nodded.
'Was it an open casket? Did you see him?'
]anet breathed deeply. 'We had him cremated so... so he wouldn't come back. We just buried his ashes.'
'Are you sure it was him?' Miles prodded gently. 'I mean, you didn't actually see his body after the autopsy?'
She shook her head. 'I don't know. They said..' they said we wouldn't want to see him. They said, well, that there wasn't much left that was identifiable.'
'Who suggested that he be cremated? Was that your idea?'
'No,' she admitted. 'It was suggested by the mortuary. But, under the circumstances, I thought it was a good plan.
I'd already had nightmares of my uncle digging his way out of a grave and walking through the city to find me. Cremating him would take care of that possibility.' She met Miles' eyes. 'You think he walked away, like your dad, and they pawned off some other body on me?'
He shrugged. 'It's a possibility. I'm not saying it happened, but I'd feel a lot more secure about it if you'd actually seen his body to make sure it had stopped moving.'
There was an awkward pause. Janet stood. 'q need another drink. You want something.
'Maybe some water,' Miles said.
She returned a few moments later with a tumbler of water and her refilled wineglass. 'You know,' she said, handing him his drink,
'there's one thing that I've been thinking about. Something that stuck in my mind.'
'What?'
'His last words. Or the last words he spoke to me. I was feeding him his dinner. He could barely talk at that point, his voice was just a whisper, and I had to lean close to hear him. After that, about an hour or so after I cleaned him up, he started walking. And he never spoke again.'
'What'd he say? what'd he tell you?'
'The last thing he said, before he started walking, was, 'She's here.'
'
' 'She'? Who's 'she'? .... 'I don't know. Maybe he was just delirious, seeing things that weren't there.'
'But you don't think so?' She looked at him. 'No.' She's here.
Eeeee-eeear = Miles recalled the noises his father had made in the hospital, the desperate, incomprehensible pleas that had been so earnestly addressed to him. She's here. Was that what Bob had been trying to say?
'I've thought about it a million times since they took him away. I've gone over it in my mind, but it doesn't make any sense to me. I don't understand it. I know he was trying to tell me something, but I have no idea what it was. There certainly wasn't anyone else in the room with us, and no woman has shown up since then, unless you count the Insider photographer. I've been waiting, hoping--or maybe not hoping--that whatever he meant would be revealed to me, but..' nothing.'
She's here.
There was something ominous about the phrase, and Miles gulped down his water. He was pretty sure that that was what his father had been trying to say, and he recalled the panicked urgency of Bob's stroke-slurred voice. His father had been afraid.
'Did your uncle seem, well, scared when he told you that?'
Janet nodded. 'that why I haven't been able to forget it, why I keep going over it in my mind. I can't help feeling that it had something to do with his..' walking.'
The homeless woman in the mall, too, had warned him of a 'she'
She's going after the ddnin builders, too.
He wanted to understand, but nothing made sense to him, no facts he could put together, no conjecture he could make that would provide an identity for this woman?... girl? witch? goddess?
'Did your uncle leave anything behind?' he asked Janet
'Any diaries? Any item that might give us some clue?' 'Like what?'
'Like witchcraft paraphernalia.'
She stared at him. 'How did you know?'
He smiled wryly. 'I found some stuff in my dad's safety deposit box. I have no idea what it's for or how to use it, but I could tell that it was supposed to be used for magic.
There was a dried, flat frog, a bunch of powders, some roots in bottles.' He paused. 'And a necklace made out of teeth. Human teeth.'
'My uncle had a box in his closet. I looked through it, but it scared me, so I put it in a plastic garbage sack and haven't looked at it since. It's in my hall closet. You want to check it out?'
Miles shook his head. 'Maybe later.'
'There's no necklace, but there is some kind of arm bone with feathers attached to it. And, like you said, a bunch of powders and potions, I guess.'
'No diary, though, huh? No book?'
'My uncle wasn't one for keeping diaries.'
'Neither was my dad.'
They looked glumly at each other.
'Do you know anything about this witchcraft stuff? Did your uncle ever talk to you about it? Do you remember... anything?'
She shook her head slowly. 'What about your parents?' 'Dead.'
'Any other relatives?'
Yeah, but they're pretty distant. I mean, I was the one closest to him. If he was going to tell anybody, he would have told me? 'Well, what about friends.
'I don't know.'
'Where did he work? when and where was he born? If I have some background information, I can check up on him, build a profile from there.'
'I know he was born in Arizona.'
'Arizona?'
'A place called Wolf Canyon.'
A shiver feather-tickled the back of his neck, moved down his back, spread into his arms.
Wolf Canyon. It was all circling back to that.
Miles realized that he did not know where his father had been born, and while he had never thought of it before, he understood now how strange that was. Would Bonnie know?
He was tempted to call his sister and find out, but he had a feeling he already knew what the answer was.
He played a hunch. 'Did your uncle say anything about dreams he was having before he died? Recurring dreams about'--a tidal wave and the end of the world?'
Miles nodded slowly. 'Yeah.'
'I've been having dreams, too, he died. Not a tidal wave, exactly, but water.
'Me, too,' Miles mentioned. 'What's it mean? What is it? Janet sounded as though she were about to cry.
'I don't know, but there's more to come.' He motioned toward her empty glass. 'You might want to get yourself another drink. I have a lot of things to tell you.'
He started from the beginning. Marina Lewis and her father. Montgomery Jones and the other men on the list.
Brodsky and Hec Tibbert. The homeless old woman in the mall. Liana on the fence.
And, at the hub of all this activity, Wolf Canyon.
