“Stay away from her, damn it!”
He stayed like that for a couple of seconds, his profile burnished by the cruiser’s interior lights, and then turned to look directly at me. It was the same face I’d seen in the photographs, only harder. I couldn’t make out his eyes but was rapidly getting the feeling that I’d gotten the attention of something I might not live to regret.
“Bobby Womack.”
He stared at me.
“You can’t have her.”
With one last glance at Rosey, he trailed a gloved hand over the sill of the open door of the cruiser and stepped out to stare at me. His head canted and, dragging one boot, he began to move.
“Go away.” I automatically tried to reach to my side, but even if my hands would have worked, I remembered I’d disarmed myself before the jump.
In a couple of halting steps, he was standing over me. I tried to back away on my elbows, but he kept up and knelt down, bringing his face in close to mine.
The eyes were black, no white at all, just twin tunnels leading nowhere. He crouched there, just as he had on the road, and began working the glove from his fingers a tug at a time.
“What do you want?”
He paused for the shortest of moments and finally freed his hand. He held it to his face and blew into it just as Rosey had when she’d gotten back in the cruiser earlier tonight, but his breath was like a blast furnace.
Casually, he turned his palm and started reaching for my face.
I tried to draw back, but with no energy to defend myself, I flopped to the side and just lay there looking up at him.
He was about to reach out again when one of the Morgan silver dollars fell out of my shirt pocket and dropped onto the surface of the road. It rolled forward, circled once, and then, glinting between us, fell over flat with a metallic sound.
He stared at the coin with ebony eyes and then, extending a forefinger, he placed it on the coin, whereupon the surrounding asphalt began smoking with the stench of burning oil and tar. The coin glowed red and slowly sank into the pavement, and I’m sure it would’ve gone all the way to hell if he hadn’t lifted the tip of his finger, blowing on it like the barrel of a fired pistol.
He glanced at Henry and Rosey. My eyes followed his, and I could see the Bear had her on her side as she retched the river water from her body.
When I turned back, his face was close, and I could feel the heat waves emanating from him.
He stayed like that for a few seconds, and then I became aware of his lips moving. The words were faint but powerful, like the canyon wind, and a smile traced itself to the corners of his eight-ball eyes. “Unit 3, 10-78, officer needs assistance.”
I narrowed my eyes at him and tried to sit up but wavered a little, not wanting to get too close. “What officer needs assistance?” I scrubbed my hands over my face, but when I started to ask again, he was gone. Nudging an elbow beneath me, I sidled up and caught sight of the silver dollar that had fallen from my pocket. It was resting on the surface of the pavement—not seared into the melted asphalt, no burns, nothing.
Static. “Unit 3, 10-78, officer needs assistance.”
I looked around for him again, but he wasn’t there, just Henry holding Rosey up against his chest as she sobbed, the two of them looking into the cruiser, where the same voice that had just haunted me came from the radio, loud and clear.
Static. “Unit 3, 10-78, officer needs assistance.”
8
I stared at the hands on my pocket watch. “The time was wrong in her cruiser—they never adjusted it after they jumped it, and that’s why the clock was an hour slow.”
“That is not the point.”
I sat there, still trying to get warm after a shower and clean, dry clothes. “No, I suppose it isn’t.”
“You heard it, the same as I did.”
Hot Springs County Memorial Hospital was a lot like the hospital back in Durant, especially the mauve waiting room with the mauve walls, mauve carpet, mauve drapes, and off-mauve furniture.
“It was exactly one hour late.”
Leaning back on the mauve sofa, he attempted to get me to answer. “You are not addressing the question.”
“Bear with me for a moment.” I sat forward in my chair with the thankfully not-mauve blanket still wrapped around me, resting my elbows on my knees. “That means that the electrics on the cruiser went out exactly one hour before the service guy got there.”
“Yes.”
“Exactly sixty minutes to the second. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”
He laughed a gruff bark. “Yes, in the sea of odd that does strike me as a strange wave.”
I gave him a dirty look, but it didn’t appear to have any effect. “Yep, I heard it.” He circled the sofa and sat facing me, willing to engage in conversation now that I had answered the question. “Does the fact that I was half drowned, delirious, and occasionally unconscious limit my credibility in this?”