The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove

Thirteen

Somehow, through the night, the residents of Pine Cove, especially those who had been withdrawing from antidepressants, found a satisfied calm had fallen over them. It wasn’t that their anxiety was gone, but rather that it ran off their backs like warm rain off a naked toddler who has just discovered the splash and magic of mud. There was joy and sex and danger in the air—and a euphoric need to share.

Morning found many of them herding at the local restaurants for breakfast. Gathering together like wildebeests in the presence of a pride of lions, knowing instinctively that only one of them is going to fall to the fang: the one that is caught alone.

Jenny Masterson had been waiting tables at H.P.‘s Cafe for twelve years, and she couldn’t remember a day out of the tourist season when it had been so busy. She moved between her tables like a dancer, pouring coffee and decaf, taking orders and delivering food, catching the odd request for more butter or salsa, and snatching up a dirty plate or glass on her way back to the window. No movement wasted, no customer ignored. She was good—really good—and sometimes that bugged the hell out of her.

Jenny was just forty, slender and fair-skinned with killer legs and long auburn hair that she wore pinned up when she worked. With her husband Robert, she owned Brine’s Bait, Tackle, and Fine Wines, but after three months of trying to work with the man she loved and after the birth of her daughter Amanda, who was five, she returned to waitressing to save her marriage and her sanity. Somewhere between college and today, she had become a bull moose waitress, and she never ceased to wonder how in the hell that had happened. How had she become the repository for local information bordering on gossip, and how had she become so damn good at picking up her customers’ conversations, and following them as she moved around the restaurant?

Today the restaurant was full of talk about Mikey Plotznik, who had disappeared along his paper route the day before. There was talk of the search and speculation on the kid’s fate. At a few of her two-tops were seated couples who seemed intent on reliving their sexual adventures from the night before and—if the pawing and fawning were any indication—were going to resume again after breakfast. Jenny tried to tune them out. There was a table of her old-guy coffee drinkers, who were trading misinformation on politics and lawn care; at the counter a couple of construction workers intent on putting in a rare Saturday’s work read the paper over bacon and eggs; and over in the corner, Val Riordan, the local shrink, was scribbling notes on a legal pad at a table all by herself. That was unusual. Dr. Val didn’t normally make appearances in Pine Cove during the day. Stranger than that, Estelle Boyet, the seascape painter, was having her tea with a Black gentleman who looked as if he would jump out of his skin at the slightest touch.

Jenny heard some commotion coming from the register and turned to see her busgirl arguing with Molly Michon, the Crazy Lady. Jenny made a beeline for the counter.

“Molly, you’re not supposed to be in here,” Jenny said calmly but firmly. Molly had been eighty-sixed for life after she had attacked H.P.‘s espresso machine.

“I just need to cash this check. I need to get some money to buy medicine for a sick friend.”

The busgirl, a freshman at Pine Cove High, bolted into the kitchen, tossing “I told her” over her shoulder as she went.

Jenny looked at the check. It was from the Social Security Administration and it was above the amount she was allowed to accept. “I’m sorry, Molly, I can’t do it.”

“I have photo ID.” Molly pulled a videotape out of her enormous handbag and plopped it on the counter. There was a picture of a half-naked woman tied between two stakes on the cover. The titles were in Italian.

“That’s not it, Molly. I’m not allowed to cash a check for that much. Look, I don’t want any trouble, but if Howard sees you in here, he’ll call the police.”

“The police are here,” came a man’s voice.

Jenny looked up to see Theophilus Crowe towering behind Molly. “Hi, Theo.” Jenny liked Theo. He reminded her of Robert before he had quit drinking—semitragic but good-natured.

“Can I help here?”

“I really need to get some money,” Molly said. “For medicine.”

Jenny shot a look to the corner, where Val Riordan looked up from her notes with an expression of dread on her face. The psychiatrist obviously didn’t want to be brought into this.

Theo took the check gently from Molly and looked at it, then said to Jenny, “It’s a government check, Jenny. I’m sure it’s good. Just this once? Medicine.” He winked at Jenny from behind Molly’s back.

“Howard will kill me when he sees it. Every time he looks at the espresso machine, he mutters something about spawn of evil.”

“I’ll back you up. Tell him it was in the interest of public safety.”

“Oh, okay. You’re lucky we’re busy today and I have the cash to spare.” Jenny handed Molly a pen. “Just endorse it.”

Molly signed the check with a flourish and handed it over. Jenny counted out the bills on the counter. “Thanks,” Molly said. Then to Theo, “Thanks. Hey, you want a collector’s edition of Warrior Babes?” She held the videotape out to him.

“Uh, no thanks, Molly. I can’t accept gratuities.”

Jenny craned her neck to look at the cover of the tape.

“It’s in Italian, but you can figure it out,” Molly said.

Theo shook his head and smiled.

“Okay,” Molly said. “Gotta go.” She turned and walked out of the restaurant, leaving Theo staring at her back.

“I guess she really was in movies,” Jenny said. “Did you see the picture on the cover?”

“Nope,” Theo said.

“Amazing. Did she look like that?”

Theo shrugged. “Thanks for taking her check, Jenny. I’ll find a seat. Just some coffee and an English muffin.”

“Any luck finding the Plotznik kid?”

Theo shook his head as he walked away.

Skinner barked once to warn the Food Guy that he was about to collide with the crazy woman, but it came a little too late and, as usual, the dense but good-hearted Food Guy didn’t get the message. Skinner had finally talked the Food Guy into stopping work and going to get something to eat. Catching rats and hiking around in the mud was fun, but eating was important.

Gabe, covered with mud to the knees and burrs to the shoulder, was head down, digging in his backpack for his wallet as he approached H.P.‘s Cafe. Coming out, Molly was counting her money, not looking at all where she was going. She heard Skinner bark just as they conked heads.

“Ouch, excuse me,” Gabe said, rubbing his head. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

Skinner took the opportunity to sniff Molly’s crotch. “Nice dog,” Molly said. “Did he produce B movies in his last life?”

“Sorry.” Gabe grabbed Skinner by the collar and pulled him away.

Molly folded her money and stuffed it into the waistband of her tights. “Hey, you’re the biologist, huh?”

“That’s me.”

“How many grams of protein in a sow bug?”

“What?”

“A sow bug. You know, roly-polies, pill bugs—gray, lotsa legs, designed to curl up and die?”

“Yes, I know what a sow bug is.”

“How many grams of protein in one?”

“I have no idea.”

“Could you find out?”

“I suppose I could.”

“Good,” Molly said. “I’ll call you.”

“Okay.”

“Bye.” Molly ruffled Skinner’s ears as she walked off.

Gabe stood there for a second, distracted from his research for the first time in thirty-six hours. “What the hell?”

Skinner wagged his tail to say, “Let’s eat.”

Val Riordan watched the lanky constable coming through the restaurant toward her. She wasn’t ready to be official, that’s why she’d taken herself out to breakfast in the first place—that and she didn’t want to face her assistant Chloe and her newfound nymphomania. She was months, no, years behind on her professional journals, and she’d packed a briefcase full of them in hope of skimming a few over coffee before her appointments began. She tried to hide behind a copy of Pusher: The American Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacological Practice, but the constable just kept coming.

“Dr. Riordan, do you have a minute?”

“I suppose.” She gestured to the chair across from her.

Theo sat down and dove right in. “Are you sure that Bess Leander never said anything about problems with her marriage? Fights? Joseph coming home late? Anything?”

“I told you before. I can’t talk about it.”

Theo took a dollar out of his pocket and slid it across the table. “Take this.”

“Why?”

“I want you to be my therapist. I want the same patient confidentiality that you’re giving Bess Leander. Even though that privilege isn’t supposed to extend beyond the grave. I’m hiring you as my therapist.”

“For a dollar? I’m not a lawyer, Constable Crowe. I don’t have to accept you as a patient. And payment has nothing to do with it.” Val was willing him to go away. She had tried to bend people to her will since she was a child. She’d spoken to her therapist about it during her residency. Go away.

“Fine, take me as a patient. Please.”

“I’m not taking any new patients.”

“One session, thirty seconds long. I’m your patient. I promise you’ll want to hear what I have to say in session.”

“Theo, have you ever addressed, well, your substance abuse problem?” It was a snotty and unprofessional thing to say, but Crowe wasn’t exactly being professional either.

“Does that mean I’m your patient?”

“Sure, okay, thirty seconds.”

“Last night I saw Joseph Leander engaging in sexual relations with a young woman in the park.” Theo folded his hands and sat back. “Your thoughts?”

Jenny couldn’t believe she’d heard it right. She hadn’t meant to, she was just delivering an English muffin when the gossip bomb hit her unprepared. Bess Leander, not even cold in the grave, and her straitlaced Presbyterian husband was doing it with some bimbo in the park? She paused as if checking her tables, waited for a second, then slid the muffin in front of Theo.

“Can I bring you anything else?”

“Not right now,” Theo said.

Jenny looked at Val Riordan and decided that whatever she needed right now was not on the menu. Val was sitting there wide-eyed, as if someone had slapped her with a dead mackerel. Jenny backed away from the table. She couldn’t wait for Betsy to come in to relieve her for the lunch shift. Betsy always waited on Joseph Leander when he came in the cafe and made comments about him being the only guy with two children who had never been laid. She’d be blown away.

Betsy, of course, already knew.

Gabe tied Skinner up outside and entered the cafe to find all the tables occupied. He spotted Theophilus Crowe sitting at a four-top with a woman that he didn’t know. Gabe debated inviting himself to their table, then decided it would be better to approach Theo under the pretense of a rat news update and hope for an invitation.

Gabe pulled his laptop out of his shoulder bag as he approached the table.

“Theo, you won’t believe what I found out last night.”

Theo looked up. “Hi, Gabe. Do you know Val Riordan? She’s our local psychiatrist.”

Gabe offered his hand to the woman and she took it without looking away from his muddy boots. “Sorry,” Gabe said. “I’ve been in the field all day. Nice to meet you.”

“Gabe’s a biologist. He has a lab up at the weather station.”

Gabe was feeling uncomfortable now. The woman hadn’t said a word. She was attractive in a made-up sort of way, but she seemed a little out of things, stunned perhaps. “I’m sorry to interrupt. We can talk later, Theo.”

“No, sit down. You don’t mind, do you, Val? We can finish our session later. I think I still have twenty seconds on the books.”

“That’s fine,” Val said, seeming to come out of her haze.

“Maybe you’ll be interested in this,” Gabe said. He slipped into an empty chair and pushed his laptop in front of Val. “Look at this.” Like many scientists, Gabe was oblivious to the fact that no one gave a rat’s ass about research unless it could be expressed in terms of dollars.

“Green dots?” Val said.

“No, those are rats.”

“Funny, they look like green dots.”

“This is a topographical map of Pine Cove. These are my tagged rats. See the divergence? These ten that didn’t move the other night when the others did?”

Val looked to Theo for an explanation.

“Gabe tracks rats with microchips in them,” Theo said.

“It’s only one of the things I do. Mostly, I count dead things on the beach.”

“Fascinating work,” Val said with no attempt to hide her contempt.

“Yeah, it’s great,” Gabe said. Then to Theo, “Anyway, these ten rats didn’t move with the others.”

“Right, you told me this. You thought they might be dead.”

“They weren’t, at least the six of them that I found weren’t. It wasn’t death that stopped them, it was sex.”

“What?”

“I live-trapped twenty of the group of rats that moved, but when I went to find the group that hadn’t, I didn’t have to trap them. There were three pairs, all engaged in coitus.”

“So what made the others move?”

“I don’t know.”

“But the other ones were, uh, mating?”

“I watched one pair for an hour. They did it a hundred and seventeen times.”

“In an hour? Rats can do that?”

“They can, but they don’t.”

“But you said they did.”

“It’s an anomaly. But all three pairs were doing it. One of the females had died and the male was still going at her when I found them.”

Theo’s face was becoming strained with the effort of trying to figure out what in the hell Gabe was trying to tell him, and why he was telling him in the first place. “What does that mean?”

“I have no idea,” Gabe said. “I don’t know why there was a mass evacuation of the large group, and I don’t know why the smaller group stayed in one place copulating.”

“Well, thanks for sharing.”

“Food and sex,” Gabe said.

“Maybe you should eat something, Gabe.” Theo signaled for the waitress.

“What do you mean, food and sex?” Val asked.

“All behavior is related to obtaining food and sex,” Gabe said.

“How Freudian.”

“No, Darwinian, actually.”

Val leaned forward and Gabe caught a whiff of her perfume. She actually seemed interested now. “How can you say that? Behavior is much more complex than that.”

“You think so?”

“I know so. And whatever this is, this radio rat study of yours proves it.” She swiveled the screen of the laptop so they all could see it. “You have six rats that were engaged in sex, but if I have this straight, you have, well, a lot of rats that just took off for no reason at all. Right?”

“There was a reason, I just don’t know it yet.”

“But it wasn’t food and it obviously wasn’t sex.”

“I don’t know yet. I suppose they could have been exposed to television violence.”

Theo was sitting back and watching now, enjoying two people with three decades of education between them puffing up like schoolyard bullies.

“I’m a psychiatrist, not a psychologist. Our discipline has moved more toward physiological causes for behavior over the last thirty years, or hadn’t you heard?” Val Riordan was actually grinning now.

“I’m aware of that. I’m having the brain chemistry worked up on animals from both groups to see if there’s a neurochemical explanation.”

“How do you do that again?” Theo asked.

“You grind up their brains and analyze the chemicals,” Gabe said.

“That’s got to hurt,” Theo said.

Val Riordan laughed. “I only wish I could diagnose my patients that way. Some of them anyway.”

Val Riordan couldn’t remember the last time she’d enjoyed herself, but she suspected it was when she’d attended the Neiman-Marcus sale in San Francisco two years ago. Food and sex indeed. This guy was so naive. But still, she hadn’t seen anyone so passionate about pure research since med school, and it was nice to think about psychiatry in terms other than financial. She found herself wondering how Gabe Fenton would look in a suit, after a shower and a shave, after he’d been boiled to kill the parasites. Not bad, she thought.

Gabe said, “I can’t seem to identify any outside stimulus for this behavior, but I have to eliminate the possibility that it’s something chemical or environmental. If it’s affecting the rats, it might be affecting other species too. I’ve seen some evidence of that.”

Val thought about the wave of horniness that seemed to have washed over all of her patients in the last two days. “Could it be in the water, do you think? Something that might affect us?”

“Could be. If it’s chemical, it would take longer to affect a mammal as large as a human. You two haven’t seen anything unusual in the last few days, have you?”

Theo nearly spit his coffee out. “This town’s a bug-house.”

“I’m not allowed to talk about my patients specifically,” Val said. She was shaken. Of course there was some weird behavior. She’d caused it, hadn’t she, by taking fifteen hundred people off of their medication at once? She had to get out of here. “But in general, Theo is right.”

“I am?” Theo said.

“He is?” Gabe said.

Jenny had returned to the table to fill their coffees. “Sorry I overheard, but I’d have to agree with Theo too.”

They all looked at her, then at each other. Val checked her watch. “I’ve got to get to an appointment. Gabe, I’d like to hear the results of the brain chemistry test.”

“You would?”

“Yes.”

Val put some money on the table and Theo picked it up and handed it back to her, along with the dollar he’d put there earlier for her fee. “I need to talk to you about that other matter, Val.”

“Call me. I don’t know if I can help though. Bye.”

Val left the cafe actually looking forward to seeing her patients, if for no other reason than to imagine grinding up each of their brains. Anything to address the responsibility of driving an entire town crazy. But perhaps by driving them a little crazy, she could save some of them from self-destruction: not a bad reason for going to work.

