The dead don’t talk. At best, they lead me to their killers or, if they weren’t murdered, react to me in ways that allow me to make accurate deductions about them based on what their behavior implies. At worst, they resort to an insistent pantomime that is as annoying as the least-talented street mime who has ever pretended to walk against a nonexistent hurricane wind. In the case of a mime who won’t get out of my face until I give him a dollar, I might respond to his performance with a pantomime of violent vomiting; but that seems disrespectful and even cruel when dealing with the dead.
Generally speaking, these spirits aren’t threatening, but now and then one of them goes poltergeist in anger or frustration. The results can play havoc with your household budget. Trust me, no insurance company on Earth will pay on a claim that an infuriated spirit tore apart your plasma-screen TV and wrecked your family room.
In this instance, the decapitated woman did not turn toward me beseechingly. Usually the lingering dead know that I can see them, and they are drawn to me. This one seemed oblivious of me, and I drove straight through her with no more effect than driving through a swirl of mist.
Suspended on a chain around my neck, under my sweatshirt, the tiny bell began to ring itself again, three silvery bursts of sound like those it had produced shortly before dawn.
The bell had been given to me on the night when Annamaria told me that certain unnamed people wanted to kill her. She had taken the pendant from around her neck, offered it to me, and asked, Will you die for me?
Amazing myself, I had at once said yes.
Now the inexplicable ringing of the bell apparently signified that my next challenge was at hand, that the time had come to move forward in my quest for meaning and purpose.
To the east, several residential streets ran parallel to the village’s main artery, and to the west were Coast Highway underpasses that led to shoreside neighborhoods, but I was compelled to ignore them. I drove directly to the access road that carried me onto the southbound lanes of the Coast Highway, past the town line, with the ocean to my right, the crazier part of California a few hundred miles behind me, the somewhat less crazy part of it still about seventy miles ahead.
The final aspect of my paranormal ability is psychic magnetism. If I need to find someone and don’t know where he is at the moment, I concentrate on his name or picture his face in my mind’s eye, and then I walk or bicycle or drive around at random, until psychic magnetism draws me to him. Usually I find him within half an hour.
Ahead, flanked by parched meadows of pale grass stippled with widely separated live oaks, the highway rose gradually toward a crest. In this sparsely populated stretch of coast, traffic remained light. If the cowboy in the ProStar+ was ahead of me, as intuition insisted, he must be cruising beyond this hill.
The Ford Explorer was a fine machine. Sturdy, easy to handle, it rode almost as smoothly at seventy miles per hour as at sixty, only minimally less well at eighty. I looked forward to seeing how it handled at ninety.
Someone starting my memoirs with this volume might think that I’m a lawless youth, an itinerant fry-cook rebel. But I didn’t steal the car to profit from it, only to get on the trail of the homicidal cowboy trucker before he receded beyond the range of my paranormal perception.
For the same reason, I broke the posted speed limit, which otherwise I would not have done. Probably would not have done. Might not have done. I must admit, the older I get, the more I like speed almost as much as I like hash browns. There’s something mystical about perfect hash browns, something that stirs the soul, and the same is true of speed.
Now, ahead of me, a Honda maintained such a leisurely pace that the guy behind the wheel might have been a Zen Buddhist for whom the act of driving was a disciplined meditation more concerned with enlightenment than with progress.
Intending to pass, I glanced at my side mirror to be sure that the left lane was clear, and I discovered an eighteen-wheeler looming alarmingly close. I hadn’t heard the truck, but now I did, and when I glanced at my rearview mirror, the snarling-shark grille of the ProStar+ seemed to be gnashing its chrome teeth in anticipation of a satisfying bite.
One thing I failed to disclose about psychic magnetism: Once in a while, not often but often enough to make me wonder when I will be sufficiently frazzled to require a Prozac prescription, this strange gift draws my target to me instead of drawing me to my target. This might seem to be a fine distinction of little importance, but it can be a life-or-death issue when a big rig, weighing seventy thousand pounds or more if loaded, driven by a maniac, hurtles into the rear bumper of your stolen Ford Explorer.
