Fear Nothing

They would kill me.

The back door of the police station opened. Manuel Ramirez stepped outside.

Lewis Stevenson and his conspirator broke off their urgent conversation at once. From this distance, I wasn’t able to discern whether Manuel knew the bald man, but he appeared to address only the chief.

I couldn’t believe that Manuel — good son of Rosalina, mourning widower of Carmelita, loving father of Toby — would be a part of any business that involved murder and grave-robbing. We can never know many of the people in our lives, not truly know them, regardless of how deeply we believe that we see into them. Most of them are murky ponds, containing infinite layers of suspended particles, stirred by strange currents in their greatest depths. But I was willing to bet my life that Manuel’s clear-water heart concealed no capacity for treachery.

I wasn’t willing to bet his life, however, and if I called out to him to search the back of the white van with me, to impound the vehicle for an exhaustive forensics workup, I might be signing his death warrant as well as mine. In fact, I was sure of it.

Abruptly Stevenson and the bald man turned from Manuel to survey the parking lot. I knew then that he had told them about my telephone call.

I dropped into a crouch and shrank deeper into the gloom between the van and the water-department truck.

At the back of the van, I tried to read the license plate. Although usually I am plagued by too much light, this time I was hampered by too little.

Frantically, I traced the seven numbers and letters with my fingertips. I wasn’t able to memorize them by braille reading, however, at least not quickly enough to avoid discovery.

I knew that the bald man, if not Stevenson, was coming to the van. Was already on the move. The bald man, the butcher, the trader in bodies, the thief of eyes.

Staying low, I retraced the route by which I had come through the ranks of parked trucks and cars, returning to the alley and then scurrying onward, using rows of trash cans as cover, all but crawling to a Dumpster and past it, to a corner and around, into the other alleyway, out of sight of the municipal building, rising to my full height now, running once more, as fleet as the cat, gliding like an owl, a creature of the night, wondering if I would find safe shelter before dawn or would still be afoot in the open to curl and blacken under the hot rising sun.

10

I assumed that I could safely go home but that I might be foolish to linger there too long. I wouldn’t be overdue at the police station for another two minutes, and they would wait for me at least ten minutes past the appointed time before Chief Stevenson realized that I must have seen him with the man who had stolen my father’s body.

Even then, they might not come to the house in search of me. I was still not a serious threat to them — and not likely to become one. I had no proof of anything I’d seen.

Nevertheless, they seemed inclined to take extreme measures to prevent the exposure of their inscrutable conspiracy. They might be loath to leave even the smallest of loose ends — which meant a knot in my neck.

I expected to find Orson in the foyer when I unlocked the front door and stepped inside, but he was not waiting for me. I called his name, but he didn’t appear; and if he had been approaching through the gloom, I would have heard his big paws thumping on the floor.

He was probably in one of his dour moods. For the most part, he is good-humored, playful, and companionable, with enough energy in his tail to sweep all the streets in Moonlight Bay. From time to time, however, the world weighs heavily on him, and then he lies as limp as a rug, sad eyes open but fixed on some doggy memory or on some doggy vision beyond this world, making no sound other than an occasional attenuated sigh.

More rarely, I have found Orson in a state of what seems to be bleakest dejection. This ought to be a condition too profound for any dog to wear, although it fits him well.

He once sat before a mirrored closet door in my bedroom, staring at his reflection for nearly half an hour — an eternity to the dog mind, which generally experiences the world as a series of two-minute wonders and three- minute enthusiasms. I hadn’t been able to tell what fascinated him in his image, although I ruled out both canine vanity and simple puzzlement; he seemed full of sorrow, all drooping ears and slumped shoulders and wagless tail. I swear, at times his eyes brimmed with tears that he was barely able to hold back.

“Orson?” I called.

The switch operating the staircase chandelier was fitted with a rheostat, as were most of the switches throughout the house. I dialed up the minimum light that I needed to climb the stairs.

Orson wasn’t on the landing. He wasn’t waiting in the second-floor hall.

In my room, I dialed a wan glow. Orson wasn’t here, either.

I went directly to the nearest nightstand. From the top drawer I withdrew an envelope in which I kept a supply of knocking-around money. It contained only a hundred and eighty dollars, but this was better than nothing. Though I didn’t know why I might need the cash, I intended to be prepared, so I transferred the entire sum to one of the pockets of my jeans.

As I slid shut the nightstand drawer, I noticed a dark object on the bedspread. When I picked it up, I was surprised that it was actually what it had appeared to be in the shadows: a pistol.

I had never seen this weapon before.

My father had never owned a gun.

Acting on instinct, I put down the pistol and used a corner of the bedspread to wipe my prints off it. I suspected that I was being set up to take a fall for something I had not done.

Although any television emits ultraviolet radiation, I’ve seen a lot of movies over the years, because I’m safe if I sit far enough from the screen. I know all the great stories of innocent men — from Cary Grant and James Stewart to Harrison Ford — relentlessly hounded for crimes they never committed and incarcerated on trumped-up evidence.

Stepping quickly into the adjacent bathroom, I switched on the low-watt bulb. No dead blonde in the bathtub.

No Orson, either.

In the bedroom once more, I stood very still and listened to the house. If other people were present, they were only ghosts drifting in ectoplasmic silence.

I returned to the bed, hesitated, picked up the pistol, and fumbled with it until I ejected the magazine. It was fully loaded. I slammed the magazine back into the butt. Being inexperienced with handguns, I found the piece heavier than I had expected: It weighed at least a pound and a half.

Next to where I’d found the gun, a white envelope lay on the cream-colored bedspread. I hadn’t noticed it until now.

I withdrew a penlight from a nightstand drawer and focused the tight beam on the envelope. It was blank except for a professionally printed return address in the upper left corner: Thor’s Gun Shop here in Moonlight Bay. The unsealed envelope, which bore neither a stamp nor a postmark, was slightly crumpled and stippled with curious indentations.

When I picked up the envelope, it was faintly damp in spots. The folded papers inside were dry.

I examined these documents in the beam of the penlight. I recognized my father’s careful printing on the carbon copy of the standard application, on which he had attested to the local police that he had no criminal record or history of mental illness that would be grounds to deny him the right to own this firearm. Also included was a carbon copy of the original invoice for the weapon, indicating that it was a 9-millimeter Glock 17 and that my father had purchased it with a check.

The date on the invoice gave me a chill: January 18, two years ago. My father had bought the Glock just three days after my mother had been killed in the car crash on Highway 1. As though he thought he needed protection.

***