The Dead Have A Thousand Dreams (12 page)

“Right,” I said, “and your
car died on the way to the dentist. Which is how you got lost in
the woods and found the rock.”

“You know something? When
I hit the tooth that night, I should’ve ignored the pain and pulled
the trigger.”

“Don’t say
that.”

“Oh I’m gonna say it. Let
me get you told, I’m gonna say exactly that. I would’ve been better
off. I’m losing my mind here.”

“Yeah, or maybe
you’re
giving
it
away.”

He ignored me as we hit
downtown traffic. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that his
doctor was located in the Hidden Valley Executive Center. Lots of
people have offices there. Monte Slater, for one. But so did plenty
of doctors.

Wooly turned the corner
and found a parking spot just past the fried chicken place, Wings
‘N Things. We started walking, though he was lagging three steps
behind, moving a lot slower than normal. I was almost thinking we’d
have to hold him up.

“It’s the heat out today,”
he said. “Too much weather for me.”

Swinging through the
building’s revolving door weirded me out a bit. Strange going back
to the site of Monte’s suicide. Stranger still when we got in the
elevator and Wooly pressed five.

“We’re late,” said Nickie,
pointing to the digital display on the elevator wall.
The date is June 18, the current time is
1:38.

“You know what?” said
Wooly. “I don’t care. I’m in no hurry. I’m in no hurry to use up
what time that’s left.”

The doors opened. He got
out and, yeah, he turned in the direction of Monte’s office. Okay,
that was a 50/50 chance. But then he kept walking toward the far
end of the corridor, passing door after door, heading for the same
place where the crime tape had been strung. This was just bizarre.
I could feel blood drop from my head. What was going on?

Then he stopped at the
door right next to Trident Manufacturing, just a few feet away. His
doctor’s name—
Jeevika
Mhari
—was among the seven listed on the
door.

The waiting room was busy,
but Wooly, eight minutes late, would be taken right away. Nickie
and I conferred: Should one of us go in with him? Which one wanted
to see him naked? We decided he’d be fine on his own.

We found seats once Wooly
was taken inside. The walls of the waiting room were painted a
light green, exactly halfway between aquamarine and turquoise. I’d
once read that if you could somehow stand outside the universe and
see it from a distance, it would have a color halfway between
aquamarine and turquoise. The universe, in another words, looked
just like this doctors’ office in Hidden Lake.

Fifteen minutes later,
Wooly still inside, the waiting room was almost empty. Typical
doctors’ office ebb and flow. One of the two nurses at the counter
left and came back a few minutes later with lunch. Nickie and I
experimented with new positions for our legs.

The nurse ate at the
counter, surrounded by folders and charts waiting to be filed. “I
saw that guy from next door this morning,” she said to the other
nurse. “I didn’t know what to say.”

“Terrible, terrible. I
think they’re burying him tomorrow.”

They were talking, I knew,
about Monte’s funeral.

“What was I suppose to
say?”

Nothing more was said
after that.

Another nurse came out,
evidently a superior. She started saying what’s going on—you took
your lunch break too early. You’re not supposed to take it until
2:30.

“So what do you want me to
do?” the offender said. “Stop eating my tunafish?”

Wooly came out a moment
later. He looked a bit better. There was almost a look of relief on
his face, at least a trace of it.

“Okay, this is something,”
he said as we left. “There’s nothing wrong with me. My health is
good—you know, considering my weight, the way I abused myself. But
I’m all right. She says I’m all right.”

“That
is
something,” I said.

He nodded, pressed for the
elevator. “Least I know, whatever’s gonna happen, it’s not coming
from
within
, you
know?”

We got in. He pressed the
first floor button.

“Did you tell her why
you’re here?”

“I didn’t bring it up. Why
bother? She already thinks I’m crazy, why add to her…”

Whatever was headed for
his tongue, it got lost in his throat. We looked over at him. His
mouth was gaping open and he was staring at the digital
display.

The date is June 18, the
current time is 00:00.
The zeroes were
flashing. The thing was busted. This was the same elevator we’d
taken before and the clock had been working then. Not
now.

“It’s stopped,” he said.
“Time—it’s stopped. What did she say? What the fuck did she
say?
Time will stop for you. Time will
stop. When the offering of the fish is consumed, time will
stop.”
He glanced around the elevator,
confused. “That woman—the one in the office. What was she eating?
Was that tunafish?”

“Yeah.”

He didn’t collapse against
the corner wall—he just backed up and gently slumped into it. When
he looked at the clock again, his eyes were glazed over. “Word for
word. Word for fucking word.”

My body suddenly felt as
light as Styrofoam

The doors opened. Ground
floor. People were waiting to get on. Nickie and I stepped out but
he didn’t. He couldn’t move. The people were staring at
him—well?—but he couldn’t bring himself to move.

I remembered taking the
tour of his lab, him showing us that last room with one Xenon arc
light glaring on three old samples. He was still testing them for
his own amusement.
There’s just something
fascinating about disintegration
, he’d
said,
watching something fall apart with
the passage of time.

The way he was now, he’d
make a nice case study for himself.

>>>>>>

MONDAY JUNE 18, 2:10
p.m.

JOY TO THE WORLD

We finally got him out of
there, got him out on the street. “I keep hearing her voice,” he
said. “Keep hearing her words. Time will fucking stop. The fucking
fish. I keep hearing ‘em in my head.”

