Little Timmy, said the Voice.
He sat up and cried to the air, not caring by this time if the whole building heard him. "If they catch me it's your fault. You said you'd protect me, damn you."
There was a pause, but then the voice inside his skull answered him. Damn me? it said. How redundant.Timmy felt a shudder go through him, and, more than anything else, he wanted to be away. But it wouldn't let him go. I disguised you, Timothy. I made you look like someone else, and the police caught him, but he escaped.You were almost found three days ago, Timothy, but I protected you. So you see-
"You did that?" he spoke to the walls, and there was hysteria in his voice. "I did that. You made me kill an old woman who had never-"
Shush, Timothy. You tire me. Yes, you killed her, but what took you so long? Was she too strong for you? If you had killed her quickly, they wouldn't be after you. But I acted to protect you. Now 1 will act again. It is time for you to get up and go out. It is no longer enough to count on your police, Timothy. You must act yourself.
He sat on the bed and looked at his hands. There was a power there, as there was a power in the Voice. His stomach churned once more as he thought of the old woman, her eyes bright with anger and pride and hate, and he felt the fear in his bowels as she had struck the gun from his hand, and then he'd been holding a knife, and where had it come from? And where did it go?
"What must I do?" he said.
The knife has fallen from our hands, and we could not use it against him in any case. You must get your gun. I will tell you what to do with it.
He still sat at the edge of the bed and stared at his hands, "Why are you doing this to me?" he asked.
To his surprise, she answered.
Because I can. Little Timmy.
I keep finding hands to help me with the load
So I'll keep walking further up this road.
"UP THE ROAD"
Early morning: Cigany sat cross-legged in his hidey-hole beneath the overpass and stared at his knife. It would need to be cleaned, he. knew, before he could fully trust it again. Until it was, it could draw the Fair Lady to him, and who knew what form the attack would take? He was not invulnerable, he knew that.He had lived a long time because of his wits, and skill, and luck, but now the Fair Lady had seen him,and he Her, and the battle was joined in earnest, and he knew that She had the power to destroy him if he wasn't careful.
Death didn't frighten him, but the idea that he could die after all of those forgotten years, and all of that heartache and pain; this was not to be borne.
As he stood up, the sun's rays struck him across the face, and he shuddered, knowing that today someone would try to kill him. He made the sign of the cross in the air and looked around for a piece of wood to touch. There were none, so he picked up some gravel and threw it in front of him saying, "May my road be higher than the river and lower than the sun, and may my feet find a safe way home."
He brushed his hands on his shirt and set off, keeping to alleys as much as possible, always staying alert for the police. As he walked he found a clothing store and stole a snakeskin belt (the only snakeskin he could find), pulled a twig from a hazel tree, and begged a small quantity of holy water from a confused priest. He drank a bowl of tasteless soup and a cup of weak coffee at a Howard Johnson's, then continued to forage. As he walked, his vision began to blur, and he felt his headache coming back. He took the piece of paper out of his pocket and tried to remember how the scribbling on it could cure the headache, but it was no good- He laughed grimly to himself. "When my head doesn't hurt," he thought,"I don't think of it, and when it does, I can't read it." He took wheat flour from a grocery store and a white candle from a pharmacy. He took a piece of bark from an oak, and, with the knife, scratched designs of the moon and the stars on the bark.
Armed with these things, he made his way back to his place beneath the overpass and waited for the rising of the full moon of autumn.
They said. "Why are you here?"
I said, "I'm doing time,
'Cause I'm willing to break laws
But I won't commit no crime."
"NO PASSENGER"
It was humiliating to be a coachman and to be forced to ride in a cab; a humiliation only partly alleviated by riding up front, with the driver. Sometimes they wouldn't let you do that, but this man, big and burly like an innkeeper and gnarled like a peasant woman,didn't seem to mind. His nod was an implied shrug,and as the Coachman settled into place he said, "Whereto?"
"The bus station," he said. More humiliations in store.
The cab pulled away. "Meeting someone?"
"No, going somewhere."
The driver frowned for a moment then shrugged. The lack of luggage probably puzzled him. He said,"Where ya going?"
"I'm looking for birds," he said, only coming to realize it as the words were spoken.
"Birds?"
"I have to find a Raven and an Owl before the Dove kills himself."
The driver cleared his throat and twitched nervously, obviously having second thoughts about having this wacko in the front seat "Whatever you say,buddy," he finally said. They spoke no more during the journey.
My partner doesn't even know my name.
If he did I think I'd hate him
Just the same.
"STEPDOWN"
Stepovich wished he were driving. Durand always talked while he drove, and flapped his right hand at Stepovich, as if that were an essential part of talking.
"So the lab guy says, 'Yeah, that bastard drove that knife into her like he was trying to shove it clear to China, but that wasn't the weirdest part of it, though,'so I says, 'Oh, yeah,' kind of casual, and he says,'No, the weirdest part was the wound configuration.I didn't know what the hell it was, I thought maybe the killer had a defective knife or something, but one of the older guys, he looks at it and says, hey, will you look at the hilt impressions on this wound?' "
The taxicab at the corner barely curtsied to the stop sign before it swung out in front of them. Durand crammed on the brakes and Stepovich's palm, slapped the dash as he braced himself.
"Shit," hissed Stepovich, and spent a few futile moments groping for the ends of the seat belt, but as always it was stuffed somewhere in the crevice of the seat back.
"Yeah!" Durand agreed enthusiastically, hardly pausing in his story. "You know, a hilt impression.It's a mark around the knife wound when a blade gets really driven in. This one was really weird. The lab guy tells me the old guy said the knife must be a custom job. It left these three little bruises around the wound, like there were little studs sticking out from the guard. That knife-"
"Durand." Stepovich spoke without looking at him, but his cold tone stopped the story in midsentence. "It's a homicide, isn't it?"
"Well, yeah," Durand sounded sulky.
"Then leave it to the homicide guy. They hate it when guys like us sniff around in their shit. You won't get any thanks for it. No one's going to think you're Sherlock Holmes. Even if you come up with something, you won't get the credit. The only thing you'll get is a reputation as a hotshot boy scout who can't mind his own business. Worse, they're gonna figure you're out to make them look bad, so they're going to devote a little time to making you look bad. Only they're going to be better at it. You're suddenly going to find that you've screwed up any crime scene you're called to, that you've mishandled evidence and handled witnesses all wrong. And that's going to go in your file. You get what I'm saying?" Dumbshit.