"Doesn't the county have a crime lab for that?"
"Yeah, but I can't take it to them. There are circumstances."
"Like?"
"Like they will think I'm stoned or nuts or both. Look at the hair," Theo said. "You tell me. I'll tell you.
"Okay, but I don't have all that cool CSI stuff."
"Yeah, but the guys at the crime lab don't have batteries Super-Glued to their gonads. You've got them there."
* * *
Ten minutes later Gabe looked up from his microscope. "Well, it's not human," he said.
"Swell."
"In fact, it doesn't appear to be hair."
"So what is it?"
"Well, it seems to have a lot of the qualities of optic fiber."
"So it's man-made?"
"Not so fast. It has a root, and what appears to be a cuticle, but it doesn't look like keratin. I'd have to have it tested for proteins. If it's manufactured, there's no evidence of the process. It looks as if it was grown, not made. You know polar-bear hair has fiber-optic properties — channels light energy through to the black skin for heat."
"So it's polar-bear hair?"
"Not so fast."
"Gabe, goddammit, where in the hell did it come from?"
"You tell me."
"Just us, okay? This doesn't leave this cottage unless we get some confirmation, okay?"
"Of course. Are you okay, Theo?"
"Am I okay? You're asking me if I'm okay?"
"Everything all right with you and Molly? The job? You're not smoking dope again, are you?"
Theo hung his head. "You say you have another one of those electrodes?"
Gabe brightened. "You'll need to shave a spot. Can I open my present while you're in the bathroom? You can use my razor."
"No, go ahead and open your present. I have some stuff I need to tell you."
"Wow, a salad shooter. Thanks, Theo."
* * *
"He took the salad shooter," Molly said.
"Wow, was that important to him?" Lena asked.
"It was a wedding present."
"I know, I gave it to you. It was a wedding present to me and Dale, too."
"See, there was tradition." Molly was inconsolable. She drank off half of her diet Coke and slammed the plastic Budweiser cup down on the bar like a pirate cursing over a schooner of grog. "Bastard!"
It was Wednesday evening, and they were at the Head of the Slug saloon to coordinate the replanning of the food for the Christmas for the Lonesome party. Lena's first reaction to Molly's call to help was to beg off and stay at home, but even as she was creating an excuse, she realized that she'd only sit home obsessing alternately on getting caught for killing Dale and getting her heart broken by this strange, strange helicopter pilot. She decided that maybe meeting with Molly and Mavis down at the Slug wasn't such a bad idea. And she might be able to find out from Molly if Theo suspected her in Dale's disappearance. Yeah, fat chance, with Molly obsessing on Theo's — whatever it was that Theo was supposed to have done wrong. It sounded to Lena like he had just taken a salad shooter to work with him. You were supposed to empathize with your friend's problems, but they were, after all, your friend's problems, and Lena's friends, Molly in particular, could be a little wacky.
The bar was full of singles in their twenties and thirties and you could feel a desperate energy sparking around the dark room, like loneliness was the negative and sex was the positive and someone was brushing the wires together over an open bucket of gasoline. This was the fallout of the holiday heartbreak cycle that started with young men who, lacking any stronger motivation toward changing their lives, would break up with their current girlfriend in order to avoid having to buy her a Christmas present. The distraught women would sulk for a few days, eat ice cream, and avoid calling relatives, but then, as the idea of a solitary Christmas and New Year started to loom large, they swarmed into the Slug in search of a companion, virtually any companion, with whom they could pass the holidays. Full speed ahead and forget the presents. Pine Cove's male singles, to display their newfound freedom, would descend on the Slug, and avail themselves of the affections of dejected women in a game of small-town sexual musical chairs played hungrily to the tune of "Deck the Halls" — everyone hoping to have slipped drunkenly into someone more comfortable before the last fa was la-la-ed.
There might have been a bubble around Lena and Molly, however, for they were obviously not part of the game. While both were certainly more than attractive enough to garner attention from the younger men, they had about them a mystique of experience, of having been there and moved on, of unbullshitability. Essentially, they scared the hell out of all but the drunkest of the Slug's suitors, and the fact that they were drinking straight diet Coke scared the hell out of the drunks. Molly and Lena, despite their own personal distress, had slain their own holiday desperation dragons, which was how the Lonesome Christmas party had started in the first place. Now they were on to new, individual anxieties.