Saint Odd (29 page)

“Young man, you have made many friends in your short life, and you are fortunate that a number of them love you, truly love you. But it’s a rare person who can without reservation love someone with a face like the face that Blossom was left with after the fire.”

“But in its own way, it’s a beautiful face.”

“Some people,” she continued, “will be drawn to her because being her friend supports the image of themselves that they want others to have of them, makes them feel they’re compassionate and tolerant and admirable. Such people may be her friends in a casual sense, they may even to some degree care about her. But when their true focus is always and all but entirely on themselves, they can’t love her.”

“Not all her friends can be like that,” I said
.

“Others will befriend her out of pity, but pity very often—not
always—comes with an unspoken and sometimes unrecognized element of contempt.”

I didn’t even try to argue that point
.

“Others,” Annamaria said, “will befriend her out of sympathy, because they have suffered, too, though not as she has suffered. Sympathy is a nobler feeling than pity. But if sympathy is the principal reason that one person is drawn to another, there will always be an unbridgeable chasm between friendship and genuine love.”

I was distressed to think that many of Blossom Rosedale’s friends in Magic Beach might have been, for one reason or another, drawn to her because of her suffering, not mainly because of her clear quick mind and her great good heart. I refused to believe that there weren’t many who truly loved her as she deserved to be loved
.

When I expressed my distress to Annamaria, she patted my shoulder and then slipped her hands into the pockets of her roomy khaki pants. “Her mother died when she was four. Forty-five years have passed since her father set her on fire, when she was six. At fifty-one, why would she choose to dispose of her house, uproot herself, and come here to be part of your work if she didn’t feel that, for the first time in her life, she was profoundly known for who she is, that she was at last cherished for who she truly is?”

And so we had come to one of those rare moments when I was speechless
.

On the wet, compacted sand where the last of the purling surf reached before each rhythmic retreat, a sandpiper found something tasty and pecked the beach with a lack of skittishness that was unusual for its kind. The bird circled Tim, only a few feet
from him, drawing closer each time it went around him, and the boy stood watching it, amused and enchanted
.

“But I only knew Blossom for a few weeks,” I said at last
.

Annamaria smiled. “Isn’t that remarkable?”

“If she wants to be part of … whatever it is I’m doing, what if something happens? What if I’m not … doing it anymore?”

“You’re too young to retire, odd one.”

“You know what I mean, ma’am.”

She watched the boy and the sandpiper, and I thought she must be considering whether to be less mysterious than usual. Finally she said, “If you’re not doing what you do anymore, Blossom will find with Edie Fischer what she has found with you and me.”

“But Mrs. Fischer is eighty-six.”

“She won’t be retiring anytime soon, young man. Whatever may happen in Pico Mundo, Edie Fischer will have work to do for a long time. She will need a chauffeur, considering that you proved not to be well suited for that job. She said you dawdled.”

Tim stooped without frightening off the sandpiper. The bird met his gaze. They stared at each other. Tim held out one hand, palm up, and the bird regarded the hand for a moment before continuing to peck the sand, now inches from the boy’s right foot
.

“The dream I had last night,” I said, “ended with the amaranth.”

“The flower that never dies.”

“It died in my dream.”

“Because that was just a dream. Things in dreams don’t always mean what they seem to mean.”

“It’s from Greek mythology. The amaranth, I mean. There’s no such flower.”

“The ancient Greeks were wise. They got many things right.”

I said, “The big white flowers you always have floating in bowls. Like the one on the dinette table now. And the one in the living room. What are they?”

She appeared to be amused and yet dead serious when she said, “Amaranths.”

“Where did you get them?”

“As I’ve said before, Oddie, I picked them from a tree in the neighborhood.”

“Ma’am, I’ve walked the neighborhood a hundred times in the past couple of months, and I’ve never seen such flowers on a tree.”

“Well, dear heart, you have to know where to look, and you have to be able to find a part of the neighborhood that not many people see.”

