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  “Jesse Turnbull.”

  “Don’t know the name.” He reached down for his notebook.

  “Whereabouts is this jail?” I asked again.

  “Left onto the main drag here, right at the fire station. In behind there.”

  “Good enough,” I said, and went out the door before he could ask why my teeth had started chattering, in which case I would’ve had to tear his guts apart and smear the fat all over his face. Jesse Turnbull, incidentally, had been Lydia’s bridesmaid, who’d been in Costa Rica the day of her funeral. Funny how the brain works, to come up with stuff like that—to hell with Cam Vincent, I was getting sharper!

  I walked out between the bug-lights—which had nothing to kill so late in the year—and threw a wary glance at the slack-jawed faces peering from behind the three windshields. I gave my head the slightest shake and hoped that’d keep the kids from hollering my name and address. But would they be more likely to follow my game plan if they had a little luncheon meat in them, or if I kept them dangling?

  I sidled up to each car and passed a couple of damp sandwiches to the passenger.

  “Okay, all right, we got it,” Franny whispered. “Radio silence. But Ye Olde Candy Shoppe is exactly six blocks that way.” She pointed to my left with a green-nailed finger close to her chest. “I mean, C here broke his brother’s leg this morning, and even he says he’s down for an ice cream sundae.”

  “Shut…up,” Clint mouthed, wolfing down so-called pastrami.

  It had sounded, of course, like the bacon bandits had our symptoms, and maybe they possessed valuable insights, though if they’d solved our mutual problem to anybody’s satisfaction they probably wouldn’t have hijacked a meat truck. I did not glance across the roof of the car at the gas station window.

  “What ice cream?” I said through my teeth.

  “Didn’t you see the sign, G? Big sign, bright colors, ‘Velouria, Nebraska, Famous for Ice Cream Sundaes’?”

  “Just follow me a couple of blocks first.” I nodded down to Clint, the driver, who now had mayonnaise dripping down his red scarf. “Place we got to be.”

  I got into my own car, and as I slid the key into the ignition I felt the old temptation to pull the picture out of the ashtray. In the yellow wash of gas-station light, an unwrapped sandwich across her knees, Colleen sat with arms around her middle, like I might hit her with a rolled-up newspaper.

  “I want to ask him if he’s seen Megan,” she said.

  Her eyes looked like dark puddles with weeds around them. I hadn’t thought of Megan. I turned off the car and Colleen climbed out, walking nimbly across the rainy concrete.

  I focused on the sandwiches still in the bag. I tore through plastic wrappings, peeled out meat slices and jammed them in my mouth, barely chewing before I hurried on to the next. They used nitrites to process the meat and I could feel the blessed chemicals flood through my chest and out into my extremities like good-hearted lines of falling dominoes. Three sandwiches dissolved like that in a minute and a half, and I relaxed back into the seat, chewing a mouthful of what might have been roast beef. My suddenly steady hands said, You may keep us another day. Arms still wrapping her middle, Colleen walked out of the office, past the row of white propane tanks, back to the car. She got in and slammed her door, then sat looking at her knees. From the movement of her jaw she seemed to be chewing the inside of her mouth.

  After each fresh diagnosis my Lydia had done the same thing, hunched in that very same seat.

  As I drove the quarter-mile into town Colleen constantly leaned forward and back, trying to get a look at every driveway and rain-slicked parking lot. A Ford truck up on blocks seemed to be Velouria’s vehicle of choice.

  “If we spot a sporty yellow car,” I said quietly, “it won’t necessarily be our guy.”

  “No, but he has to be somewhere on planet Earth. Wouldn’t have stayed in Hoover, and his bosses are most likely here. My gut says Dodge Charger.”

  “There’s more than one yellow Dodge Charger on planet Earth.”

  “I’ll know it when I see it, okay?” She whirled in her seat as we passed a poorly lit cluster of cars in front of a bar. “Shut up two seconds!”

  I smiled at her companionably—my little quest might’ve seemed just as nebulous, after all, and in the meantime I at least knew where my children were. I parked in the alley behind the red-walled, clearly demarcated Velouria Fire Station. The other two cars pulled in beside us. People’s silhouettes walked by on the main street, maybe couples out for their anniversaries.