“I’ve got to go too,” Theo said, standing up. “Gabe, should I have the county test the water or something? I have to go into San Junipero to the county building today anyway.”

“Not yet. I can do a general toxins and heavy metals test. I do them all the time for the frog population studies.”

“You wanna walk out with me?”

“I have to order something to go for Skinner.”

“Didn’t you say that you had ten rats that diverged from the pack?”

“Yes, but I could only find six.”

“What happened to the other four?”

“I don’t know. They just disappeared. Funny, these chips are nearly indestructible too. Even if the animals are dead, I should be able to pick them up with the satellites.”

“Out of range maybe?”

“Not a chance, the coverage is over two hundred miles. More if I look for them.”

“Then where did they go?”

“They last showed up down by the creek. Near the Fly Rod Trailer Court.”

“You’re kidding. That’s where the Plotznik kid was last seen.”

“You want to see the map?”

“No, I believe you. I’ve got to go.” Theo turned to leave.

Gabe caught him by the shoulder. “Theo, is, uh…”

“What?”

“Is Val Riordan single?”

“Divorced.”

“Do you think she likes me?”

Theo shook his head. “Gabe, I understand. I spend too much time alone too.”

“What? I was just asking.”

“I’ll see you.”

“Hey, Theo, you look, uh, well, more alert today.”

“Not stoned, you mean?”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean…”

“It’s okay, Gabe. Thanks, I think.”

“Hang tough.”

As Jenny passed Estelle Boyet’s table, she heard the old Black gentleman say, “We don’t need to tell nobody nothin‘. Been fifty years since I seen that thing. It probably done gone back to the sea.”

“Still,” Estelle said, “there’s a little boy missing. What if the two are connected?”

“Ain’t nobody ever called you a crazy nigger, did they?”

“Not that I can remember.”

“Well, they have me. For some twenty years after I talked about that thing the last time. I ain’t sayin‘ nothin’ to no one. It’s our secret, girl.”

“I like it when you call me girl,” Estelle said.

Jenny went off to the kitchen, trying to put the morning together in her mind, pieces of conversations as surreal as a Dali jigsaw puzzle. There was definitely something going on in Pine Cove.

Fourteen

Pine Cove was a decorative town—built for show—only one degree more functional than a Disneyland attraction and decidedly lacking in businesses and services that catered to residents rather than tourists. The business district included ten art galleries, five wine-tasting rooms, twenty restaurants, eleven gift and card shops, and one hardware store. The position of hardware clerk in Pine Cove was highly coveted by the town’s retired male population, for nowhere else could a man posture well past his prime, pontificate, and generally indulge in the arrogant self-important chest-pounding of an alpha male without having a woman intercede to remind him that he was patently full of shit.

Crossing the threshold of Pine Cove Hardware and breaking the beam that rang the bell was tantamount to setting off a testosterone alarm, and if they’d had their way, the clerks would have constructed a device to atomize the corners with urine every time the bell tolled. Or at least that’s the way it seemed to Molly when she entered that Saturday morning.

The clerks, three men, broke from their heated argument on the finer points of installing a wax toilet seal ring to stare, snicker, and make snide comments under their breath about the woman who had entered their domain.

Molly breezed past the counter, focusing on an aisle display of gopher poison to avoid eye contact. Raucous laughter erupted from the clerks when she turned down the aisle for roofing supplies.

The clerks, Frank, Bert, and Les—all semiretired, balding, paunchy, and generally interchangeable, except that Frank wore a belt to hold up his double knits, while the other two sported suspenders fashioned to look like yellow measuring tape—planned to make Molly beg. Oh, they’d let her wander around for a while, let her try to comprehend the arcane function of the gizmos, geegaws, and widgets binned and bubble-wrapped around the store. Then she would have to come back to the counter and submit. It was Frank’s turn to do the condescending, and he would do his best to drop-kick her ego before finally leading the little lady to the appropriate product, where he would continue to question her into full humiliation. “Well, is it a sheet metal screw or a wood screw? Three-eighths or seven-sixteenths? Do you have a hex head screwdriver? Well, then, you’ll need one, won’t you? Are you sure you wouldn’t rather just call someone to do this for you?” Tears and/or sniffles from the customer would signal victory and confirm superior status for the male race.

Frank, Bert, and Les watched Molly on the security monitor, exchanged some comments about her breasts, laughed nervously after five minutes passed without her surrender, and tried to look busy when she emerged from the aisle carrying a five-gallon can of roof-patching tar, a roll of fiberglass fabric, and a long-handled squeegee.

Molly stood at the counter, shifting her weight from foot to foot. Bert and Les squinted into a catalog set on a rotating stand while concentrating on sucking in their guts. Frank manned the register and pretended he was doing something complex on the keyboard, when, in fact, he was just making it beep.

Molly cleared her throat.

Frank looked up as if he’d just noticed she was there. “Find everything you need?”

“I think so,” Molly said, taking both hands to lift the heavy can of tar onto the counter.

“You need some resin for that fiberglass fabric?” Les said.

“And some hardener?” Bert said. Frank snickered.

“Some what?” Molly said.

“You can’t patch a trailer roof with that stuff, miss. You live down at the Fly Rod, don’t you?” They all knew who she was and where she lived. She was often the subject of hardware store gossip and speculation, even though she’d never set foot in there before today.

“I’m not going to patch a roof.”

“Well, you can’t use that on a driveway. You need asphalt sealer, and it should be applied with a brush, not a squeegee.”

“How much do I owe you?” Molly said.

“You should wear a respirator when you work with fiberglass. You have one at home, right?” Bert asked.

“Yeah, right next to the elves and the gnomes,” Les said.

Molly didn’t flinch.

“He’s right,” Frank said. “Those fibers get down in your lungs and they could do you a world of harm, especially with those lungs.”

The clerks all laughed at the joke.

“I’ve got a respirator out in the truck,” Les said. “I could come by after work and give you a hand with your little project.”

“That would be great,” Molly said. “What time?”

Les balked. “Well, I, um…”

“I’ll pick up some beer.” Molly smiled. “You guys should come along too. I could really use the help.”

“Oh, I think Les can handle it, can’t you, Les?” Frank said as he hit the total key. “That comes to thirty-seven sixty-five with tax.”

Molly counted her money out on the counter. “So I’ll see you tonight?”

Les swallowed hard and forced a smile. “You bet,” he said.

“Thanks then,” Molly said brightly. Then she picked up her supplies and headed for the door.

As she broke the doorbell beam, Frank whispered “Crazy slut” under his breath.

Molly stopped, turned slowly, and winked.

Once she was outside, the clerks made miserable old white guy attempts at trading high-fives while patting Les on the back. It was a hardware store fantasy fulfilled—much better than just humiliating a woman, Les would get to humiliate her and get her naked as well. For some reason they’d all been feeling a little randy lately, thinking about sex almost as often as power tools.

“My wife is going to kill me,” Les said.

“What she don’t know won’t hurt her,” the other two said in unison.

Theo actually felt his stomach lurch when he went into his victory garden and clipped a handful of sticky buds from his pot plants. They weren’t for himself this time, but the reminder of how much this little patch of plants ruled his life made him ill. And how was it that he hadn’t felt the need to fire up his Sneaky Pete for three days? A twenty-year drug habit suddenly ends? No withdrawal, no side effects, no cravings? The freedom was almost nauseating. It was as if the Weirdness Fairy had landed in his life with a thump, popped him on the head with a rubber chicken, bit him on the shin, then went off to inflict herself on the rest of Pine Cove.

He stuffed the marijuana into a plastic bag, tucked it into his jacket pocket, and climbed into the Volvo for the forty-mile drive to San Junipero. He was going to have to enter the bowels of the county justice building and face the Spider to find out what he wanted to know. The pot was grease for the Spider. He would stop by a convenience store on the way down and pick up a bag full of snacks to augment the bribe. The Spider was difficult, arrogant, and downright creepy, but he was a cheap date.

Through the safety-glass window, Theo could see the Spider sitting in the middle of his web: five computer screens with data scrolling across them illuminated the Spider with an ominous blue glow. The only other light in the room came from tiny red and green power indicator lights that shone through the darkness like crippled stars. Without looking away from his screens, the Spider buzzed Theo in.

“Crowe,” the Spider said, not looking up.

“Lieutenant,” Theo said.

“Call me Nailgun,” the Spider said.

His name was Irving Nailsworth and his official position in the San Junipero Sheriff’s Department was chief technical officer. He was five-foot-five inches tall, weighed three hundred and thirty pounds, and had taken to wearing a black beret when he perched in his web. Early on, Nailsworth had seen that nerds would rule the world, and he had staked out his own little information fiefdom in the basement of the county jail. Nothing happened without the Spider knowing about it. He monitored and controlled all the information that moved about the county, and before anyone recognized what sort of power that afforded, he had made himself indispensable to the system. He had never arrested a suspect, touched a firearm, or set foot in a patrol car, yet he was the third-highest-ranking officer on the force.

Besides a taste for raw data, the Spider had weaknesses for junk food, Internet porn, and high-quality marijuana. The latter was Theo’s key to the Spider’s lair. He put the plastic Baggie on the keyboard in front of Nailsworth. Still without looking at Theo, the Spider opened the bag and sniffed, pinched a bud between his fingers, then folded the bag up and stuffed it into his shirt pocket.

“Nice,” he said. “What do you need?” He peeled the marshmallow cap off a Hostess Sno Ball, shoved it into his mouth, then threw the cake into a wastebasket at his feet.

Theo set the bag of snacks down next to the wastebasket. “I need the autopsy report on Bess Leander.”

The Nailgun nodded, no easy task for a man with no discernible neck. “And?”

Theo wasn’t sure what questions to ask. Nailsworth seldom volunteered information, you had to ask the right question. It was like talking to a rotund Sphinx. “I was wondering if you could come up with something that might help me find Mikey Plotznik.” Theo knew he didn’t have to explain. The Spider would know all about the missing kid.

The Spider reached into the bag at his feet and pulled out a Twinkie. “Let me pull up the autopsy.” His fat fingers flew over the keyboard. “You need a printout?”

“That would be nice.”

“It doesn’t show you as the investigating officer.”

“That’s why I came to you. The M.E.‘s office wouldn’t let me see the report.”

“Says here cause of death was cardiac arrest due to asphyxiation. Suicide.”

“Yes, she hung herself.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I saw the body.”

“I know. Hanging in the dining room.”

“So what do you mean, you don’t think so?

“The ligature marks on her neck were postmortem, according to this. Neck wasn’t broken, so she didn’t drop suddenly.”

Theo squinted at the screen, trying to make sense of the data. “There were heel marks on the wall. She had to have hung herself. She was depressed, taking Zoloft for it.”

“Not according to the toxicology.”

“What?”

“They ran the toxicology for antidepressants because you put it on the report, but there was nothing.”

“It says suicide right there.”

“Yes, it does, but the date doesn’t corroborate the timing. Looks like she had a heart attack. Then she hung herself afterward.”

“So she was murdered?”

“You wanted to see the report. It says cardiac arrest. But ultimately, cardiac arrest is what kills everyone. Catch a bullet in the head, get hit by a car, eat some poison. The heart tends to stop.”

“Eat some poison?”

“Just an example, Crowe. It’s not my field. If I were you, I’d check and see if she had a history of heart problems.”

“You said it wasn’t your field.”

“It’s not.” The Spider hit a key and a laser printer whirred in the darkness somewhere.

“I don’t have much on the kid. I could give you the subscription list for his paper route.”

Theo realized that he had gotten all he was going to get on Bess Leander. “I have that. How about giving me any known baby-rapers in the area?”

“That’s easy.” The Spider’s fingers danced over the keyboard. “You think the kid was snatched?”

“I don’t know shit,” Theo said.

The Spider said, “No known pedophiles in Pine Cove. You want the whole county?”

“Why not?”

The laser printer whirred and the Spider pointed through the dark at the noise. “Everything you want is back there. That’s all I can do for you.”

“Thanks, Nailgun, I appreciate it.” Theo felt a chronic case of the creeps going up his spine. He took a step into the dark and found the papers sitting in the tray of the laser printer. Then he stepped to the door. “You wanna buzz me out?”

The Spider swiveled in his chair and looked at Theo for the first time. Theo could see his piggy eyes shining out of deep craters.

“You still live in that cabin by the Beer Bar Ranch?”

“Yep,” Theo said. “Eight years now.”

“Never been on the ranch, though, have you?”

“No.” Theo cringed. Could the Spider know about Sheriff Burton’s hold over him?

“Good,” the Spider said. “Stay out of there. And Theo?”

“Yeah?”

“Sheriff Burton has been checking with me on everything that comes out of Pine Cove. After the Leander death and the truck blowing up, he got very jumpy. If you decide to pursue the Leander thing, stay low-key.”

Theo was amazed. The Spider had actually volunteered information. “Why?” was all he could say.

“I like the herb you bring me.” The Spider patted his shirt pocket.

Theo smiled. “You won’t tell Burton you gave me the autopsy report?”

“Why would I?” said the Spider.

“Take care,” Theo said. The Spider turned back to his screens and buzzed the door.

Molly wasn’t so sure that life as Pine Cove’s Crazy Lady wasn’t harder than being a Warrior Babe of the Outland. Things were pretty clear for a Warrior Babe: you ran around half-naked looking for food and fuel and occasionally kicked the snot out of some mutants. There was no subterfuge or rumor. You didn’t have to guess whether or not the Sand Pirates approved of your behavior. If they approved, they staked you out and tortured you. If they didn’t they called you a bitch, then they staked you out and tortured you. They might release starving radioactive cockroaches on you or burn you with hot pokers, they might even gang-rape you (in foreign-release directors’cuts only), but you always knew where you stood with Sand Pirates. And they never tittered. Molly had had all the tittering she could handle for the day. At the pharmacy, they had tittered.

Four elderly women worked the counter at Pine Cove Drug and Gift, while above them, behind his glass window, Winston Krauss, the dolphin-molesting pharmacist, lorded over them like a rooster over a barnyard full of hens. It didn’t seem to matter to Winston that his four hens couldn’t make change or answer the simplest question, nor that they would retreat to the back room when anyone younger than thirty entered the pharmacy, lest they have to sell something embarrassing like condoms. What mattered to Winston was that his hens worked for minimum wage and treated him like a god. He was behind glass; tittering didn’t bother him.

The hens started tittering when Molly hit the door and broke titter only when she came to the counter with an entire case of economy-sized Neosporin ointment.

“Are you sure, dear?” they kept asking, refusing to take Molly’s money. “Perhaps we should ask Winston. This seems like an awful lot.”

Winston had disappeared among the shelves of faux-antidepressants when Molly entered the store. He wondered if he should have ordered some faux-antipsychotics as well. Val Riordan hadn’t said.

“Look,” Molly finally said, “I’m nuts. You know it, I know it, Winston knows it. But in America it is your right to be nuts. I get a check from the state every month because I’m nuts. The state gives me money so I can buy whatever I need to continue being nuts, and right now I need this case of ointment. So ring it up so I can go be nuts somewhere else. Okay?”

The hens huddled and tittered.

“Or do I need to buy a case of those huge fluorescent orange prelubricated condoms with the deely-bobbers on the tip and blow them up in your card section.” You never have to get this tough with Sand Pirates, Molly thought.

The hens broke their huddle and looked up in terror.

“I hear they’re like thousands of tiny fingers, urging you to let go,” Molly added.

Between the four of them it only took ten minutes more to ring up Molly’s order and figure her change within the nearest dollar.

As Molly was leaving, she turned and said, “In the Outland, you would have all been made into jerky a long time ago.”

