There was a time in my life when this was very hard for me, inheriting other people’s wants, their needs. This was back when I used to feel guilty about being what I am, when I felt as if I was losing my own identity every time someone got killed. One of the wolf’s many victims had been a paranoid, reading all the papers every fucking day, but unlike so many other idiosyncrasies, I’ve allowed myself to keep the newspaper routine up all these years because all I have to do is find one unsolved crime in the paper, and then I have someone to send the beast after when it comes around to that time of the month. You see, I can’t ever stop it from killing, but I can at least keep it from killing people who don’t have it coming. That right there is turning two negatives into a positive.
I always started off the paper sessions with the Harbinger and the Post. After that, I went through the different newspapers for all the different towns based on how far they were from Evelyn. On this day the front pages of the two local papers were dedicated to what was dubbed “the Horror at the Mill.” Some poor slob got his hand taken off by a saw over at the lumber mill all the way out west of town. That’s what headlines consisted of in a town like Evelyn, and I could live with that, too.
Out in the restaurant, I heard the bell above the door jangle.
I kicked Abraham’s foot, and he stirred.
“There’s a guy out there,” I said. “Get to it.”
“Take care of him, man. Please.”
“Fuck you,” I whispered.
“Howdy, Marlowe,” called the man in the restaurant.
I turned and recognized the tall, lanky blond man in the suit and tie as one of the regulars, a guy named Brian. He worked over at the life insurance place around the corner.
“Howdy, Brian,” I said.
“You’re open, right?”
“Yeah, pretty much. What do you need?”
“Just a coffee to go.”
“Would you mind getting it yourself?”
“Are you serious?”
I nodded.
Brian went behind the counter with baby steps, as if he were a cat burglar. I hated the interruption, but he was at least funny to watch through the long window in the wall. He poured himself a cup of coffee without getting burned, and then he dropped a pair of quarters on the counter.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said.
“Sure I do,” said Brian. He held up the cup of coffee in a salute, then went back out the door.
“He’s a good guy,” said Abraham.
I lit a cigarette and blew smoke in his face.
“If I have to talk to one more person today because of you, I’m going to burn you with this cigarette.”
Buried in the back pages of the Harbinger was a short article about Crazy Bob. Crazy Bob was a trucker who lived not far from me. He must have been a big fan of getting arrested, because he did, a lot. When I first came to town he had just stolen an eighteen-wheeler and driven it into the river. He figured if he stole enough trucks, he’d be able to make a dam and flood the town. I guess that was around the time he lost one of his jobs. The article in front of me stated that he’d gotten picked up again, for breaking all the windows at a hardware store. He apparently had angermanagement issues. What sparked this latest incident off was the fact that they had given him a Canadian penny.
When I finished the two local papers, I placed them in a new pile on the floor. I picked up the Edenburgh Gazette—the major paper for our closest neighboring town—and dropped it on the counter in front of me. At this point, Abraham got up off the chair, but instead of going to work, he went to the bathroom and didn’t come back.
I put my hair back in a ponytail with a rubberband, ran my fingers through my handlebar, and got myself good and hunched over the pale counter.
Edenburgh was the kind of town where they wrote about the cats stuck in the trees, and if the cat happened to have some unusual talent, or if it had one good eye or something, then it was front page news over there, but on this day there was something just a touch more interesting: A local church had been broken into. The poor box was stuffed and intact. Nothing had been taken, and nothing had been vandalized.
A few pages after that, there was an even more interesting article. A seventeen-year-old girl had disappeared.
That, I thought, could be something.
A flash of light from outside the restaurant caught my eyes. I craned my neck through the space in the wall and saw a dusty black 1973 Mach 1 drive slowly past the restaurant, heading west. It then made an illegal U-turn and pulled up into one of the parking spots outside. The black car could have kept on going, but it didn’t. The engine revved up once, and then was shut down. I didn’t know it at the time, but things would never be the same again.
TWO
The black car rested in a space between my truck and Abraham’s gold-colored Buick. I’d never seen the Mach 1 before. Evelyn was the kind of place where if you stuck around long enough you got to notice these kinds of things. I knew right then that this guy wasn’t a local. He’d probably even want to see a fucking menu.
The driver got out, alone. He was a youngish kid, late twenties. He was of average height, and maybe a little more wiry than the typical underwear model. He was wearing Italian boots with squared-off tips and a pair of those jeans they sell at the high-end places that are a little fucked up and worn out already. An Italian corno hung from his neck, dangling from a thin gold chain. He had on a white T-shirt that looked slept-in, with one greasy fingerprint smeared across its front, and over that was a light leather jacket, the kind with lapels and such. It was the kind of jacket that cost just about as much as a month’s rent in a nice neighborhood, but it looked like it would disintegrate in the rain. The leather jacket I had back at the house was the real kind, with zippers and studs all over the fucking thing, the kind that would still look good if you fell off a motorcycle and slid down the road on it.
The kid had on aviator shades, and five-o’clock shadow framed his chiseled, prettyboy face. His dark hair was neatly trimmed and slicked back across his head with oil. Hanging down over his forehead like a vine was a single lock from his bangs. He was wearing a ring on his left pinky. It flashed in the light, and then I saw what it was: a birthstone. Opal. I couldn’t even smell the guy yet, but I already wanted to hit him. He reached into the car and took out a fancy camera, which he slung around his neck by the strap. He raised the camera to his eye and snapped off a pair of shots of the outside of the restaurant. Up along the top of the building was an old neon sign that read LONG JOHN’S.
He slammed the car door, looked into the backseat through the dusty window, then climbed the three stairs outside the restaurant. The door opened. The little bell jangled. He stepped in.
If Abe wasn’t in the bathroom, I would have thrown his drunken ass through those double doors to avoid dealing with this prettyboy.
The kid stood near the door, the sun beaming in behind him, and he was perhaps a little hesitant to venture any farther. After all, there wasn’t anyone in the place as far as he could tell. After a long minute he turned his eyes my way and saw me staring at him through the long window in the wall. He seemed to let out a sigh of relief. I breathed deep, made no motion to draw shut the paper, made no attempt at disguising the fact that I was trying to read his life with my eyes—a nervous habit of mine ever since I came back from overseas. I think I might have even given him the evil eye.
He got the hint and took off his shades, folded them up, and stuck them in the collar of his shirt.