  “That is so not the punchline!” a woman told somebody.

  A guy strolled beside her in a ball cap and jean jacket. For normal people, every night is a good night.

  “There’s the ice cream shop Franny’s so crazy about.” Colleen bundled her purse onto her lap. “I can buy everybody something.”

  “Appreciate it. I’m going up to the police station, there’s a bunch of Dockside guys in there—maybe they know as much about it as Rob Aiken does. If I’m not back here in an hour, you all drive away, okay? Just go where no one would think to look.”

  “I have a friend in North Platte.”

  I set a foot out on the pavement. “North Platte’s good.”

  “You’re going one place and we’re going another,” she said blandly.

  “Just like at the gas station, yes. We survived. I will see you here in one hour.” I got out, and leaned in to look at her. “Maybe take the kids in the store now so we don’t look like freaks in an alley.”

  She sat propped against her door—all the fight in her seemed to have collected and dispersed like intestinal gas.

  “I don’t have lipstick,” she said.

  “You’re fine. Honestly.”

  The four kids looked out at me from their cars, wide-eyed, hopping in their seats. They were good at waiting for instructions. Every year the seniors did a countywide scavenger hunt and this lucky bunch got to do it a year early.

  “He said no spoiler on the car,” Colleen told them behind me, “but I don’t buy it.”

  The post office clock tower said it was ten after seven as I went up the police station steps. I held the door open as a middle-aged woman in a bulky sweater shuffled out, then she left me holding the door while she fished in her purse for cigarettes. Her mouth frowned like it didn’t know any other shape.

  “Gad,” she said. “If you’re going to see a detain-ee, you better take a Bible in there, and a priest too.”

  Everybody in Velouria was looking for a friendly ear.

  “Who’ve you been in to see?” I asked.

  “Oh, my kid,” she said, lighting a Marlboro and exhaling hard out her nose. “Donny Brown. You must know him, right?”

  “Sure,” I lied.

  “You wouldn’t recognize him. He says some of them in those back cells need the doctor, so just now I asked the sergeant about it and he says the doctor comes in the morning. Full stop. Which of ’em in there is yours?”

  “Jesse Turnbull,” I said. “Got picked up with marijuana.”

  She gave me a weird look and went down the steps. Clint jogged up then, his jacket open to show off his ninjas make better boyfriends shirt.

  “You don’t need to be here,” I said. “I’ll run this alone. Go back and—”

  “And eat ice cream?” His bunched fists looked like sock puppets. “I don’t want to sit knitting, man! You know I broke my brother’s leg when he was buttering toast, you know how messed up that is? You don’t get to be king of everything, man.”

  “If I get in trouble here, there’s no reason why we should both be in trouble.”

  “Dude.” He shook his bottom teeth at me. “Way too late.”

  I was still holding the door, and I waved him through.

  “There’s no emperor but the emperor of ice cream,” I said.

&nb
sp; Two of the foyer’s walls were covered with bulletin boards, as though the police station were the most obvious place for a second-hand leaf blower to find a buyer. Masseurs and notary publics. The third wall had a steel reception counter with a Plexiglas window, its speaking-hole the size of a quarter. Beyond the window a blond, crewcutted cop eyed me from behind a crisp copy of Rod & Gun—he was such a ringer for Cam Vincent that it looked like the manufacturer had just reissued the design with a new outfit and hair color. sgt. dorfsman, his breast pocket read.

  “Help you fellas?” he asked.

  I leaned in toward the speaking-hole, but not so close that I’d seem enthusiastic.

  “I just want to see my cousin Donny Brown,” I said. “Is there a room we go in to see the prisoners?”

  “Visiting stops at six.” He drummed on the magazine with a pen. “We’re on the evening shift now, so that’s that. Come back tomorrow morning at eleven, happy to bring Donny up for you.”

  “Aw, man.” I rubbed my brow theatrically but not too theatrically. “We drove in from Fontaine to see Donny tonight—I have to be at work tomorrow morning!”