Fifteen

Getting blown up had put the Sea Beast in a deep blue funk. Sometimes when he felt this way, he would swim to the edge of a coral reef and lie there in the sand while neon cleaner fish nipped at the parasites and algae on his scales. His flanks flashed a truce of color to let the little fish know that they were safe as they darted in and out of his mouth, grabbing bits of food and grunge like tiny dental hygienists. In turn, they emanated an electromagnetic message that translated roughly to: “I won’t be a minute, sorry to bother you, please don’t eat me.”

He was getting a similar message from the warmblood that was ministering to his burns, and he flashed the truce of color along his sides to confirm that he understood. He couldn’t pick up the intentions of all warmbloods, but this one was wired differently. He could sense that she meant him no harm and was even going to bring him food. He understood that when she made the “Steve” sound, she was talking to him.

“Steve,” Molly said, “stop making those colors. Do you want the neighbors to see? It’s broad daylight.”

She was on a stepladder with a paintbrush. To the casual observer, she was painting her neighbor’s trailer. In fact, she was applying great gobs of Neosporin ointment to the Sea Beast’s back. “You’ll heal faster with this stuff on you, and it doesn’t sting.”

After she had covered the charred parts of the trailer with ointment, she draped fiberglass fabric on as bandages and began ladling roof-patching tar over the fabric. Several of her neighbors looked out their windows, dismissed her actions as more eccentricities of a crazy woman, then went back to their afternoon game shows.

Molly was spreading the roofing tar over the fiberglass bandages with a squeegee when she heard a vehicle pull up in front of her trailer. Les, the hardware guy, got out of the truck, adjusted his suspenders, and headed toward her, looking a little nervous, but resolved. A light dew of sweat shone on his bald head, despite the autumn chill in the air.

“Little lady, what are you doing? I thought you were going to wait for me to help you.”

Molly came down from her ladder and stood with the squeegee at port arms while it dripped black goo. “I wanted to get going on this before dark. Thanks for coming.” She smiled sweetly—a leftover movie star smile.

Les escaped the smile to hardware land. “I can’t even tell what you’re trying to do here, but whatever it is, it looks like you mucked it up pretty bad already.”

“No, come here and look at this.”

Les moved cautiously to Molly’s side and looked up at the trailer. “What the hell is this thing made of anyway? Up close it looks like plastic or something.”

“Maybe you should look at it from the inside,” Molly said. “The damage is more obvious in there.”

The hardware clerk leered. Molly felt him trying to stare through her sweatshirt. “Well, if that’s what you think. Let’s go inside and have a look.” He started toward the door of the trailer.

Molly grabbed his shoulder. “Wait a second. Where are the keys to your truck?”

“I leave ‘em in it. Why? This town is safe.”

“No reason, just wondering.” Molly dazzled him with another smile. “Why don’t you go on in? I’ll be in as soon as I get some of this tar off of my hands.”

“Sure thing, missy,” Les said. He toddled toward the front door like a man badly in need of a rest room.

Molly backed away toward Les’s truck. When the hardware clerk laid a hand on the door handle, Molly called, “Steve! Lunch!”

“My name isn’t Steve,” Les said.

“No,” Molly said, “you’re the other one.”

“Les, you mean?”

“No, lunch.” Molly gave him one last smile.

Steve recognized the sound of his name and felt the thought around the word “lunch”

Les felt something wet wrap around his legs and opened his mouth to scream just as the tip of the serpent’s tongue wrapped his face, cutting off his air. The last thing he saw was the bare breasts of the fallen scream queen, Molly Michon, as she lifted her sweatshirt to give him a farewell flash before he was slurped into the waiting maw of the Sea Beast.

Molly heard the bones crunch and cringed. Boy, sometimes it just pays to be a nutcase, she thought. That sort of thing might bother a sane person.

One of the windows in the front of the dragon trailer closed slowly and opened, a function of the Sea Beast pushing his meal down his throat, but Molly took it for a wink.

Dr. Val’s office had always represented a little island of sanity to Estelle, a sophisticated status quo, always clean, calm, orderly, and well appointed. Like many artists, Estelle lived in an atmosphere of chaotic funk, taken by observers to be artistic charm, but in fact no more than a civilized way of dealing with the relative poverty and uncertainly of cannibalizing one’s imagination for money. If you had to spill your guts to someone, it was nice to do it in a place that wasn’t spattered with paint and covered with canvases that beckoned to be finished. Dr. Val’s office was an escape, a pause, a comfort. But not today.

After being sent in to the inner office, before she even sat down in one of the leather guest chairs, Estelle said, “Your assistant is wearing oven mitts, did you know that?”

Valerie Riordan, for once with a few hairs out of place, rubbed her temples, looked at her desk blotter, and said, “I know. She has a skin condition.”

“But they’re taped on with duct tape.”

“It’s a very bad skin condition. How are you today?”

Estelle looked back toward the door. “Poor thing. She seemed out of breath when I came in. Has she seen a doctor?”

“Chloe will be fine, Estelle. Her typing skills may even improve.”

Estelle sensed that Dr. Val was not having a good day and decided to let the assistant in oven mitts pass. “Thanks for seeing me on such short notice. I know it’s been a while since we’ve had a session, but I really felt I need to talk to someone. My life has gotten a little weird lately.”

“There’s a lot of that going around,” Dr. Val said, doodling on a legal pad as she spoke. “What’s up?”

“I’ve met a man.”

Dr. Val looked up for the first time. “You have?”

“He’s a musician. A Bluesman. He’s been playing at the Slug. I met him there. We’ve been, well, he’s been staying at my place for the last couple of days.”

“And how do you feel about that?”

“I like it. I like him. I haven’t been with a man since my husband died. I thought I would feel like, well, like I was betraying him. But I don’t. I feel great. He’s funny, and he has this sense of, I don’t know, wisdom. Like he’s seen it all, but he hasn’t become cynical. He seems sort of bemused by the hardships in life. Not at all like most people.”

“But what about you?”

“I think I love him.”

“Does he love you?”

“I think so. But he says he’s going to leave. That’s what’s bothering me. I finally got used to being alone, and now that I found someone, he’s going to leave me because he’s afraid of a sea monster.”

Valerie Riordan dropped her pen and slumped in her chair—a very unprofessional move, Estelle thought.

“Excuse me?” Val said.

“A sea monster. We were at the beach the other night, and something came up out of the water. Something big. We ran for the car, and later Catfish told me that he was once chased by a sea monster down in the Delta and that it had come back to get him. He says he doesn’t want other people to get hurt, but I think he’s just afraid. He thinks the monster will come back as long as he’s on the coast. He’s trying to get a gig in Iowa, as far from the coast as he can get. Do you think he’s just afraid to commit? I read a lot about that in the women’s magazines.”

“A sea monster? Is that a metaphor for something? Some Blues term that I’m not getting?”

“No, I think it’s a reptile, at least the way he describes it. I didn’t get a good look at it. It ate his best friend when he was a young man. I think he’s running away from the guilt. What do you think?”

“Estelle, there’s no such thing as sea monsters.”

“Catfish said that no one would believe me.”

“Catfish?”

“That’s his name. My Bluesman. He’s very sweet. He has a sense of gallantry that you don’t see much anymore. I don’t think it’s an act. He’s too old for that. I didn’t think I would ever feel this way again. These are girl feelings, not woman feelings. I want to spend the rest of my life with him. I want to have his grandchildren.”

“Grandchildren?”

“Sure, he’s had his days with the booze and the hos, but I think he’s ready to settle down.”

“The booze and the hos?”

Dr. Val seemed to have gone into some sort of fugue state, working on a stunned psychiatrist autopilot where all she could do was parrot what Estelle said back in the form of a question. Estelle needed more input than this.

“Do you think I should tell the authorities?”

“About the booze and the hos?”

“The sea monster. That Plotznik boy is missing, you know?”

Dr. Val made a show of straightening her blouse and assuming a controlled, staid, professional posture. “Estelle, I think we may need to adjust your medication.”

“I haven’t been taking it. But I feel fine. Catfish says that if Prozac had been invented a hundred years ago there wouldn’t have been any Blues at all. Just a lot of happy people with no soul. I tend to agree with him. The antidepressants served their purpose for me after Joe died, but I’m not sure I need them now. I even feel like I could get some painting done—if I can find some time away from sex.”

Dr. Val winced. “I was thinking of something besides antidepressants, Estelle. You obviously are dealing with some serious changes right now. I’m not sure how to proceed. Do you think that Mr., uh, Catfish would mind coming to a session with you?”

“That might be tough. He doesn’t like your mojo.”

“My mojo?”

“Not your mojo in particular. Just psychiatrist’s mojo in general. He spent a little time in a mental hospital in Mississippi after the monster ate his friend. He didn’t care for the staff’s mojo.” Estelle realized that her vocabulary, even her way of thinking, had changed over the last few days, the result of immersion in Catfish’s Blues world.

The doctor was rubbing her temples again. “Estelle, let’s make another appointment for tomorrow or the next day. Tell Chloe to add it on at the end of the day if I’m booked up. And try to bring your gentleman along with you. In the meantime, assure him that my practice is mojo-free, would you?”

Estelle stood. “Can that little girl write with those oven mitts on?”

“She’ll manage.”

“So what should I do? I don’t want him to go. But I feel like I’ve lost a part of myself by falling in love. I’m happy, but I don’t know who I am anymore. I’m worried.” Estelle realized that she was starting to whine and looked at her shoes, ashamed.

“That’s our time, Estelle. Let’s save this for our next appointment.”

“Right. Should I tell the constable about the sea monster?”

“Let’s hold off on that for now. These things have a way of taking care of themselves.”

“Thanks, Dr. Val. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Good-bye, Estelle.”

Estelle left the office and stopped at Chloe’s desk outside. The girl was gone, but there were animal noises coming from the bathroom just down the hall. Perhaps she had caught one of the oven mitts on her nose ring. Poor thing. Estelle went to the bathroom door and knocked lightly.

“Are you okay in there, dear? Do you need some help?”

The answer came back in high moan. “I’m fine. Really fine. Thanks. Oh my God!”

“You’re sure?”

“No, that’s all right!”

“I’m supposed to make an appointment for tomorrow or the next day. The doctor said to pencil it in late if you have to.” Estelle could hear thumping noises coming from the bathroom, and it sounded as if the medicine cabinet had dumped.

“Oh wow! Wow! Oh wow!”

The scheduling must really have been tight. “I’m sorry. I won’t bother you anymore. Call me to confirm, would you, dear?”

Estelle left Valerie Riordan’s house even more unsettled than she had come in, thinking that it had been quite some time, half a day anyway, since she had had her skinny Bluesman between the sheets.

Val had a break between appointments, time in which to reflect on her suspicion that by taking everyone in Pine Cove off antidepressants, she had turned the town into a squirrel’s nest. Estelle Boyet had always been a tad eccentric, it was part of her artist persona, but Val had never seen this as unhealthy. On the contrary, the self-image of an eccentric artist seemed to help Estelle get over losing her husband. But now the woman was raving about sea monsters, and worse, she was getting involved in a relationship with a man that could only be construed as self-destructive.

Could people—rational adult people—still fall in love like that? Could they still feel like that? Val wanted to feel like that. For the first time since her divorce, it occurred to her that she actually wanted to be involved again with a man. No, not just involved, in love. She pulled her Rolodex from the desk drawer and thumbed through it until she found the number of her psychiatrist in San Junipero. She had been in analysis all through med school and residency, it was an integral part of the training of any psychiatrist, but she hadn’t seen her therapist in over five years. Maybe it was time. What sort of cynicism had come over her, that she was interpreting the desire to fall in love as a condition requiring treatment? Maybe her cynicism was the problem. Of course she couldn’t tell him about what she had done to her patients, but perhaps…

A red light blinked on the tiny LED panel on her phone and the incoming call, screened by Chloe, who had obviously taken a short break from her self-abuse, scrolled across the screen. Constable Crowe, line one. Speaking of squirrels.

She picked up the phone. “Dr. Riordan.”

“Hi, Dr. Riordan, this is Theo Crowe. I just called to tell you that you were right.”

“Thank you for calling, Constable. Have a nice day.”

“You were right about Bess Leander not taking the antidepressants. I just got a look at the toxicology report. There was no Zoloft in her system.”

Val stopped breathing.

“Doctor, are you there?”

All her worries about the drugs, this whole perverse plan, all the extra sessions, the long hours, the guilt, the friggin‘ guilt, and Bess Leander hadn’t been taking her medication at all. Val felt sick to her stomach.

“Doctor?” Theo said.

Val forced herself to take a deep breath. “Why? I mean, when? It’s been over a month. When did you find this out?”

“Just today. I wasn’t given access to the autopsy report. No one was. I’m sorry it took so long.”

“Well, thank you for letting me know, Constable. I appreciate it.” She prepared to ring off.

“Dr. Riordan, don’t you have to get a medical history on your patients before you prescribe anything?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Do you know if Bess Leander had any heart problems?”

“No, physically she was a very healthy woman, as far as I know. Why?”

“No reason,” Theo said. “Oh yeah, I never got your thoughts on the information I shared at breakfast. About Joseph Leander. I was still wondering if you had any thoughts?”

The whole world had flip-flopped. Val had stone-walled up to now on Bess Leander because she had assumed that her own negligence had had something to do with Bess’s death. What now, though? Really, she didn’t know much about Bess at all. She said, “What exactly do you want from me, Constable?”

“I just need to know, did she suspect her husband of having an affair? Or give you any indication that she might be afraid of him?”

“Are you saying what I think you are saying? You don’t think Bess Leander committed suicide?”

“I’m not saying that. I’m just asking.”

Val searched her memory. What had Bess Leander said about her husband? “I remember her saying that she felt he was uninvolved in their family life and that she had laid down the law to him.”

“Laid down the law? In what way?”

“She told him that because he refused to put the toilet seat down, he was going to have to sit down to pee from now on.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s all I can remember. Joseph Leander is a salesman. He was gone a lot. I think Bess felt that he was somewhat of an intrusion on her and the girls’ lives. It wasn’t a healthy relationship.” As if there is such a thing, Val thought. “Are you investigating Joseph Leander?”

“I’d rather not say,” Theo said. “Do you think I should be?”

“You’re the policeman, Mr. Crowe.”

“I am? Oh, right, I am. Anyway, thanks, Doctor. By the way, my friend Gabe thought you were, uh, interesting, I mean, charming. I mean, he enjoyed talking with you.”

“He did?”

“Don’t tell him I said so.”

“Of course. Good-bye, Constable.” Val hung up and sat back in her chair. She had unnecessarily put an entire town in emotional chaos, committed a basketful of federal crimes as well as breaking nearly every ethical standard in her field, and one of her patients had possibly been murdered, but she felt, well, sort of excited. Charming, she thought. He found me charming. I wonder if he really said “charming” or if Theo was just making that up—the pothead.

Charming.

She smiled and buzzed Chloe to send in her next appointment.

Sixteen

The phone behind the bar rang and Mavis yanked it out of its cradle. “Mount Olympus, Goddess of Sex speaking,” she said, and there was a mechanical ratcheting noise as she cocked a hip while she listened. “No, I haven’t seen him—like I would even tell you if he was here. Hell, woman, I have a sacred trust here—I can’t rat out every husband who comes in for a snort after work. How would I know? Honey, you want to keep this kind of thing from happening? Two words: long, nasty blowjobs. Yeah, well, if you were doing them instead of counting words, then maybe you wouldn’t lose your husband. Oh, all right, hold on.”

Mavis held her receiver to breast and shouted, “Hey! Anyone seen Les from the hardware store?” A few heads shook and a fusillade of “nopes” fired through the bar.

“Nope, he’s not here. Yeah, if I see him, I’ll be sure and tell him that there was a screeching harpy looking for him. Oh yeah, well, I’ve been done doggie-style by the Better Business Bureau and they liked it, so say hi for me.”