As the sandpiper pecked tiny bits of whatever lunch from the beach, Tim had continued to hold out his hand. Now the bird regarded the offered palm once more, turned its head this way and that, and accepted the perch. Tim looked at us, astonished, as if to say
, Do you see this?

“Remarkable,” I said
.

“As is everything around us, if we look.”

The sandpiper flew from the hand, and Tim leaped to his feet to watch the bird soar skyward
.

I said, “At dinner tonight with Blossom …”

“Yes?”

“Will you show me the trick with the amaranth? You’ve promised to show me, ma’am, but you never do.”

“It is not a trick, odd one. It’s better than that.”

“So will you show me?”

“Not tonight. But soon.”

Winging away, repeating its flight call
—pjeev, pjeev, pjeev—
the sandpiper diminished to a dot, then vanished, but of course at the same moment it suddenly came into view of those who were farther north along the shore
.

“Ma’am?”

“Yes, Oddie?”

“Do you know the true and hidden nature of the world?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you do. I’ll probably never understand it. Aside from English, I never was much good in school.”

The puncture in my palm was more than an inch wide, but on the back of my hand, where the point of the blade had torn through, it was somewhat narrower. I bled freely, but not as voluminously as I would have bled if the nameless girl had severed an artery or vein when she attacked me. That was a bit of luck, because I had no time to go to a hospital emergency room.

In a washbasin drawer in the ground-floor half-bath at the Ainsworth house, I found first-aid supplies. Band-Aids, gauze pads, adhesive tape, rubbing alcohol, iodine …

A decorative container of liquid soap stood on the counter beside the sink. I turned the spigots, adjusted the water temperature so that it was warm but perhaps not so hot as to exacerbate the pain of the wound. The soap smelled of oranges. Lathering up proved to be about as much fun as sticking my hand in a wasps’ nest.

After I rinsed off the soap, I kept my hands under the spout, though I could have stood there all night rinsing away the oozing blood. Maybe I was in shock, but I seemed to zone out as I
watched the water foaming in the sink, the bubbles tinted pink and sparkling. I had set the temperature too hot, and the longer I kept my hand in gushing water, the more sharply the wound stung. Nevertheless, I stood there, watching the fast-flowing stream, grimacing at the torture but enduring it, because I was overcome by a sense that some revelation was impending, a revelation related to the water, the blood, the pain. There was something important that I knew—but didn’t know I knew. Water, blood, pain …

The feeling passed, though not the pain. I was not a guy to whom revelations came easily.

Letting the water run in the sink, I poured rubbing alcohol and then iodine into both the entrance and exit wounds, all the while making shrill sounds of less than manly distress through my clenched teeth.

I used a small towel to wrap my left hand, to avoid dripping blood all over the marble countertop and the floor. With my right hand only, I prepared gauze pads. I found a bottle of thick and odorous fluid stoppered with a brush; it was used to paint shut small weeping wounds, creating a flexible sort of artificial skin, never meant for serious cuts into which bacteria might have been carried by a blade. My tetanus vaccination was current. Even if I might be trapping germs in the wound, I wasn’t going to die of an infection. It took time for an infection to develop, and I doubted that I had enough hours left to accommodate one. The sealant dried swiftly, and I painted layer over layer. For the moment, anyway, the bleeding stopped. I applied the gauze pads and then wound adhesive tape around and around my hand.

Through all of that, I left the water running, listening to it rush
into the sink and gurgle down the drain. In those sounds, there seemed to be words, a quick and liquid voice. I felt that everything depended on my understanding what was being said.

I wondered if being stabbed and having to kill the girl had left me in a state of shock that muddied my thinking. My skin was cold and clammy. A slight dizziness came and went and came again. Both were symptoms of a drop in blood pressure, which was one of the causes of physiological shock.

Bandaged, I watched the water for another half minute but then cranked it off when enlightenment did not come.

I was still cold and clammy, but the lightheadedness seemed to have passed.