  “Jay!” a man called from somewhere back in the station. “You gone on coffee?”

  “No!” Sgt. Dorfsman kept his eyes me. “Been waiting half an hour!”

  “Wait one sec!” called the voice.

  “Didn’t you just let his mother go back and see him?” I asked.

  “Yeah, well, she’s Doris and you guys aren’t. What’s your relation to her exactly?”

  “Her sister’s stepson,” I said.

  Clint, at my shoulder, just studied his scuffed pointy shoes, which was perfect.

  “Okay! I’m here, I’m here!” A tall teenaged girl, her hair in a braid, slid in beside the sergeant on a rolling chair. “I had to ta the class, I’m so sorry, Jay!”

  “Christ, Tina, half an hour ago!”

  Dorfsman leapt up and stomped out of sight, shaking his head like a buffalo.

  “I’m the intern,” said the girl, smiling up at me. “Gets a little crazy around here! What can we do for you?”

  “Well, we were about to go back and see—”

  The station doors crashed open behind us and two scruffy guys hustled in, looking vaguely like little-league coaches in their ball caps and sweatpants. One carried, miraculously, a stack of fifteen pizza boxes, and the other a deflated basketball.

  “This the recycling?” It was hard to tell which one was yelling. “Hell, I told you it wasn’t!”

  “Oh my God!” Tina shouted at them. “Get out of—this is the last time! You think your bullshit is funny?”

  They looked baffled by that but went on yelling about the pulp and paper industry. I refused to lose my Donny Brown momentum. I stretched my arms apart and shepherded both of them toward the doors. Go, I thought, before I feed you your legs.

  “Okay,” Clint encouraged them, “there you go.”

  They tumbled out and down the steps, boxes and all, and I turned back to see Tina watching us with abject disgust.

  “Can you believe that?” she asked. “My first minute here, and those losers come out of the woodwork! Sorry, who did you want to see?”

  I stood up very straight, like a reliable citizen might, while I wondered how hard I’d have to hit the Plexiglas to bring the window down and put Tina through that wall behind her. I was strong enough. Grab Clint by the ankles and swing him like a bat.

  “Donny Brown,” I said. “Please.”

  Clint waited beside me—eyes down, hands clasped behind him.

  “I’ll buzz you in,” she said. “Okay. Go ahead now.”

  She tilted her head meaningfully and I realized a doorknob to our right was buzzing. We stepped through into a particleboard hallway, then I closed the door behind us but not so the latch clicked shut.

  “This,” Clint whispered, “is fully like The Matrix.”

  We walked through to a little room furnished with what looked like a high school study carrel but with the middle board taken out so that two people could sit in the provided plastic patio chairs and stare at each other. Or, if they preferred, they could move the chairs and stare at each other from anywhere in the room. A steel door with a window in it led out into the squad room, jammed with a half-dozen desks and computer monitors and tattered motivational posters showing dolphins. A dark-haired cop sat facing me, pecking at his keyboard with the end of a pencil, while Sgt. Dorfsman sat with his back to us, reading his magazine and eating Irish stew out of a can—stuff must’ve been pulsing with nitrites because I suddenly had to swallow drool.

  Tina hurried between the desks, leading a kid in a jean jacket by the arm.

  “Here’s your boy!” She held the interview-room door open with her hip and steered the kid inside. “Come tell me at the front when you’re done, guys, and make sure to sign out. Ten minutes? Hurry up and sit down, Donny, before you fall on your butt.”

  She hustled off behind the squad room filing cabinets, and I caught Donny Brown under the armpits before he did fall on his butt—didn’t feel like he weighed more than Josie. The door banged shut and the sergeant only glanced over his shoulder at it—he’d probably raise hell once his break was over.

  “Please get him a chair,” I said.

  “Awesome,” said Clint.

  Donny was a blond kid with freckles, and because the rest of his face had the pallor of drywall the freckles looked fiery as the ends of cigarettes. His eyes were inside black bags and he could barely look up at us, but the worst was how badly his lips were chapped. I didn’t feel the least urge to throw him through a wall. He smelled like sawdust—maybe we all did. We got him balanced on the chair. He lifted his eyes as high as my belly.