Before I could stomp the accelerator to the floor and try to outrun the cowboy, he rammed me hard enough to bounce the Ford off its back tires, tipping it forward for an instant. The steering wheel spun through my hands, I struggled for control, the tailgate window imploded, plastic cracked, metal tore with a banshee shriek, and I could no more regain control than I could vaporize the big rig with a well-chosen magic word.
I spat out a number of well-chosen words, but none of them was magic.
I’m not quite sure of the subsequent physics of the encounter, but somehow the Explorer turned its starboard flank to the ProStar+ and briefly stuttered violently sideways. More windows burst and the SUV noisily cast off pieces of itself, like one of those lizards that can escape by shedding at will the tail that is in the teeth of its attacker. Then, with the indifferent majesty of a freight train rolling on its rails, the big rig rumbled past, and the Ford was forced off the road, across the graveled shoulder. It plunged bow-first down a long, grassy embankment. It ricocheted off a boulder, off an ancient ficus tree, tipped, rolled, and slid on its roof about fifty feet until it came to rest where the shore grass transitioned to sand.
I wondered why the airbag hadn’t deployed. But then I realized that a vehicle belonging to professional criminals might have been modified to make it not only faster and easier to handle but perhaps also to remove from it any features that might hamper them in a slam-bang pursuit with police hot behind them. Besides, they weren’t the type to worry about collision injuries, any more than they would employ a BABY ON BOARD bumper sticker even if they turned from bank robbery to kidnapping.
Happily, the safety harness kept me from harm, although now I hung upside down in the inverted vehicle, with the ocean vista above my head and the blue sky under my blown tires. I might have taken a little while to savor this unusual perspective if I hadn’t smelled gasoline.
Three
AS I CLIMBED THE MEADOWY SLOPE TOWARD THE COAST Highway, I expected the Explorer to burst into flames behind me, but it merely lay in ruin, belly exposed as if it were some sad beast soon to be a meal for carrion crows.
By the time I arrived at the summit and stood on the shoulder of the road, the ProStar+ was long gone, as were the other cars and trucks that had been in the northbound and southbound lanes when the cowboy had attempted to murder me with an eighteen-wheeler. Blacktop receded into sun-baked silence, still and lonely, as if the rest of humanity had vanished from the planet while I’d ridden the runaway Ford to the shore.
Some of the people in those vehicles must have seen what happened, yet none stopped to ascertain my condition or to offer assistance. The world howls for social justice, but when it comes to social responsibility, you sometimes can’t even hear crickets chirruping.
Engine noise drew my attention to the north. A car appeared in the distance, and the closer it came, the longer it grew. When it stopped on the side of the highway, in front of me, it proved to be a black superstretch Mercedes limousine.
The front tinted window on the passenger side powered down, and when I bent to peer into the limo, I discovered that the driver was a pixie. Standing, she might have been an inch short of five feet. She could see over the steering wheel only because she was perched on a firm pillow. Elderly, slight but not frail, she wore her white hair in a Peter Pan cut.
“Child,” she said, “you look in n
eed of something. Are you in need of something?”
I could see nothing to be gained and all kinds of complications that might arise if I mentioned the thoroughly wrecked Ford Explorer on the beach below.
“Well, ma’am, I need to get south in a hurry.”
“South where?”
“I’m not quite sure.”
“You don’t know where you need to go?”
“I’ll know it when I get there, ma’am.”
She cocked her head and regarded me in silence for a moment, and I thought of a cockatoo, perhaps because of her white hair and the birdlike brightness of her stare.
“Are you a cut-throat murderer?” she asked.
“No, ma’am.”
I chose not to say that I had sometimes killed in self-defense and to protect the innocent. Killing is different from murder, though most people tend to get nervous when you try to explain why one might be acceptable but never the other.