I dropped the lid of the toilet. Sat. Fumbled my phone from a pocket. Held it in my injured hand. My good hand was shaking so that I had to concentrate to press the correct digits. Chief Porter had two cell phones. I figured he was fielding a lot of calls on the first one. I dialed the number that only Mrs. Porter and I knew. He answered, asked me to hold, and finished a call on the other phone.

When he came back to me, he sounded harried, which I’d never known him to be before. He knew about the explosions, of course, not just those that I had heard and seen, but another one at a warehouse at the opposite end of town from the Blue Sky Ranch.

“All hell’s breaking loose tonight.” He was furious. “These madmen, these goddamn
losers
.”

“Sir, nothing that’s happened so far is the main event. These are all distractions, to get your men spread thin.”

“Distractions from the dam?”

“I don’t think it’s going to be the dam.”

“I’ve got four men at Malo Suerte ever since I talked to you. If it’s not the dam, I need them elsewhere.”

I hesitated. “I don’t know if it’s the dam or not. I just don’t know. Sir, there are three dead men and one dead woman here at Lauren Ainsworth’s place.”

“Not Lauren.”

“No, sir. She and the girls are safe.”

“Thank God.”

“These are cultists. Two more are dead just inside the orchard fence that runs beside the Ainsworth driveway.”

“Six altogether?”

“Six.”

“Did you …”

“Yes, sir. I did. I did them all. They’ve forced me to be a killing machine, and I can’t … I can’t take much more of it.” My voice broke, and for a moment, I couldn’t piece it together again.

“Son, are you all right?”

My voice returned, but to my ear it didn’t sound much like me. “She stabbed me in the hand, but that’s okay. I can take more of that, but I can’t take more killing.”

“I’ll be there right away, Oddie.”

“No. No, sir. No. I’m leaving here as soon as I hang up. Did the CSI team finish in that motor home?”

“Yes. The coroner removed the bodies.”

“You search the place, find anything?”

“Concealed gun closet. Weapons, ammo. Hundred thousand in cash. Passports and driver’s licenses, their pictures but different names.”

“Wolfgang, Jonathan, and Selene.”

“Actually Woodrow, Jeremy, and Sibyl.”

“What do you know about them?”

“We’re working it. One or all three look to’ve been junkies. Forty hypodermic needles in the fridge, lots of ampules of drugs.”

“What drug?”

“The lab is analyzing.”

“You at the fairground?”

“Just left there to—”

“Go back. I’ll meet you there. Maybe it’s the dam, maybe something else. But the operation’s being run from the carnival.”

“Nothing can happen there that would put the town underwater.”

“Remember, sometimes my dreams are symbolic, not literal.”

Even in his silence, I could hear his alarm. Then he said, “There’s ten, twelve thousand people in the fairgrounds tonight.”

I looked at my watch. Ten minutes past ten o’clock.

“If anything’s going to happen there,” I said, “it might not be until the crowd is at its peak for the big drawing. Eleven forty-five might be the target time.”

“
Might
doesn’t cut it, Oddie. If they’ve moved that C-4 in here, I’ve got to evacuate this place
now
.”

My hand throbbed like an abscessed tooth. “The cult will have people on the midway, Chief. The moment they see an evacuation starting, they’ll move up the strike time.”

“Maybe the timer’s already set, and they can’t change it.”

“Or maybe they’re using a cell phone as a detonator, all they have to do is make a call to it.”

“Sonofabitch.”

I stood up from the toilet, though it was an appropriate seat, considering that the cult seemed on the verge of flushing away
Pico Mundo. And more than this one town. Maybe much more. “I’m walking right along the edge of it, Chief.”

“The edge of what?”

“The truth. Understanding. I can almost see it. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“Not from where you are.”

“Quarter to eleven at the latest.”

“Leaves us just an hour.”

“Meet me at a concession on the southwest side of the midway. Place called Face It.”

“Wait a second. When you were on the midway earlier, did you see any bodachs?”

“No, sir.”

“Not even one? Then nothing’s going to happen at the carnival. If it was going to be blown sky-high, the place would be crawling with those bodachs of yours.”