“You think so?”

“I know so. And whatever this is, this radio rat study of yours proves it.” She swiveled the screen of the laptop so they all could see it. “You have six rats that were engaged in sex, but if I have this straight, you have, well, a lot of rats that just took off for no reason at all. Right?”

“There was a reason, I just don’t know it yet.”

“But it wasn’t food and it obviously wasn’t sex.”

“I don’t know yet. I suppose they could have been exposed to television violence.”

Theo was sitting back and watching now, enjoying two people with three decades of education between them puffing up like schoolyard bullies.

“I’m a psychiatrist, not a psychologist. Our discipline has moved more toward physiological causes for behavior over the last thirty years, or hadn’t you heard?” Val Riordan was actually grinning now.

“I’m aware of that. I’m having the brain chemistry worked up on animals from both groups to see if there’s a neurochemical explanation.”

“How do you do that again?” Theo asked.

“You grind up their brains and analyze the chemicals,” Gabe said.

“That’s got to hurt,” Theo said.

Val Riordan laughed. “I only wish I could diagnose my patients that way. Some of them anyway.”

Val

Val Riordan couldn’t remember the last time she’d enjoyed herself, but she suspected it was when she’d attended the Neiman-Marcus sale in San Francisco two years ago. Food and sex indeed. This guy was so naive. But still, she hadn’t seen anyone so passionate about pure research since med school, and it was nice to think about psychiatry in terms other than finan-cial. She found herself wondering how Gabe Fenton would look in a suit, after a shower and a shave, after he’d been boiled to kill the parasites. Not bad, she thought.

Gabe said, “I can’t seem to identify any outside stimulus for this behavior, but I have to eliminate the possibility that it’s something chemical or envir-onmental. If it’s affecting the rats, it might be affecting other species too. I’ve seen some evidence of that.”

Val thought about the wave of horniness that seemed to have washed over all of her patients in the last two days. “Could it be in the water, do you think? Something that might affect us?”

“Could be. If it’s chemical, it would take longer to affect a mammal as large as a human. You two haven’t seen anything unusual in the last few days, have you?”

Theo nearly spit his coffee out. “This town’s a bug-house.”

“I’m not allowed to talk about my patients specifically,” Val said. She was shaken. Of course there was some weird behavior. She’d caused it, hadn’t she, by taking fifteen hundred people off of their medication at once? She had to get out of here. “But in general, Theo is right.”

“I am?” Theo said.

“He is?” Gabe said.

Jenny had returned to the table to fill their coffees. “Sorry I overheard, but I’d have to agree with Theo too.”

They all looked at her, then at each other. Val checked her watch. “I’ve got to get to an appointment. Gabe, I’d like to hear the results of the brain chemistry test.”

“You would?”

“Yes.”

Val put some money on the table and Theo picked it up and handed it back to her, along with the dollar he’d put there earlier for her fee. “I need to talk to you about that other matter, Val.”

“Call me. I don’t know if I can help though. Bye.”

Val left the cafe actually looking forward to seeing her patients, if for no other reason than to imagine grinding up each of their brains. Anything to address the responsibility of driving an entire town crazy. But perhaps by driving them a little crazy, she could save some of them from self-destruction: not a bad reason for going to work.

Gabe

“I’ve got to go too,” Theo said, standing up. “Gabe, should I have the county test the water or something? I have to go into San Junipero to the county building today anyway.”

“Not yet. I can do a general toxins and heavy metals test. I do them all the time for the frog population studies.”

“You wanna walk out with me?”

“I have to order something to go for Skinner.”

“Didn’t you say that you had ten rats that diverged from the pack?”

“Yes, but I could only find six.”

“What happened to the other four?”

“I don’t know. They just disappeared. Funny, these chips are nearly indestructible too. Even if the animals are dead, I should be able to pick them up with the satellites.”

“Out of range maybe?”

“Not a chance, the coverage is over two hundred miles. More if I look for them.”

“Then where did they go?”

“They last showed up down by the creek. Near the Fly Rod Trailer Court.”

“You’re kidding. That’s where the Plotznik kid was last seen.”

“You want to see the map?”

“No, I believe you. I’ve got to go.” Theo turned to leave.

Gabe caught him by the shoulder. “Theo, is, uh…”

“What?”

“Is Val Riordan single?”

“Divorced.”

“Do you think she likes me?”

Theo shook his head. “Gabe, I understand. I spend too much time alone too.”

“What? I was just asking.”

“I’ll see you.”

“Hey, Theo, you look, uh, well, more alert today.”

“Not stoned, you mean?”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean…”

“It’s okay, Gabe. Thanks, I think.”

“Hang tough.”

As Jenny passed Estelle Boyet’s table, she heard the old Black gentleman say, “We don’t need to tell nobody nothin‘. Been fifty years since I seen that thing. It probably done gone back to the sea.”

“Still,” Estelle said, “there’s a little boy missing. What if the two are connected?”

“Ain’t nobody ever called you a crazy nigger, did they?”

“Not that I can remember.”

“Well, they have me. For some twenty years after I talked about that thing the last time. I ain’t sayin‘ nothin’ to no one. It’s our secret, girl.”

“I like it when you call me girl,” Estelle said.

Jenny went off to the kitchen, trying to put the morning together in her mind, pieces of conversations as surreal as a Dali jigsaw puzzle. There was definitely something going on in Pine Cove.

Fourteen

Pine Cove was a decorative town—built for show—only one degree more functional than a Disneyland attraction and decidedly lacking in businesses and services that catered to residents rather than tourists. The business district included ten art galleries, five wine-tasting rooms, twenty restaur-ants, eleven gift and card shops, and one hardware store. The position of hardware clerk in Pine Cove was highly coveted by the town’s retired male population, for nowhere else could a man posture well past his prime, pontificate, and generally indulge in the arrogant self-important chest-pounding of an alpha male without having a woman intercede to remind him that he was patently full of shit.

Crossing the threshold of Pine Cove Hardware and breaking the beam that rang the bell was tantamount to setting off a testosterone alarm, and if they’d had their way, the clerks would have constructed a device to at-omize the corners with urine every time the bell tolled. Or at least that’s the way it seemed to Molly when she entered that Saturday morning.

The clerks, three men, broke from their heated argument on the finer points of installing a wax toilet seal ring to stare, snicker, and make snide comments under their breath about the woman who had entered their domain.

Molly breezed past the counter, focusing on an aisle display of gopher poison to avoid eye contact. Raucous laughter erupted from the clerks when she turned down the aisle for roofing supplies.

The clerks, Frank, Bert, and Les—all semiretired, balding, paunchy, and generally interchangeable, except that Frank wore a belt to hold up his double knits, while the other two sported suspenders fashioned to look like yellow measuring tape—planned to make Molly beg. Oh, they’d let her wander around for a while, let her try to comprehend the arcane func-tion of the gizmos, geegaws, and widgets binned and bubble-wrapped around the store. Then she would have to come back to the counter and submit. It was Frank’s turn to do the condescending, and he would do his best to drop-kick her ego before finally leading the little lady to the appro-priate product, where he would continue to question her into full humili-ation. “Well, is it a sheet metal screw or a wood screw? Three-eighths or seven-sixteenths? Do you have a hex head screwdriver? Well, then, you’ll need one, won’t you? Are you sure you wouldn’t rather just call someone to do this for you?” Tears and/or sniffles from the customer would signal victory and confirm superior status for the male race.