Текст книги "Howlers"

Автор книги: Kent Harrington

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

CHAPTER 9

“Genie, I want to know where my daughter is,” Quentin said. “She’s not in at the pool where she should be. She has a PE class this hour, I thought.”

Quentin had walked into Timberline High’s busy main office. Two students were answering the phones. Quentin could see, too, that the main office’s multiple phone lines were all flashing red, people waiting to get through to someone at the office. The students manning the phones looked harried, and it was still first period.

Genie Lamont, wearing a pale yellow pants suit, had been Timberline High’s school secretary when Quentin had been a student more than twenty years before. The older woman, wearing reading glasses on a chain just as she had in his day, was beyond crusty. She looked up at the Sheriff.

“Good morning, Quentin. We were just going to call you. I’ll tell Mr. —”

“Genie! I need to speak to my daughter, now!” He didn’t realize he’d raised his voice until everyone in the office got quiet and turned to look at him. He’d asked the swim coach about having seen Sharon at practice, and had gotten a blank look and a shrug. By the time Quentin reached the office, he was certain something was wrong. It wasn’t like his daughter to miss a swim practice. It was the one thing she was dedicated to.

“Well, Quentin. Why didn’t you say it was about Sharon?” The school secretary looked up at the IBM clock on the wall. “It will be the beginning of first period. What does she have first period?”

“I thought PE,” Quentin said. His voice was normal again. He hadn’t raised his voice since his wife died. It was as if he were afraid that if he got angry he wouldn’t be able to stop. “She came to school, but I guess she didn’t go to swim practice this morning,” he said, embarrassed.

“Kenny, get me Sharon Collier’s schedule, will you dear,” Genie said.

One of the students got up from a desk and went to a computer terminal and punched up his daughter’s schedule. The lights flickered and went off. The office changed from a well-lit glow to a dull room full of gray figures in an instant.

“Computer’s down,” the kid said. “We’ll have to wait for juice.”

“No, we won’t.” Genie went back to the wall and Quentin watched the woman pull out a paper file. “We were doing this way before we had one of those,” she nodded toward the computer. “I never liked those things, anyway. She’s in Biology this period, Quentin. Mrs. Richard’s class on the second floor. Room 156,” Genie said.

“Sheriff, could I speak to you for a moment?” The principal, Mat Marks, had come out of his office and was standing in his office doorway. They were the same age. Marks had been a poor kid when they were students at the high school together. Marks had worked his way up the ladder, even married one of Nevada City’s rich girls.

Quentin nodded hello.

“Quentin, I’ll call up to Sharon’s room and have her sent down so you can speak to her,” Genie said.

“Thanks, Genie,” Quentin said.

Since the intercom system was down, Genie sent a kid up to get his daughter.

Mat Marks, wearing a little American flag pin on his suit jacket’s lapel, closed the office door behind him. The office had a view of the big expanse of grass between the new gym and the school’s original old red-brick building.

“You’re coming to the wedding?” Marks said.

Quentin had to think. Then he remembered that Mat’s kid brother was getting married. “Sure, of course. Sharon showed me the invitation. She opens all the mail now, since—yeah, we’re going to be there. Me and the girls,” Quentin said.

“Good. Quentin, there’s something screwy going on. Over half the student body is missing today. And at least that many teachers. It’s never happened before. I thought you should know. I mean, maybe there’s some kind of bug. A real serious one, for that many people to be gone. E. coli, maybe?”

“That’s not exactly my department, Mat.”

“And that’s not all. Families have been calling up the school and asking us to check and make sure their kids are here. You aren’t the first. A lot of students went missing yesterday, too. Their parents say they never went home. Did you get any calls at the sheriff’s office?”

“I was just on my way in. I wouldn’t get missing persons calls on the radio. I was in Sacramento for two days. Just got back yesterday. Only emergencies come through on this.” Quentin tapped the Motorola radio hooked to his black-leather belt.