“Are you a rapist?”
“No, ma’am.”
“You don’t look like a rapist.”
“Thank you.”
“You don’t look drug-crazed, either.”
“People often tell me that, ma’am.”
She squinted at me but then smiled, apparently having decided that I wasn’t trying to be a wiseass.
“Do you have a job, child?”
“I’m a fry-cook, currently unemployed.”
“I don’t need a fry-cook.”
“I think everyone does, ma’am, they just don’t know it.”
A Peterbilt, a motor home, and a Cadillac Escalade roared past, and we waited for silence.
She said, “What I need is a chauffeur.”
“I thought you were the chauffeur.”
“Isn’t anybody in this big old boat but me. Four days ago, up in Moonlight Bay, Oscar Dunningham, my best friend and my driver for twenty-two years, dropped dead of a massive heart attack.”
“That’s terrible, ma’am. I’m sorry.”
“Maybe it would be a tragedy if Oscar wasn’t ninety-two years old. He had a good life. Now he’s ashes in an urn, flying back to Georgia where the truly sad thing is his mother will see him buried.”
“His mother is still alive?”
“She’s not some walking-dead zombie, child. Of course she’s alive. Or was this morning. You never know. None of us does. If it matters at all, I’m eighty-six.”
“You don’t look it, ma’am.”
“The hell I don’t. When I see myself in a mirror, I scream.”
In fact, she had one of those fine-boned, perfectly symmetrical faces that time could little distort, and her soft skin was not so much wrinkled as precisely pleated to sweet effect.
She said, “Can you drive?”
“Yes. But I can’t take a job right now.”
“You don’t look like a shiftless good-for-nothing.”
“That’s kind of you to say. But the problem is, I have this thing I’ve got to do.”
“Somewhere south of here, you don’t know where, but you’ll know the place when you get there.”
“That’s right, ma’am.”
Her blue eyes were neither clouded nor sorrowed by age, but were alert, quick, and clear. “This thing you’ve got to do—have you any idea what it is?”
“More or less,” I said. “But I’d rather not talk about it.”
“Okay, then,” she said, putting the limo in park and applying the emergency brake, but leaving the engine running, “you be my chauffeur and just drive us where you need to go.”
“You can’t mean that, ma’am. What kind of chauffeur would that be?”
“The kind I can live with. A lot of the time, I don’t much care where I go, just so I go somewhere.”
She got out of the limousine and came around to the passenger side. She was wearing a yellow pantsuit with a white blouse that featured frilly lace-trimmed collar and cuffs, and a gold brooch with little diamonds and rubies arranged to form a glittering exclamation point.
When she looked up at me, I felt extraordinarily tall, like Alice after consuming a piece of cake labeled EAT ME.
“As my chauffeur,” she said, “you need to open the door for me.”
“I can’t be your chauffeur, ma’am.”
“I’ll ride up front with you to get to know you better.”
“I’m sorry, but I really can’t be your—”
“I’m Edie Fischer. I don’t hold with formalities, so you can just call me Edie.”
“Thank you, ma’am. But—”
“I was named after St. Eadgyth. She was a virgin and martyr. I can’t claim to be a virgin, but the way the world is sliding into darkness, I might yet be a martyr, even though I don’t aspire to it. What’s your name, child—or are you as unsure of that as you are of where you’re going?”
I have in the past used aliases. Using one now made sense, if only to avoid having to explain the origin of my first name for the ten thousandth time. Instead, I said, “My name’s Odd Thomas.”
“Of course, it is,” Mrs. Fischer said. “And if you need to be paid in cash, I am entirely comfortable with that arrangement. Please open the door for me, Oddie.”
Oddie and Edie. I had seen and enjoyed Driving Miss Daisy, but I was neither as reliable nor as noble as Morgan Freeman’s character, Hoke. “Ma’am—”
“Call me Edie.”
“Yes, ma’am. The problem is, I’m looking for a dangerous man, this trucker who dresses like a rhinestone cowboy, and maybe he’s looking for me.”
