Deeply Odd(54)
Chet turned more directly toward us on the swiveling stool. “Two in Bakersfield, one up to Visalia.”
All those diner smells that had been so appetizing congealed now into a greasy, meaty malodor, as though beneath every shining moment of culinary delight, the repressed knowledge of the slaughterhouse waited to assert the sacrifice that was the source of that pleasure. The aroma of coffee now had the bitter smell of an emetic.
“Two in Winslow, Arizona,” Sandy said, “and four from one family in a suburb of Phoenix.”
“Four more in Vegas,” Chet said. “Kidnappers killed the parents to get at the young’uns. And one from Cedar City, up to Utah.”
“Seventeen altogether,” I said.
“Maybe even others nobody knows of yet,” Chet said. “This smells like terrorism. Don’t it to you? Who knows where it ends?”
Mrs. Fischer crossed herself, the first indication of a traditional faith that I had witnessed from her, although I’d never seen anyone make the sign of the cross with jaws clenched tight in anger and eyes as fierce as hers were just then. Maybe she prayed the rosary every night, or maybe this terrible news reminded her of the Catholicism of her childhood and of why she’d once felt a need for it.
“All these things happened in so many jurisdictions,” Chet explained, “nobody saw the pattern till late this mornin’, early this afternoon. By then those kids they could be anywhere.”
“They’ve got to be connected, don’t they?” Sandy asked. “The TV news says they’ve got to be.”
“Not a ransom demand for a one of them,” Chet said. “That gives me a bad feelin’. Don’t it you?”
“My folks are staying with us till there’s some kind of end to this,” Sandy revealed. “Dad, Mom, Jim—they all have guns, and we’re schooling at home for the time being.”
On the road all day, with no interest in the radio, we had not heard the news. Usually I spare myself from the news, because if it’s not propaganda, then it’s one threat or another exaggerated to the point of absurdity, or it’s the tragedy of storm-quake-tsunami, of bigotry and oppression misnamed justice, of hatred passed off as righteousness and honor called dishonorable, all jammed in around advertisements in which a gecko sells insurance, a bear sells toilet tissue, a dog sells cars, a gorilla sells investment advisers, a tiger sells cereal, and an elephant sells a drug that will improve your lung capacity, as if no human being in America any longer believes any other human being, but trusts only the recommendations of animals.
Not having heard the news, I had been drawn to Ernestine’s to make an important discovery, and this was it. The Payton kids were not the only souls in peril. Some demented group was trawling the West for children, to bring them together for burning or to kill them otherwise, on a stage before a select audience more perverse than I cared to consider.
With my paranormal abilities, perhaps I might be the only one who could find the abductees in time to save them. This obligation was so heavy that I didn’t know if I had the shoulders to carry it. I have had successes but also failures, because whatever else I might be, I am first and foremost human, and the tendency of our fallen kind is to fall again. To fail so many innocent children—or any of them—would leave me in a dark place, perhaps even blacker than the emotional slough through which I suffered in the weeks immediately after I lost Stormy Llewellyn. I had no choice, of course, but to try.
The likelihood of failure seemed greater than usual, however, because I was one against what seemed to be phalanxes of enemies, and singularly brutal enemies, at that. More troubling than their numbers and bloodthirstiness, they were not the usual scapegraces, criminals, psychopaths, and sociopaths. They might be all of those things, yes, but they were also something more dangerous. At least two of them, the rhinestone cowboy and his stone-faced viper-eyed associate, possessed some paranormal abilities—or supernatural knowledge—unique to them.
Sandy gave Mrs. Fischer her change.
Mrs. Fischer deposited a few dollars of it into a clear-plastic collection bucket for the Special Olympics, which stood near the cash register.
Sandy wished us a safe journey.
Mrs. Fischer plucked a couple of complimentary cellophane-wrapped hard-candy mints from a plastic bowl beside the Special Olympics bucket.
I opened the door for Mrs. Fischer.
Mrs. Fischer gave me one of the mints.
Even if there are moments during the day when all seems normal and when every action of your own and of those around you seems to be unremarkable, the appearance of ordinariness is an illusion, and just below the placid surface, the world is seething.