WHEN LELA WAKES, it takes her a panicked moment to remember where she is. She throws out an arm and knocks over a mop and searchingly flutters a ream of paper. She stands and bonks her head on a shelf that clatters staples, pencils, paper clips to the floor. Then she sees the line of light at the bottom of the door. The supply closet at The Oregonian. The staff keeps a cot in here to sneak in power naps. She spent the night on it. Her neck cramps from a pinched nerve. Her clothes remain damp. She stinks like mildew and BO.
She nearly trips over her purse and then checks it in a panic to make certain the skull is still there. She isn’t sure what time it is when she steps from the closet, but the newsroom is bustling and the windows burn with sunlight. She rubs her eyes with the heel of her hand and yawns so widely her jaw clicks. The Books editor glances at her and shakes his head and snorts out a laugh. “Looking good, Falcon.”
“What time is it?”
“Eight something.”
“Shit.” The Willamette 10K, which she’s supposed to cover, has already started. But—no reason to panic—she should be able to make it to the finish line to interview the winner and round up some ambient details before heading over to the farmers’ market.
There are obviously other things crowding her mind. Far more pressing than any empty-calorie civic-pride 500-worder. But she has never missed a deadline, and she doesn’t plan to this morning, no matter the circumstances. She shoves a stick of gum in her mouth and rakes her fingers through her hair and starts for the elevators before changing her mind and ducking down a stairwell to avoid passing by her editor’s office.
Her wild memory of yesterday—the Rue, the skull, the murder, the hounds—might mean she’s gone nuts. She’s perfectly willing to entertain that possibility. Bad food, lack of sleep, too much coffee laced with too much Adderall, whatever—she could very possibly be an unreliable source, seeing things and making connections that aren’t there. Or . . . ? She’s dealing with what can only be described as extranormal, supernatural, the kind of weirdness that might appear in the novels she doesn’t normally read. She isn’t sure which possibility frightens her more. But she can handle them both. She just needs time to think, to process.
In the lobby, the security guard tells her to hold up. He has a star on his shoulder and a baton on his belt, and his name tag reads STEVE. Some cream cheese whitens the edge of his mustache, and he holds a paper cup of Peet’s coffee that steams through the vent. He doesn’t seem to know what to say to her. Last night, she now recalls, he asked if she was all right and put a hand on her shoulder, and she knocked it away and said to mind his own business.
“Some guy,” he says. “Some guy, last night, he tried to get in here. Said he was looking for you. Said the two of you had an appointment. Thought about calling your desk, but it was late and he wasn’t on the guest sheet and I didn’t like the looks of him, so I said you weren’t here. Said you’d gone. He asked where to and I said home, I suppose. Hope that’s all right? Hope I didn’t mess up anything for you?”
“What did he look like?”
Steve crags up his face. “Like, weird. Creepy. Young and old at the same time. Not sure that makes any sense. His body could have been a kid’s, but his face looked like a little old man’s. Know what I mean? He sounded funny too. Foreign or something. Like he was chewing on metal. Hope I did all right, sending him away.”
“You did.” She eyes up the coffee. “Can I have the rest of that?”
“This?” He examines the cup as though surprised to find it in his hand. “Um.”
She says thanks and grabs it from him. Some coffee sloshes her wrist, but she barely notices the sting. She’s already out the door, knocking back the cup and digging out her cell. The phone is nearly drained, but she uses it to call Powell’s and asks for a transfer to the rare books section. The ringing goes on too long. The taste of coffee goes acidic in her mouth. She remembers the glasses on the ground. Daniel’s. She did this to him. This is her fault. Then, at last, he picks up, and she lets out a shout of relief.
“Lela?” he says. “Lela, is that you?” His voice is shrill and broken by a stammer. What in God’s name happened, he wants to know, and is she all right?
She assures him she is, and tells him she’s sorry, and hopes that she hasn’t caused too much trouble. She was attacked last night. She’ll fill him in later. “Things aren’t safe right now,” she says. “If anybody comes around, asking about me, play dumb. You’ve never heard of me. You never saw that skull. You have no idea what they’re talking about.”
“Oh dear,” he says. “This is all terribly upsetting.”
She tells him she has to go, but she’ll be in touch. She has some follow-up questions.
He lowers his voice. “About the skull?”
“About the skull.”
For the next two hours, this Saturday morning, she does her job. She shakes hands and asks questions and scratches down notes and hammers out copy and meets her deadline, but she feels barely present for any of it, as though she’s hovering over herself.
Her Volvo has been towed, no surprise, so she takes the bus. She’s so preoccupied that she misses her stop and has to walk ten blocks to her apartment, the second floor of an old Arts and Crafts home. Once there she fails to recognize that her living room is not as she left it. Granted, she doesn’t clean very often, so it is difficult to see the mess overlying the mess. The walls are bare, but the floor is full. Small islands of T-shirts and pants and half-balled socks are staggered down the hallway, through the bedroom. Dishes and take-out containers stack up in the kitchen and collect clouds of fruit flies. Every corner is a leaning tower of newspapers and magazines. The couch is a coffee-stained nest of blankets. That’s her standard. But every drawer and cupboard door is now open, the contents disgorged.