“That isn’t what he was trying to tell me,” I disagreed.
“What—you think he was just hitting on you?”
“He doesn’t have a romantic life anymore. He’s dead.”
“Anyway,” Terri said, “Elvis wasn’t gay.”
“I didn’t claim he was gay. Stormy made the inference.”
“I’d bet the Grille,” Terri said, “and my left butt cheek that he wasn’t gay.”
I groaned. “This is the craziest conversation I’ve ever had.”
Terri demurred: “Gimme a break—I’ve had a hundred conversations with you a lot crazier than this.”
“Me too,” Stormy agreed. “Odd Thomas, you’re a fountain of crazy conversations.”
“A geyser,” Terri suggested.
“It’s not me, it’s just my life,” I reminded them.
“You better stay out of this,” Terri worried. “Let Wyatt Porter handle it.”
“I am going to let him handle it. I’m not a cop, you know. I don’t pack a gun. All I can do is advise him.”
“Don’t even advise this time,” Stormy said. “Just this one time, stay out of it. Go to Vegas with me. Now.”
I wanted to please her. Pleasing her pleases me, and then the birds sing sweeter than usual and the bees make better honey and the world is a place of rejoicing—or so it seems from my perspective.
What I wanted to do and the right thing to do were not one and the same. So I said, “The problem is that I was put here for this work, and if I walk away from the job, it will only follow me, one way or another.”
I picked up my glass. I’d forgotten it was empty. I put it down again.
“When I’ve got a specific target, my psychic magnetism works in two directions. I can cruise at random and find who I need to find ... in this case Robertson ... or he’ll be drawn to me if he wants to be, sometimes even if he doesn’t. And in the second case, I have less control and I’m more likely to be ... unpleasantly surprised.”
“That’s just a theory,” Stormy said.
“It’s nothing I can prove, but it’s true. It’s something I know in my gut.”
“I’ve always figured you don’t think with your head,” Stormy said, her tone changing from one of insistent—and almost angry—persuasion to one of resignation and affection.
Terri said to me, “If I were your mother, I’d box your ears.”
“If you were my mother, I wouldn’t be here.”
These were the two most important women in the world to me; I loved each of them in a different way, and declining to do what they wanted, even in the interest of doing the right thing, was difficult.
The candlelight burnished their faces to the same golden glow, and they regarded me with an identical anxiety, as though by virtue of their female intuition they knew things that I could not perceive even with my sixth sense.
From the CD player, Elvis crooned, “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”
I consulted my wristwatch. “It’s August fifteenth.”
When I tried to get to my feet, Stormy didn’t restrain me as she had done previously. She, too, rose from her chair.
I said, “Terri, I guess you’ll have to cover for me on the first shift—or get Poke to come in if he’s willing.”
“What—you can’t cook and save the world at the same time?”
“Not unless you want the bacon burnt. Sorry to give you such short notice.”
Terri accompanied us to the door. She hugged Stormy, then me. She boxed one of my ears. “You be here day after tomorrow, on time, at the griddle, flippin’ those cakes, or I’m going to demote you to fountain jockey.”
ACCORDING TO THE BIG DIGITAL SIGN AT the Bank of America, the temperature had fallen to a comparatively chilly ninety degrees here on the side of midnight when broomsticks are licensed to fly.
A lazy breeze stirred through town, repeatedly dying and rising again, as though rust inhibited the mechanisms of the wind gods. Hot and dry, it traveled in crisp and fitful whispers among ficuses, palms, and jacarandas.
The streets of Pico Mundo were quiet. When the breeze held its breath, I could hear the click of the switches in the traffic-signal control boxes as the lights changed from green to yellow to red at the intersections.
As we walked to Stormy’s apartment, we remained alert, half expecting Bob Robertson to pop like a jack-in-the-box from behind a parked car, out of a doorway.
Other than the wind-licked leaves, the only movement was the dart-and-swoop of a swarm of bats pursuing a flurry of moths through the glow of a streetlamp, to the moon, and then out past Cassiopeia.
Stormy lives three blocks from the Pico Mundo Grille. We held hands and walked in silence.
My course was set irrevocably. In spite of her objections, she knew as well as I did that I had no choice but to do whatever I could to help Chief Porter stop Robertson before he committed the slaughter that had drenched my dreams for three years.
Anything that could be said on the subject now would be useless repetition. And here on the dark side of a threatening dawn, small talk had no charm.
The old, two-story Victorian house had been divided into four apartments. Stormy lives in the ground-floor unit on the right.
We didn’t expect Robertson to be waiting there for us. Though he had somehow learned who I was, it didn’t follow that he would easily discover Stormy’s address.
If he was lying in wait for me, my apartment over Rosalia Sanchez’s garage was a better bet than Stormy’s place.
Prudence, however, made us cautious as we entered the foyer and then her apartment. Inside, the cool air had a faint peach scent. We left the Mojave far behind us when we closed the door.
She has three rooms, a bath, and a kitchen. Switching on lights, we went directly to her bedroom, where she keeps her 9-mm pistol.
She ejected the magazine, checked it to be sure that it was fully loaded, and snapped it back into the weapon.
I am wary of any gun, anywhere, anytime—except when it’s in Stormy’s hand. She could sit with her finger on the detonation button of a nuclear weapon, and I would feel safe enough to nap.
A quick check of the windows revealed that they were locked, as she had left them.
No boogeyman had taken up residence in any of the closets.
While Stormy brushed her teeth and changed for bed, I called Green Moon Lanes and listened to a recorded message regarding their hours, services, and prices. They opened for business at 11:00 A.M. Thursday through Sunday, and at 1:00 P.M. Monday through Wednesday.
The earliest that Robertson could walk into the bowling center with murder in mind was when they unlocked the doors at one o’clock.
Two multiplex cinemas with a total of twenty screens serve the greater Pico Mundo area. By phone, I learned that the movie to which Viola had intended to take her daughters was playing at two theaters in only one multiplex. I made a mental note of the show times, the earliest of which was 1:10 P.M.
In the bedroom, I turned down the bedclothes, took off my shoes, and