“Not unless consciousness somehow continues after death. I’d like to believe it, but empirical evidence suggests that’s not the case.”

“Continues? Oh, it surely does.” Annie went to the sink and began rinsing blood from the rag she’d been using. “Some say that souls gone on take no interest in the earthly sphere, nummore than we care about the goings-ons of ants in anthills, but I ain’t one of those some. I believe they pay attention. I’m sorry she’s passed, son.”

“Do you think their love continues?” The idea was silly, he knew that, but it was good silly.

“Sure. Love don’t die with the earthly body, son. It’s a purely ridiculous notion. How long since she went on?”

“Maybe a month, maybe six weeks. I’ve pretty much lost track of time. They were murdered, and I was kidnapped. I know that’s hard to believe—”

Annie went to work on the rest of the blood. “Not hard if you’re in the know.” She tapped her temple below the brim of her sombrero. “Did they come in black cars?”

“I don’t know,” Luke said, “but I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“And were they doing experiments on you?”

Luke’s mouth dropped open. “How did you know that?”

“George Allman,” she said. “He’s on WMDK from midnight until four in the morning. His show is about walk-ins, and UFOs, and psychic powers.”

“Psychic powers? Really?”

“Yes, and the conspiracy. Do you know about the conspiracy, son?”

“Sort of,” Luke said.

“George Allman’s show is called The Outsiders. People call in, but mostly it’s just him talking. He doesn’t say it’s aliens, or the government, or the government working with aliens, he’s careful because he doesn’t want to disappear or get shot like Jack and Bobby, but he talks about the black cars all the time, and the experiments. Things that would turn your hair white. Did you know that Son of Sam was a walk-in? No? Well, he was. Then the devil that was inside him walked back out, leaving only a shell. Raise your head, son, that blood’s all down your neck, and if it dries before I can get it, I’ll have to scrub.”

3

The Beeman boys, a pair of great hulking teenagers from the trailer park south of town, showed up at quarter past noon, well into what was usually Tim’s lunch hour. By then most of the stuff for Fromie’s Small Engine Sales and Service was on the cracked concrete of the station tarmac. If it had been up to Tim, he would have fired the Beemans on the spot, but they were related to Mr. Jackson in some complicated southern way, so that wasn’t an option. Besides, he needed them.

Del Beeman got the big truck with the stake sides backed up to the door of the Carolina Produce boxcar by twelve-thirty, and they began loading in crates of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and summer squash. Hector and his secondman, interested not in fresh veggies but only in getting the hell out of South Carolina, pitched in. Norb Hollister stood in the shade of the depot overhang, doing some heavy looking-on but nothing else. Tim found the man’s continued presence a trifle peculiar—he’d shown no interest in the arrivals and departures of the trains before—but was too busy to consider it.

An old Ford station wagon pulled into the station’s small parking lot at ten to one, just as Tim was forklifting the last crates of produce into the back of the truck that would deliver them to the DuPray Grocery . . . assuming that Phil Beeman got it there all right. It was less than a mile, but this morning Phil’s speech was slow and his eyes were as red as those of a small animal trying to stay ahead of a brushfire. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to deduce he’d been indulging in a bit of wacky tobacky. He and his brother both.

Doc Roper got out of his station wagon. Tim tipped him a wave and pointed to the warehouse where Mr. Jackson kept his office/apartment. Roper waved back and headed in that direction. He was old-school, almost a caricature; the kind of doctor who still survives in a thousand poor-ass rural areas where the nearest hospital is forty or fifty miles away, Obamacare is looked upon as a libtard blasphemy, and a trip to Walmart is considered an occasion. He was overweight and over sixty, a hardshell Baptist who carried a Bible as well as a stethoscope in a black bag which had been handed down, father to son, for three generations.

“What’s with that kid?” the train’s secondman asked, using a bandanna to mop his forehead.

“I don’t know,” Tim said, “but I intend to find out. Go on, you guys, rev it up and go. Unless you want to leave me one of those Lexuses, Hector. Happy to roll it off myself if you do.”

