Outside and down the block, Jack watched as the woman in the suit turned into Anderson’s driveway. Anderson came out and helped her with her things. She didn’t have much, traveling light. One of her bags was from Walmart. So that was where she’d gone. Maybe to get a nightie and a toothbrush. Judging from the look of her, the nightie would be ugly and the bristles of the toothbrush would be hard enough to draw blood from her gums.
He took a nip from his flask, and as he was screwing on the cap and thinking about going home (why not, since all the good little children were in for the night), he realized he was no longer alone in the truck. Someone was sitting on the passenger side. He had just appeared in the corner of Hoskins’s eye. That was impossible, of course, but he couldn’t have been there all along. Could he?
Hoskins looked straight ahead. The sunburn on his neck, which had been relatively quiet, began to throb again, and very painfully.
A hand came into his peripheral vision, floating. It seemed he could almost see the seat through it. Written on the fingers in faded blue ink was the word MUST. Hoskins closed his eyes, praying that his visitor would not touch him.
‘You need to take a drive,’ the visitor said. ‘Unless you want to die the way your mother died, that is. Do you remember how she screamed?’
Yes, Jack remembered. Until she couldn’t scream anymore.
‘Until she couldn’t scream anymore,’ said the passenger. The hand touched his thigh, very lightly, and Jack knew the skin there would soon begin to burn, just like the back of his neck. The pants he was wearing would be no protection; the poison would seep right through. ‘Yes, you remember. How could you forget?’
‘Where do you want me to go?’
The passenger told him, and then the touch of that awful hand disappeared. Jack opened his eyes and looked around. The other side of the bench seat was empty. The lights in the Anderson house were out. He looked at his watch and saw it was fifteen minutes to eleven. He had fallen asleep. He could almost believe he’d just had a dream. A very bad one. Except for one thing.
He started the truck and put it in gear. He would stop to gas up at the Hi station on Route 17 outside of town. That was the right place, because the guy who worked the night shift – Cody, his name was – always had a good supply of little white pills. Cody sold them to the truckers either highballing north to Chicago or down south to Texas. For Jack Hoskins of the Flint City PD, there would be no charge.
The truck’s dashboard was dusty. At the first stop sign, he leaned over to his right and wiped it clean, getting rid of the word his passenger’s finger had left there.
MUST.
NO END TO THE UNIVERSE
July 26th
1
What sleep Ralph got was thin and broken by bad dreams. In one of them, he held the dying Terry Maitland in his arms, and Terry said, ‘You robbed my children.’
Ralph woke at four thirty and knew there would be no more sleep. He felt as if he had entered some heretofore unsuspected plane of existence, and told himself everyone felt that way in the small hours. That was good enough to get him into the bathroom, where he brushed his teeth.
Jeannie was sleeping as she always did, with the coverlet pulled up so high that she was nothing but a hump with a fluff of hair showing over the top. There was gray in that hair now, as there was in his. Not much, but more would be coming right along. That was all right. Time’s passage was a mystery, but it was a normal mystery.
The breeze from the air conditioner had spilled some of the pages Jeannie had printed onto the floor. He put them back on the night table, picked up his jeans, decided they would do for another day (especially in dusty south Texas), and went to the window with them in his hand. The first gray light was creeping into the day. It would be a hot one here, and hotter still where they were going.
He observed – without much surprise, although he couldn’t have said why – that Holly Gibney was down there, dressed in her own pair of jeans and sitting in the lawn chair where Ralph himself had been sitting little more than a week ago, when Bill Samuels had come calling. The evening Bill had told him the story of the disappearing footprints and Ralph had matched him with the one about the infested cantaloupe.
He pulled on his pants and an Oklahoma Thunder tee-shirt, checked Jeannie again, and left the room with the old scuffed moccasins he wore as bedroom slippers dangling from two fingers of his left hand.
2
He stepped out the back door five minutes later. Holly turned at the sound of his approach, her small face cautious and alert but not (or so he hoped) unfriendly. Then she saw the mugs on the old Coca-Cola tray and her face lit up with that radiant smile. ‘Is that what I hope it is?’
‘It is if you were hoping for coffee. I take mine straight, but I brought the other stuff in case you want it. My wife takes it white and sweet. Like me, she says.’ He smiled.
‘Black is fine. Thank you so much.’
He put the tray on the picnic table. She sat across from him, took one of the mugs, sipped. ‘Oh, this is good. Nice and strong. There’s nothing better than strong black coffee in the morning. That’s what I think, anyway.’
‘How long have you been up?’
‘I don’t sleep much,’ she said, neatly dodging the question. ‘It’s very pleasant here. The air is so fresh.’
‘Not so fresh when the wind comes from the west, believe me. Then you smell the refineries in Cap City. Gives me a headache.’
He paused, looking at her. Holly looked away, holding her cup to her face, as if to shield it. Ralph thought back to last night, and how she had seemed to steel herself for every handshake. He had an idea that this woman found many of the world’s ordinary gestures and interactions quite difficult. And yet she had done some amazing things.
‘I read up on you last night. Alec Pelley was right. You have quite a resumé.’
She made no reply.
‘In addition to stopping that guy Hartsfield from bombing a bunch of kids, you and your partner, Mr Hodges—’
‘Detective Hodges,’ she corrected. ‘Retired.’
Ralph nodded. ‘In addition to that, you and Detective Hodges saved a girl who was kidnapped by a crazy guy named Morris Bellamy. Bellamy was killed during the rescue. You were also involved in a shootout with a doctor who went off the rails and killed his wife, and last year you nailed a bunch of guys who were stealing rare-breed dogs, either ransoming them back to their owners or selling them on if the owners wouldn’t pay. When you said part of your business was finding lost pets, you weren’t kidding.’
She was blushing again, all the way up from the base of her neck to her forehead. It was pretty clear that this enumeration of her past exploits made her more than uncomfortable; she found it actively painful.
‘It was mostly Bill Hodges who did those things.’
‘Not the dognappers. He passed on a year before that case.’
‘Yes, but by then I had Pete Huntley. Ex-Detective Huntley.’ She looked directly at him. Made herself do it. Her eyes were clear and blue. ‘Pete’s good, I couldn’t keep the business going without him, but Bill was better. Whatever I am, Bill made me. I owe him everything. I owe him my life. I wish he were here now.’
‘Instead of me, you mean?’
Holly didn’t reply. Which was a reply, of course.
‘Would he have believed in this El Cuco shape-shifter?’
‘Oh yes.’ She said it without hesitation. ‘Because he … and I … and our friend Jerome Robinson, who was with us … have the benefit of certain experiences that you don’t have. Although you may, depending on how the next few days go. You may before the sun goes down tonight.’
‘Can I join you?’
It was Jeannie, with her own cup of coffee.
Ralph gestured for her to sit down.