The door opened. Both men turned around. Quentin was expecting to see his youngest daughter standing in the doorway.

“Sheriff, Sharon’s not in class,” Genie said.

Quentin looked at the secretary. He felt his hand tighten where he had it on his gun belt.

“She was marked as absent in homeroom,” the secretary said. “But I wouldn’t worry, Quentin. A lot of kids are sick today.” The lights flickered on and went off again as she was speaking.

*   *   *

“No sir, I don’t understand it either,” the lieutenant said. “But it’s the God’s honest truth, sir.”

Lieutenant Bell was standing in the colonel’s office at the base. The medic had worked on him again, insisting they take Bell to a civilian hospital in Nevada City. The colonel seemed to dismiss the seriousness of Bell’s injuries; he’d sent the corpsman out of the office.

“Lieutenant, you just said that a gang of ”—the colonel turned and looked at the duty officer standing next to him—“civilians attached you and Sergeant Whitney. And that they dragged the sergeant away into the woods and killed him. Do I understand you correctly, Lieutenant?”

“Yes sir, you do. That is exactly what happened, sir. They broke his back first, sir.”

        “You say you fired your weapon at the civilians?”

“Yes sir, I did. But some of them didn’t—sir, some of the attackers were not affected by the fire, sir. It seems you have to shoot them just right. Head shots seemed to work, sir.”

“You’re fucking crazy, Lieutenant. Now I want you to tell me what really happened out there. You’re facing a court-martial, boy.”

“I did tell you, sir. Just now.”

“Tell me again, asshole.”

*   *   *

“What the fuck was that?” Bell said. “Sounds like a wolf or a dog.” The lieutenant looked at Whitney.

The sergeant turned toward the screaming sound. He looked down the creek. They both watched a kid at the lead of the pack run down the creek bank, fifty yards in front of them. The kid jumped into the water and came toward them, riding the current.

“It’s just a kid.” The sergeant turned around and faced Bell.

“Boy, what the heck are you doing out here?” the lieutenant yelled, watching the boy. Another one of the things jumped down from the bank and followed the boy into the icy water. A woman, about thirty, wearing dark-colored leotards, no shoes or coat on. “Ma’am?” Bell yelled.

Bell watched the two strange people float down the creek toward them. The boy turned and looked back toward the dozen or so things gathered about seventy yards up the creek who were pointing at the two pilots.

The boy in the water began to howl. It was loud, the same sound they’d heard moments before. The woman coming at them was being pushed by the current, behind the kid. She was stopped by a huge rock. She hit the boulder with her face, bounced off, and kept coming, swept along by the fast-moving creek. Bell watched her crash into the boulder and thought she would be hurt, but she just kept coming. Halfway to them, the woman began to howl, seemingly answering the kid’s howl.

Bell looked at Whitney. The sergeant was trying to say something but Bell couldn’t hear him. The howling stopped.

He’s only a kid, the Lieutenant thought. He lifted his hand off his wound and raised his weapon. Another woman was running at them along the bank, older than the first, long gray hair, in some kind of supermarket-clerk-like apron. Bell watched her mouth open. It was big, looked distorted, un-human. She was baring her teeth like a dog might.

The kid was getting closer. His face distorted as if the muscles had gotten bigger, somehow exaggerated from normal human features. The kid stopped himself in the current and swung toward their side of the creek. He stood up and looked at them. He was wearing a red mackinaw and jeans and had brown hair.

“Hey, kid, what’s going on?” Bell said.

The kid looked at him and started to stumble through the water toward him.

“Stay right there!” Bell said.

The boy stopped, then sprung at them from fifteen feet away, like a wolf. He flew through the air and landed on the sergeant, knocking him down onto the bank, and dragged him into the water.