Mavis slammed down the phone. She felt like the Tin Man left out in the rain. Her metal parts felt rusty and she was sure that her plastic parts were going to mush. Ten o’clock on a Saturday, live entertainment on the stage, and she still hadn’t sold enough liquor to cover the cost of her Blues singer. Oh, the bar was full, but people were nursing their drinks, making them last, making goo-goo eyes at each other and slipping out, couple by couple, without dropping a sawbuck. What in the hell had come over this town? The Blues singer was supposed to drive them to drink, but the entire population seemed to be absolutely giddy with love. They were talking instead of drinking. Wimps. Mavis spit into the bar sink in disgust and there was a pinging sound from a tiny spring that had dislodged somewhere inside of her.

Wusses. Mavis threw back a shot of Bushmills and glared at the couples sitting at the bar, then glared at Catfish, who was finishing up a set on the stage, his National steel guitar whining as he sang about losing his soul at the crossroads.

Catfish told the story of the great Robert Johnson, the haunting Bluesman who had met the devil at the crossroads and bargained his soul for supernatural ability, but was pursued throughout his life by a hellhound that had caught his scent at the gates of hell and finally took him home when a jealous husband slipped poison into Johnson’s liquor.

“Truth be,” Catfish said into the microphone, “I done stood at midnight at every crossroad in the Delta lookin‘ to sell my soul, but wasn’t nobody buyin’. Now that there is the Blues. But I gots me my own brand of hellhound, surely I do.”

“That’s sweet, fish boy,” Mavis shouted from behind the bar. “Come over here, I gotta talk to you.”

“‘Scuse me, folks, they’s a call from hell right now,” Catfish said to the crowd with a grin. But no one was listening. He put his guitar in the stand and ambled over to Mavis.

“You’re not loud enough,” Mavis said.

“Turn up your hearing aid, woman. I ain’t got no pickup in that National. They’s only so high you can go into a mike or she feed back.”

“People are talking, not drinking. Play louder. And no love songs.”

“I gots me a Fender Stratocaster and a Marshall amp in the car, but I don’t like playin ‘lectric.”

“Go get them. Plug in. Play loud. I don’t need you if you don’t sell liquor.”

“This gonna be my last night anyway.”

“Get the guitar,” Mavis said.

Molly slammed the truck into the Dumpster behind the Head of the Slug Saloon. Glass from the headlights tinkled to the tarmac and the fan raked across the radiator with a grating shriek. It had been a few years since Molly had done any driving, and Les had left out a few parts from the do-it-yourself brake kit he’d installed. Molly turned off the engine and set the parking brake, then wiped the steering wheel and shift knob with the sleeve of her sweatshirt to remove any fingerprints. She climbed out of the truck and tossed the keys into the mashed Dumpster. There was no music coming from the back door of the Slug, only the smell of stale beer and the low murmur of conversation. She scampered out of the alley and started the four-block walk home.

A low fog drifted over Cypress Street and Molly was grateful for the cover. There were only a few lights on in the park’s trailers, and she hurried past them to where her own windows flickered with the lonely blue of the unwatched television. She looked past her house to the space where Steve lay healing and noticed a figure outlined in the fog. As she drew closer, she could see that it was not one person, but two, standing not twenty feet from the dragon trailer. Her heart sank. She expected the beams of police flashlights to swing through the fog any second, but the figures were just standing there. She crept around the edge of her trailer, pressed so close that she could feel the cold coming off the aluminum skin through her sweatshirt.

A woman’s voice cut the fog, “Lord, we have heeded your call and come unto you. Forgive us our casual attire, as our dry cleaner did close for the weekend and we are left sorely without outfits with matching accessories.”

It was the school prayer ladies, Katie and Marge, although Molly wouldn’t be able to tell which was which. They were wearing identical pink jogging suits with matching Nikes. As she watched, the two women moved closer to Steve, and Molly could see a rippling across the dragon trailer.

“As our Lord Jesus did give His life for our sins, so we come unto Thee, O Lord, to giveth of ourselves.”

The end of the dragon trailer lost its angles to curves, and Molly could see Steve’s broad head extending, changing, the door going from a vertical rectangle to a wide horizontal maw. The women seemed unaffected by the change and continued to move slowly forward, silhouetted now by Steve’s jaws, which were opening like a toothed cavern.

Molly ran around her trailer and up the steps, reached in and grabbed her broadsword which was leaned against the wall just inside the door, and dashed back around the trailer and toward the Sea Beast.

Marge and Katie were almost inside of Steve’s open mouth. Molly could see his enormous tongue snaking out the side of his mouth, reaching behind the church ladies to drag them in.

“No!” Molly leapt from a full run, slamming between Marge and Katie like a fullback leaping through blockers to the goal line, and smacked Steve on the nose with the flat of her sword. She landed in his mouth and rolled clear to the ground just as his jaws snapped shut behind her. She came up on one knee, holding the sword pointed at Steve’s nose.

“No!” she said. “Bad dragon.” Steve turned his head quizzically, as if wondering what she was so upset about.

“Change back,” Molly said, raising the sword as if to whack his nose again. Steve’s head and neck pulled back into the shape of a double-wide trailer.

Molly looked back at the church ladies, who seemed very concerned with having been knocked into the mud in their pink jogging suits, but oblivious to the fact that they had almost been eaten. “Are you two okay?”

“We felt the call,” one of them said, either Marge or Katie, while the other one nodded in agreement. “We had to come to give ourselves unto the Lord.” Their eyes were glazed over and they stared right past her to the trailer as they spoke.

“You guys have to go home now. Aren’t your husbands worried about you or something?”

“We heard the call.”

Molly helped them to their feet and pointed them away from Steve, who made a faint whining noise as she pushed the church ladies away toward the street.

Molly stopped them at the edge of the street and spoke to them from behind. “Go home. Don’t come back here. Okay?”

“We wanted to bring the children to feel the spirit too, but it was so late, and we have church tomorrow.”

Molly smacked the speaker across the butt with the flat of her sword, a good two-handed stroke that sent her stumbling into the street. “Go home!”

Molly was winding up to smack the other one when she turned and held up her hand as if refusing a refill on coffee. “No thank you.”

“Then you’re going and you’re not coming back, right?”

The woman didn’t seem sure. Molly turned her grip on the sword so the edge was poised to strike. “Right?”

“Yes,” the woman said. Her friend nodded in agreement as she rubbed her bottom.

“Now go,” Molly said. As the women walked away, she called after them, “And stop dressing alike. That’s fucking weird.”

She watched them until they disappeared into the fog, then went back to where Steve was waiting in trailer form. “Well?” She threw out her hip, frowned, and tapped her foot as if waiting for his explanation.

His windows narrowed, ashamed.

“They’ll be back, you know. Then what?”

He whimpered, the sound coming from deep inside, where the kitchen would be if he were really a trailer.

“If you’re still hungry, you have to let me know. I can help. We can find you something. Although there is only one hardware store in town. You’re going to have to diversify your diet.”

Suddenly an electric guitar screamed out of the fog, wailing like a tortured ghost of Chicago Blues. The dragon trailer became the dragon again, his white skin went black, then flashed brilliant streaks of red anger. The bandages Molly had spent all day applying shredded with the abrupt shape change. His gill trees hung with tatters of fiberglass fabric as if toilet-papered by mischievous boys. The Sea Beast threw back his head and roared, rattling the windows through the trailer park. Molly fell in the mud as she backed up, then rolled and came up on her feet with the broadsword poised to thrust into the Sea Beast’s throat.

“Steve, I think you need to take a timeout, young man.”

Such a short period of time to have so many new experiences. In just the last few days, he had coordinated his first major missing person search, including talking to worried parents and the milk carton company, whose people wanted to know if Theo could get a picture of Mikey Plotznik where he wasn’t making a contorted, goofy face at the camera. (If they found a better picture, Mikey would end up with great exposure on the two percent or nonfat cartons, but if they had to go with what they had, he was going on the side of the buttermilk and would only be seen by old folks and people making ranch dressing.) Theo had also had to deal with his first major fire, the hallucination of giant animal tracks, and opening a real live murder investigation, all without the benefit of his lifelong chemical crutch. Not that he couldn’t nurse at his favorite pipe, he’d just lost the desire to do so.

Now he had to decide how to go about investigating Bess Leander’s murder. Should he pull someone in for interrogation? Pull them in where? His cabin? He didn’t have an office. Somehow he couldn’t imagine holding an effective interrogation with the suspect in a beanbag chair under a hot lava lamp. “Talk, scumbag! Don’t make me turn the black light on that Jimi Hendrix poster and light some incense. You don’t want that.”

And amid all the other activity, he felt a nagging compulsion to go back to the Fly Rod Trailer Court and talk to Molly Michon. Crazy thoughts.

Finally he decided to drop by Joseph Leander’s house, hoping he might catch the salesman off guard. As he pulled into the driveway, he noticed that weeds had grown up around the garden gnomes and there was a patina of dust on the Dutch hex sign over the front door. The garage door was open and Joseph’s minivan was parked inside.

Theo paused at the front door before knocking and made sure that his ponytail was tucked into his collar and his collar was straight. For some reason, he felt as if he should be wearing a gun. He had one, a Smith & Wesson .357 revolver, but it was on the top shelf of his closet, next to his bong collection.

He rang the bell, then waited. A minute passed before Joseph Leander opened the door. He was wearing paint-spattered corduroys and an old cardigan sweater that looked like it had been pulled out of the trash a dozen times. Obviously not the sort of attire that Bess Leander would have allowed in her home.

“Constable Crowe.” Leander was not smiling. “What can I do for you?”

“If you have a minute, I’d like to talk to you. May I come in?”

“I suppose,” Leander said. He stepped away from the door and Theo ducked in. “I just made some coffee. Would you like some?”

“No thanks. I’m on duty.” Cops are supposed to say that, Theo thought.

“It’s coffee.”

“Oh, right, sure. Milk and sugar please.”

The living room had bare pine plank floors and rag rugs. An antique pew bench took the place of a sofa, two Shaker chairs and a galvanized milk can with a padded cushion on the top provided the other seating. Three antique butter churns stood in the corners of the room. But for a new thirty-six-inch Sony by the fireplace, it could have been the living room of a seventeenth-century family (a family with very high cholesterol from all that butter).

Joseph Leander returned to the living room and handed Theo a hand-thrown stoneware mug. The coffee was the color of butterscotch and tasted of cinnamon. “Thanks,” Theo said. “New TV?” He nodded to the Sony.

Leander sat across from Theo on the milk can. “Yes, I got it for the girls. PBS and so forth. Bess never approved of television.”

“And so you killed her!”

Leander sprayed a mouthful of coffee on the rug. “What?”

Theo took a sip of his coffee while Leander stared at him, wide-eyed. Maybe he’d been a bit too abrupt. Fall back, regroup. “So did you get cable? Reception is horrible in Pine Cove without cable. It’s the hills, I think.”

Leander blinked furiously and did a triple-take on Theo. “What are you talking about?”

“I saw the coroner’s report on your wife, Joseph. She didn’t die from hanging.”

“You’re insane. You were there.” Leander stood and took the mug out of Theo’s hands. “I won’t listen to this. You can go now, Constable.” Leander stepped back and waited.

Theo stood. He wasn’t very good at confrontation, he was a peace officer. This was too hard. He pushed himself. “Was it the affair with Betsy? Did Bess catch you?”

Veins were beginning to show on Leander’s bald pate. “I just started seeing Betsy. I loved my wife and I resent you doing this to her memory. You’re not supposed to do this. You’re not even a real cop. Now get out of my house.”

“Your wife was a good woman. A little weird, but good.”

Leander set the coffee mugs down on a butter churn, went to the front door, and pulled it open. “Go.” He waved Theo toward the door.

“I’m going, Joseph. But I’ll be back.” Theo stepped outside.

Leander’s face had gone completely red. “No, you won’t.”

“Oh, I think I will,” Theo said, feeling very much like a second grader in a playground argument.

“Don’t fuck with me, Crowe,” Leander spat. “You have no idea what you’re doing.” He slammed the door in Theo’s face.

“Do too,” Theo said.

Seventeen

Molly had always wondered about American women’s fascination with bad boys. There seemed to be some sort of logic-defying attraction to the guy who rode a motorcycle and had a tattoo, a gun in the glove compartment, or a snifter of cocaine on the coffee table. In her acting days, she’d even been involved with a couple of them herself, but this was the first one who actually, well, ate people. Women always felt that they could reform a guy. How else could you explain the numerous proposals of marriage received by captured serial killers? That one was a bit too much even for Molly, and she took comfort in the fact that no matter how crazy she had gotten, she’d never been tempted to marry a guy who made a habit of strangling his dates.

American mothers programmed their daughters to believe that they could make everything better. Why else was she leading a hundred-foot monster down a creek bed in broad daylight?

Fortunately, the creek bed was lined in most places by a heavy growth of willow trees, and as Steve moved over the rocks, his great body changed color and texture to match his surroundings until he looked like nothing more than a trick of the light, like heat rising off blacktop.

Molly made him stay under cover as they approached the Cypress Street bridge, then waited until there was no traffic and signaled him to go. Steve slithered under the bridge like a snake down its hole, his back knocking off great hunks of concrete, and he passed through.

In less than an hour they were out of town, into the ranchland that ran along the coast to the north, and Molly led Steve up through the trees to the edge of a pasture. “There you go, big guy,” Molly said, pointing to a herd of Holsteins that were grazing a hundred yards away. “Breakfast.”

Steve crouched at the edge of the forest like a cat ready to pounce. His tail twitched, splintering a cypress sapling in the process. Molly sat down beside him and cleaned mud from her sneakers with a stick as the cows slowly made their way toward them.

“This is it?” she asked. “You just sit here and they come over to be eaten? A girl could lose respect for you as a hunter watching this, you know that?”

Theo found himself trying to figure out why, exactly, he was driving to Molly Michon’s place, when his cell phone rang. Before he answered, he reminded himself not to sound stoned, when it occurred to him that he actually wasn’t stoned, and that was even more frightening.

“Crowe here,” he said.

“Crowe, this is Nailsworth, down at County. Are you nuts?”

Theo stalled while he tried to remember who Nailsworth was. “Is this a survey?”

“What did you do with that data I gave you?” Nailsworth said. Theo suddenly remembered that Nailsworth was the Spider’s real name. A second call was beeping on Theo’s line.

“Nothing. I mean, I conducted an interview. Can you hold? I’ve got another call.”

“No, I can’t hold. I know you’ve got another call. You didn’t hear anything from me, do you hear? I gave you nothing, understand?”

“‘Kay,” Theo said.

The Spider hung up and Theo connected to the other call.

“Crowe, are you fucking nuts!”

“Is this a survey?” Theo said, pretty sure that it wasn’t a survey, but also pretty sure that Sheriff Burton wouldn’t be happy with a truthful answer to the question, which was: “Yes, I probably am nuts.”

“I thought I told you to stay away from Leander. That case is closed and filed.”

Theo thought for a second. It hadn’t been five minutes since he’d left Joseph Leander’s house. How could Burton know already? No one got through to the sheriff that quickly.

“Some suspicious evidence popped up,” Theo said, trying to figure out how he was going to cover for the Spider if Burton pressed. “I just stopped by to see if there was anything to it.”

“You fucking pothead. If I tell you to let something lie, you let it lie, do you understand me? I’m not talking about your job now, Crowe, I’m talking about life as you know it. I hear another word out of North County and you are going to be getting your dance card punched by every AIDs-ridden convict in Soledad. Leave Leander alone.”

“But…”

“Say ‘Yes, sir,’ you bag of shit.”

