Prodigal Son

CHAPTER 81

Exhausted, Carson sailed through sleep with no nightmares, only a simple continuous dream of being aboard a black boat under a black sky, knifing silently through black water.

She had not gotten to bed until well after dawn. She woke at 2:30, showered, and ate Hot Pockets while standing in Arnie's room, watching the boy at work on the castle.

At the foot of the bridge that crossed the moat, in front of the gate at the barbicon, at each of two entrances from the outer ward to the inner ward, and finally at the fortified entrance to the castle keep, Arnie had placed one of the shiny pennies that he had been given by Deucalion.

She supposed the pennies were, in Arnie's mind, talismans that embodied the power of the disfigured giant. Their mighty juju would prevent entrance by any enemy.

Evidently Arnie trusted Deucalion.

So did Carson.

Considering the events of the past two days, Deucalion's claim to be Frankenstein's monster seemed no more impossible than other things that she had witnessed. Besides, he possessed a quality that she had never encountered before, a substantialness that eluded easy description. His calm was of an oceanic depth, his gaze so steady and so forthright that she sometimes had to look away, not because the occasional soft pulse of light in his eyes disturbed her, but because he seemed to see too deeply into her for comfort, through all her defenses.

If Deucalion was the storied creation of Victor Frankenstein, then during the past two centuries, while the human doctor had become a monster, the monster had become human-and perhaps had become a man of unusual insight and caliber.

She needed a day off. A month. There were others working on the case now, seeking Harker. She didn't need to push herself seven days out of seven.

Nevertheless, by prior arrangement, at 3:30 in the afternoon, Carson was waiting at the curb in front of her house.

At 3:33, Michael arrived in the plainwrap sedan. Earlier in the day, Carson had experienced a moment of weakness. Michael had driven the car when they left Harker's apartment building.

Now, as she got in the passenger's seat, Michael said, "I drove all the way here and never exceeded a speed limit."

"That's why you're three minutes late."

"Three whole minutes? Well, I guess I just blew every chance we have to find Harker."

"The only thing we can't buy more of is time," she said.

"And dodo birds. We can't buy any of them. They're extinct. And dinosaurs."

"I called Deucalion at the Luxe. He's expecting us at four o'clock."

"I can't wait to enter this one in my interview log-'discussed case with Frankenstein monster. He says Igor was a creep, ate his own boogers.'"

She sighed. "I was sort of hoping that the concentration needed to drive would mean less patter."

"Just the opposite. Driving keeps me mentally fluid. It's cool being the wheel man."

"Don't get used to it."

When they arrived at the Luxe Theater, after four o'clock, the sky had grown as dark as an iron skillet.

Michael parked illegally at a red curb and hung a police card on the rearview mirror. "Lives in a theater, huh? Is he buddies with the Phantom of the Opera?"

"You'll see," she said, and got out of the car.

Closing his door, looking at her across the roof, he said, "Do his palms grow hairy when the moon is full?"

"No. He shaves them just like you do."