“Chupa mi polla,” Hector said. Then he shook Tim’s hand and headed back to his engine, hoping to make up time between DuPray and Brunswick.

4

Stackhouse intended to make the trip on the Challenger with the two extraction teams, but Mrs. Sigsby overruled him. She could do that because she was the boss. Nevertheless, Stackhouse’s expression of dismay at this idea bordered on insulting.

“Wipe that look off your face,” she said. “Whose head do you think will roll if this goes pear-shaped?”

“Both of our heads, and it won’t stop with us.”

“Yes, but whose will come off first and roll the farthest?”

“Julia, this is a field operation, and you’ve never been in the field before.”

“I’ll have both Ruby and Opal teams with me, four good men and three tough women. We’ll also have Tony Fizzale, who’s ex-Marines, Dr. Evans, and Winona Briggs. She’s ex-Army, and has some triage skills. Denny Williams will be in charge once the operation begins, but I intend to be there, and I intend to write my report from a ground-level perspective.” She paused. “If there needs to be a report, that is, and I’m starting to believe there will be no way to avoid it.” She glanced at her watch. Twelve-thirty. “No more discussion. We need to get this on wheels. You run the place, and if all goes well, I’ll be back here by two tomorrow morning.”

He walked with her out the door and down to the gated dirt road that eventually led to two-lane blacktop three miles east. The day was hot. Crickets sang in the thick woods through which the fucking kid had somehow found his way. A Ford Windstar soccer-mom van was idling in front of the gate, with Robin Lecks behind the wheel. Michelle Robertson was sitting beside her. Both women wore jeans and black tee-shirts.

“From here to Presque Isle,” Mrs. Sigsby said. “Ninety minutes. From Presque Isle to Erie, Pennsylvania, another seventy minutes. We pick up Opal Team there. From Erie to Alcolu, South Carolina, two hours, give or take. If all goes well, we’ll be in DuPray by seven this evening.”

“Stay in touch, and remember that Williams is in charge once you go hot. Not you.”

“I will.”

“Julia, I really think this is a mistake. It ought to be me.”

She faced him. “Say it again, and I’ll haul off on you.” She walked to the van. Denny Williams unrolled the side door for her. Mrs. Sigsby started to get in, then turned to Stackhouse. “And make sure Avery Dixon is well dunked and in Back Half by the time I return.”

“Donkey Kong doesn’t like the idea.”

She gave him a terrifying smile. “Do I look like I care?”

5

Tim watched the train pull out, then returned to the shade of the depot’s overhang. His shirt was soaked with sweat. He was surprised to see Norbert Hollister still standing there. As usual, he was wearing his paisley vest and dirty khakis, today cinched with a braided belt just below his breastbone. Tim wondered (and not for the first time) how he could wear pants that high and not squash the hell out of his balls.

“What are you still doing here, Norbert?”

Hollister shrugged and smiled, revealing teeth Tim could have done without viewing before lunch. “Just passing the time. Afternoons ain’t exactly busy back at the old ranchero.”

As if mornings or evenings were, Tim thought. “Well, why don’t you put an egg in your shoe and beat it?”

Norbert pulled a pouch of Red Man from his back pocket and stuffed some in his mouth. It went a long way, Tim thought, to explaining the color of his teeth. “Who died and made you Pope?”

“I guess that sounded like a request,” Tim said. “It wasn’t. Go.”

“Fine, fine, I can take a hint. You have a good day, Mr. Night Knocker.”

Norbert ambled off. Tim looked after him, frowning. He sometimes saw Hollister in Bev’s Eatery, or down at Zoney’s, buying boiled peanuts or a hardboiled egg out of the jar on the counter, but otherwise he rarely left his motel office, where he watched sports and porn on his satellite TV. Which, unlike the ones in the rooms, worked.

Orphan Annie was waiting for Tim in Mr. Jackson’s outer office, sitting behind the desk and thumbing through the papers in Jackson’s IN/OUT basket.