“Yes, sir, you bag of shit,” Theo said.

“You are finished, Crowe, you—”

“Sorry, Sheriff. Battery’s going.” Theo disconnected and headed back to his cabin, shaking as he drove.

In Flesh Eaters of the Outland, Kendra was forced to watch while a new breed of mutants sprayed hapless villagers with a flesh-dissolving enzyme, then lapped up puddles of human protein with disgusting dubbed sucking sounds that the foley artists had obtained at Sea World, recording baby walruses being fed handfuls of shellfish. The special effects guys simulated the carnage with large quantities of rubber cement, paraffin body parts that conveniently melted under the Mexican desert sun, and transmission fluid instead of the usual Karo syrup fake blood. (The sugary stage blood tended to attract blowflies and the director didn’t want to get notice from the ASPCA for abuse.) Overall, the effect was so real that Molly insisted that all of Kendra’s reaction shots be done after the cleanup to avoid her gagging and going green on camera. Between the carrion scene and some salmonella tacos served up by the Nogales-based caterer, as well as repeated propositions by an Arab coproducer with halitosis that made her eyes water, Molly was sick for three days. But none of it, even the fetid falafel breath, produced the nausea she was experiencing upon watching Steve yack up four fully masticated, partially digested Holsteins.

Molly added the contents of her own stomach (three Pop Tarts and a Diet Coke) to the four pulverized piles of beefy goo that Steve had expelled onto the pasture.

“Lactose intolerant?” She wiped her mouth on her sleeve and glared at the Sea Beast. “You have no problem gulping down a paperboy and the closet perv from the hardware store, but you can’t eat dairy cows?”

Steve rolled onto his back and tried to look apologetic—streaks of purple played across his flanks, purple being his embarrassment color. Viscous tears the size of softballs welled up in the corner of his giant cat’s eyes.

“So I suppose you’re still hungry?”

Steve rolled back onto his feet and the earth rumbled beneath him.

“Maybe we can find you a horse or something,” Molly said. “Stay close to the tree line.” Using her broadsword as a walking stick, she led him over the hill. As they moved, his colors changed to match the surroundings, making it appear that Molly was being followed by a mirage.

For some reason, the words of Karl Marx kept running through Theo’s mind as he dug the machete out of the tool shed behind his cabin. “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” It follows, then, that “opium is the religion of the addict,” Theo thought. Which is why he was feeling the gut-wrenching remorse of the excommunicated as he took the machete to the first of the thick, fibrous stems in his marijuana patch. The bushy green weeds fell like martyred saints with each swing of the machete, and his hands picked up a film of sticky resin as he threw each plant onto a pile in the corner of the yard.

In five minutes his shirt was soaked with sweat and the pot patch looked like a miniature version of a clear-cut forest. Devastation. Stumps. He emptied a can of kerosene over the waste-high pile of cannabis, then pulled out his lighter and set the flame to a piece of paper. “Throw off the chains of your oppressors,” Marx had said. These plants, the habit that went with them, were Theo’s chains: the boot that Sheriff John Burton had kept pressed to his neck these last eight years, the threat that kept him from acting freely, from doing the right thing,

He threw the burning paper, and the flames of revolution whooshed over the pile. There was no elation, no rush of freedom as he backed away from the pyre. Instead of the triumph of revolution, he felt a sense of sickening loss, loneliness, and guilt: Judas at the base of the Cross. No wonder communism had failed.

He went into the cabin, retrieved the box from the shelf in the closet, and was beating his bong collection into shrapnel with a ballpeen hammer when he heard automatic weapons fire coming from the ranch.

Ignacio was lying in the shade just outside the metal shed, smoking a cigarette, while Miguel labored away inside, cooking the chemicals down into methamphetamine crystals. Beakers the size of basketballs boiled over electric burners, the fumes routed through glass tubes to a vent in the wall.

Miguel was short and wiry, just thirty years old, but the lines in his face and the grim expression he always wore made him look fifty. Ignacio was only twenty, fat and full of machismo, taken with his own success and toughness, and convinced that he was on his way to being the new godfather of the Mexican Mafia. They had crossed the border together six months ago, smuggled in by a coyote to do exactly what they were doing. And what a sweet deal it had turned out to be. Because the lab was protected by the big sheriff, they were never raided, they never had to move on a moment’s notice like the other labs in California, or bolt across the border until things cooled off. Only six months, and Miguel had sent home enough money for his wife to buy a ranch in Michoacán, and Ignacio was driving a flashy Dodge four-wheel drive and wearing five-hundred-dollar alligator-skin Tony Lama boots. All of this for only eight hours of work a day, for they were only one of three crews that kept the lab running twenty-four hours a day. And there was no danger of being stopped on the road while transporting drugs, because the big sheriff had a gringo in a little van come every few days to drop off supplies and take the drugs away.

“Put out that cigarette, cabrone!” Miguel shouted. “Do you want to blow us up?”

Ignacio scoffed and flicked his cigarette into the pasture. “You worry too much, Miguel.” Ignacio was tired of Miguel’s whining. He missed his family, he worried about getting caught, he didn’t know if the mix was right. When the older man wasn’t working, he was brooding, and no amount of money or consoling seemed to satisfy him.

Miguel appeared at the doorway and stood over Ignacio. “Do you feel that?”

“What?” Ignacio reached for the AK-47 that was leaning against the shed. “What?”

Miguel was staring across the pasture, but seemed to be seeing nothing. “I don’t know.”

“It is nothing. You worry too much.”

Miguel started walking across the pasture toward the tree line. “I have to go over there. Watch my stove.”

Ignacio stood up and hitched his silver-studded belt up under his belly. “I don’t how to watch the stove. I’m the guard. You stay and watch the stove.”

Miguel strode over the hill without looking back. Ignacio sat back down and pulled another cigarette from the pocket of his leather vest. “Loco,” he mumbled under his breath as he lit up. He smoked for several minutes, dreaming and scheming about a time when he would run the whole operation, but by the time he finished the cigarette he was starting to worry about his partner. He stood to get a better look, but couldn’t see anything beyond the top of the hill over which Miguel had disappeared.

“Miguel?” he called. But there was no answer.

He glanced inside the shed to see that everything was in order, and as far as he could tell, it was. Then he picked up his assault rifle and started across the pasture. Before he got three steps, he saw a white woman coming over the hill. She had the face and body of a hot senorita, but the wild gray-blonde hair of an old woman, and he wondered for the thousandth time what in the hell was wrong with American women. Were they all crazy? He lowered the assault rifle, but smiled as he did it, hoping to warn the woman off without making her suspicious.

“You stop,” he said in English. “No trespass.” He heard the cell phone ringing back in the shed and glanced back for a second.

The woman kept coming. “We met your friend,” Molly said.

“Who is we?” Ignacio asked.

His answer came over the hill behind the woman, first looking like two burned scrub oak trees, then the giant cat’s eyes. “Holy Mary, Mother of God,” Ignacio said as he wrestled with the bolt on the assault rifle.

Eight years of living at the edge of the ranch and never once had Theo so much as taken a walk down the dirt road. He had been under orders not to. But now what? He’d seen the trucks going in and out over the years, occasionally heard men shouting, but somehow he’d managed to ignore it all, and there had never been gunfire. Going onto the ranch to investigate automatic weapons fire seemed an especially stupid way to exercise his newfound freedom, but not investigating, well, that said something about him he wasn’t willing to face. Was he, in fact, a coward?

The sound of a man screaming in the distance made the decision for him. It wasn’t the sound of someone blowing off steam, it was a throat-stripping scream of pure terror. Theo kicked the shards of his bong collection off the front steps and went back to the closet to get his pistol.

The Smith & Wesson was wrapped in an oily cloth on the top shelf of his closet next to a box of shells. He unwrapped it, snapped open the cylinder, and dropped in six cartridges, fighting the shake that was moving from his hands to his entire body. He dumped another six shells into his shirt pocket and headed out to the Volvo.

He started the Volvo, then grabbed the radio mike to call for some backup. A lot of good that would do. Response time from the Sheriff’s Department could run as long as thirty minutes in Pine Cove, which was one of the reasons there was a town constable in the first place. And what would he say? He was still under orders not to go onto the ranch.

He dropped the mike on the seat next to his gun, put the Volvo in gear, and was starting to back out when a Dodge minivan pulled in beside him. Joseph Leander waved and smiled at him from the driver’s seat.

Theo put the Volvo in park. Leander climbed out of his van and leaned into the passenger window and looked at the .357 lying on the seat. “I need to talk to you,” he said.

“You weren’t much for talking an hour ago.”

“I am now.”

“Later. I’m just going to check something out on the ranch.”

“That’s perfect,” Leander said, shoving a small automatic pistol through the window into Theo’s face. “We’ll go together.”

Eighteen

The bust of Hippocrates stared up at Val Riordan from the desk. “First, do no harm…”

“Yeah, bite me,” said the psychiatrist, throwing her Versace scarf over the Greek’s face.

Val was having a bad day. The call from Constable Crowe, revealing that her treatment, or lack of it, had not caused Bess Leander’s suicide, had thrown Val into a quandary. She’d zombied her way through her morning appointments, answering questions with questions, pretending to take notes, and not catching a word that anyone said to her.

Five years ago there had been a flood of stories in the media about the dangers of Prozac and similar antidepressants, but those stories had been set off by sensational lawsuits against the drug companies, and the follow-ups, the fact that not one jury found antidepressants to cause destructive behavior, had been buried in the back pages. One powerful religious group (whose prophet was a hack science fiction writer and whose followers included masses of deluded movie stars and supermodels) had fielded a media attack against antidepressants, recommending instead that the depressed should just cheer up, buck up, and send in some gas money to keep the Mother Ship running. The various professional journals had reported no studies that proved that antidepressants increased the incidence of suicidal or violent behavior. Val had read the religious propaganda (it had the endorsement of the rich and famous), but she hadn’t read the professional journals. Yes, automatically treating her patients with antidepressants had been wrong, but her attempt to atone by taking them all off the drugs was just as wrong. Now she had to deal with the fact that she might be hurting them.

Val hit the speed dial button to the pharmacy. Winston Krauss answered, but his voice was muted, as if he had an incredibly bad cold.

“Pine Cobe Drug and Gibt.”

“Winston, you sound horrible.”

“I hab on my mask and snorkle.”

“Oh, Winston.” Val rubbed her eyes, causing her contacts to slide back in her head somewhere. “Not at the store.”

“I’m in the back room.” His voice became clear on the last word of the sentence. “There, I took it off. I’m glad you called, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about killer whales.”

“Pardon?”

“I’m attracted to Orcas. I’ve been watching a Jacques Cousteau tape about them…”

“Winston, can we cover this in session…?”

“I’m worried. I was especially turned on by the male one. Does that make me a homosexual?”

Jeez, it didn’t worry him that he was a wannabe whale-humper, as long as he wasn’t a gay wannabe whale-humper. As a psychiatrist, she’d tried to drop terms like “full-blown batshit” from her vocabulary, even in thought, yet with Winston, she couldn’t keep the term from rising. Lately, Val felt as if she was running the batshit concession on the cave floor. It had to stop. “Winston, I’m putting everyone back on their SSRIs. Get rid of the placebos. I’m going to put everyone on Paxil to get their levels up as quickly as possible. Make sure to warn the ones who were on Prozac that they absolutely can’t miss a day like they used to. I’ll move those who need it later.”

“You want me to take everyone off of the placebos? Do you know how much money we are making?”

“Start today. I’m going to call my patients. I want you to give them credit for the unused placebos they still have.”

“I won’t do it. I almost have enough saved to spend a month at the Cetacean Research Center on Grand Bahama. You can’t take that away from me.”

“Winston, I won’t compromise my patients’ mental health so you can go on vacation and fuck Flipper.”

“I said I won’t do it. You were the one who started this. What about your patients’ mental health then?”

“I was wrong. I’m not going to put everyone back on antidepressants either, so you’re going to lose some revenue there too. Some of them didn’t need the drugs in the first place.”

“No.”

Val was shocked at the conviction in Winston’s voice. His self-esteem problem no longer seemed an issue. What a crappy time for him to be making progress. “So you want the town to know about your little problem?”

“You won’t do that. You have more to lose than I do, Valerie. If you blow the whistle on me, then I’ll tell the whole story to the papers. I’ll get immunity and you’ll go to jail.”

“You bastard. I’ll send my patients down to the Thrifty Mart in San Junipero. Then you won’t even have the legitimate sales.”

“No, you won’t. Things are going to stay just the way they are, Dr. Val.” Winston hung up.

Valerie Riordan stared at the receiver for a second before replacing it in its cradle. How? How in the hell had she given control of her life over to someone like Winston Krauss? More important, how was she going to get it back without going to jail?

Joseph Leander had the automatic stuck against Theo’s ribs. He’d thrown Theo’s gun into the backseat. Leander was wearing a tweed jacket and wool dress slacks and a film of sweat was forming on his forehead. The Volvo bounced over a rut in the dirt road and Theo felt the barrel of the automatic dig into his ribs. He was trying to remember what you were supposed to do in such a situation, but all he could remember from the cop shows that he’d watched was never to give up your gun.

“Joseph, could you pull that gun out of my ribs, or put the safety on, or something? This is a pretty bumpy road. I’d hate to lose a lung because I didn’t get new shocks.” That sounded sufficiently glib, he thought. Professionally calm. Now if he could just avoid wetting himself.

“You couldn’t leave it alone, could you? It would have just passed into history and no one would have noticed, but you had to dig things up.”

“So you did kill her?”

“Let’s say I helped her make a decision that she’d been waffling about.”

“She was the mother of your children.”

“Right, and she treated me with about as much respect as a turkey baster.”

“Wow, you lost me there, partner.”

“They use them for artificial insemination, Crowe, you fucking stoner. One squirt and you throw them away.”

“You got tired of being a turkey baster, so you hung your wife?”

“Her herb garden killed her. Foxglove tea. Contains huge amount of digitalis. Stops the heart and it’s almost undetectable unless you’re looking for it. Ironic, isn’t it? I would have never known about any of that crap if she hadn’t blathered on about it constantly.”

Theo was not at all happy that Leander was telling him this. It meant that he was going to have to make some sort of move to save himself or he was dead. Ram a tree maybe? He checked Leander’s seat belt; it was buckled. What kind of criminal kidnaps someone and remembers to buckle his seat belt? Stall for now. “There were heel marks on the wall.”

“Nice touches, I thought. I don’t know, she may have still been alive when I hung her up there.”

They were coming out of the forest that surrounded the ranch into an open pasture. Theo could see a metal shed next to a double-wide house trailer a couple of hundred yards ahead. A bright red Dodge truck was parked by the shed.

“Hmmm,” Leander said. “They got a new trailer for the boys. Pull up to the shed and park.”

Theo felt panic rise in his throat like acid and fought it down. Keep them talking and they won’t shoot. Hadn’t he heard that somewhere? “So you killed your wife for a big-screen TV and a tumble with Betsy? Divorce never occurred to you?”

Leander laughed and Theo felt a chill run through his body. “You really are dense, aren’t you, Crowe? See that shed up there? Well, I hauled twenty-eight million dollars’ worth of methamphetamine out of that shed last year. Granted, I only get a piece of that, but it’s a nice piece. I move it all. I’m a salesman, a family man, innocuous and unnoticeable. Who’d suspect me? Mr. Milquetoast.”

“Your wife?”

“Bess found out about it. Funny thing is, she was following me because she suspected an affair, but she never found out a thing about Betsy and me. She was going to turn me in. I had no choice.”

Theo pulled up next to the shed and turned off the Volvo. “You have a choice now, Joseph. You don’t have to do this.”

