“That’s not your business, Annie,” Tim said mildly. “And if you mess that stuff up, I’ll be the one in trouble.”

“Nothing in’dresting, anyway,” she said. “Just invoices and schedules and such. Although he does have a meal punch-card for that topless café down Hardeeville. Two more punches and he gets a free buffet lunch. Although eating lunch while looking at some woman’s snatchola . . . brrr.”

Tim had never thought of it that way, and now that he had, wished he hadn’t. “The doc’s in with the kid?”

“Yeah. I stopped the bleeding, but he’ll have to wear his hair long from now on because that ear is never gonna look the same. Now listen to me. That boy’s parents were murdered and he was kidnapped.”

“Part of the conspiracy?” He and Annie had had many conversations about the conspiracy on his night-knocker rounds.

“That’s right. They came for him in the black cars, count on it, and if they trace him to here, they’ll come for him here.”

“Noted,” he said, “and I’ll be sure to discuss it with Sheriff John. Thanks for cleaning him up and watching him, but now I think you better head out.”

She got up and shook out her serape. “That’s right, you tell Sheriff John. You-all need to be on your guard. They’re apt to come locked and loaded. There’s a town in Maine, Jerusalem’s Lot, and you could ask the people who lived there about the men in the black cars. If you could find any people, that is. They all disappeared forty or more years ago. George Allman talks about that town all the time.”

“Got it.”

She went to the door, serape swishing, then turned. “You don’t believe me, and I ain’t a bit surprised. Why would I be? I been the town weirdo for years before you came, and if the Lord doesn’t take me, I’ll be the town weirdo years after you’re gone.”

“Annie, I never—”

“Hush.” She stared at him fiercely from beneath her sombrero. “It’s all right. But pay attention, now. I’m telling you . . . but he told me. That boy. So that’s two of us, all right? And you remember what I said. They come in black cars.”

6

Doc Roper was putting the few tools of examination he’d used back into his bag. The boy was still sitting in Mr. Jackson’s easy chair. His face had been cleaned of blood and his ear was bandaged. He was raising a good bruise down the right side of his face from his argument with the signal-post, but his eyes were clear and alert. The doc had found a bottle of ginger ale in the little fridge, and the boy was making short work of it.

“Sit there easy, young man,” Roper said. He snapped his bag shut and walked over to Tim, who was standing just inside the door to the outer office.

“Is he okay?” Tim asked, keeping his voice low.

“He’s dehydrated, and he’s hungry, hasn’t had much to eat in quite awhile, but otherwise he seems fine to me. Kids his age bounce back from worse. He says he’s twelve, he says his name is Nick Wilholm, and he says he got on that train where it started, way up in northern Maine. I ask him what he was doing there, he says he can’t tell me. I ask him for his address, he says he can’t remember. Plausible, a hard knock on the head can cause temporary disorientation and scramble memory, but I’ve been around the block a few times, and I can tell the difference between amnesia and reticence, especially in a kid. He’s hiding something. Maybe a lot.”

“Okay.”

“My advice? Promise to feed him a big old meal at the café, and you’ll get the whole story.”

“Thanks, Doc. Send me the bill.”

Roper waved this away. “You buy me a big old meal someplace classier than Bev’s, and we’ll call it square.” In the doc’s thick Dixie accent, square came out squarr. “And when you get his story, I want to hear it.”

When he was gone, Tim closed the door so it was just him and the boy, and took his cell phone from his pocket. He called Bill Wicklow, the deputy who was scheduled to take over the night knocker’s job after Christmas. The boy watched him closely, finishing the last of his cold drink.

“Bill? This is Tim. Yeah, fine. Just wondering if you’d like a little dry run on the night-knocking job tonight. This is usually my time to sleep, but something’s come up down at the trainyard.” He listened. “Excellent. I owe you one. I’ll leave the time clock at the cop-shop. Don’t forget you have to wind it up. And thanks.”

