“Why do you think he stole your wallet?”

“Dunno.”

“Well, why’d you say it was him?”

“I showed him my son-in my wallet.”

“So you did have your wallet there. See, Dennis-we know you had it with you in the VA hospital.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You showed him a picture of your kid. How old is your son, Dennis?”

“Dunno. She won’t let me see him. Fucking bitch.”

He was obviously referring to the other Mrs. Flaherty, the one his mother couldn’t say enough bad things about.

“What happened when you showed the marine the picture in your wallet?”

“Nothing.”

“Okay. So why do you think he stole it?”

“Dunno. Maybe he wanted the picture.”

“What would he want a picture of someone else’s kid?”

“He’s a crazy fucker-I told you.”

“Well, was he still there when you left?”

“Sure. He’s crazy.”

“So it wasn’t him, Dennis. Your wallet ended up with someone in California.”

“No kidding.”

“Was the marine black?”

“No.”

“Okay. Forget about the marine. Think about it. You had your wallet and then you didn’t. What happened?”

He shrugged.

“Did they discharge you, Dennis?”

“I let myself out.”

“You took off.”

“I let myself out.”

“How’d you get the pills?”

“Huh?”

“The medication. They gave you your dose every day, right?”

“Affirmative.”

“So how’d you get the pills? The ones you have with you?”

“Oh, that.”

“Oh that what?”

“I requisitioned them.”

“You stole them.”

“I need them, man.”

“What are you going to do when you run out?”

“Huh?”

“When you run out of your pills, where are you going to get more?”

“We have a problem, Houston.”

“Where was the hospital, Dennis?”

“Hard to say.”

“You remember the marine.”

“Affirmative.”

“You remember showing him a picture of your son in your wallet.”

“Affirmative.”

“Where’s the hospital, Dennis?”

“Dunno.”

His mind played hide-and-seek with him. Maybe it was the drugs, or maybe it was the petrochemicals from Iraq, or maybe he was just as crazy as the marine-searching the labyrinthine pathways of his cerebrum for memories, the way the marine searched Route 80 for his dead children.

“Well, we know it wasn’t Seattle.”

I thought about calling every VA hospital in America, but federal psych patients were protected by privacy and I didn’t hold out much hope they’d tell me anything. In most mental hospitals, patients weren’t even listed in the registry.

“Remember which direction you went in when you left Seattle? How did you travel, anyway?”

“My thumb, man.”

“You hitched.”

“Affirmative.”

“Remember who picked you up?”

“A man.”

“Yeah, I don’t think a woman would’ve stopped for you.”

We’d come to a playground. It wasn’t much-just two swings and a see-saw-but there were several small kids there, enough of them to make some of them have to wait their turn. A few mothers, chain-smoking cigarettes and looking old beyond their years, were standing off to the side watching them with little interest.

“South,” Dennis said.

“What?”

“The direction I went in. I went south. There’s not a lot of north left when you’re in Seattle.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

Dennis liked to read the passing road signs out loud.

“Dawsville. Exit 42. One mile.”

“Boise. Exit 59. Quarter mile.”

“Roadwork ahead. Next ten miles.”

I became used to it and eventually stopped looking at the signs altogether since I had my own human OnStar satellite system sitting right next to me.

When the distance between signs stretched for miles, Dennis would switch to reading passing license plates.

“A6572G4.”

“M87GT2.”

As traveling companions go, he wasn’t bad. Except for the near-constant drone, he remained affably calm and even drifted off on occasion-though he nearly always awoke in time for the next road alert.

When I put on some music, he told me he used to play guitar in a Metallica knockoff band, and even sang two lines from “St. Anger” in fair facsimile of James Hetfield.

There were five VA hospitals south of Seattle.

If need be, we were going to visit each and every one of them.

Dennis was my guide. It might’ve been the blind leading the blinder, but he was all I had.

It had taken some doing to get him into the car.

He’d just broken out of a VA hospital; he didn’t particularly feel like going back. Mrs. Flaherty had looked at me as if I’d turned as crazy as her son when I told her what I had in mind.

Dennis was running out of meds, I told her. That was a fact.

He was still clearly disturbed-that was also a fact.

It might not have been the smartest thing in the world for Dennis to have escaped from a federal psych ward, either. I didn’t know if having voluntarily committed himself absolved him from anything-but if it didn’t, I wasn’t going to bring it up.

I needed him.

It was the meds that convinced the both of them. She had no money for psychiatrists. She was one of the 40 million or so Americans without health insurance. Dennis needed the U.S. Army if he was going to stay on his regimen of antipsychotics.

The hospital was the best place for him-sad but true.

I would take him back there.

If we could find it.

I called Norma from North Dakota.

I’d dipped into my dwindling ATM resources again and paid for two rooms at the Sioux Nation Motel, which sported a mini-casino in the check-in area.

“I have bad news for you, Tom,” she said. “Laura passed away last night.”

Hinch’s wife.

That was bad news, but in the scheme of things not the worst thing I’d heard recently. There was that gunshot from the speeding blue pickup, for example.

“How’s Hinch taking it?” I asked.

My suspension notwithstanding, Hinch had always been good to me. He’d given me a chance when no one else on earth would’ve even considered it.

“About the way you’d expect. You know Hinch-God knows what he’s really thinking half the time. He keeps it bottled up real tight. He was pretty devoted to her.”

“Yeah. How’s Nate doing?”

“Okay. He had a little infection yesterday so they put him on stronger antibiotics. His mom’s here.”

“Yeah, I know. I saw her at the hospital.”

“No, I mean she’s here. In my house. I’m putting her up.”

“That’s nice of you, Norma.”

“The least I can do for the poor woman. Where are you, Tom? You sound far away.”

“North Dakota.”

“What in God’s name are you doing in North Dakota?”

“We’re looking for something.”

“Who’s we’re?”

“Me and my traveling companion.”

“Who would that be, Tom?”

“That would be the deceased from the car accident on Highway 45.”

“You’re scaring me, Tom, you know that?”

“Okay. He’s not actually dead. Though sometimes he appears that way.”

There was a small silence-the only sound coming from The 100 Best Songs from the ’80s on the motel TV. They were up to number 22: “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”

“Tom?”

“Yes, Norma?”

“All this stuff you’re talking about-I heard about some of it from Mary-Beth, who heard it from I don’t know who-you aren’t making it up, are you?”

“No, Norma.”

“I’ve never asked you about, you know… New York and all that.”

She hadn’t. For a long time, I’d wondered if she even knew. It wasn’t like she read the national papers-as far as I could tell, I’d never made Us magazine.

“I know.”

“I figured if you wanted to talk about it, you would.”

“Right.”

“So, you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“Okay, Tom. You didn’t give someone your gun to shoot at you, did you?”

“No, Norma.”