“I’m not doing anything but going back to my life until there’s enough money in my offshore accounts to take off. Don’t get me wrong, Crowe. I didn’t enjoy killing Bess. I’m not a killer. Hell, I’ve never even taken any drugs. This isn’t crime, it’s just a well-paid delivery route.”

“So you’re not going to shoot me?” Theo really, really wanted to believe that.

“Not if you do what I tell you to do. Get out of the car. Leave the keys. Slide over and come out on my side.”

Theo did as he was told and Leander kept the pistol trained on him the whole time. Where did Leander learn to do that? He’d hadn’t had a television that long. Guy must have taken a mail-order course or something.

“Miguel! Ignacio! Come out here!” Leander gestured with the pistol for Theo to move toward the shack. “Go inside.”

Theo ducked to get through the door and immediately saw rack upon rack of lab glass, glass tubing, and plastic barrels of chemicals. A single metal chair sat in front of half a dozen electric burners that were filling the shed with a brutal heat.

“Sit down,” Leander commanded.

As Theo sat, he felt the handcuffs being yanked out of his back pocket.

“Put your hands behind you.” Theo did as he was told and Leander threaded the handcuffs through two metal bars at the back of the chair and snapped them over Theo’s wrists.

“I’ve got to go find these guys,” Leander said. “Probably taking a siesta. What was Burton thinking when he put a house trailer down here? I’ll be back in a second.”

“Then what?”

“Then Ignacio will shoot you, I’m guessing.”

This was a first: a guy that actually did what you asked him to do. When she heard a car coming down the ranch road, she asked Steve to make himself look like a trailer and he had done it. Sure, she had to make a little box diagram in the air with her hands, and he missed the first time, trying to make himself look like the tin shed next to him, a miserable failure that resulted in only his head changing and making him look like a dragon wearing an aluminum bag over his head, but after a few seconds he got it. What a guy. Okay, his tail, which had always hung down into the creek bed before, was showing, but maybe no one would notice.

“What a guy,” she said, patting him on his air-conditioning unit. Or at least it was an air-conditioning unit now. No telling what body part it had been before he changed into a trailer.

She’s patting my unit, Steve thought. A low growl of pleasure rolled out of his front door.

Molly ran and hid behind the shed, peeking out to watch the white Volvo pull up and stop. She almost stepped out to say hi to Theo, then saw the other man in the car holding a gun on him. She listened as the bald guy led Theo into the shed and made some threats. She wanted to jump out and say, “No, Ignacio won’t be shooting anyone, Mr. Bald Guy. He’s busy being digested right now,” but the guy did have a gun. How the hell did Theo let himself be taken prisoner by someone who looked like an assistant principal?

When it was evident that the bald guy was coming out, she ran to the dragon trailer, caught the edge of the air-conditioning unit, and swung herself up onto the roof.

The bald guy was going around to the front door. She ran over Steve’s back and looked down over the edge.

“Miguel! Ignacio!” the bald guy yelled. “Get out here!” He seemed uncertain about going into the trailer.

“I saw them go in there,” Molly said.

The bald guy stepped back, looking like he was going to go into a fit searching for where the voice had come from.

“You’re an assistant principal, aren’t you?” Molly said.

The bald guy finally spotted her and tried to hide the gun behind his back. “You’re that crazy woman,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

Molly scooched up to the edge of the dragon trailer. “‘Scuse me? Pardon me? Beg your pardon? I’m the what?”

He ignored her question. “What are you doing here?”

“Excuse me. Excuse me, excuse me,” she almost sang. “There is an as-yet-unapologized-for aspersion on the floor. You’ll have to handle that before we move on.”

“I’m not apologizing for anything. What are you doing here? Where are Ignacio and Miguel?”

“You’re not apologizing?”

“No. Get down from there.” He showed her the gun.

“‘Kay,” Molly said, patting Steve on the head/roof. “Steve, eat this impolite motherfucker.”

She’d seen it before, but it was especially exciting to be sitting on Steve’s head when he changed shape and his tongue leapt out below her to wrap around the assistant principal. After the initial slurp, the inevitable crunch (which had bothered her before) was sort of satisfying.

She couldn’t figure out if it was because the assistant principal had pointed a gun at her friend and called her a crazy woman, or if she was just getting used to it.

“That was just swell,” she said. She ran across Steve’s back, slid down to the top of the air-conditioning unit, then jumped to the ground.

Steve growled and the angles of his trailer form melted into the curves and sinew of his dragon shape. He rolled over on his side and Molly watched as the scales on his belly parted and seven feet of dragon penis emerged as thick and stiff as a telephone pole. Luminescent colors flashed up the length of the organ.

“Wow, that is impressive,” Molly said, taking a few steps backward.

Steve sent her a message similar to the one he had sent to the fuel truck. It worked better on Molly. Her knees went wobbly, a warm tingling ran up her thighs, and she could feel the pulse rising in her temples.

She looked into Steve’s eyes (well, one of them anyway), stepped up to his face and gently touched him on the lips (or what would have been lips, if he’d had them), and let the sweetly acrid smell of his breath (a mix of Old Spice, manly Mexicans, and barfed cow) wash over her.

“You know,” she said, “I never kissed a guy with assistant principal on his breath.”

Nineteen

Intimacies, what happens between two people in private (or one person and a Sea Beast in a pasture), are not the business of anyone but the parties involved. Still, for the sake of the voyeur in us all, a tidbit or two to satisfy curiosity…

Molly tried, made a valiant effort in fact, but even for a woman of such fine physical conditioning, the task was too great. She did, however, manage to locate near the shed a gas-powered weed-whacker (which the late drug chefs used to clear flammables from the area) and with firm but gentle application of that rude machine, and a little coaxing, was able to bring Steve to that state the French inscrutably call “the little death.”

And soon after, what at first seemed an insurmountable obstacle, the size difference, was turned to advantage, allowing Molly to join Steve in that place of peace and pleasure. How? Imagine a slow slide down a long, slippery bannister of a tongue, each taste bud a tease and tingle in just the right place, and you can understand how Molly ended up a satisfied puddle snuggled in that spot between his neck and shoulder that women so love. (Except in Steve’s case, it didn’t make his arm go to sleep.)

Yes, there was a bit of the awkwardness that comes with the unfamiliarity and exploration of new lovers, and Theo’s Volvo was soundly smashed before Steve realized that rolling around on the ground was an inappropriate way to display his enthusiasm, but a boxy Swedish automobile is a small price to pay for passion in the great scheme of things.

And that is all you need to know about that.

Twenty

Over the years, Theo had learned to forgive himself for having inappropriate thoughts at inappropriate times (imagining the widow naked at the funeral, rooting for a high death toll in Third World earthquakes, wondering whether white slavers provided in-house financing), but it worried him more than somewhat that, while hand-cuffed to a chair, waiting for his executioner, he was thinking about getting laid instead of escaping or making amends with his creator. Sure, he’d tried to get away, managing to do little more than tip the chair over and give himself a bug’s-eye view of the dirt floor, but shortly after that, when the voices outside had stopped, he was overtaken with thoughts of women he’d had and women he hadn’t, including an erotic mental montage of the erstwhile actress and resident Crazy Lady, Molly Michon.

So it was embarrassment as much as relief that he felt when, after the sound of a weed-whacker and the crashing of metal, Molly popped her head into the shed.

“Hi, Theo,” she said.

“Molly, what are you doing here?”

“Out for a walk.” She didn’t come in, just craned her head around the corner.

“You’ve got to get away from here, Molly. There’s some very dangerous guys around here.”

“Not a problem. You don’t want any help then?”

“Yes, go get help. But get away from here. There’s guys with guns.”

“I mean, you don’t want me to uncuff you or anything?”

“There’s no time.”

“There’s plenty of time. Where are the keys?”

“On my key ring. In the ignition of my car.”

“Okay. Be right back.”

And she was gone. Theo heard some pounding and what sounded like safety glass being shattered. In a second Molly was back in the doorway. She tossed the keys on the floor near his head. “Can you get to those?”

“Can you unlock me?”

“Uh, I’d rather not right now. But you’ll be able to get to those eventually, won’t you?”

“Molly!”

“Yes or no?”

“Sure, but…”

“Okay. See ya, Theo. Sorry about your car.”

And again she was gone.

As he scrambled in the dirt to get to the keys, he was still troubled about the unwarranted wave of horniness that had overtaken him. Could it have been set off by the handcuffs? Maybe he’d been into bondage all these years and never even knew it. Although when he’d been arrested right before Sheriff Burton had blackmailed him into becoming constable, he’d spent almost two hours in handcuffs and he didn’t remember it being an especially erotic experience. Maybe it was the death threat. Was he turned on by the thought of being shot? Man, I am a sick individual, he thought.

In ten minutes he was free of both the handcuffs and the dogging thoughts of sex and death. Molly, Joseph Leander, and the house trailer were gone, and he stood before the ruins of his Volvo with an entirely new set of questions nagging him. The roof of the station wagon was now mashed down to level with the hood, three of the four tires were blown, and on the ground, all around the car, were the tracks of what had to be a very, very large animal.

There were two trails that had matted down the grass leading away from the shed and over the hill. One, obviously, was the track of a person. The other was wider than the dirt road that led into the ranch.

Theo dug into the Volvo for his gun and cell phone, having no idea what to do with either of them. There was no one to call—and certainly no one he wanted to shoot. Except maybe Sheriff John Burton. He searched the area, found Joseph Leander’s gun, and tucked it into the waistband of his jeans. The keys were still in the red four-wheeler, and after a minute of measuring the ethics of “borrowing” the truck against having been kidnapped, handcuffed, and almost killed, he climbed into the truck and took off across the pasture, following the double trail.

Gabe and the rancher stood over the pulverized remains of the Holstein, waving flies away from their faces, while Skinner crouched a few yards away, his ears back, growling at the mess.

The rancher pushed his Stetson back on his head and shuddered. “My people have been running dairy and beef cattle on this land for sixty years, and I ain’t never heard or seen anything like it, Gabe.”

His name was Jim Beer. He was fifty-five, going on seventy, leathery from too much sun and stress, and there was a note of the sad lonely under everything he said. He was tall and thin, but stood with the broken-backed slouch of a beaten man. His wife had left him years ago, driving off in her Mercedes to live in San Francisco and taking with her a note worth half the value of Jim Beer’s thousand acres. His only son, who was to have taken the ranch over, was twenty-eight now and was busy getting thrown out of colleges and into rehabs all over the country. He lived alone in a fourteen-room house that rattled with emptiness and seemed to suck up the laughter of the ranch hands, who Jim fed in his enormous kitchen every morning. Jim was the last of his breed, and he would forever trace the beginning of his downfall to an affair he’d had with the witch who once lived in Theo’s cabin at the edge of the ranch. Cursed he was, or so he believed. If the witch hadn’t run off ten years ago with the owner of the general store, he would have been sure the mutilated cattle was her doing.

Gabe shook his head. “I have no idea, Jim. I can take some samples and have some test run, but I don’t even know what we are looking at here.”

“You think it was kids? Vandals?”

“Kids tip cows over, Jim. These look like they’ve been dropped from thirty thousand feet.” Gabe knew what appeared to have happened, but he wasn’t willing to admit it. There wasn’t a creature alive that could have done this. There had to be another explanation.

“So you’re saying aliens?”

“No, I am definitely not saying aliens. I’m not saying aliens.”

“Something was here. Look at the tracks. Satanic cult?”

“Damn it, Jim, unless you want to be on the cover of Crackpot Weekly, don’t talk that way. I can’t tell you what did this, but I can tell you what didn’t. This was not aliens, or Satanists, or Bigfoot on a binge. I can take some samples and run some tests and then maybe, maybe, I can tell you what did this, but in the meantime, you should call the state ag guys and get them out here.“

“I can’t do that, Gabe.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t have strangers running around on my land. I don’t want this gettin‘ out. That’s why I called you.”

“What’s that?” Gabe held up a finger to hold his place in the conversation, then looked to the hills: the sound of an engine. In a second a red four-wheel-drive pickup appeared on the hill headed toward them.

“You’d better go,” Jim Beer said.

“Why?”

“You’d just better. Nobody’s supposed to be on this side of the ranch but me. You need to go.”

“This is your land?”

“Let’s jump in your truck, son. We need to go.”

Gabe squinted to get a better look at the truck, then waved. “That’s Theo Crowe,” he said. “What’s he doing in that thing?”

“Oh shit,” Jim Beer said.

Theo pulled the truck up next to Gabe’s, skidded to a stop, and crawled out. To Gabe, the constable looked pissed off, but he couldn’t be sure, having never seen the expression on Theo before. “Afternoon, Gabe, Jim.”

Jim Beer looked at his boots. “Constable.”

Gabe noticed that Theo had two pistols stuck in his jeans and was half-covered with dust. “Hi, Theo. Nice truck. Jim called me out to take a look…”

“I know what that is,” Theo said, tossing his head toward the mashed cow. “At least I think I do.” He strode up to Jim Beer, who seemed to be trying to sink into a hole in his own chest.

“Jim, you got a crank lab back there turning out enough product to hype all of Los Angeles. You wanna tell me about it?”

The life seemed to drain out of Jim Beer and he fell to the ground in a splay-legged sit. Gabe caught his arm to keep him from cracking his tailbone. Beer didn’t look up. “My wife took a note for half the ranch when she left. She called it in. Where else was I going to get three million dollars?”

Gabe looked from Jim to Theo as if to say, “What the hell?”

“I’ll explain later, Gabe. I have something I have to show you anyway.” Theo pushed Jim Beer’s Stetson back so he could see the rancher’s face. “So Burton gave you the money so he could use your land for the lab.”

“Sheriff Burton?” Gabe asked, totally confused now.

“Shut up, Gabe,” Theo snapped.

“Not all of the money. Payments. Hell, what could I do? My grandfather started this ranch. I couldn’t sell off half of it.”

“So you went into drug dealing?”

“I ain’t never even seen this lab you’re talking about. Neither have my hands. That part of the ranch is off-limits. Burton said he had you in the cabin to keep anyone from coming in the back gate. I just run my cattle and mind my own business. I never even asked Burton what he was doing out there.”

“There million dollars! What the hell did you think he was doing? Raising rabbits?”

Jim Beer didn’t answer, he just stared at the ground between his legs. Gabe held his shoulder to steady him and looked to Theo. “Maybe finish this later, Theo?”

Theo turned and walked in a tight circle, waving his hands in the air as if chasing away annoying spirits.

“You okay?” Gabe asked.

“What the fuck do I do now? What do I do? What am I supposed to do?”

“Calm down?” Gabe ventured.

“Fuck that! I got murders, drug manufacturing, some fucking giant animal of some kind, a whole town that’s gone nuts, my car is mashed, and I have a crush on a crazy woman—I don’t have the training for this! No one has the fucking training for this!”

“So calming down isn’t an option right now?” Gabe said. “I understand.” Theo interrupted his anxiety Tilt-A-Whirl and wheeled on Gabe. “And I haven’t smoked any pot in a week, Gabe.“

“Congratulations.”

“It’s made me insane. It’s ruined my life.”

“Come on, Theo, you never had a life.” Gabe immediately realized that perhaps he had chosen the wrong tack in consoling his friend.

“Yeah, there’s that.” Theo strode to the red truck and punched the fender. “Ouch! Goddamn it!” He turned to Gabe again. “And I think I just broke my hand.”

“Mad cow disease worries me,” Jim Beer said from his stupor of defeat.

“Shut up, Jim,” Gabe said. “Theo has a gun.”

“Guns!” Theo shouted.

“I stand corrected,” said Gabe. “You mentioned a giant animal?”

Theo massaged his temples as if trying to squeeze out a coherent thought.

