Oz watched the man get back into his car, drive out of the lot, and take the turn toward the freeway. Then he slowly finished his beer. He did not hurry, for once. He was feeling almost as if he were just sitting in a bar, rather than hiding there. The people at the counter were talking, laughing. The arguing couple were now chewing face across their table, the woman’s hand hooked meatily around the man’s neck. Oz wished them well.
When he eventually stepped outside, it was cold and windy, the streets deserted. People with normal lives were home asleep. Oz was going to join them now. Home for the time being was an anonymous motel on the edge of town, but any kind of home is better than none.
As he walked, he considered the man he’d just met, what he represented. There were countless groups interested in the underbelly, in finding the hidden truths. JFK obsessives who met once a month to pore over autopsy shots. Online 9/11 nuts with their trajectory-modeling software, Priory of Sion wannabes, Holocaust revisionists—circle jerks for everything that might or might not ever have been true. Jones’s people sounded very different, or Oz would not have agreed to make contact in the first place. A tight, focused group of men and women who studied the facts without previous agenda, who met in secret, who weren’t too close to one particular issue to miss a glimpse of the whole. This was what Oz needed. People with rigor. People with dedication.
Just some fucking people, bottom line.
Maybe, after his time in the wilderness, things were going to start turning around. Oz picked up the pace a little, idly wondering if his motel had a snack machine.
It did not, and the soda machine didn’t work. After establishing these facts and becoming resigned to them, Oz let himself into his room, first noting that the strip of Scotch tape he’d laid across the bottom of the door had not been disturbed.
Once inside, he stood irresolute. It was late. He should go to bed. Get on the road early. Keep on the move. But he still felt hopped up from the meeting and knew that if he laid his head down, it would get locked in a long spiral that would leave him exhausted and headachy in the morning.
He turned instead to the ancient console television next to the room’s shabby desk. The huge screen warmed slowly, to reveal a rerun of a show so old Oz barely remembered it. Perfect. A little background noise, the kind that creeps inside your head and tells you everything’s all right. Comfort sound.
There was a knock on the door.
Oz turned fast, heart beating hard.
The television wasn’t on loud enough to provoke a complaint. It was hard to imagine why else someone should be outside. The bedside clock said it was 2:33 A.M.
The knock came again, more quietly this time.
Oz knew that the flickering of the television screen would be visible around the edges of the curtains. He went and stood behind the door. This was the moment he’d feared, the prospect that kept him awake at night, and he realized suddenly that he’d never really come up with a plan for when it came to pass. So much for the Lone Horseman of the Unknown.
“Mr. Turner? It’s Mr. Jones.”
The person outside had spoken very quietly. Oz stared at the door for a moment, put his ear closer. “What?”
“Could you let me in?”
Oz hesitated, undid the lock. Opened the door a crack, to see Jones standing shivering outside.
“What the hell do you want?”
Jones kept well back from the door, didn’t crowd him. “I got a few miles down the road and realized there were a couple things I forgot to say. I turned around, saw you walking through town, followed you back here.”
Oz let the man into the hotel room, annoyed at how careless he’d been to allow someone to spot him on the street.
“You scared the fucking life out of me, man,” he said, closing the door and locking it. “Jesus.”
“I know. I’m sorry, really. It’s just that I came all this way. And, you know, I think meeting up was kind of a big deal for both of us. The start of something bigger.”
“You could say that.”
“Right. So I just wanted to make sure we got everything said.”
Oz relaxed a little. “So what was it?”
The man looked sheepish. “First thing…well, it’s embarrassing. It’s just that Jones isn’t my real name.”
“Okay,” Oz said, confused. He’d already assumed that the other guy might have given a false one. “No big deal.”
“I know. Just…you were going to find out later, and I didn’t want you to think I’d been jerking you around.”
“That’s okay,” Oz said, disarmed, wondering if he should offer the guy a drink and realizing he didn’t have anything. The motel wasn’t the type that supplied coffeemaking facilities. It was barely the type that supplied clean towels. “So—what is it? Your name.”
