Now I’m working as a victim advocate. And next fall I start back to school—I’m going to become a lawyer, doing work that supports victims’ rights. Not only the young have a social conscience. I know Noah would be proud of me.
I pushed myself off the rock and started down the beach. Clyde trotted alongside me in the surf, a puppy again. I knew if he could speak, he’d ask me why I’d waited so damn long to show him the ocean.
I stopped by the station to see Detective Bandoni, but I was told he was out on short-term disability. How is he doing?
That was another thing that entered my dreams every night. While Bandoni had been laying down cover fire for me, he’d taken a knife in the chest for his troubles. The blade had cut through his pectoralis muscle and shattered his clavicle on its way past. Despite that, he’d managed to get off one more shot, the one that hit Craze. But the shock of his injury had triggered a heart attack. Only the fact that Lupita had already called 911 saved Bandoni’s life. He’d been quickly stabilized and undergone a triple bypass the next day. Stitching up the knife wound had been almost incidental.
His doctor predicted a full recovery and a return to the detectives’ squad. Bandoni himself insisted that the heart attack had saved his life. Time for a little overhaul in his diet, he’d said. Maybe some exercise.
Cut down on the Ding Dongs.
But whatever he might say, something in Bandoni had shifted.
I thought I understood.
Bandoni had looked into the abyss of his own death. But he’d also looked into the abyss of profound madness and evil. Murder cops do their best to give that void only a passing glance before they bury themselves in interviews and reports and the minutiae of crime scenes. They keep the void in their peripheral vision, knowing the darkness is right there. But they try not to look too deeply.
Bandoni had looked. Good and hard.
And when you look into the abyss, the monster stares back.
I kept walking while Clyde darted in and out of the water, then came running back to me to shake himself dry.
“Bandoni’s strong,” I said out loud. “He’s going to be okay.”
I hope you’ll look me up someday. I’d love to thank you in person. I’ve enclosed something for you from Ami. I know you’re going through your own personal hell right now. I hope this helps.
Warm regards and best wishes,
Julia
I returned Julia’s letter to the envelope but held Ami’s paper in my hand and kept on limping through the sand, the grains clean and cool beneath my feet, the sky steadily lightening, the mist burning off. Clyde spotted Cohen and took off like a fur-covered rocket.
Sometimes, usually at night, I found myself back in that room with the reeking drain and wet walls and air so cold it froze my breath. Yellow eyes watching from the dark.
Each time I found myself there, I was terrified.
In the dream, just as in real life, I didn’t know that Cohen and Clyde were closing in. That Clyde had caught my scent and surged ahead, and that Ami—still and always the Protector—had roused herself enough to find the keys and let Clyde through the door, where he was panting and scratching, desperate to reach me.
In the dream, the drill was suddenly in my hand, and I pointed it toward the yellow eyes, and a fierce happiness rose in me, lifted me out of the room.
When I woke from these dreams, I wondered if I, too, had gone to darkness.
Back in the real world, Clyde bounded back to me, Cohen jogging close behind. On my right, the sun lifted over the edge of the world, shafting its light across the ocean and filling the air with gold. Clyde paused and turned toward the light, head up, ears cocked. Then he abruptly spun around and knocked into Cohen.
The two went down into the sand together, Cohen laughing, Clyde mock growling as they tussled.
Half-afraid, I unfolded the paper from Ami.
It was a drawing of two women sitting at a table, drinking milkshakes. One of the women was Ami, although her countenance was less stern than it had been in Noah’s drawing. The second woman had long, braided hair and wore a fierce expression. Emblazoned on the front of both women’s T-shirts was a shepherd’s staff inside an inverted triangle. The emblem of the Protector.
The woman sitting at the table with Ami was me.
At the bottom of the drawing, Ami had written, NEVER GIVE UP, NEVER GIVE IN.
I lifted my head. In the surf, Cohen had gained his knees. Clyde barreled into him again, Cohen shouted, and back down they went.
Everything else dissolved.
And with utter certainty, I knew that this could be the sum total of my world if I let it be.
A good, righteous anger swept through and then past me.
Never give up, never give in.
Never let the darkness win.
I moved toward Cohen and Clyde.
Thinking that for now, for this moment, I was still good.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
In writing this novel, I took certain liberties in how I portrayed some of the counties, cities, railroad tracks, and institutions. The world presented here, along with its characters and events, is entirely fictitious. Denver Pacific Continental (DPC) is a wholly fictional railway. Any resemblance to actual incidents and corporations, or to actual persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
That said, some of the groups and organizations mentioned in this book are very real. If you’re curious about pickup artists, I recommend starting with Neil Strauss’s entertaining introduction to the seduction community, The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists. For information on the darker aspects of the manosphere, a simple Google search will suffice.
Evan’s theories about the differences between the handwriting of serial killers and mass murderers owe a tremendous debt to the authors of Murder in Plain English, Michael Arntfield and Marcel Danesi. My thanks to