  “Did, did Mom send you in?” he whispered.

  “No, man, no.” I knelt in front of him. “You worked at the factory, am I right? I’m the science teacher from Hoover, we got caught under that burst pipe and now things aren’t right with us either, you understand?”

  He nodded, though his head wavered.

  “Other guys, they aren’t going to live through the night with no bacon,” he muttered. “I remember you guys, the other day. Dancing around. We saw you.”

  “How, uh, how do you guys get better?” Clint asked.

  He’d stolen my question.

  “Ha,” Donny exhaled. “You’re a real stupid kid. I said bacon.”

  “But, I,” said Clint. “Bacon just makes you want more bacon!”

  Donny stuck his tongue out, then withdrew it.

  “How many Dockside guys are back there now?” I asked.

  “Ha. None!” Donny’s jaw tilted over to his shoulder. “Set our bail this morning—twelve grand for each of us. I was talking to my mom, ten minutes ago, she said she could cash her retirement fund, get me out. Took me back in the cells? Other guys are gone, Ben, Lars, all of them. Collis told me somebody came and paid for all of them guys to get out, and I was sitting right here talking to my mom, and I, I got missed! They had a van or something waiting in the back. Boom. Collis thinks it was Dockside but Dockside would’ve known I was in here, right? Aw, shit, you guys got working legs, run get bacon!”

  “In a minute,” I said.

  He dropped his eyes, reached his right hand up and scratched hard at his temple, but the index finger folded sideways against his hand, dangling like a Christmas ornament. The rest of the fingers went on scratching.

  “Dude!” Clint whispered. His lips worked themselves over his teeth, struggling to get the next syllable out.

  “Donny,” I said, “listen, did, did that gunk get on you guys before it got on us?”

  “No, no,” he murmured. Drops of purple blood, viscous as Vaseline, beaded on the exposed knuckle. “We mopped up that compound after it went on those kids. We had the respirators, the gloves, the whole shift of guys down there moppin
g, and you know what?”

  “Take it easy,” I said. “We’ve got plenty of time.”

  “The stuff was leaking onto the backs of our necks all the time, and we never even knew it. Never felt it. They hadn’t shut the feeder all the way off. Some guys say they left it dripping on fucking purpose. You got anything salty?”

  He scratched his chin, scratching hard, and that index finger dropped into his lap. Balanced there on his thigh.

  “Who runs that Penzler outfit?” I whispered. “Who can tell us what’s happening?”

  “Corporate headquarters is like nine hundred miles away. Look it up on the fucking internet, man. And the other day he was saying he remembered these hippie doctors coming in like a year ago, asking about processing different crap.”

  “Hippie doctors,” repeated Clint.

  “He said this might’ve been their shit.”

  “Who said?”

  “Our main guy. What’s-his-name.”

  “Rob Aiken?”

  “Yeah, funny name now, right? Shit!” He snatched up the finger and cradled it in his hands like a porcelain baby. “It’s me now! Look at this, it ain’t natural, man!”

  Sergeant Dorfsman barged through the door.

  “Time’s up, Donny. Enough blowjobs for one night.”

  “You ate bacon, I smell it!” Donny clambered to his feet. “Gimme some!”

  The sergeant backed up a step, hand on his holster. “No, I didn’t…”

  “Look at the goddamn kid!” I said. “Get him a doctor!”

  “Back the hell up, Donny!” Dorfsman stammered.

  Donny’s eyes looked half asleep, but he shuffled forward like he wanted to stick his tongue down the sergeant’s throat. He wasn’t a fraction as angry as I would’ve been.

  “Fun’s fun,” said Sgt. Dorfsman. “You sit the hell down.”

  He rammed a shoulder into Donny that sent him sprawling back into the chair, then the kid’s momentum flipped him off the chair and onto his back. Clint knelt beside him and we tried to lift him by the shoulders.

  “I told you,” I snarled, “he needs a doctor!”

  “He—he was—”