The LTSI washrooms weren't anything to write home about, but Sarah and Kenner dried off with paper towels and found some warm coveralls, and Sarah began to feel better. Staring in the mirror, she saw that she'd lost two inches of hair around her left side. The ends were ragged, black, twisted.
"Could have been worse," she said, thinkingPonytails for a while.
Kenner tended to her shoulder, which he said was just a first-degree burn with a few blisters. He put ice on it, telling her that burns were not a thermal injury but were actually a nerve response within the body, and that ice in the first ten minutes reduced the severity of the burn by numbing the nerve, and preventing the response. So, if you were going to blister, ice prevented it from happening.
She tuned out his voice. She couldn't actually see the burned area, so she had to take his word for it. It was starting to hurt. He found a first-aid kit, brought back aspirin.
"Aspirin?" Sarah said.
"Better than nothing." He dropped two tablets in her hand. "Actually, most people don't know it, but aspirin's a true wonder drug, it has more pain-killing power than morphine, and it is anti-inflammatory, anti-fever--"
"Not right now," she said. "Please." She just couldn't take another of his lectures.
He said nothing. He just put on the bandage. He seemed to be good at that, too.
"Is there anything you're not good at?" she said.
"Oh sure."
"Like what? Dancing?"
"No, I can dance. But I'm terrible at languages."
"That's a relief." She herself was good at languages. She'd spent her junior year in Italy, and was reasonably fluent in Italian and French. And she'd studied Chinese.
"And what about you?" he said. "What are you bad at?"
"Relationships," she said. Staring in the mirror and pulling at the blackened strands of her hair.
BEVERLY HILLS
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 9
1:13 P. M.
As Evans climbed the steps to his apartment, he could hear the television blaring. It seemed louder than before. He heard cheers and laughter. Some sort of show with a live studio audience.
He opened the door, and went into the living room. The private investigator from the courtyard was sitting on the couch, his back to Evans while he watched television. His jacket was off and flung over a nearby chair. He had his arm draped across the back of the sofa. His fingers drummed impatiently.
"I see you've made yourself at home," Evans said. "Pretty loud, don't you think? Would you mind turning it down?"
The man didn't answer, he just continued to stare at the TV.
"Did you hear me?" Evans said. "Turn it down, would you?"
The man did not move. Just his fingers, moving restlessly on the back of the couch.
Evans walked around to face the man. "I'm sorry, I don't know your name but--"
He broke off. The investigator hadn't turned to look at him but continued to stare fixedly at the TV. In fact, no part of his body moved. He was immobile, rigid. His eyes didn't move. They didn't even blink. The only part of his body that moved was his fingers, on the top of the couch. They almost seemed to be twitching. In spasm.
Evans stepped directly in front of the man. "Are you all right?"
The man's face was expressionless. His eyes stared forward, seeming to look straight through Evans.
"Sir?"
The investigator was breathing shallowly, his chest hardly moving. His skin was tinged with gray.
"Can you move at all? What happened to you?"
Nothing. The man was rigid.
Just like the way they described Margo,Evans thought. The same rigidity, the same blankness. Evans picked up the phone and dialed 911, called for an ambulance to his address.
"Okay, help is coming," he said to the man. The private detective gave no visible response, but even so, Evans had the impression that the man could hear, that he was fully aware inside his frozen body. But there was no way to be sure.
Evans looked around the room, hoping to find clues as to what had happened to this man. But the apartment seemed undisturbed. One chair in the corner seemed to have been moved. The guy's smelly cigar was on the floor in the corner, as if it had rolled there. It had burned the edge of the rug slightly.
Evans picked up the cigar.
He brought it back to the kitchen, ran it under the faucet, and tossed it in the wastebasket. Then he had an idea. He went back to the man. "You were going to bring me something..."
There was no movement. Just the fingers on the couch.
"Is it here?"
The fingers stopped. Or almost stopped. They still moved slightly. But there was clearly an effort being made.
"Can you control your fingers?" Evans said.
They started, then stopped again.
"So you can. Okay. Now: is the thing you wanted me to see here?"
Fingers moved.
Then stopped.
"I take that as a yes. Okay." Evans stepped back. In the distance, he heard an approaching siren. The ambulance would be here in a few minutes. He said, "I am going to move in one direction, and if it is the right direction, move your fingers."
The fingers started, then stopped, as if to signal "yes."
"Okay," Evans said. He turned and took several steps to his right, heading toward the kitchen. He looked back.
The fingers did not move.
"So it's not that way." He now moved toward the television, directly in front of the man.