He ended the call and studied the boy. The bruises on his face would bloom, then fade in a week or two. The look in his eyes might take longer. “You feeling better? Headache going away?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Never mind the sir, you can call me Tim. Now what do I call you? What’s your real name?”

After a brief hesitation, Luke told him.

7

The poorly lit tunnel between Front Half and Back Half was chilly, and Avery began to shiver immediately. He still had on the clothes he’d been wearing when Zeke and Carlos had hauled his small unconscious body out of the immersion tank, and he was soaked. His teeth began to chatter. Still, he held onto what he had learned. It was important. Everything was important now.

“Stop with the teeth,” Gladys said. “That’s a disgusting sound.” She was pushing him in a wheelchair, her smile nowhere in evidence. Word of what this little shit had done was everywhere now, and like all the other Institute employees, she was terrified and would remain so until Luke Ellis was hauled back and they could all breathe a sigh of relief.

“I c-c-c-can’t h-h-help ih-it,” Avery said. “I’m so c-c-cold.”

“Do you think I give a shit?” Gladys’s raised voice echoed back from the tile walls. “Do you have any idea of what you did? Do you have any idea?”

Avery did. In fact, he had many ideas, some of them Gladys’s (her fear was like a rat running on a wheel in the middle of her head), some of them entirely his own.

Once they were through the door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, it was a little warmer, and in the tatty lounge where Dr. James was waiting for them (her white lab coat misbuttoned, her hair in disarray, a big goofy smile on her face), it was warmer still.

Avery’s shivering slowed, then ceased, but the colored Stasi Lights came back. That was all right, because he could make them go away any time he wanted. Zeke had nearly killed him in that tank, in fact before Avery passed out he thought he was dead, but the tank had also done something to him. He understood that it did stuff to some of the other kids who went into it, but he thought this was something more. TK as well as TP was the least of it. Gladys was terrified of what might happen because of Luke, but Avery had an idea that he, Avery, could terrify her of him, if he wanted.

But this wasn’t the time.

“Hello, young man!” Dr. James cried. She sounded like a politician on a TV ad, and her thoughts were flying around like scraps of paper caught in a strong wind.

Something is really, really wrong with her, Avery thought. It’s like radiation poisoning, only in her brain instead of her bones.

“Hello,” Avery said.

Dr. Jeckle threw back her head and laughed as if Hello were the punchline of the funniest joke she’d ever heard. “We weren’t expecting you so soon, but welcome, welcome! Some of your friends are here!”

I know, Avery thought, and I can’t wait to see them. And I think they’ll be glad to see me.

“First, though, we need to get you out of those wet clothes.” She gave Gladys a reproachful look, but Gladys was busy scratching at her arms, trying to get rid of the buzz running over her skin (or just under it). Good luck with that, Avery thought. “I’ll have Henry take you to your room. We have nice caretakers here. Can you walk on your own?”

“Yes.”

Dr. Jeckle did some more laughing, head back and throat working. Avery got out of the wheelchair, and gave Gladys a long, measuring look. She stopped scratching and now she was the one who shivered. Not because she was wet, and not because she was cold. It was because of him. She felt him, and she didn’t like it.

But Avery did. It was sort of beautiful.

8

Because there was no other chair in Mr. Jackson’s living room, Tim brought one in from the outer office. He considered putting it in front of the boy, then decided that would be too much like the set-up in a police interrogation room. He slid it beside the La-Z-Boy instead, sitting next to the boy the way you’d sit with a friend, maybe to watch a favorite TV show. Only Mr. Jackson’s flatscreen was blank.

“Now, Luke,” he said. “According to Annie, you were kidnapped, but Annie isn’t always . . . completely on the beam, let’s say.”

“She’s on the beam about that,” Luke said.

“Okay, then. Kidnapped from where?”

“Minneapolis. They knocked me out. And they killed my parents.” He swiped a hand across his eyes.

“These kidnappers took you from Minneapolis to Maine. How did they do that?”

“I don’t know. I was unconscious. Probably in a plane. I really am from Minneapolis. You can check that out, all you have to do is call my school. It’s called the Broderick School for Exceptional Children.”