Devoted(93)

Until a knock on the door of the motor home would eventually wake him to a new and astonishing world, a river of what-ifs carried Carson Conroy into sleep. He dreamed of dogs, a glorious panoply of breeds, and of a world transformed in the most magical way.





99



Morning. Sheriff Eckman had thought that the interminable night would never end, that morning would never come, but now that it had come, he wished it hadn’t. The cloud-filtered morning sun at the windows of the heating-cooling plant was the light of blame, the light of accountability, and it could not be escaped.

Here a jigsaw skull, there a headless Norseman. The wind raving like rabid wolves outside, the building seeming filled with machine sounds, as if the robots of the Apocalypse were being manufactured here.

Sheriff Hayden Eckman felt his world fragmenting just like Thad Fenton’s skull had been cracked into pieces and pried apart.



Nobody could locate Carson Conroy. He was supposed to be on call at all hours if a crime scene required his presence. But he wasn’t answering his phone, and he wasn’t at home.

Jim Harmon, Conroy’s assistant, took photos, gathered evidence, attended to the dead, but he wasn’t Dr. Carson Conroy, he was only Jim Harmon, just thirty-four years old, damn it, a mere assistant medical examiner, and this was the biggest crime in the history of Pinehaven County, a murder spree that could destroy more than the killer’s victims, that could also vaporize Hayden Eckman’s career.

He couldn’t tolerate being in the plant manager’s office with all the blood and biological debris. When he had run for sheriff, it had never crossed his mind that he would have to wade through a damn abattoir, that he would see things that would give him nightmares for the rest of his life. The urgent need to pee that had almost embarrassed him earlier, when he had barely avoided soiling himself in front of his deputies, was nothing compared to the compulsion to vomit that surged anew each time that he thought he had repressed it; his throat burned with the tides of stomach acid that washed up and down, up and down.

Pretending only that he wanted to stay out of Jim Harmon’s way, the sheriff stationed himself in the large room with the boilers and chillers. He was sitting on the top step of a three-step ladder. The throbbing pumps pushing water through the maze of insulated pipes sometimes matched the rhythm of a strong impulse to regurgitate, but that was better than the sights and smells of the scene in the plant office.



When Freeman Johnson came to report on Eric Norseman’s missing vehicle, which Lee Shacket had surely stolen, he had more bad news. Norseman was a hot-rodder who drove a black ’48 Ford pickup that had been chopped, channeled, sectioned, and further customized. Although the truck might be easily spotted once an APB had been issued, it had no GPS, which meant it was not emitting a signal that could be located almost immediately.

“By the way,” Johnson said, “there’s no doubt about it now.”

“No doubt about what?”

“Fenton’s brain is gone.”

Eckman grimaced. “I thought that was already obvious.”

“Well, Jim Harmon had to make a thorough search.”

“Did he expect to find it in a desk drawer?”

“You never know with a lunatic like this.”

“Is Harmon nearly finished?”

“He’ll need another hour. You know Norseman’s head?”

“I never met him. I wouldn’t recognize his head.”

“Jim says it’s definitely gone, nowhere on the premises.”

Sheriff Eckman didn’t want to talk about the missing head.

“You know what some of the guys are calling it?” Johnson asked.

The sheriff answered the question with silence and hoped that Johnson would take the hint.

Johnson didn’t take the hint. “They’re calling the missing head Shacket’s lunch pail.”



Hayden Eckman shuddered. “I am so screwed.”





100



In his sleep, Woody went to Castle Wyvern, but Kipp went with him, their dreams as synchronized as their snoring. Together, they walked the ramp to the drawbridge and crossed the moat and entered under the portcullis of the first gatehouse, into the outer ward. The sky was blue and without lightning, and no dragons flew as the boy and the dog passed through the second gatehouse, into the inner ward. They climbed the spiral stone stairs in the southwest tower of the inner curtain wall and went through the ironbound door into the high redoubt with its timbered ceiling and narrow windows at each of the four points of the compass.

The dog and boy turned in a circle, gazing at the high windows.

The sky remained blue.

All dragons had been vanquished.

As they completed a full turn, the castle disappeared.

In the dream, they stood in a meadow overlooking the sea.

From the sea, in all other directions, the meadow stretched a hundred miles, a thousand.

Out of nowhere appeared a foil balloon, buoyant with helium.

It floated across the field.



The words Happy Birthday were printed on it in red.

Although this was neither Kipp’s nor Woody’s birthday, they found the balloon irresistible, for it was strange to see it adrift here in the wilds. The bright, mirrored Mylar, trailing a red satin ribbon, seemed important. It must mean something. They pursued it with exuberance. Kipp leaped to bite at the long ribbon, and Woody leaped higher and missed, but they would not give up. They would never give up. Laughing, barking, they raced across the meadow. Through knee-high golden grass they ran and ran, ran and ran.