This is not New Age sentimentalism. This is simply common sense.
Now, in Bobby’s shower, as I scrubbed the soot off Orson, he continued to shiver. The water was warm. The shivers had nothing to do with the bath.
By the time I blotted the dog with several towels and fluffed him with a hair dryer that Pia Klick had left behind, his shakes had passed. While I dressed in a pair of Bobby’s blue jeans and a long-sleeve, blue cotton sweater, Orson glanced at the frosted window a few times, as if leery of whoever might be out there in the night, but his confidence appeared to be returning.
With paper towels, I wiped off my leather jacket and my cap. They still smelled of smoke, the cap more than the jacket.
In the dim light, I could barely read the words above the bill: Mystery Train. I rubbed the ball of my thumb across the embroidered letters, recalling the windowless concrete room where I’d found the cap, in one of the more peculiar abandoned precincts of Fort Wyvern.
Angela Ferryman’s words came back to me, her response to my statement that Wyvern had been closed for a year and a half: Some things don’t die. Can’t die. No matter how much we wish them dead.
I had another flashback to the bathroom at Angela’s house: a mental image of her death-startled eyes and the silent surprised oh of her mouth. Again, I was gripped by the conviction that I had overlooked an important detail regarding the condition of her body, and as before, when I tried to summon a more vivid memory of her blood-spattered face, it grew not clearer in my mind but fuzzier.
We’re screwing it up, Chris…bigger than we’ve ever screwed up before…and already there’s no way…to undo what’s been done.
The tacos—packed with shredded chicken, lettuce, cheese, and salsa—were delicious. We sat at the kitchen table to eat, instead of leaning over the sink, and we washed down the food with beer.
Although Sasha had fed him earlier, Orson cadged a few bits of chicken, but he couldn’t charm me into giving him another Heineken.
Bobby had turned on the radio, and it was tuned to Sasha’s show, which had just come on the air. Midnight had arrived. She didn’t mention me or introduce the song with a dedication, but she played “Heart Shaped World” by Chris Isaak, because it’s a favorite of mine.
Enormously condensing the events of the evening, I told Bobby about the incident in the hospital garage, the scene in Kirk’s crematorium, and the platoon of faceless men who pursued me through the hills behind the funeral home.
Throughout all of this, he only said, “Tabasco?”
“What?”
“To hotten up the salsa.”
“No,” I said. “This is killer just the way it is.”
He got a bottle of Tabasco sauce from the refrigerator and sprinkled it into his half-eaten first taco.
Now Sasha was playing “Two Hearts” by Chris Isaak.
For a while I repeatedly glanced through the window beside the table, wondering whether anyone outside was watching us. At first I didn’t think Bobby shared my concern, but then I realized that from time to time, he glanced intently, though with seeming casualness, at the blackness out there.
“Lower the blind?” I suggested.
“No. They might think I cared.”
We were pretending not to be intimidated.
“Who are they?”
He was silent, but I outwaited him, and at last he said, “I’m not sure.”
That wasn’t an honest answer, but I relented.
When I continued my story, rather than risk Bobby’s scorn, I didn’t mention the cat that led me to the culvert in the hills, but I described the skull collection arranged on the final two steps of the spillway. I told him about Chief Stevenson talking to the bald guy with the earring and about finding the pistol on my bed.
“Bitchin’ gun,” he said, admiring the Glock.
“Dad opted for laser sighting.”
“Sweet.”
Sometimes Bobby is as self-possessed as a rock, so calm that you have to wonder if he is actually listening to you. As a boy, he was occasionally like this, but the older he has gotten, the more that this uncanny composure has settled over him. I had just brought him astonishing news of bizarre adventures, and he reacted as if he were listening to basketball scores.
Glancing at the darkness beyond the window, I wondered if anyone out there had me in a gun sight, maybe in the cross hairs of a night scope. Then I figured that if they had meant to shoot us, they would have cut