The lieutenant ran down the creek, trying to grab the kid from behind. It was like grabbing a wild biting dog. The boy turned on Bell and knocked him backwards toward the bank. The kid reached down and grabbed the sergeant by the throat. Death-panic showed in the sergeant’s face. He was trying to scream. Bell stood up and fired.

The shot hit the boy in the ear from almost point-blank range. He slid off the sergeant and into the water. Something got behind Bell and pulled him backwards. Bell’s weapon flew into the creek. The lieutenant scrambled to stand up. He looked at the woman with the gray hair lying beside him. She had him in a scissors lock with her legs. She was howling and snorting, spit was flying out of her mouth as she squeezed him with her legs. It felt as if he were being squeezed by a machine and not by some old lady.

Bell looked into the woman’s eyes. He punched her twice in the face. Nothing. He heard the screaming sound coming from her open mouth, which was dripping spit. She’d stopped for a moment, howling, her head back like a wolf’s. Bell tried to turn on his side, but her legs closed around him even tighter so that he had to fight to breathe. In a moment he would lose consciousness.

Bell watched the sergeant loom up behind her with a rock. He saw the sergeant’s big arms lift the rock above his head; then he drove the rock straight down, hitting the old woman’s head. The rock plowed into the top of her skull.

It was a horrible sound. Gray matter burst into the air. The howling stopped. The thing relaxed its legs. Bell felt the scissors grip give way, and he could breathe again. The sergeant dragged the old woman’s twitching body off of Bell and tossed her into the current. For a moment neither man spoke.

“What are they?” the sergeant said, holding his throat. “They look like people, but they can’t be. That was an old lady!”

CHAPTER 10

“A Factor Nine is a sigma-six event,” one of the company’s scientists said.

“What?” Squires said.

Harvey Squires’ office, on the Genesoft campus, was ostentatious. The president of the company and a native New Yorker, Squires had used that word himself when he was explaining what he wanted to the two “celebrity decorators.”

“I want ostentatious,” he’d told them. “I want people to come in here and have exactly three reactions: Insecurity, envy, and especially fear. Hopefully in that order. Business is all about levers. I like to throw the Fear lever.”

The decorators realized, to their horror, that he was serious, and probably a sociopath.

Squires stood in one corner of his grandiose Swedish modern office looking down on the half empty Genesoft parking lot through the picture window. He’d like to fire everyone who hadn’t come to work, but he needed them. He was angry to the point of not being able to focus. How could they do this to him?

He crossed the snow-white carpet, past the eight-seat Swedish modern glass conference table, past the two black-leather couches, and, finally, to his enormous power desk where two senior company executives were sitting waiting for him. Both men were on the verge of panic.

“Factor Nine? What do you mean, Factor Nine?” Squires said.

One of the scientists looked at his colleague, a younger man. Both had Ph.Ds. in biochemistry and were tops in their field, genetic engineering. The look on the two scientists’ faces was one of both frustration and fear. Their fear had nothing to do with Squires’ office appointments; it had everything to do with Factor Nine.

“Factor Nine is what might be called the unknown percentile of risk,” the older scientist said, looking at his notes, which were a greasy smear of lead-pencil formulas and notes to himself in a language meant for rocket scientists and math geeks. The computer room was down because power failure had crashed their Microsoft network. They were resorting to pencil and paper. To make matters worse, the younger scientists in the Genesoft lab were unable to handle calculations in what they called “Luddite.”

“Some people call it the Mutation factor,” the younger scientist added sotto voce. “The post procedure mutations that come from nature’s side of the ledger, you could say. Sometimes we’ve found they can be very quick—as in, say, spongiform disease.”

“Listen, you fucking nimrod, stop whispering and cut to the fucking chase. I got food rotting in warehouses all over the state of California. I got consumers calling saying they are sick from eating our product. I got The Food and Drug Administration lighting up my operation here. Let’s have it in fucking English, pencil dick.” Squires, like a lot of CEOs, was used to getting things in bite-sized pieces. Anytime anyone presented him a complex problem that couldn’t be reduced into quickly chewable bites, he reacted in a predictable manner: he blew up. He swore and bullied. The odd thing was that it usually worked. People explained less, he understood less, and everyone seemed to get what they wanted. In short, he was the kind of man that yelled at machines when they didn’t work.

