“And you say that’s what happened to Jesse Sterrett?”

“Yes, of course. He fell into a black hole.”

“Jesse Sterrett died in the quarry in Pierce. You think there was a collapsed star in that quarry?”

“No, of course not. Just because I’m in here doesn’t make me crazy. But a black hole doesn’t have to be formed only by a star. Anything with sufficient density can be a black hole. There are things called primordial black holes, formed in the very first moments after the big bang, formed of the very first pieces of the universe. It’s right here in the book. Little bits of matter that have compressed into the tiniest shapes and float around the universe wreaking havoc. Think of something the mass of a mountain compressed into something no wider or longer than a million millionth of an inch. Think of that. A dark force from the very dawning of our universe. And they could be anywhere, anywhere, deep in outer space or just behind the moon or around the next bend in the road. They could be anywhere, floating here, floating there, leaving nothing but destruction. Anything that comes too close falls in and gets ripped apart before disappearing forever. The mass of a mountain in a million millionth of an inch.”

I stared at her pretty face as she spoke, I gaped sad and incredulous, but at the same time, for some reason, I remembered the strange force that roared through Hailey and me in the middle of sex. It had seemed then, that force, something powerful, insatiable, devastating, ancient.

“And that’s what killed Jesse Sterrett,” I said, “a primordial black hole?”

“Yes. And Hailey, too.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s in the book.”

“It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Of course it doesn’t. Not yet, at least. No one’s been smart enough to come up with a unified theory that explains everything. It is what Einstein spent his life searching for. It is what Stephen Hawking is traveling to the edges of the universe to figure out. One elegant equation that answers all the questions. Stephen Hawking is so close to figuring it out, they are all so close. And I am close, too. I know it. Each day I read over what he says here in this book and I feel myself growing closer and closer to an answer, closer and closer to figuring it out. And when I do, everything will become clear. Everything. Do you want to help me? Won’t you help me?”

“I don’t know anything about physics.”

She reached out and grabbed at my shirt. “You said you knew her. You said you knew Hailey.”

“Yes, I did.”

“And you were asking questions about Jesse Sterrett. So you know more than you think you know. You are closer than you ever imagined. Will you work with me? Will you help me?”

She was shaking the fistful of cloth still in her grip. I took hold of her wrist and gently pulled her hand off of me. “That’s what I’m trying to do. If you could only answer some questions…”

“All your answers are here.” She waved the book with her other hand. “Whatever it is you want to know.”

Just then a shadow appeared to my right. “Is everything all right?” said Titus, his deep voice filled with a solicitous concern.

I noticed then that I was still gripping Roylynn’s wrist. I let go. She turned and smiled at Titus with the same bright smile she had given me only moments ago.

“Mr. Carl is going to work with us to find the unified theory,” she said.

“That’s good,” said Titus. “That’s very good.”

“Titus has helped me so much already,” she said. “We’re getting so close, aren’t we?”

“Yes, we are, we surely are.”

“The world will be stunned when we figure it out.”

“Yes, it will,” said Titus. “You’ll be getting yourself a Nobel Prize.”

“We,” said Roylynn. “You and everyone else who helped.”

“Thank you, Ms. Prouix. That is so kind.”

“All right, Mr. Carl?” she said. “Are you ready?”

“Do you miss her?” I said. “Do you miss your sister?”

There was a pause, where she seemed to carefully, willfully, compose her face into a smile. “How could I?” she said finally. “I never had the chance. She’s in me, she always has been. She makes me strong. I’ve never been lonely a day in my life, because she is in me. I can feel her breath in my breath, her touch in my touch. When I look into a mirror, I see two faces. When I speak, I hear two voices. If it is all right, Mr. Carl, I like to start at the introduction. There are many clues there, I think.” She opened the book. “Here we are. Are you ready?”

I glanced at Titus and then nodded into her kind, smiling face.

She began to read.

I nodded again and kept nodding as she read on and on.

There is something about a Southern accent that sends a comforting signal of assurance. The certainty in Roylynn Prouix’s voice itself told me how important this all was to her, how surely she held to the belief that the answers to everything that had plagued her soul, and her sister’s, were somewhere contained in that battered black book. So I nodded and stopped fighting it and let the syrup of her voice slip over me. I followed her through the words and the pages, I followed her through the simple equations and complex concepts, I followed her until we both were released from the bindings of gravity and flew free from this earth, this solar system, flew side by side past planets spinning and stars forming and stars collapsing and galaxies spiraling around great massive centers, past black holes glowing white-hot against all expectation, past all the strange, gorgeous phenomena, of which man can only as yet dream, toward the far far edges of the universe.

“ANYTHING?” SAID Skink when I met him in the lobby after Titus had come to take Roylynn away.

“No.”

“What was she, Looney Tunes?”

“You could say that.”

“What the hell you think you was going to get in a place like this?”

“I don’t know. Something else. It’s time to go home.”

“Giving up, are we?”

“I’ve got a trial to prepare for.”

“You still going to defend him after finding nothing?”

“Yes. He didn’t do it, I’m sure of it now.”

“You ain’t convinced me yet.”

“I don’t have to convince you. There are only twelve that I care about.”

“You’re disappointing me, Vic. I thought if we found nothing, you’d go back to your original plan.”

“It was a bad plan, flawed from the start. There’s only one way to handle something like this. Straight up to the end. That’s how I mean to play it.”

“I didn’t think you’d find a frigging thing down here, but I’ll admit I’m a little disappointed it turns out I was right. It would have been nice to see things tidied all neat and clean, would have been nice to dig into the past to find our villain. But that ain’t the way of it, is it, Vic? Things never do tidy up all neat and clean.”

“I suppose not,” I said. But even as I was saying it, I didn’t believe it to be the truth. Even as I was saying it, I was remembering the strange interstellar journey I had just taken with Roylynn Prouix only a few moments before. And I couldn’t help thinking that somewhere, out there, in the far reaches of the universe, somewhere in the great black space that I had traversed with Roylynn, somewhere lay the unified theory I was looking for, the theory that tied two victims, two murders, two mysteries together into one brutal solution.