ERIC WENT INTO THE dining room and ordered breakfast, realizing with relief that he was truly hungry again, sipping his coffee with a touch of impatience, eager to see the food brought out. That had to be a good sign.
He couldn’t stop thinking about the effects of Anne’s water. It had eased his physical suffering just as the Bradford bottle had, but the vision it brought on was so different, so much gentler. Like watching a film, really. He’d had distance, separation of space and time. If what he’d seen were real…
The possibilities there tempted him in a strange way. Maybe it was a hallucination the same as those experienced by drug users every day. If it wasn’t, though, if he was really seeing the past, then the water provided him something far different from pain. Provided him with power, really. A gift.
“French toast with bacon,” a female voice behind him said, and then the waitress set a plate before him that intensified his hunger. “And you need more coffee. Hang on and I’ll get a refill. Sorry about that. I stopped to watch the TV people for a few minutes.”
“Uh-huh,” Eric muttered, putting the first forkful of French toast into his mouth even before she was gone. It tasted fantastic.
“They were filming right in the lobby,” she said. “I was hoping they’d come in here and I could make the news. You know, fifteen seconds of fame.”
Eric swallowed, wiped his mouth with the napkin, and said, “Oh, right, I saw the TV vans. What’s the deal?”
“Someone was murdered,” she said, dropping her voice to a grim whisper as she leaned over him to fill his coffee cup. “Blown up in his van, can you believe it?”
“Really? So much for this being a peaceful place. If people find out the locals are blowing one another up, it might hurt business.”
“Oh, it wasn’t a local. Was some man from Chicago. And he was a detective, too. So it’s even more interesting, you know? Because who knows what he was doing down here. I don’t remember his name, but they said that-”
“Gavin,” Eric said, feeling his body temperature drop and his breathing slow, the food in front of him no longer so appealing. “His name was Gavin Murray.”
It was a hell of a long hike, particularly going through the woods to avoid the road, but Josiah didn’t trust his cell phone, figured they could track it. He turned it off and took the battery out to be sure it wasn’t transmitting any signal, and then he set off through the woods and toward town. He hated to involve Danny Hastings in this mess, but there was work to be done now that he couldn’t do alone, and Danny was the only person he trusted to keep his mouth shut no matter what happened. Oh, Danny would stand a good chance of getting caught at it, but he’d never tell the cops a thing. They’d gotten into plenty of scrapes with the police over the years, and if there was one thing Danny knew how to do in those situations, it was keep his mouth shut.
The hike into town took more than an hour, and then he had to chance being seen, come out into the open for at least a little while. There was a pay phone at the gas station, one of the last pay phones in town, and he called and told Danny where to meet him. The whole time he felt a prickle in the middle of his back, expecting a police car to come swerving around the corner at any minute, cops boiling out of it, guns drawn. Nothing happened, though. Nobody so much as blinked at him.
As soon as he hung up, he went back into the woods and climbed out of sight. Sat on an overturned log and waited. Fifteen minutes later, Danny’s Oldsmobile appeared, driving slow, Danny craning his head and looking for him. Shit, way to avoid attention.
Josiah hustled down the hill and came out of the woods and lifted a hand. He jerked open the passenger door when the car pulled up, and said, “Drive, damn it.”
Danny took them up the hill, the transmission double-clutching and shivering.
“What in the hell is going on, Josiah?”
“I got powerful problems is what’s going on. You willing to help a friend out?”
“Well, of course, but I’d like to know what I’m getting into.”
“It ain’t good,” Josiah said, and then, softer, “and I’ll try to keep you out of it much as possible. I will.”
It was that remark, the show of concern for someone other than himself, that seemed to tell Danny the gravity of the situation. He turned, frowning, and waited.
“I got into a scrape last night,” Josiah said. “Man pulled a gun on me. I had a rock in my hand, and I used it on him. Hit him once more than I needed to.”
“Oh, shit,” Danny said. “I ain’t helping you bury no body, Josiah. I ain’t doing it.”
“Don’t need to bury a body.”
“So you didn’t kill him?”
Josiah was quiet.
“You did kill him?” Danny almost missed a curve. “You murdered somebody?”
“It was self-defense,” Josiah said. “But he’s dead, yeah. And you know what the police around here will do to somebody like me in a case like that. Self-defense ain’t going to mean shit. The prosecutor will pull out all my old charges and tell the jury I’m nothing but trash, dangerous trash, and I’ll be up in Terre Haute or Pendleton.”
Danny’s fat tongue slid out, moistened his lips. “It wasn’t that guy in the van?”
“How’d you know about that?”
“Whole town knows about it, Josiah! Grandpa dragged my ass up to church today, was all anybody was talking about. Oh, hell, it was you?”
“He pulled a gun on me, damn it! I told you that.”
They’d reached the logging road, and Josiah instructed him to turn in. He explained everything except the odd dreams of the black train and the man in the bowler hat.
“I don’t understand what everybody’s interested in Campbell for,” Danny said.
“I don’t either. But somebody named Lucas Bradford sent this guy down from Chicago to watch me, and old Lucas has himself some dollars. I found a bill in that dead guy’s papers, Danny-he’d been paid fifteen thousand as a retainer. And there’s a note in there says he was authorized to spend up to a hundred to resolve the situation. That’s what it said-resolve the situation. A hundred thousand dollars.”
Danny reached up and scratched the back of his neck. He was still in his church clothes, had on a starched white shirt that was showing sweat stains under the arms.
“Something going on, that’s for sure,” he said. “But the way you’re handling it ain’t right. You’re just making things worse. You said he pulled a gun on you? Shit, call the police and tell them that. Get yourself a lawyer-”
“Danny,” Josiah said, “I set the man on fire. You understand that? Think about that, and about the reputation I got in this town, and you tell me what’s going to happen.”
Danny was frozen for a moment, but eventually he gave a small nod. Then, in a whisper, he said, “What in the hell did you set him on fire for?”
“I don’t know,” Josiah said. “I don’t even know why I hit him the second time. Didn’t feel like myself. But I did it, and now I got to figure something out fast.”
“What are you thinking?”
“This fella Lucas Bradford has money to spare. And I’m in need of it. But first I got to understand some things-who he is, and why he’s asking about me. I’m going to need your help to do that. I’m asking you, please, to help.”
Danny sighed, reached out and wrapped his hands around the steering wheel, squeezed it tight.
“Danny?”
He nodded. “I’ll do what I can.”
“Good. Thank you. First thing I want you to do is find that son of a bitch who came down to Edgar’s and told us that bullshit about making a movie. He’ll be staying at one of the hotels. You find him, and you follow him.”