“The company’s new irradiated food products have gone bad because after we screwed with their genes, nature threw us a curve ball,” the younger scientist said getting the message, finally, that his boss was a moron and had been put in charge of the company only because he was a Goldman Sachs alum and spear carrier who was representing the bank’s interest in the company.

Squires looked at him, nodding. He understood what they’d been trying to say for fifteen minutes in that scientist language they used. “You mean after we designed them, they changed. That’s Factor Nine.”

“Exactly,” the young man said.

“Well, shit. What do we do now? We’re introducing the R-19 line to the press this morning. Already have, an hour ago. Come up with a fix,” Squires said. “I’ll give you twenty-four hours.” Squires used a dismissive tone, as if he were talking about fixing a dead car battery instead of some of the most complex cutting-edge biotechnology and irradiation science in the world.

“Sir. I’m afraid that it couldn’t possibly take twenty-four hours for us to understand how this mutation has worked its way into our hybrid gene’s schematic,” the older executive said, shocked by the man’s ignorance.

“You fucking, limp-dicked asshole! God damn you, if you say one more word in that fucking foreign language, I’ll fire your asses—so help me God!” Squires said. “I told you this is about money, not science. How many times do I have to tell you assholes the facts of life? This is a business, not a fucking university, no matter how many single-story buildings we got. Do you understand? I got a nine-month burn rate!”

Burn rate, the amount of capital consumed in a startup, was a phrase the younger man had learned to revere, along with book value and other terms—especially stock options—that were going to make him rich.

“We can’t fix this problem in a day,” the older man said. Unlike the younger man, he still had a sense of responsibility. He was English, and phlegmatic at the oddest times. Years of crisis in colonial backwaters had taught his ancestors sang-froid in the face of panic. Crouchback had the rare ability to lie to moronic superiors in order to get things done.

“Why didn’t you say so? I’ll give you two days. How’s that? Then I want a memo on my desk I can read to the board,” Squires said.

Crouchback was about to try and explain that the lab work alone would take ten, never mind the discussions and analysis. But he realized, like all good middle managers, that the truth was not what the CEO wanted. He wanted a memo and he would get one. A very short one indeed.

Failure is an option. This is an eight sigma event, no doubt, he thought.

“No problem, sir,” Crouchback said.

“Now, I need a story for Food and Drug. So give me one.” Squires picked up his cell phone.

“A story, sir?” Crouchback said.

“Yes, a fucking story—you know, the thing we tell our kids at night. Make-believe fairy tales. They go to sleep, you go into your bedroom and bang the wife, end of the day. A STORY. Jesus, man.”

“You can tell them that the new food products were irradiated for too long and we can fix it,” the younger man said. The younger scientist was deathly afraid of Squires and only spoke now because he wanted to score a point. He was determined to score points. He’d spent his whole life fearing people in authority.

“You mean I tell everyone we overcooked them in that five-hundred million dollar bug-killer thing?”

“Yes, sir. That’s about the size of it.”

“What about people calling saying we’ve made them sick with R-19 foods?”

“Ask them for proof,” the young man said, and smiled. “It’s the same as Gulf War Syndrome. No proof. No problem.”

“Fucking right. No ticky, no laundry. Yeah, where is their proof?” Squires smiled and buzzed his secretary. “Love it.”

As soon as Crouchback got to his office, he picked up the phone and called his daughter. He told her to throw out the assorted vegetables he’d sent her from the company’s “new line.” Then he began the process of trying to understand what nature had done to their perfectly good idea for a genetically altered common table—vegetables that couldn’t be bruised during shipping. Two hours into his investigation he felt ill, and drove home.