After a few minutes, he walked to where Jim Beer was sitting and kneeled down in front of him. “Jim, I need you to pull it together for a second.” The rancher looked at Theo. Tears had traced the creases in his cheeks. “Jim, this never happened, okay? You haven’t seen me and you haven’t heard anything from this side of the ranch, okay? If Burton calls you, everything is standard operating procedure. You know nothing, you understand?”

“No, I don’t understand. Am I going to jail?”

“I don’t know that, Jim, but I do know that Burton finding out about this will only make it worse for every one. I need some time to figure some things out. If you help, I’ll do my best to protect you, I promise.”

“Okay.” Beer nodded. “I’ll do what you say.”

“Good, take Gabe’s truck home. We’ll pick it up in an hour or so.”

Skinner watched all this with heightened interest, tentatively wagging his tail between Theo’s tirades, hoping in his heart of hearts that he would get a ride in that big red truck. Even dogs harbor secret agendas.

“Theo, these can’t be real,” Gabe said, running his hand over a footprint nearly three feet across. “This is some sort of hoax. Although the depth of the claw impressions and the scuffing would indicate that whoever did this really knows something about how animals move.”

Theo was fairly calm now, as if he had settled into the whole unreality of the situation. “And they know something about crushing a Volvo too. They’re real, Gabe. I’ve seen a track like this before.”

“Where?”

“By the creek, the night the fuel truck blew up. I didn’t want to believe it then either.”

Gabe looked up from the track. “That’s the night I had the mass exodus with my rats.”

“Yep.”

“There’s no way, Theo. That couldn’t be what happened. A creature that could leave tracks like this would dwarf a T. Rex. There hasn’t been anything this size on the planet for sixty million years.”

“Not anything we know about. Look, Gabe, I followed the trail through the grass to the mutilated cows. I thought that was where they went, but evidently that’s where they just came from.”

“They? You think there’s more than one?”

“So you accept that this thing is real?”

“No, Theo. I’m just asking what you think.”

“I think that this thing was with Molly Michon.”

Gabe laughed. “Theo, I think the withdrawal has you addled.”

“I’m not joking. Molly was here right after I heard my car getting crunched. She gave me the keys to the handcuffs. When I came out, she was gone, and so were Joseph Leander and whoever he came here to see.”

“So what do you think happened to them?”

“The same thing that happened to those cows. Or something like it. The same thing that I think happened to the Plotznik kid. The last time anyone saw him was at the Fly Rod Trailer Court. That’s where Molly lives.”

Gabe stood and looked around at the pattern of tracks. “You haven’t been into town today, have you, Theo?”

“No, I’ve been busy.”

“Les from the hardware store is missing. They found his truck behind the Head of the Slug, but there’s no sign of him.”

“We’ve got to go to Molly’s, Gabe.”

“We? Theo, I’m a biologist, not a cop. I say we try and track whatever this is. Skinner’s a pretty good tracker. I’d bet we find an explanation that doesn’t involve some sort of giant creature.”

“I’m not a cop anymore either. And what if we track this thing and you’re wrong, Gabe? Do you want to meet up with whatever did that to my car? Those cows?”

“Well, yes, I do.”

“We can do that later. It shouldn’t be too hard. Whatever it is, it’s pulling a house trailer.”

“What?”

“There was a trailer here when Leander took me into the shed. When I came out, it was gone.”

Gabe checked his watch. “Have you eaten today? I’m not questioning you, but maybe you’re having a hypoglycemic reaction or something. Let’s go get some dinner and when your head clears, we can go by Molly Michon’s.”

“Right, I’m hallucinating from a bad case of the munchies.”

Gabe grabbed his shoulder. “Theo, please. I have a date.”

Theo nodded. “Molly’s first. Then I’ll go to dinner.”

“Deal,” Gabe said, still staring at the tracks. “I want to come back here with some casting materials. Even if this is a hoax, I want a record of it.”

Theo started for the truck and pulled up when he heard the sound of a cell phone ringing inside the shed. He walked into the shed, located the cell phone, and looked at the display for the number that was ringing in. It was Burton’s private number. He drew his .357 Magnum and blew the phone into a thousand pieces. He walked out of the shed to find Gabe hiding behind the fender of the red truck and Skinner cowering in the bed.

“What in the hell do you mean, you have a date?”

Twenty-one

“This is where I found the aberrant rats,” Gabe said as they pulled into the

Fly Rod Trailer Court.

“That’s nice,” Theo said, not really paying attention.

“Did I tell you I got the brain chemistry back from Stanford? It’s interesting, but I’m not sure that it explains the behavior.”

“Not now, Gabe, please.” Theo slammed on the brakes and the truck rocked to a stop. “What the hell?” There were no lights on in Molly Michon’s trailer. In the empty lot next door, a dozen well-dressed adults stood in a circle, holding candles.

“Prayer meeting?” Gabe ventured. “It’s Sunday night.”

“There was a trailer there last time I was here,” Theo said. “Just like the one on the ranch.”

“I know. This is the lot where I found the rats with the low serotonin levels.”

Theo shut off the truck, set the parking brake, and climbed out. Then he looked back at Gabe. “You found your rats right here?”

“The six that I could find. But this is where the other ones that were last tracked disappeared as well. I can show you the graphic later.”

“That would be good.”

Theo pulled his flannel shirt over the guns in his waistband and approached the circle. Skinner jumped out of the truck and ran ahead. Gabe reluctantly followed. They did, indeed, seem to be praying. Their heads were bowed and a woman in a powder-blue dress and pillbox hat was leading the group. “Bless us, Lord, for we have felt the stirrings of your power within us and heeded your call to come to this holy place on the eve of…”

Skinner drove his nose into the woman’s crotch, and she yipped like a bee-stung poodle. Everyone in the group looked up.

“Excuse me,” Theo said. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but what are you all doing here?” Several of the men looked irritated and stepped up behind the powder-blue woman to give support.

The woman held Skinner’s nose away from her dress while trying to keep the candle flame away from her hair spray. “Constable Crowe? Is that right?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Theo said. The woman was younger than he was by at least five years and pretty in a Texas Big Hair sort of way, but her dress and manner of speaking made him feel as if he’d just been busted by his first-grade teacher for eating paste.

“We’ve been called here, Constable,” the woman explained. She reached behind her, grabbed the shoulder of a woman who looked like her clone in pink, and pulled her forward. Skinner stamped the pink woman’s dress with the Wet-Nose Inspection Seal. “Margie and I felt it first, but when we started talking about it after services this afternoon, all these other people said that they had felt drawn to this place as well. The Holy Spirit has moved us here.”

“Ask them if they’ve seen any rats.” Gabe said.

“Call your dog,” Theo tossed over his shoulder.

Gabe called Skinner and the Labrador looked around.

They smell fine to me, Food Guy. I say fuck ‘em, Skinner thought. But he got no response except a minor scolding.

“The Holy Spirit called you here?” Theo said.

Everyone in the group nodded earnestly.

“Did any of you happen to see the woman who lives in that trailer next door?”

The pink lady chimed in, “Oh yes, she was the one to call our attention to this place two nights ago. We wondered about that at first, being as how she is and all, but then Katie pointed out”—she gestured to her friend—“that our Lord Jesus spent time with Mary Magdalene, and she, as I’m sure you know, was—well—she was…”

“A whore,” Theo offered.

“Well. Yes. And so we thought, who are we to judge?”

“Very charitable of you,” Theo said. “But have you seen Molly Michon tonight?”

“No, not tonight.”

Theo felt his energy reserves drain even more. “Look, folks, you shouldn’t be here. I’m not sure it’s safe. Some people have gone missing…”

“Oh, that poor boy,” Margie said.

“Yes and maybe some others. I have to ask you all to take your meeting somewhere else, please.”

The group looked disappointed. One of the men, a portly bald fellow in his fifties, puffed himself up and stepped forward. “Constable, we have the right to worship when and where we please.”

“I’m just thinking of your safety,” Theo said.

“This country was founded on the basis of religious freedom, and…”

Theo stepped up to the man and loomed over him with all of his six-foot-six frame, “Then start praying that I don’t throw you in jail with the biggest, horniest sodomite the country jail has to offer, which is what I’m going to do if you all don’t go home right now.”

“Smooth,” Gabe said.

Make him roll over and pee on himself, Skinner thought.

The bald man made a harumph sound and turned to the group. “Let’s meet at the church to discuss the removal of our local law enforcement official.”

“Yeah, get in line,” Theo said. He watched as the group dispersed to their cars and drove away.

When the last one pulled out, Gabe said, “Theories?”

Theo shook his head. “Everyone in this town is nuts. I’m going to check Molly’s trailer, but I doubt she’s there. Do you want me to take you home to shower and change clothes before your date?”

Gabe looked down at his stained work pants and safari shirt. “Do you think I should?”

“Gabe, you’re the only guy I know that makes me look suave.”

“You’re coming along, right?”

“Casanova,” Theo said. “Compared to you, I feel like Casanova.”

“What?” Gabe said. “It’s fried chicken night at H.P.‘s.”

Steve lay under a stand of cypress trees, his new lover snuggled up to his right foreleg, snoring softly. He let his tongue slide out and the tip just brushed her bare back. She moaned and nuzzled closer to his leg. She tasted pretty good. But he had eaten all those other warmbloods and he wasn’t really hungry.

When he had been a female, some fifty years ago, and going back another five thousand, he had become accustomed to eating his lovers after mating. That’s just how it was done. But as a male, he wasn’t sure. He hadn’t mated with his own species since he’d become male, and so the instinct to become passive after mating was new to him. He just didn’t feel like eating the warmblood. She had made him feel better, and for some reason, he could see the pictures of her thoughts instead of just sending his own signals. He sensed no fear in her, and no need to send the signal to draw her to him. Strange for a warmblood.

He lay his head down on the bed of cypress needles to sleep and let his wounds heal. He could eat her later. Somewhere in the back of his brain, as he fell asleep, a fear alarm went off. In five thousand years of life, he had never conceived of the concept of later or before, only now. His DNA had rechained itself many times, adapted to changes without waiting for the life cycles of generations—he was a unique organism in that way—but the concept of time, of memory beyond the cellular level, was a new adaptation. Through his contact with Molly he was evolving consciousness, and like the pragmatic mechanism that it is, nature was trying to warn him. The nightmare was about to have a nightmare.

Is this a date? Val sat alone at a table in the back of H.P.‘s Cafe. She’d ordered a glass of a local chardonnay and was trying to form an opinion about it that would reflect the appropriate disgust, but unfortunately, it was quite good. She was wearing light evening makeup and an understated raw silk suit in indigo with a single string of pearls so as not to clash too badly with her date, who she knew would be in jeans or cotton khaki. Her date? If this is a date, how far have I sunk? she asked herself. This tacky little cafe in this tacky little town, waiting for a man who had probably never worn a tux or a Rolex, and she was looking forward to it.

No, it’s not a date. It’s just dinner. It’s sustenance. It’s, for once, not eating alone. Slumming in the land of the folksy and the neighborly, that’s what it is. It’s a satirical performance art experience; call it The Bourgeois Fried Chicken Follies. It was one thing to read her journals over coffee in the local cafe, but dinner?

Gabe Fenton came through the front door and Val felt her pulse quicken. She smiled in spite of herself as she watched the waitress point to her table. Then Theo Crowe was following Gabe across the restaurant and a bolt of anxiety shot up her spine. This definitely isn’t a date.

Gabe smiled and the lines around his eyes crinkled as if he were about to burst out laughing. He extended his hand to her. “Hi, I hope you don’t mind, I asked Theo to join us.” His hair was combed, as was his beard, and he was wearing a faded but clean chambray shirt. Not exactly dashing, but a pretty good-looking guy in a lumberjack sort of way.

“No, please,” Val said. “Sit down, Theo.”

Theo nodded and pulled a chair up to the table, which had been set for two. The waitress breezed in with another place setting before they were seated. “I’m sorry to intrude,” Theo said, “but Gabe insisted.”

“No, really, you’re welcome, Constable.”

“Theo, please.”

“Theo then,” Val said. She forced a smile. What now? The last time she had talked to this man it had thrown her life for a loop. She found herself building a resentment for Gabe that was usually reserved for relationships that were years old.

Theo cleared his throat. “Uh, can we go on the doctor-patient confidentiality plan again, Doctor?”

Val nodded to Gabe, “That usually implies a session. Not dinner.”

“Okay, then, don’t say anything, but Joseph Leander killed his wife.”

Val didn’t say, “Wow.” Almost, but she didn’t. “And you know this because…”

“Because he told me so,” Theo said. “He gave her tea made from foxglove. Evidently, it can cause heart failure and is almost undetectable. Then he hung her in the dining room.”

“So you’ve arrested him?”

“No, I don’t know where he is.”

“But you’ve put a warrant out for his arrest or whatever it is that you do?

“No, I’m not sure that I’m still the constable.”

Gabe broke in. “We’ve been talking about it, Val. I say that Theo is an elected official, and therefore the only way he can lose his job is through impeachment, even if his immediate superior tries to kill him. What do you think?”

“Kill him?”

“Smooth,” Theo said, grinning at Gabe.

“Oh, maybe you should tell her about the crank lab and stuff, Theo.”

And so Theo explained, telling the story of his kidnapping, the drug lab, Joseph Leander’s disappearance, and Molly Michon setting him free, but leaving out any theories he had about a giant creature. During the telling, they ordered (fried chicken for Theo and Gabe, a Greek salad for Val) and were halfway through dinner before Theo stopped talking.

Val stared at her salad and silence washed over the table. If there was going to be a murder investigation, she could be found out. And if they found out what she had done to her patients, her career was over. She might even go to jail. It wasn’t fair, she really had tried to do the right thing for once. She resisted the urge to blurt out a confession—to throw herself on the mercy of a court born of sheer paranoia. Instead she raised her eyes to Gabe, who took the signal to break the silence.

Gabe said, “And I still don’t know the significance of the low serotonin levels in the rats’ brains.”

“Huh?” said not only Val and Theo, but the waitress, Jenny, who had been eavesdropping from the next table and joined the confusion at Gabe’s non sequitur.

“Sorry,” Gabe said to Val. “I thought you might have a take on the brain chemistry of those rats I had tested. You said you were interested.”

“And I am,” Val said, lying through her teeth, “but I’m a little overwhelmed by the news about Bess Leander.”

“Right, anyway, the group of rats that didn’t take part in the mass migration all had unusually low levels of serotonin. The brain chemistry of the larger group, the group that ran, was all in normal ranges. So I’m thinking that…”

“They were depressed,” Val said.

“Pardon me?” Gabe said.

“Of course they’re depressed, they’re rats,” Theo said.

Gabe glared at him.

“Well, imagine waking up to that every morning,” Theo continued. “‘Oh, it’s a great day, crap, I’m still a rat. Never mind.’”

“Well, I don’t know about rats,” Val said, “but serotonin levels in humans affect a lot of different things, predominantly mood. Low levels of serotonin can indicate depression. That’s how Prozac works. It basically keeps serotonin in the brain to keep the patient from getting depressed. So maybe Gabe’s rats were too depressed to run.”

Gabe stroked his beard. “I never thought of that. But it doesn’t help that much. It doesn’t tell me why the majority of the rats did run.”

“Well, duh, Gabe,” Theo said. “It’s the fucking monster.”

“What?” Val said.

“What?” said Jenny, who was lingering nearby.

“Can we get some dessert menus?” Gabe asked, sending Jenny backing across the restaurant.

“Monster?” Val said.

“Maybe you’d better explain, Gabe,” Theo said. “I think your scientific skepticism will make it sound more credible.”

