Chris immediately springs into action. He tells Robbie to get the rifle and his boots, and the two men head out in the meat wagon. Dorothy follows a moment later with the car key, leaving Anna on the porch with Gran. At the abandoned Lincoln Continental, the family gathers. Robbie circles the car with the rifle aimed at it, while Chris inspects the interior without touching anything. He concludes that Grace wasn't in the car against her will, because there are no smudges on the glass—though Anna privately wonders about the trunk.
Luke Fisher and Sam Peltier arrive with the tribal police. Luke tells Robbie to put the rifle away. Chris explains that the car door was already open. Luke examines the car and finds a blood trail leading from the open driver's door into the brush. There's no damage to the car and no blood inside. Sam notes the car isn't from the rez, and Luke runs the plates—it's a local plate from Sportsman's Paradise. Chris follows the blood trail to the edge of the asphalt, where it disappears into the brush. Anna whispers