The man moved slightly, so he was farther from the door.
“It’s Shepherd,” he said.
Oz held his gaze, noticing for the first time how dark the man’s eyes were. “Well, mine really is Oz Turner. So now we’re straight on nomenclature. What was the other thing?”
“Just this,” the man said. He pushed Oz in the chest.
Oz was caught off guard. He couldn’t maintain his balance against the calm, firm shove, especially when the man slipped his right foot behind one of Oz’s. His arms pinwheeled, but he toppled straight over backward, catching his head hard against the television.
He was stunned and barely had time to slur a questioning syllable before the man quickly bent down over him. He grabbed handfuls of Oz’s coat, careful not to touch flesh, and yanked him halfway back to standing.
“What?” Oz managed. His right eye was blinking hard. He felt weak. He realized that the man was wearing gloves. “What are you…”
The man put his face up close. “Just so you know,” he said, “‘They’ do exist. They send their regards.”
Then he dropped him, twisting Oz’s shoulder forward just as he let go. Oz’s head hit the side of the television again, at a bad sideways angle this time, and there was a muffled click.
Shepherd sat on the end of the bed and waited for the man’s gasps to subside, watching the television with half an eye. He couldn’t remember the name of the show, but he knew that just about everyone on it was long dead. Ghosts of light, playing to a dying man. Almost funny.
When he was satisfied that Turner was done, he took a fifth of vodka out of his pocket and tipped most of it into Oz’s mouth. A little over his hands, some on his coat. He left the bottle on the floor, where it might have fallen. A diligent coroner could question either stomach contents or blood-alcohol level within the body, but Shepherd doubted it would come to that. Not here in the sticks. Not when Turner looked so much like a man who had this kind of end coming to him sooner or later.
It took Shepherd less than three minutes to find where the man had hidden his laptop and notebook. He replaced these with further empty vodka bottles. He shut the room door quietly behind him as he left and then took only another minute to find the backup disk duct-taped under the dashboard of Oz’s car in the lot outside. All three would be destroyed before daybreak.
And that, he believed, was that.
When Shepherd got into his own vehicle, he realized his cell phone was ringing. He reached quickly under the seat for it, but he’d missed the call.
He checked the log. He didn’t recognize the number, but he did know the area code, and he swore.
A 503 prefix. Oregon. Cannon Beach.
He slammed the door and drove fast out of the lot.
If you lay still, really still, you could hear the waves. That was one of the best things about the cottage, Madison thought. When you went to bed, assuming the television in the main room wasn’t on—it usually wasn’t, because time at the beach was for reading and thinking, Dad said, instead of watching the same old (rude word)—you could lie there and hear the ocean. You had to tune yourself first. The dune was in the way, and depending on the tides the water could be quite a distance down the beach. You had to let your breathing settle, lie flat and very still on your back with both ears open, and just wait…and gradually you would begin to hear the distant rustle and thump that said tonight you were sleeping near the edge of the world. And you certainly would sleep, as the waves seemed to get closer and closer, tugging gently at your feet, pulling you into friendly warmth and darkness and rest.
If you woke up in the night, you heard them, too. It was even better then, as they were the only sound anywhere. Back in Portland there was always other noise—cars, dogs, people walking by. Not here. Sometimes the waves would be very quiet, barely audible above the ringing of your ears, but if there was heavy weather, they could sound very loud. Madison could remember one time being really scared in the night when there had been a storm and it sounded like the waves were chaotic right into the next room. They hadn’t been, of course, and Dad said the dune would protect them and they never would, so now when she heard them in the night, she enjoyed it, feeling adventurous and safe, knowing that there was a vigorous, crashing universe out there but that it could never harm her.
