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“When we gave Robertson the slip in the church, he must’ve been angry. But why he decided to take it out on the building, I don’t know.” “Two cars are on the way to St. Bart’s, no sirens. They might even be there now. But vandalism—that doesn’t measure up to the horrors you said he’s going to commit.” “No, sir. Not close. And there’s less than three hours till August fifteenth.” “If we can park his butt in jail overnight for vandalism, we’ll have an excuse to poke around in his life. Maybe that’ll give us a chance to figure out the bigger thing he’s up to.”
I checked my watch. Midnight—and August 15—seemed like a tsunami, building height and power, racing toward us with silent but deadly force.
CHAPTER 21
I told her about the black room. Licking corn-fritter crumbs off her elegant fingers, she said, “Listen to me, odd one.” “I’m all ears.” “They’re big, but they’re not all of you. Open them wide now and hear this: Don’t go in that black room again.” “It doesn’t exist anymore.” “Don’t even go looking for it, hoping it’ll come back.” “That never even crossed my mind.” “Yes, it did,” she said.
“It’s the gate to Hell. If you go looking for it, and you find it, and you wind up in Hell, I’m not going to go down there looking for you and pull your ass out of the fire.” “Your warning is duly noted.”
On more than one occasion, I have asked her to marry me. Though we both agree that we are soul mates and that we will be together forever, she has always shied from my proposals with something like, I love you madly, desperately, Oddie, so madly that I would cut off my right hand for you, if that made any sense as a proof of love. But as for this marriage thing—let’s put a pin in it.
“So…you mean you’re accepting my proposal?” “Silly, I accepted it ages ago.” Off my look of bewilderment, she said, “Oh, not with a conventional ‘Yes, darling, I’m yours,’ but I accepted in so many words.” “I didn’t interpret ‘put a pin in it’ as meaning yes.” Brushing swordfish crumbs off my shirt, she said, “You have to learn to listen with more than your ears.” “What orifice do you suggest I listen with?” “Don’t be crude. It doesn’t become you. I mean, sometimes you have to listen with your heart.”
“You’re as smart as anyone I’ve ever known…and yet so simple. It’s a lovely combination. Brains and innocence. Wisdom and naivete. Sharp wit and genuine sweetness.” “That’s your favorite thing about me?” “At the moment, yes.” “Well, gee, it’s not something I can work on.”
“What’s happening is—I want a second churro, and I’m going to have it now instead of next Thursday.” “You’re a wild woman, Stormy Llewellyn.” “You don’t know the half of it.”
My cell phone rang, and I wasn’t surprised to hear Chief Porter’s voice. “Son, the sacristy at St. Bart’s gives new meaning to the word trashed. Someone went purely berserk in there.” “Robertson.” “I’m sure you’re right. You always are. It was probably him. But he was gone by the time my men reached the church. You haven’t seen him again?” “We’re sort of hiding out here but…no, not a sign of him.”
The chief said, “We’ve had a watch on his house for a few hours, but now we’re actively looking for him.”
As I turned left into the street, she said, “Let’s stop by my place first, so I can get my pistol.” “That’s a home-defense gun. You’re not licensed to carry.”
“No gun,” I insisted. “We’ll just cruise and see what happens.” “Why’re you afraid of guns?” “They go bang.” “And why is that a question you always avoid answering?” “I don’t always avoid answering it.” “Why’re you afraid of guns?” she persisted. “I was probably shot to death in a past life.” “You don’t believe in reincarnation.” “I don’t believe in taxes, either, but I pay them.” “Why are you afraid of guns?” “Maybe because I’ve had a prophetic dream in which I was shot.” “Have you had a prophetic dream in which you were shot?” “No.” She can be relentless. “Why’re you afraid of guns?” I can
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“I’m not afraid of sex,” she said. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m an idiot.” “I just want to be sure—” I tried to hush her.
She persisted: “I just want to be sure the reason why you’re in love with me has less to do with that than with other things.” “It does,” I assured her, feeling small and mean. “A thousand other things. You know that.” “When we’re together, I want it to be right and clean and beautiful.” “So do I. And it will be, Stormy. When the time is right. We have plenty of time.”
