and still intensifying.”
The buzzing started again and this time I could read the crawl: WEATHER ALERT FOR YORK, CUMBERLAND, ANDROSCOGGIN, OXFORD, AND CASTLE COUNTIES UNTIL 2 AM AUGUST 1. POSSIBILITY OF SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS 90%. SUCH STORMS MAY PRODUCE HEAVY RAIN, HIGH WINDS, GOLF BALL–SIZED HAIL. OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES NOT RECOMMENDED.
No shit, Sherlock, I thought.
“These cells can’t dissipate or change course,” Charlie said. He spoke with the calmness of either madness or absolute certainty. “They can’t. She won’t last much longer, and I’m too old and sick to start over with someone else. I want you to bring a golf cart around to the kitchen loading dock, and be ready to go at a moment’s notice.”
“To Skytop,” I said.
He smiled his lopsided smile. “Go now. I need to keep an eye on these storms. They’re producing over a hundred lightning-strikes an hour in the Albany area, isn’t that wonderful?”
Not the word I would have chosen. I couldn’t remember how many volts he’d said a single lightning-strike produced, but I knew it was a lot.
In the millions.
• • •
Charlie’s call-bell went off again a little after 5 PM. I went upstairs, part of me hoping to see him downhearted and angry, another part as damnably curious as ever. I thought that was the part that would be satisfied, because the day was darkening rapidly in the west, and I could already hear mumbles of thunder, distant but approaching. An army in the sky.
Jacobs was still listing to starboard, but excitement—he was fairly bursting with it—made him look years younger. His mahogany box was on the end table. He had shut off the TV in favor of his laptop. “Look at this, Jamie! It’s beautiful!”
The screen displayed NOAA’s projection of the evening’s weather. It showed a tightening cone of orange and red that went directly over Castle County. The timeline projected the highest probability of heavy weather arriving between seven and eight. I glanced at my watch and saw it was five fifteen.
“Isn’t it? Isn’t it beautiful?”
“If you say so, Charlie.”
“Sit down, but get me a glass of water first, if you will. I have some explaining to do, and I think there’s just time. Although we’ll want to go soon, yes we will. In carny terminology, we’ll want to DS.” He cackled.
I got a bottle of water from the bar refrigerator and poured it into a Waterford glass—nothing but the best for guests of the Cooper Suite. He sipped and popped his lips in appreciation, a leathery smack I could have done without. Thunder rumbled. He looked toward the sound, his smile that of a man anticipating the arrival of an old friend. Then he turned his attention back to me.
“I made a great deal of money playing Pastor Danny, as you know. But instead of spending it on private jets, heated doghouses, and gold-plated bathroom fixtures, I spent mine on two things. One was privacy—I’ve had enough of Jesus-shouting pagans to last me a lifetime. The other was private investigation firms, a dozen in all, the best of the best, located in a dozen major American cities. I tasked them with finding and tracking certain people suffering from certain diseases. Comparative rarities. Eight such illnesses in all.”
“Sick people? Not your cures? Because that’s what you told me.”
“Oh, they tracked a representative number of cures, too—you weren’t the only one interested in aftereffects, Jamie—but that wasn’t their main job. Starting ten years ago, they found several hundred of these unfortunate sufferers, and sent me regular updates. Al Stamper minded the dossiers until he left my employ; since then, I’ve done it myself. Many of those unlucky people have since died; others replaced them. Man is born to illness and sorrow, as you know.”
I didn’t answer, but the thunder did. The sky in the west was now dark with bad intentions.
“As my studies progressed—”
“Was a book called De Vermis Mysteriis part of your studies, Charlie?”
He looked startled, then relaxed. “Good for you. De Vermis wasn’t just a part of my studies, it was the basis of them. Prinn went mad, you know. He ended his days in a German castle, studying abstruse mathematics and eating bugs. Grew his fingernails long, tore out his throat with them one night, and died at the age of thirty-seven, painting equations on the floor of his room in blood.”
“Really?”
He gave the one-sided shrug, accompanied by the one-sided grin. “Who knows for sure? A cautionary tale if true, but the histories of such visionaries were written by people interested