*   *   *

“Eileen, would you calm down, please,” Quentin said. His secretary had started talking as soon as he’d come into the office, but not making a lot of sense.

She stopped talking.

“Now, start at the beginning. And sit down,” Quentin said.

“Okay. I have heard from the dispatcher that at least 200 people have been reported missing just this morning—might be more. My son is missing from school. And, as soon as I give you your messages, I am leaving and getting to the bottom of this,” she said. “The state police have sent a fax this morning about some of the news stories that have appeared in the press and TV concerning missing people.”

“What news stories? I didn’t watch ‘Good Morning America’ this morning.”

“I don’t know. I didn’t read the whole thing,” she said. “And Lacy called. She said she was going back to school and that she’d call you once she got down to the Bay Area. She said she’d lost her phone and is getting a replacement this morning. She’ll call you from her car.

“Dr. Poole wants to see you, he’s been waiting. And he’s upset, something happened over at his office. I’m afraid something happened to Willis Good—he’s dead. And T.C. is missing.” And then Eileen Anderson did something he never thought he’d see: she started to cry.

Quentin got up. She was someone he’d known practically all his life. They had dated in high school. She was a lot more than his secretary; she was a dear friend. They were, in fact, friends in a way few men and women ever get to be. He had never seen her cry before—ever.

“I’ll take you up to the junior high as soon as I call the state police. But you can’t leave me right now. Something’s going on, and I need your help, Eileen. Okay? Sharon is missing, too. I was just up at the high school and she didn’t show up for school. Now, we can’t panic and leave our posts here. Right?”

Eileen stopped crying and looked up at him.

“I need you.” He put his arm around her. “Now get me the state police on the phone, and then I’ll take you up to the school to find your son. And send Marvin in. I thought Willis was on the way to Boonville with T.C.? How can he be dead?”

Eileen left the room without answering his last question.

Quentin sat down behind his desk, which was stacked with mail and pink phone-message slips. He watched Eileen behind the glass wall that separated his office from her desk. She and his wife had been good friends. He was putting Ronny Alexander—her son—at the top of his list, right next to his daughter. Quentin looked at the sea of papers on his desk and saw the fax from the state police. The message was so obtuse you couldn’t tell exactly what they were trying to say. He quickly flipped through several phone message slips; half of them were about missing people. He recognized most of the names.

Quentin heard his office door open. The doctor was standing there, his jacket and sweater stained with blood. The morning was getting crazier and crazier, Quentin thought, looking at Poole.

“Marvin? What the hell’s going on?”

“Sheriff.”

“What happened to you?”

“I’ve got the state police in Sacramento on line three.” Eileen’s voice came through on the intercom.

Quentin motioned for Marvin to sit down. Quentin put on the speakerphone.

“Sheriff, this is Captain Harrison.”

“Captain, I have a rash of missing—” Quentin started.

“You can stop there, Sheriff. You aren’t alone. We have twenty-six counties reporting unusually high numbers of missing persons. We texted you to ask you not to speak to the press until we have a coordinated law-enforcement response. We don’t want wholesale panic—” The phone went dead.

Quentin almost broke out laughing. It was all a little too much—a nightmare he would certainly wake up from.

“I’ve got him back.” It was Eileen’s voice on the intercom. She’d been listening in.

“Sorry, we’ve had lots of phone problems. If we get disconnected, you can radio me. Now, I need your help with your local press, Sheriff.”

“Sure. Can you brief me?” Quentin said. “On what’s going on, I mean. I don’t understand.” He leaned back in his chair. He thought of Sharon and Ronny.

“Nobody does,” Harrison said. “There are reports that—there are reports of a mass hysteria.”

“Come again?” Quentin said.

“We’ve had some pretty disturbing reports, especially in the Bakersfield area, about mass hysteria. Reports are saying that people are going off their heads,” the captain said. His voice tried to retain that policeman’s cool, but it wavered.

