“Yeah, you’re helping a lot with my mental health self-image,” she said to the narrator. “I liked it better when it was just me and Steve.”

None of the pilgrims seemed to notice that Molly was talking to herself. They were all in some trancelike state, stark naked, seated in a semicircle around Steve, who lay in the back of the cave, where it was dark, with his head tucked under his forelegs, flashing sullen colors across his flanks: olive drab, rust, and blue so dark that it appeared more like an afterimage on the back of the eyelid than an actual color.

“Oh yeah, you and Steve,” the narrator said snidely. “There’s a healthy couple—the two greatest has-beens of all time. He’s sulking, and you’re robbing people who are even nuttier than you are. Now you’re going to feed them to old lizard lick over there.”

“Am not.”

“Looks like none of these people has had any sun or exercise since high school gym class. Except for that guy who came in Birkenstocks, and he has that Gandhi-tan vegetarian starvation stare that looks like he’d slaughter a whole kindergarten for a Pink’s foot-long with sauer-kraut. You feel okay about making them strip and prostrate themselves before the big guy?”

“I thought it would make them go away.”

“The lizard is using you.”

“We care about each other. Now just shut up. I’m trying to think.”

“Oh, like you’ve been thinking so far.”

Molly shook her head violently to try and dislodge the narrator from her mind. Her hair whipped about her face and shoulders and stood out in a wild mess. The narrator was quiet. Molly pulled a compact out of one of the pilgrims’ purses and looked at herself in the mirror. She certainly couldn’t have looked much crazier. She braced for the narrator’s comment, but it didn’t come.

She tried to get in touch with the warm feeling that had been running through her since Steve had appeared, but it just wasn’t there. Maybe the pilgrims were using up his energy. Maybe the magic had just passed.

She remembered sitting on a deck in Malibu, waiting for a producer who had just made love to her, only to have his Hispanic maid show up with a glass of wine and an apology that “The mister had to go to the studio, he very sorry, you call him next week please.” Molly had really liked the guy. She’d broken her foot kicking his spare Ferrari as she left and had to eat painkillers through the filming of her next movie, which eventually put her in detox. She never heard from the producer again.

That was being used. This was different.

“Right,” said the narrator sarcastically.

“Shhhhh,” Molly said. She heard someone scuffling on the rocks outside the cave. She snatched up the assault rifle and waited just inside the cave mouth.

Twenty-seven

Val was wishing she had a video recorder to preserve the gargantuan lie that Mavis Sand and Howard Phillips had been telling over the last hour. According to them, ten years ago the village of Pine Cove had been visited by a demon from hell, and only through the combined effort of a handful of drunks were they able to banish the demon whence it came. It was a magnificent delusion, and Val thought that she could at least get an aca-demic paper on shared psychosis out of it. Being around Gabe had ignited her enthusiasm for research.

When Mavis and Howard wrapped up their story, Catfish started in with his tale of being pursued through the bayou by a sea monster. Soon Gabe and Val were spouting the details of Gabe’s theory that the monster had evolved the ability to affect the brain chemistry of its prey. Tipsy after a few Bloody Marys and taken by the momentum of the tale, Val confessed her replacement of Pine Cove’s supply of antidepressants with placebos. Even as she unburdened herself, Val realized that her and Gabe’s stories were no more credible than the fairy tale Mavis and Howard had just told.

“That Winston Krauss is a weasel,” Mavis said. “Comes in here every day acting like his shit don’t stink, then overcharges the whole town for something they ain’t even gettin. Should’a known he was a fish-fucker.”

“That’s in strictest confidence,” Val said. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

Mavis cackled. “Well, it ain’t like I’m gonna run tell Sheriff Burton on you. He’s weasel with a capital Weas. Besides, girl, you increased my business by eighty percent when you took the wackos off their drugs. And I thought it was old Mopey down there.” Mavis shot a bionic thumb toward Catfish.

The Bluesman put down his drink. “Hey!”

Gabe said, “So you believe that there really is a sea monster on that ranch?”

“What reason would you have to lie?” said Howard. “It would seem that Mr. Fish is an eyewitness as well.”

“Jefferson,” Catfish said. “Catfish Jefferson.”

“Shut up, you chickenshit,” Mavis spat. “You could have helped Theo when he asked you. What’s that boy think he’s doing following that sheriff out to the ranch anyway? It’s not like he can do anything.”

Gabe said, “We don’t know. He just left and told us to come here and wait for his call.”

“Ya’ll some heartless souls,” Catfish said. “I lost me a good woman because of all this.”

“She’s smarter than she looks,” Mavis said.

“Theo has my Mercedes,” Val added, feeling out of place even as she said it. Suddenly she felt more ashamed of looking down on these people than she did about all of her professional indiscretions.

“I’m getting worried,” said Gabe. “It’s been over an hour.”

“I don’t suppose you thought about calling him?” Mavis asked.

“You have his cell phone number?” Gabe asked.

“He’s the constable. It’s not like he’s unlisted.”

“I suppose I should have thought of that,” said Howard.

Mavis shook her head and one of her false eyelashes sprung up like a snare trap. “What, you three got thirty years of college between you and not enough smarts to dial a phone without a blueprint?”

“Astute observation,” Howard said.

“I ain’t got no college,” Catfish said.

“Well, cheers to you for being just naturally stupid,” Mavis said, picking up the phone.

The daytime regulars at the end of the bar had snapped out of their malaise to have a laugh at Catfish. There’s nothing quite so satisfying to the desperate as having someone to look down on.

The gun barrel was pushed so hard into the spot behind Theo’s ear that he thought he could hear bone cracking. Burton reached around and took the .357 and tossed it aside, then he took the automatic from Theo’s waistband and did the same.

“On the ground, facedown.” Burton kicked Theo’s feet out from under him, then put his knee in the constable’s back and handcuffed him. Theo could taste blood where his lip had split hitting the rock. He turned his head to the side, raking his cheek on some lichen. He was terrified. Every muscle in his body ached with the need to run.

Burton smacked him across the back of the head with his pistol, not hard enough to knock him out, but when the white-hot light of the blow faded, Theo could feel blood oozing into his right ear.

“You fucking stoner. How dare you fuck with my business?”

“What business?” Theo said, hoping ignorance might buy his life.

“I saw your car at the lab, Crowe. The last time I talked to Leander he was on his way to see you. Now where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

The pistol smacked Theo on the other side of the head.

“I don’t fucking know!” Theo shrieked. “He was at the lab, then he was gone. I didn’t see him leave.”

“I don’t care if he’s alive or dead, Crowe. And it doesn’t make any difference to you either. But I need to know. Did you kill him? Did he run? What?”

“I think he’s dead.”

“You think?”

Theo could feel Burton rearing back to hit him again.