After a while, in a voice soft with emotion, she said, “I’m sorry, Oddie. That was my fault.” “It wasn’t your fault. I’m an idiot.” “I pushed you into a corner about why you’re afraid of guns, and when I kept pushing, you pushed back.” That was the truth, but the truth didn’t make me feel any better about what I’d done.
She and I became an item when we were juniors. We have been together—and each other’s best friend—for more than four years. In spite of all that we had been to each other and all that we hoped to achieve together in the years to come, I had been able to hurt her—Why’re you afraid of sex?—when she pushed me too hard about my fear of guns.
We sailed the blacktop rivers for a while, not finding Fungus Man, but slowly finding our way back to each other. In time she said, “I love you, Oddie.” My voice was thick when I replied. “I love you more than life.”
She knows about the recurring dream that has disturbed my sleep once or twice a month for the past three years. It features dead bowling-alley employees: gut-shot, limbs shattered, faces hideously disfigured not by a few bullets but by barrages.
“Is it coming true now, tonight—the dream?” “I don’t think so. I don’t know. Maybe.”
I almost wanted to drive back to Stormy’s place and get her gun.
CHAPTER 22
Staring at the green and blue neon letters that spelled out GREEN MOON LANES, I hoped to get a sense of whether the slaughter I had foreseen was imminent or still some distance in the future. The neon failed to speak to my sixth sense.
I have lived my entire life in the relative peace of Pico Mundo and the territory immediately encircling it. I have not even seen the farther reaches of Maravilla County, of which our town is the county seat.
I don’t desire a change of scenery or exotic experiences. My heart yearns for familiarity, stability, the comfort of home—and my sanity depends upon it.
We didn’t wander far before I saw something that made my mouth go dry. “Oh, my God.” The guy behind the shoe-rental counter had not come to work in the usual black slacks and blue cotton shirt with white collar. He wore tan slacks and a green polo shirt, like the dead people in my bowling dream. Stormy turned, surveying the long busy room, and pointed toward two additional employees. “They’ve all gotten new uniforms.”
As Stormy and I proceeded farther into Green Moon Lanes, I saw the blonde from the dream. She stood behind the bar, drawing draft beer from one of the taps.
CHAPTER 23
For a man tired from a day of hard work, bloated with barbecue and beer, and ready for bed, the chief responded with admirable quickness and clarity of mind. “How late are they open?” Phone to my right ear, finger in my left ear to block the alley noise, I said, “I think until midnight, sir.” “A little more than two hours. I’ll dispatch an officer right now, have him stand security, be on the lookout for Robertson. But, son, you said this might go down August fifteenth—tomorrow, not today.”
“Any of these things you call bodachs there?” “No, sir. But they could show up when he does.”
Stormy stared at the blonde behind the bar while I surveyed the room for any bodachs that might precede the executioner. Nobody here but us humans. “She’s so pretty, so full of life,” Stormy said, meaning the bartender. “So much personality, such an infectious laugh.” “She seems more alive to you because you know she might be fated to die young.” “It just seems wrong to walk out and leave her there,” Stormy said, “without warning her, without giving her a chance.” “The best way to give her a chance, to give all the potential victims a chance, is to stop Robertson before he does anything.”
“But you can’t be sure you’ll stop him.” “Nothing’s for sure in this world.” Searching my eyes, she thought about what I’d said, and then reminded me: “Except us.” “Except us.” I pushed my chair away from the table. “Let’s go.” Still staring at the blonde, Stormy said, “This is so hard.” “I know.” “So unfair.” “What death isn’t?” She rose from her chair. “You won’t let her die, will you, Oddie?” “I’ll do what I can.”
No cops on the Pico Mundo force understand my relationship with Chief Porter. They sense that something’s different about me, but they don’t realize what I see, what I know. The chief covers well for me.
When Stormy and I stepped out of Green Moon Lanes at ten o’clock, an hour after nightfall, the temperature in Pico Mundo remained over a hundred degrees. By midnight the air might cool below triple digits. If Bob Robertson was intent on making Hell on Earth, we had the weather for it.