Quentin noted a hint of fear. And it was that hint of fear that finally got to Quentin.

“Captain, my daughter is missing. What the hell is going on? Can’t you be more specific?” Quentin slid forward in his seat. He looked through the window. Eileen was standing and holding the phone, tears in her eyes.

“I don’t know,” Harrison said. “My wife and son are missing too. I don’t know. But let’s not give the press any more ammo. They’re already having a field day with this.”

“What do I tell the families of the missing?” Quentin said, looking at Marvin.

“Tell them that you’re going to do everything you can to find their loved ones,” the policeman said and rang off. Quentin watched Eileen put down the phone in the next room.

  “Marvin, I don’t have a lot of time,” Quentin said. “You heard what he said. Something crazy is going on. I thought you should hear it, seeing that you’re the only doctor we got in town.”

“Sheriff. I just had Willis Good kill himself in my office. He cut his throat.”

“What?”

“Willis cut his throat because he was afraid that something was coming to town,” Marvin said. His face was almost gray from the stress. His shirt, splashed with blood, was pulled out and hung from under his sheep-skin jacket. The shirttail was stiff and hard with dried blood.

“Willis killed himself? I just sent him down to Sacramento with T.C. That’s impossible.”

“There was an accident outside of town. They brought Willis to my office,” Marvin said.

“Eileen, where’s T.C.?” Quentin spoke into the intercom.

Eileen Anderson opened Quentin’s door and stepped into the office. She’d put on her coat and a ski hat.

“I don’t know, Quentin. He never got to Sacramento with the prisoner is my guess. I’m leaving the office. I have to find Ronny.”

Quentin stood up and wanted to grab something, anything, to stop the world from spinning.

   “Quentin. I think there’s something very wrong. Some kind of mass poisoning or meningitis. I’m not sure what,” Marvin said. “I called the CDC. We’ve had over twenty cases at the office this morning alone.”

“Poisoning?” Quentin said. “What’s that got to do with Willis killing himself in your office, for Christ’s sake?”

“I don’t know. He was hysterical,” Marvin said.

“Okay. All right, there’s something going on, okay. You heard what the man said on the phone. Let’s slow down. Marvin, I want you to go back to your office. We’ll investigate Willis’ suicide as soon as we can. Eileen, I want you to find out where the hell T.C. is.” He looked at the two of them. The doctor’s bloody shirt and coat were unnerving. They both were staring at him.

“I want to use the phone,” Marvin said. “I want to check on my wife.” Quentin nodded.

“T.C. is missing,” Eileen said. She walked back over to her side of the office and turned on the intercom. “I had the note on my desk. I just didn’t read it, I’m sorry. T.C. wasn’t at the accident site when they found Willis. His patrol car was destroyed,” she said over the intercom.

“Accident site?” Quentin said.

“T.C. must have gotten into some kind of accident out on 50 this morning,” Eileen said over the intercom. She lifted the Highway Patrol flash report from her desk and pressed it against the glass between them, showing Quentin the report.

The sheriff’s car pulled out of the parking lot and merged into the traffic on Main Street. It didn’t seem much different than any other February morning, Quentin thought. The sky was overcast. Lit Christmas lights were still strung over the street. Quentin took comfort in the familiar sight. The lights always reminded him of his own childhood.

“What time did Lacy call?” Quentin asked.

“About an hour ago,” Eileen said.

“I’m glad she’s decided to go back. I don’t know what got into that girl. Kids, huh?” He looked at his friend.

She was looking out at the street, her expression pensive. “What did the captain mean by mass hysteria?” Eileen said.

“I don’t know. People are missing all over the state. Maybe it’s a coincidence. Or maybe it’s some kind of illness. I just don’t know.”

“Quentin, what would make people go missing all over the state? Come on? Don’t talk to me like a cop, Quentin.”

“Eileen, you heard him. They don’t know.”