Val’s jaw dropped visibly as she listened to Gabe talk about the tracks at the ranch, the mutilated cattle, and Theo’s theory for the disappearances of Joseph Leander, Mikey Plotznik, and perhaps Les from the hardware store. When Gabe brought up Molly Michon, Val stopped him.

“You can’t believe what she tells you. Molly is a very disturbed woman.”

“She didn’t tell me anything,” Theo said. “I just think she knows something about all this.”

Val wanted to call up Theo’s drug history to sweep the story aside, then she remembered what Estelle Boyet had told her in therapy. “I’m not going to say who, but one of my patients mentioned a sea monster in session.”

Gabe asked. “Who?”

“I can’t say,” Val said.

“Estelle Boyet,” Jenny said as she came up to get the dessert order.

“Damn,” Val said. “I wasn’t the one who told you,” she said to Theo.

“Well, she was talking about it over breakfast with that Catfish guy,” Jenny added.

“No dessert,” Val snapped at Jenny.

“I’ll bring the check.”

“So Estelle has seen it?” Theo asked.

“No, she says she’s heard it. She’s not the type to propagate a hoax, but I wouldn’t put it past Molly Michon. Perhaps that’s where the rumor started. I can ask Estelle.”

“Do that,” Theo said. “But it’s not a hoax. My car is smashed. That’s evidence. I’m going to Molly’s tonight and wait for her. The door was unlocked when I checked earlier and I can’t go home.”

“You think it’s that dangerous?” Val asked.

“I know it is.” Theo stood and started to pull some bills from his pocket. Gabe waved him off. Theo said, “Doctor, can you give Gabe a ride?”

“Sure, but…”

“Thanks,” Theo said. “I’ll call you, Gabe. Thanks for letting me join you, Doctor. I thought you’d want to know about Bess. I’m afraid I’ve ruined your date.”

I’ll say, Val thought as she watched Theo leave the restaurant. A sense of alert exhaustion washed over her like an espresso fog bank.

“He just quit smoking pot,” Gabe said. “He’s feeling the stress.”

“He has a right to. You don’t believe any of that stuff about a monster, do you?”

“I have some theories.”

“Would you like to come up to the house and explain them over a bottle of wine?”

“Really? I mean, sure, that would be nice.”

“Good,” Val said. “I think I need to get hammered and I’d like your company.” Had she used the term “hammered” since college? She didn’t think so.

“I’ll get the check,” Gabe said.

“Of course you will.”

“I hope you don’t mind having a dog in your car,” Gabe said.

I’m not slumming, she thought. I’ve moved to the slums.

Twenty-two

The walls of Molly’s trailer were plastered with movie posters. He stood in the middle of the living room among the scattered videotapes, magazines, and junk mail and slowly turned. It was her, Molly. She hadn’t been lying all this time. Most of the posters were in foreign languages, but every one featured a younger Molly in various states of undress, holding weapons or fighting off bad guys, her hair flying in the wind, a nuked-out city or a desert littered with human skulls and burned-out cars in the background.

The adolescent male part of Theo, the part that every man tries to bury but carries to his grave, reared up. She was a movie star. A hot movie star! And he knew her, had in fact put handcuffs on her. If there was only a locker room, a street corner, or a second-period study hall where he could brag about it to his friends. But he didn’t really have any friends, except for Gabe maybe, and Gabe was a grown-up. The prurient moment passed and Theo felt guilty about the way he had treated Molly: patronizing her and condescending to her; the way many people treated him when he tried to be something besides a pothead and puppet.

He kneeled down to a bookshelf filled with videotapes, found one labeled KENDRA: WARRIOR BABE OF THE OUT LAND (ENGLISH), and slipped it into the VCR and turned on the television. Then he turned off the lights, laid his guns on the coffee table, and lay down on Molly’s couch to wait. He watched as the Crazy Lady of Pine Cove battled mutants and Sand Pirates for half an hour before he drifted off to sleep. His mind needed a deeper escape from his problems than the movie could provide.

“Hi, Theo.”

He came awake startled. The movie was still casting a flickering light over the room, so he couldn’t have been sleeping that long. She stood in the doorway, half in shadow, looking very much like the woman on the television screen. She held an assault rifle at her side.

“Molly, I’ve been waiting for you.”

“How’d you like it?” She nodded toward the television.

“Loved it. I never realized. I was just so tired…”

Molly nodded. “I won’t be long, I just came to get some clean clothes. You’re welcome to stay here.”

Theo didn’t know what to do. It didn’t seem like the time to grab one of the pistols off the table. He felt more embarrassed than threatened.

“Thanks,” he said.

“He’s the last one, Theo. After him there aren’t any more of his kind. His time has passed. I think that’s what we have in common. You don’t know what it is to be a has-been, do you?”

“I think I’m what they call a never-was.”

“That’s easier. At least you’re always looking up the ladder, not down. Coming down is scarier.”

“How? Why? What is he?”

“I’m not sure, a dragon maybe. Who knows?” She leaned back against the doorway and sighed. “But I can kinda tell what he’s thinking. I guess it’s because I’m nuts. Who would have thought that would come in handy, huh?”

“Don’t say that about yourself. You’re saner than I am.”

Molly laughed, and Theo could see her movie-star teeth shine in the light of the television. “You’re a neurotic, Theo. A neurotic is someone who thinks something is wrong with him, but everyone else thinks he is normal; a psychotic thinks something’s wrong with her. Take a poll of the locals, I think I’d come out in the latter category, don’t you?”

“Molly, this is really dangerous stuff you’re messing with.”

“He won’t hurt me.”

“It’s not just that. You could go to jail just for having that machine gun, Molly. People are getting killed, aren’t they?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“That’s what happened to Joseph Leander, and the guys working the drug lab, right? Your pal ate them?”

“They were going to hurt you, and Steve was hungry. Seemed like great timing to me.”

“Molly, that’s murder!”

“Theo! I’m nuts. What are they going to do to me?”

Theo shrugged his shoulders and sat back on the couch. “I don’t know what to do.”

“You’re not in a position to do anything right now. Get some rest.”

Theo cradled his head in his hands. His cell phone, still in the pocket of his flannel shirt, began ringing. “I could sure use a hit right now.”

“There’s some Smurfs of Sanity in the cupboard over the sink—neuroleptics Dr. Val gave me, antipsychotics—they’ve done wonders for me.”

“Obviously.”

“Your phone is ringing.”

Theo pulled out the phone, flipped it open, hit the answer button and watched as the incoming number appeared on the display. It was Sheriff Burton’s cell phone number. Theo hit disconnect.

“I’m fucked,” Theo said.

Molly picked up Theo’s .357 Magnum from the table, held it on Theo, then picked up Joseph Leander’s automatic. “I’ll give these back before I go. I’m going to get some clean clothes and some girlie things out of my bedroom. You be okay here?”

“Yeah, sure.” His head was still hung. He spoke into his lap.

“You’re bumming me out, Theo.”

“Sorry.”

Molly was gone from the room for only five minutes, in which time Theo tried to get a handle on what had happened. Molly returned with a duffel bag slung over her shoulder. She was wearing the Kendra costume, complete with thigh-high boots. Even in the dim light from the television, Theo could see a ragged scar over her breast. She caught him looking.

“Ended my career,” she said. “I suppose now they could fix it, but it’s a little late.”

“I’m sorry,” Theo said. “I think you look beautiful.”

She smiled and shifted both of the pistols to one hand. She’d left the assault rifle by the door and Theo hadn’t even noticed. “You ever feel special, Theo?”

“Special?”

“Not like you’re better than everyone else, just that you’re different in a good way, like it makes a difference that you’re on the planet? You ever feel that way?”

“I don’t know. No, not really.”

“I had that for a while. Even though they were cheesy B movies and even though I had to do some humiliating things to get into them, I felt special, Theo. Then it went away. Well, now I feel that way again. That’s why.”

“Why what?”

“You asked me why before. That’s why I’m going back to Steve.”

“Steve? You call him Steve?”

“He looked like a Steve,” Molly said. “I have to go. I’ll leave your guns in the bed of that red truck you stole. Don’t try to follow, okay?”

Theo nodded. “Molly, don’t let it kill anybody else. Promise me that.”

“Promise to leave us alone?”

“I can’t do that.”

“Okay. Take care of yourself.” She grabbed the assault rifle, kicked open the door, and stepped out.

Theo heard her go down the steps, pause, then come back up. She popped her head in the door. “I’m sorry you never felt special, Theo,” she said.

Theo forced a smile. “Thanks, Molly.”

Gabe stood in the foyer of Valerie Riordan’s home, looking at his hiking boots, then the white carpet, then his boots again. Val had gone into the kitchen to get some wine. Skinner was wandering around outside.

Gabe sat down on the marble floor, unlaced his boots, then slipped them off. He’d once been into a level-nine clean room at a biotech facility in San Jose, a place where the air was scrubbed and filtered down to the micron and you had to wear a plastic bunny suit with its own air umbilical to avoid contaminating the specimens. Strangely, he’d had a similar feeling to the one he was feeling now, which was: I am the harbinger of filth. Thank God Theo had made him shower and change before his date.

Val came into the sunken living room carrying a tray with a bottle of wine and two glasses. She looked up at Gabe, who was standing at the edge of the stairs as if ready to wade into molten lava.

“Well, come on in and have a seat,” Val said.

Gabe took a tentative step. “Nice place,” he said.

“Thanks, I still have a lot to do on it. I suppose I should just hire a decorator and have done with it, but I like finding pieces myself.”

“Right,” Gabe said, taking another step. You could play handball in this room if you didn’t mind destroying a lot of antiques.

“It’s a cabernet from Wild Horse Vineyard over the hill. I hope you like it.” Val poured the wine into stemmed bubble glasses. She took hers and sat down on the velvet couch, then raised her eyebrows as if to say, “Well?”

Gabe joined her at the other end of the couch, then took a tentative sip of the wine. “It’s nice.”

“For a local cheapie,” Val said.

An awkward silence passed between them. Val made a show of tasting the wine again, then said, “You don’t really believe this stuff about a sea monster, do you, Gabe?”

Gabe was relieved. She wanted to talk about work. He’d been afraid that she would want to talk about something else—anything else—and he didn’t really know how. “Well, there are the tracks, which look very authentic, so if they are fake, whoever did them studied fossil tracks and replicated them perfectly. Then there’s the timing of the rat migration, plus Theo and your patient. Estelle, was it?”

Val set down her wine. “Gabe, I know you’re a scientist, and a discovery like this could make you rich and famous, but I just don’t believe there’s a dinosaur in town.”

“Rich and famous? I hadn’t thought about it. I guess there would be some recognition, wouldn’t there?”

“Look, Gabe, you deal in hard facts, but every day I deal with the delusions and constructions of people’s minds. They are just tracks on the ground, probably like that Bigfoot hoax in Washington a few years ago. Theo is a chronic drug user, and Estelle and her boyfriend Catfish are artist types. They all have overactive imaginations.”

Gabe was put off by her judgment of Theo and the others. He thought for a second, then said, “As a biologist, I have a theory about imagination. I think it’s pretty obvious that fear—fear of loud noises, fear of heights, the capacity to learn fear—is something that we’ve adapted over the years as a survival mechanism, and so is imagination. Everyone thinks that it was the big strong caveman who got the girl, and for the most part, that may have been true, but physical strength doesn’t explain how our species created civilization. I think there was always some scrawny dreamer sitting at the edge of the firelight, who had the ability to imagine dangers, to look into the future in his imagination and see possibilities, and therefore survived to pass his genes on to the next generation. When the big ape men ended up running off the cliff or getting killed while trying to beat a mastodon into submission with a stick, the dreamer was standing back thinking, ‘Hey, that might work, but you need to run the mastodon off the cliff.’ And, then he’d mate with the women left over after the go-getters got killed.”

“So nerds rule,” Val said with a smile. “But if fear and imagination make you more highly evolved, then someone with paranoid delusions would be ruling the world.” Val was getting into the theory of it now. How strange to talk to a man who talked about ideas, not property and personal agendas. Val liked it. A lot.

Gabe said, “Well, we didn’t miss that by far with Hitler, did we? Evolution takes some missteps sometimes.

“Big teeth worked pretty well for a while, then they got too big. Mastodons’ tusks got so large they would snap the animal’s neck. And you’ve probably noticed that there are no saber-toothed cats around anymore.

“Okay, I’ll buy that imagination is an evolutionary leap. But what about depression?” Talking about mental conditions, she couldn’t help thinking about what she’d done to her patients. Her crimes circled in her mind, trying to get out. “Psychiatry is looking more and more at mental conditions from a physical point of view, so that fits. That’s why we’re treating depression with drugs like Prozac. But what evolutionary purpose is there for depression?”

“I’ve been thinking about that since you mentioned it at dinner,” Gabe said. He drained his wineglass and moved closer to her on the couch, as if by being closer, she would share in his excitement. He was in his element now. “A lot of animals besides humans get depressed. Higher mammals like dolphins and whales can die from it, but even rats seem to get the Blues. I can’t figure out what purpose it serves. But in humans it might be like nearsightedness: civilization has protected a biological weakness that would have been weeded out by natural dangers or predators.”

“Predators? How?”

“I don’t know. Depression might slow the prey down, make it react less quickly to danger. Who knows?”

“So a predator might actually evolve that preyed on depressed animals?” Right and it’s me, Val thought. If I haven’t been preying on depressed people, what have I been doing? She suddenly felt ashamed of her home, of the pure materialism of it. Here was an incredibly bright man who was concerned with the pure pursuit of knowledge, and she had sold her integrity for some antiques and a Mercedes.

Gabe poured himself another glass of wine and sat back now, thinking as he spoke. “Interesting idea. I suppose there could be some sort of chemical or behavioral stimulus that would trigger preying on the depressed. Low serotonin levels tend to raise libido, right? At least temporarily?”

“Yes,” Val said. That’s why the entire town has turned into horndogs, she thought.

“Therefore,” Gabe continued, “you’d have more animals mating and passing on the depression gene. Nature tends to evolve mechanisms to remain in balance. A predator or a disease would naturally evolve to keep the depressed population down. Interesting, I’ve been feeling especially horny lately, I wonder if I’m depressed.” Gabe’s eyes snapped open wide and he looked at Val with the full-blown terror of what he had just said. He gulped his wine, then said, “I’m sorry, I…”

Val couldn’t stand it anymore. Gabe’s faux pas opened the gate, and she stepped through it. “Gabe, we have to talk.”

“I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to…”

She grabbed his arm to stop him. “No, I have to tell you something.”

Gabe braced himself for the worst. He’d fallen out of the lofty world of theory into the awkward, gritty world of first dates, and she was going to drop the “Don’t get the wrong idea” bomb on him.

She gripped his arm and her nails dug into his bicep hard enough to make him wince.

She said, “A little over a month ago, I took almost a third of the people in Pine Cove off antidepressants.”

“Huh?” That wasn’t at all what he’d expected. “My God, why?”

“Because of Bess Leander’s suicide. Or what I thought was her suicide. I was just going through the motions in my practice. Writing prescriptions and collecting fees.” She explained about her arrangement with Winston Krauss and how the pharmacist had refused to put everyone back on the drugs. When she finished, to wait for his judgment, there were tears welling up in her eyes.

He put his arms around her tentatively, hoping it was the right thing to do. “Why tell me this?”

She melted against his chest. “Because I trust you and because I have to tell someone and because I need to figure out what to do. I don’t want to go to jail, Gabe. Maybe all my patients didn’t need to be on antidepressants, but a lot of them did.” She sobbed on his shoulder and he began to stroke her hair, then pushed up her chin and kissed her tears.

“It’ll be okay. It will.”

She looked up into his eyes, as if looking for a hint of disdain, then not finding it, she kissed him hard and pulled him on top of her on the couch.