now , though , as he approached the date of his original death , he worried that perhaps it was inevitable , that things were ruled by fate after all , and that some cosmic forcesome script written in the starsremained indifferent to the changes he had lived and the lessons he had learned and carried onward down a path that left him dead , late in the evening on february 11 , alone on a quiet , snow-peppered strip of freeway stretching between the downtowns of minneapolis and saint paul .