Without hesitation, she zippered open her large purse to show me the pistol nestled among all the lady things. “I can take care of myself, Oddie. Don’t you worry about me.”
“But, ma’am, in all good conscience—”
“Now that you’ve gotten me intrigued,” she said, “there’s no way you’re going to shake loose of me. Child, I need a little danger to keep the blood creeping through my veins. Last time I had some major fun was Elko, Nevada, four months ago, when Oscar and I outfoxed those government fools and helped that poor creature get home again.”
“Poor creature?” I asked.
“Never you mind.” She zippered shut her purse. “Let’s find your rhinestone cowboy if that’s what you want.”
I opened the door. She got into the limousine.
Four
THE MERCEDES LIMO HAD A TWELVE-CYLINDER ENGINE and two fuel tanks, providing both speed and range.
Not a single cloud sailed the sea of sky above, and the coastal land rolled in gentle waves.
Riding shotgun with panache, voluminous black purse on her lap, Mrs. Fischer pointed to the radar detector that was fixed to the dashboard and then to something that she called a laser foiler, which she assured me meant that, regarding velocity, we were at little risk of being caught when we broke the law. I had never heard of a laser foiler; but she claimed that it was reliable, “as cutting-edge as any technology on the planet.”
She said her previous chauffeur, Oscar, had driven her across the United States, Maine to Texas, Washington State to Florida, again and again, often with the speedometer needle past the one-hundred mark, and they had never gotten a single speeding ticket. They had explored a hundred cities and a thousand small towns, mountains high and lush, deserts low and arid, anywhere a superstretch limousine could be piloted.
The current car was an impressive machine. So little vibration translated from the pavement into the frame that we seemed to be floating swiftly southward, as if the highway were a racing river.
“Oscar was a good employee and a perfect friend,” Mrs. Fischer said. “And he was as restless as I am, wanted always to be going somewhere. I knew him better than I ever knew either of my brothers. I would like to know you as well as I knew him, Odd Thomas. Even if I just live to be as old as Oscar, you and I will travel many thousands of miles together, and the journey will be so much more fun if we’re friends and understand each other. So … are you gay?”
“Gay? No. Why w
ould you think I’m gay?”
“You’re chasing after this rhinestone cowboy. That’s all right with me, child. I have nothing against gays. I’ve always liked men a lot, so I understand why you would.”
“I don’t like men. I mean, I like them, I’m not a man-hater, but I don’t love them. Except, you know, in the sense that we should all love our fellow man. But that means man and woman. In general. You know, like the whole human species.”
She favored me with a grandmotherly smile, nodded knowingly, and said, “So you’re bisexual.”
“What? Good heavens, no. I’m not bisexual. Who would have the time or energy for that? I’m just saying, I’m fine with loving all mankind in theory, which is different from dating them.”
She winked and said, “So you mean, you’re gay in theory but not in practice.”
“No. I’m not gay in theory or practice.”
“Maybe you’re in denial.”
“No, not at all. I love a girl. My girl, Stormy Llewellyn—she’s the only one for me and always will be. We’re destined to be together forever.”
My contention is that I’m not a total conversational idiot, although the foregoing exchanges might indicate otherwise. Engaged once more in psychic magnetism, concerned that I might again draw the cowboy to me instead of being drawn to him, getting accustomed to handling the massive limo, I was distracted.
Mrs. Fischer said, “ ‘Destined to be together forever.’ That’s sweet. You’re a sweet child.”
“We once got a card from a carnival fortune-telling machine, and that’s what it said.”
As the speedometer needle crept past ninety, the highway might have been a runway. I felt as if we were on the brink of being airborne.
Mrs. Fischer said, “I hope you’re not one of these moderns who thinks marriage isn’t necessary. You’re going to marry the girl, aren’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am. It’s all I want.”
“You wouldn’t be saying that just to please an old woman and keep your new job, would you?”