Stormy said, “Sometimes I don’t know how you can live with all the things you see.” “Attitude,” I told her. “Attitude? How’s that work?” “Better some days than others.”
“What should you be looking for? Sir, I don’t understand.” “I see you, I figure you told the chief something that makes him send me out here.” “We were just watching some friends bowl,” I said. “I’m no good at it myself.”
When we drove out of the parking lot, Officer Varner was parked near the front entrance to Green Moon Lanes. Instead of running a quiet surveillance of the place with the hope of nabbing Robertson before violence could be committed, he was making himself highly visible, as a deterrent. This interpretation of his assignment was most likely not one the chief would have approved.
CHAPTER 24
Leaning forward with her hands braced on her knees, Viola traded her smile for a look of solemn expectation, for she knew why I must have come. “It’s my dream, isn’t it?” she said softly. I spoke quietly, too, in respect of the sleeping children. “Tell me again.” “I saw myself, a hole in my forehead, my face…broken.” “You think you were shot.” “Shot dead,” she confirmed, folding her hands together between her knees, as if in prayer. “My right eye bloodshot and swollen all ugly, half out of the socket.”
“Where were you in the dream?” “No place. You know, a dream place…all fuzzy, fluid.”
“Have you ever been inside Green Moon Lanes?” She shook her head. “No.” “Did anything in the dream suggest the place might have been a bowling alley?” “No. Like I said, it wasn’t any real place. Why do you say the bowling alley? You have a dream, too?” “I did, yes.” “People dead?” Viola asked. “Yes.”
“Tell me more about your dream, Viola.”
“I’m running from something. There are these shadows, some flashes of light, but none of it is anything.”
I was not surprised, therefore, that Viola’s nightmare, which earlier in the day had seemed likely to be of no consequence, had proved to be a matter of importance, after all. “Do your dreams have voices, sounds?” I asked her. “Some people’s don’t.” “Mine do. In the dream, I can hear myself breathing. And this crowd.” “Crowd?” “A roaring crowd, like the sound in a stadium.” Baffled, I said, “Where would such a place be in Pico Mundo?” “I don’t know. Maybe a Little League game.” “Not such a big crowd at one of those,” Stormy noted. “Wasn’t necessarily thousands of voices. Could’ve been a couple
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“Is there anything else, any other details?” I asked. “Even the smallest thing might help me. What were you…I mean your dead body…what was it lying on? A floor of some kind? Grass? Blacktop?” She thought for a moment, shook her head. “Can’t say. The only other thing was the man, the dead man.” I sat up straighter on the sofa. “You mean another…corpse?” “Next to me…next to my body. He was sort of tumbled on his side, one arm twisted behind his back.” “Were there other victims?” Stormy asked. “Maybe. I didn’t see any but him.” “Did you recognize him?” “Didn’t get a look at his face. It was
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Reading the last details of her dream that yet remained in the cheesecloth of memory, Viola said, “A polo shirt…” I got up from the sofa. I needed to move. I realized that the room was too small for pacing, but I remained on my feet. “Green,” Viola said. “A green polo shirt.”
Her voice growing even quieter, Viola said, “Tell me the truth, Odd. Look at my face. Do you see death in me?” I said, “Yes.”
CHAPTER 25
Stormy said, “Do you have plans? What are you doing tomorrow?” “I figured I’d work around the house in the morning. Always things to do here. In the afternoon…that’s for the girls.” “You mean Nicolina and Levanna?” I asked, naming her daughters. “Saturday—that’s Levanna’s birthday. She’ll be seven. But the Grille is busy Saturdays, good tips. I can’t miss work. So we were going to celebrate early.” “Celebrate how?” “That new movie, it’s a big hit with all the kids, the one with the dog. We were going to the four-o’clock show.” Before Stormy spoke, I knew the essence of what she would say.
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“I think you ought to change your plans for tomorrow.” By saving Viola from this destiny, I might be sentencing someone else to die horribly in her place, just as might have been the case if I had warned off the blond bartender at the bowling alley. The only difference was that I didn’t know the blonde…and Viola was a friend.