So when Madison realized that she was awake, the first thing she noticed was the waves. Then that it was raining, and beginning to rain harder, drumming onto the roof of the cottage. The storm she’d seen heading down the beach earlier had arrived. Tomorrow the sand would be pocked and gray and probably strewn with seaweed. It got thrown up onto the beach in bad weather, and it felt weird and squishy underfoot. Assuming they even went for a walk tomorrow at all, which—
Suddenly she sat up.
She stayed absolutely still for a moment, staring straight ahead. The rain on the roof above her was so loud it sounded like hail. Madison looked at her bedside table. The clock said 1:12. So why was she awake? Sometimes she had to go to the bathroom. She didn’t now, though, and usually when she woke in the night, it was a vague and fuzzy kind of awake. Now she felt like she’d never been asleep. Ever. There was a question going around in her head, urgently.
What was she doing here?
Next to the clock was a small, round shape. She picked it up. A sand dollar, small. She remembered finding it that afternoon, but that felt like it was something that had happened a while ago, like last time they’d come here, or the summer before. She brought it up to her nose and sniffed. It still smelled like the sea.
She could remember being on the beach as the storm headed south toward her. Sitting there knowing she’d have to go in the cottage soon. Then…she just couldn’t quite…It was like sometimes when you were in the car on a long drive and suddenly you realized that a chunk of time had passed. One minute you were twenty minutes from home, and then suddenly you were pulling into the driveway. It wasn’t like you’d been asleep, more like you hadn’t been paying attention, daydreaming, and the world had gone on regardless. The world, including your own body. You must have been awake, because you’d done stuff, but it had happened without your thinking or noticing. Like putting a car on cruise, as Daddy did on the freeway. Then, boom—you reached an interchange and there you were, noticing things again, taking back control.
Though…now she could remember being in the cottage afterward. When she’d come in from the beach, Mom had been sitting in her chair without a book and without the TV on. Doing that looking-at-her-hands thing. She said hi when Madison came in, but nothing else—which was weird, because Maddy was late. At least a half hour. In fact…now she even remembered looking at the clock in the kitchen and realizing it was seven o’clock—which was a whole hour later than she was supposed to come back.
She’d taken a shower to get the sand off, and when she came out, Mom said she didn’t feel like going out to eat tonight and what did Madison think about calling for pizza? Madison thought this was a world-class idea, because Mario’s in Cannon Beach did what her dad called “real serious pies,” and you could only get them here because they weren’t a chain. It was strange that Mom was suggesting it, because her usual position was that Mario’s put too much cheese on and not all the toppings were certified organic or GM-free, but, whatever. “Yes, please” was the answer whichever way you cut it.
But then Mom couldn’t find the menu, and she was going to call directory assistance, and it grew later and later, and after a while Madison got the idea that pizza wasn’t going to happen after all. She found a box of soup mix in the cupboard and made that instead. Her mother didn’t want any. Madison didn’t either, but she made herself eat about half and then spent a while reading one of her history books. She liked history, enjoyed knowing about how things had been in years gone by.
Then she’d gone to bed. Got into her jammies and climbed in. Then she must have fallen asleep.
And now she had woken up.
Madison opened her hand and looked at the sand dollar again. She could remember bending down to pick it up. She could remember sitting with it. So how come she couldn’t remember what had happened right after that? Sand dollars were big news. Surely she would have come running in right away to show her mom, maybe thinking it might cheer her up? Why couldn’t she remember doing that?
Madison lay back, pulling the covers up under her chin. Her memory was good. She performed well in tests at school and triumphantly took on all comers at Remember, Remember and Snap—Uncle Brian said she could win a Remember, Remember World Series, if there was one. But now it was like the world was a big television, showing two shows at once—or as if the signal had gotten confused and the screen was showing one thing but the sound was from another movie altogether. And even though she’d mainly sorted out the question of what she was doing here, it didn’t seem to answer anything. She was here because it was the beach house, and she was here with her mom, and it was night so she was in bed.
But was that what she’d actually meant?
She was breathing a little quickly now, as if expecting bad news or hearing a sound that meant that somewhere something bad was coming toward her. Something felt wrong and crooked and out of kilter.