Robert smiled wanly. "Chinese experts?"
"People believe authority. And I think Sue's grandma qualifies."
"So when do we get to meet this old woman? We're sup posed to be following her lead, taking her word as gospel, and we've never even met her. I don't feel right placing my trust in someone I don't know. It doesn't sit well with me."
"I thought we could go over to the restaurant for lunch, meet her now.
I have some things I want to talk to her about, too."
"Now?" Robert shook his head. "I have to wait for Joe
Cash from the state police to call."
"About what?"
"Pare Frye. I told him she was kidnapped here in town, in front of her mother, that we found her shoes in a ditch, but the Elvis bit threw him off, and he's insisting that we expand the search statewide."
"What about the FBI? Do they know?"
"They know and they don't care."
Rich shrugged. "I don't suppose we can talk to them about vampires, can we?"
"I'm not bringing it up."
Rich sat down in the chair in front of his brother's desk, turning his body sideways and draping his legs over the chair arms. "We'll have a late lunch, then. We'll go after he calls. Sue said they'd be there all afternoon." "The old lady knows we're coming?" "I guess."
Robert leaned back in his chair, tapped a pencil on his knee. "I was thinking. Maybe Wheeler's on to something.
Maybe this is the Second Coming."
"What is this horse shit?"
"Things are supposed to get bad before Jesus returns. Read your Revelations."
"Come on. You're no churchgoer and neither am I." Robert shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "I'm not saying I believe it. But one of my officers pointed it out to me the other day. He goes to Wheeler's church."
"Jesus--"
"Exactly."
Rich looked at his brother and both of them laughed, the spell broken.
"Okay, I don't believe it," Robert admitted. "But I can't help thinking that these two things are connected, the vampire and Wheeler's Second Coming. Who knows?
Maybe Wheeler does know something we don't." "Shit."
"People are seeing dead rock stars and dead child molesters and vampires. That's not the normal course of events."
"Wheeler doesn't know his ass from a porkpie hal Even though I don't go to church, I think there is something after we die. Some sort of afterlife. But I don't think it can be understood by us. And the idea that the nature of God can be fully understood by a semiliterate Neanderthal like Wheeler... I just don't buy it."
"Oh, but you think your part-time employee's grandma does possess the secrets of the universe."
"What is it with you? What do you have against Sue?" "Nothing."
"It doesn't seem that way to me."
"That's just because you want to pork her."
[ Rich swung his legs off the chair and stood. "I don't have to listen to this."
"Oh, get off your high horse. Can't you even take a joke?"
"That wasn't a joke." "Okay, I'm sorry." "Yeah. Right."
Robert stared at his brother for a moment, then nervously cleared his throat. "I heard laughing last night, Rich." Rich glanced toward the window, not responding. "I heard the Laughing Man."
"No, you didn't." Rich shifted in his chair, looked at his brother. "I know this is some pretty scary shit, but..."
"But what."
"Look, there's no such thing as the Laughing Man, okay? Just drop it.
That's kid stuff. And it's not going to help us out here."
"Kid stuff? You saw him too, Richie. You saw him when
Morn died. You heard him."
"No, I didn't."
"The hell you didn't. Who was that then, huh? Who did we see out there?"
"Look, we were both under a lot of stress."
"We saw the Laughing Man. You know it and I know it." Robert stood.
"And I heard him again last night." "Bullshit."
"Oh. You believe in vampires, but you don't believe in the Laughing Man. You're picking and choosing your monsters, huh?"
"We have bodies that have been drained of blood. We have no proof of the Laughing Man."
"We have me. I saw him. I heard him."
"Medusa Syndrome," Rich said, looking straight at his brother.
"That's not it." ....... "No? It was when Emily saw Elvis steal her daughter. It was when Mike was living in a septic tank. It was when Sophocles Johnson was making underwear clothes."
"It's not the same."
"It's exactly the same."
"Fuck you." The phone rang, two rings, an outside call, and Robert reached over and picked up the receiver. "Carter." He glared at Rich.
"Yes," he said. "Yes." He put his hand over the mouthpiece. "It's Cash."
Rich nodded disgustedly. "Fine." He walked outside to wait in the hall.
The old lady was nothing like he thought she would be. Robert didn't know what he'd expected--a wise, saintly Buddha-esque guru, he supposed, or maybe a smug condescending know-it-all--but he had definitely not been prepared for this mild old woman who sat on an overturned plastic bucket shelling peas.
She looked like a turtle, he thought. Her face was wrinkled her almond-shaped eyes unblinking, and her small fragile head looked as though it could be recessed into her body on its retractable neck. She spoke no English at all beyond the word "Hi," and all communication was directed through Sue, who translated for both sides, but Robert was surprised at how much respect he immediately had for this old lady.
There was something in her soft, almost musical voice, in the matter-of-fact way in which she continued to shell the peas as she spoke, that gave him a feeling of confidence in her. When he looked over at Rich, he could tell from his brother's expression that he felt the same way. Sue's parents had ignored them as they'd walked through the kitchen to the back of the restaurant, continuing their cooking chores as though nothing out of the ordinary was happening, as though this sort of thing occurred all the time. Robert found himself wondering if they knew about the vampire at all, or if this was some thing between grandmother and granddaughter.
Rich did most of the talking asking questions and writing down the answers in his little notebook, but finally the old lady turned to face him. She said something to Sue, and the young woman translated. "She wants to know why Pee Wee Nelson is not with you. She calls him the 'tall man." "
Robert shrugged. "Should he be here?"
"My grandmother wants him to make baht gwa, a mirror. She says we need it to right the cup hugirngsi." Sue paused. "She dreamed of Pee Wee the other night."
Robert didn't know what dreaming about Pee Wee had to do with anything, but he knew enough not to say so. "What kind of mirror is it?" he asked.
"A mirror with eight sides." Sue spoke rapidly in Chiand the old lady nodded, tracing an octagon in the nese, air.
"You want us to bring him over here?"
Sue spoke again in Chinese; again the old lady nodded. "Yes."
"Does she know where the vampire is? Does she want to... ride around with us? We can take her to the spots where he struck, where he killed people. Maybe she can get some vibes or something from that."
Sue translated, and the grandmother smiled, revealing small stained teeth. She spoke rapidly to her granddaughter, and at length. "It does not work that way," Sue explained. "Di Lo Ling Gum does not depend on the material world. It does not matter where she is. She can learn as much sitting here as she can seeing the bodies of the dead. When she is to know the cup hugirngsi's lair; it will be revealed to her."
"Isn't there any way to, push it along?"
Sue shook her head. "I already asked her that. She says no."
"So more people could die?" "More people will die."
"And there's nothing we can do?"
"Tell them to protect themselves. Tell them to wear jade. Tell them to place willow branches on their doors and windows."