“You said Sharon didn’t go to school this morning.”

“Right.” Quentin turned off Main Street. He looked into the new coffee house that had gone in on the corner. The bike stand in front of the place was full of mountain bikes. He stopped the patrol car. “She likes to come here, Sharon and her friends. I bet you a dollar I’ll find her in there cutting class,” he said. Quentin stopped the patrol car in the middle of the street and turned on his red lights. He threw the shift lever into park. “I’ll be right out.”

“Quentin, hurry, please,” Eileen said.

Quentin walked into the Higher Ground Cafe. The stereo was playing a song he didn’t recognize. The tables were full of young people on break from the businesses nearby. He saw Rebecca, Mike Stewart’s daughter, talking to a tall kid in bike clothes sporting a goatee, a bright yellow bike jacket hung over the chair behind him. Quentin walked through the crowd. Several of the local business people nodded to him. His radio went off and he turned it down. Eyes started to follow him toward the back of the cafe.

“Hey, Rebecca,” Quentin said.

“Hey, Sheriff. This is my new friend, Gary.”

The sheriff saw how red both kids’ eyes were. Stoned, he thought.

“Hi, Gary,” Quentin said.

The kid glanced at him, not wanting to look him in the face.

“He’s just moved up from the City,” Rebecca said.

Quentin nodded. “Welcome to Timberline, son. Rebecca, I’m looking for Sharon. Has she been in here this morning?”

“I didn’t see her, Sheriff.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah, what’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure. If you see her today, will you tell her to please call me? How’s your dad?”

“Okay. The shop’s being picketed by some anti-gun people. All week long,” Rebecca said.

“I know, he called me about it. I got to run. If you see Sharon, please tell her to call me on my cell. Or better yet, to go to the office and wait for me.”

“Sure, Sheriff,” Rebecca said.

“Nice meeting you, Sheriff,” the kid said.

Quentin was going to move on, but he stuck his hand out and the kid shook it. Quentin tried to smile back at the young man’s eager-innocent stoned face. He felt protective of the two kids, of everyone in the cafe.

   “I should go back to the store,” Rebecca said. “It’s like, not cool. But I can’t stand meeting someone and then—I don’t know. I’m kind of impulsive,” she said.

“What about the video store?” Summers asked.

“I know the owner. She’ll understand. I want to check on my dad.”

“Cool,” Gary said. He wanted to look at his watch. He was going to be late for his appointment with Mr. Worden at the pet shop, but he didn’t give a damn. The girl in front of him was not only beautiful; she was turning out to be unpredictable, too, which was very exciting. She was different from all the girls he’d known in San Francisco, with their cool-breeze, butter-won’t-melt attitudes.

“The sheriff said your dad was being picketed?”

“Yeah. It’s really stupid,” Rebecca said.

“You mind if I ask why?” Gary asked.

“He has the gun shop in town, and every once and a while the gun haters come up from San Francisco, Sacramento, or LA, some big city, and picket our shop.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, it’s really stupid. My dad’s great.”

“Why his shop? I mean, there are lots of gun shops in the Bay Area.”

“We’re one of the biggest sellers of handguns in the state,” she said proudly. “I hope you aren’t one of them. I mean those people who, you know—don’t know his ass from a can of chocolate sauce.”

Gary hardly heard what she was saying. She sounded like a truck driver but she looked like one of those girls on the cover of Maxim. “I don’t really know much about guns,” he said carefully.

“I could teach you,” Rebecca said, smiling. “I know a lot about guns. I was two-time NRA pistol champion in my age division.” She leaned over and touched his arm. He could smell her again. She smelled like coffee and some kind of sweet soap. He had a fantasy of rubbing shampoo all over her in a big shower. “We have a Fifty Caliber at the house,” she said, winking at him. “It’s legal, too. Did you know it isn’t really illegal to own machine guns? Not if you get a permit from the ATF. My dad got one.”