“Let’s keep moving,” said
Nickie.

Lunch seekers were still
on the streets, though there were no tourists today. The sidewalk
wasn’t so crowded, but Wooly’s pace was even slower than before. He
didn’t seem to want to be bothered with moving his legs. We kept
trying to hustle him along, on the lookout again for a green Ford
Fusion.

“I was feeling good there
for a moment,” he said. “The doctor? I was feeling good for just a
moment, just a second. But it never fails, does it?
Never
. You just finish
scrubbing the bowl, and
that’s
when you have to take a massive diarrhea
shit.”

We made it closer to the
Wings ‘N Things corner. An old man in a wheelchair, blue and red
Yankee cap on his head, was sitting by the side of the restaurant,
looking out at the traffic. Just as we were passing by, he broke
into song.

And heaven and nature
sing

And heaven and nature
sing

And
heaven
, and hea-ven, and nature
sing

He was doing
Joy to the World
. Middle
of June, he was singing
Joy to the
World
in a loud, almost shouting
voice.

“This is
just
what I need,” Wooly
said as we walked past. “Gimme something to gag him.”

We turned the corner. The
melody followed.

JOY to the world, the Lord
is come

Let earth receive her
KING

“The fucking people in
this fucking town,” said Wooly. “Could this day get any
worse?”

You had to ask.

Way down the street I saw
an SUV going in reverse against the traffic. Doing 25-30 miles per
hour. Jerk of a driver, I thought, and kept walking. Moments later
I heard some nerve-jump sound and the entire plate glass window of
Wings ‘N Things behind us turned to frost.

Nickie whipped her head
around so fast her face was blurred. I followed her eyes to the
SUV, a Grand Cherokee, stopped in the road now. I saw someone
standing next to it, saw a muzzle flash. The whole restaurant
window shattered and fell, the people inside starting to go to the
floor like puppets whose strings had suddenly been cut.

“Get
down!”
Nickie yelled, pushing Wooly
to the pavement. I dropped too. We did spider scrambles to the car,
using the Lexus loaner as a shield.

The sniper shots scattered
everywhere, hitting the glass in other stores, grazing the roof of
the car. People on the sidewalk were running and tripping, jumping
for cover, screaming and shouting. Drowsy heat had turned into a
white nightmare.

Wooly was face down, hands
over his head. “What is this, like the town sport? Some frucking
fruit opens fire?”

He couldn’t even
say
fucking
right. Bad sign.

I edged my head an inch
past the bumper. The Grand Cherokee was maybe 200 feet away, the
guy with the high-caliber rifle standing there like a hawk, all in
black. A ski mask?

More shots. I slipped
back, my heart thrashing like a fly trapped in a closed window,
wings beating against the screen.

Nickie took her Smith
& Wesson out. I dittoed with the Glock. We started returning
cautious fire. No chance of reaching him at this distance, but at
least we could show him there was some defense here.

“Too bad,” said Wooly, “I
don’t have
my
gun.”

“Shut up!”
said Nickie.

We heard a door slam, an
engine going into hard rev. Nickie held her breath and raised her
head. The Grand Cherokee had left a trail of exhaust on the
street.

Wooly rolled over on his
back. “I got a lot of depression,” he said, “to catch up
on.”

>>>>>>

MONDAY JUNE 18, 2:35
p.m.

THE MORE THE
MERRIER

Like real estate, the value
of Wooly-shooting depends on location. You try it in his front
yard, or on a side road, or in the parking lot of his lab, that’s
one thing. But when it happens in the middle of town, that’s
something else. Even the two Hidden Lake cops didn’t seem bored any
longer. They actually looked studious and attentive as they checked
the crowd for injuries and took statements, though they were still
moving cow-fast.

“What are you
doing
to this town?”
Alex Tarkashian said.

“You’re asking what
I’m
doing?” said Wooly,
so jumpy he couldn’t stop his hands from shaking. “I think you got
it vighsa-versa.”

Onlookers were still
mobbing both sides of the street, staying back but remaining
curious. One shaken Wings ‘N Things customer was doubled over in
the doorway, throwing up on the steps.

“So no Ford Fusion this
time?” said Alex.

“A Grand Cherokee,” said
Nickie.

“Color?”

“Black.”

“Or maybe dark blue,” I
said.

“Plate?”

“Too far away,” said
Nickie.

“About 200
feet.”

“A ski mask
again?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe.”

“This is just
brilliant.”

One of the cops came over,
lighting a cigarette. “Nobody saw more than shit,” he
complained.

Alex looked back at us.
“So what’s the thinking? Your perp’s switched vehicles?”

“Or there’s more than
one,” said Nickie.

“Kidding.”

“She could be right,” said
Wooly. “There could be more than one. It could be a
plot
. It could be a
fucking
conspiracy
.”

Alex let out a sad,
long-day sigh. “Does it ever stop with you?
Ever?”

>>>>>>

MONDAY JUNE 18, 3:25
p.m.

JUST LIKE THAT—SHE’S
DEAD

Genevieve took one look at
him—lost, out of it, repeating the words
time
and
fish
and
conspiracy
over and over to
himself—and she made up her mind. “Wooly, the rock.” The two of us
set out on the same paths we’d taken four long days ago, the woods
all furred with shade, heading toward the swamp reeds and tannin
waters of the original hidden lake.

“It’s like everything’s
moving too fast,” he said. “I try to hang onto things they just
keep moving away from me.”