The unknown dangers of the black room had not daunted me, but here was a known evil, entirely comprehensible. Cabinet by cabinet, my chest tightened with dread and my hands trembled, until I slammed shut a file drawer and resolved to open no more of them.
Memory freshened by what I'd seen in those folders, I could now put names to the poster-size photographs that flanked Charles Manson.
A portrait of Timothy McVeigh hung to the right of Manson. McVeigh had been convicted and executed for the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, where 168 people were killed in 1995.
To the left hung Mohammed Atta, who had flown an airliner into one of the World Trade Center towers, killing thousands. I had seen no evidence that Fungus Man sympathized with the cause of radical Islamic fascists. As with Manson and McVeigh, he apparently admired Atta for the terrorist's cruel vision, brutal actions, and accomplishments in the service of evil.
This room was less of a study than it was a shrine.
Having seen enough, too much, I wanted to get out of the house. I yearned to return to Tire World, breathe the scent of rubber ready for the road, and think about what to do next.
Instead, I sat in the office chair. I am not squeamish, but I cringed slightly when I put my hands on the arms of the chair where his hands might have rested.
On the desk were a computer, a printer, a brass lamp, and a day-date calendar. Not a speck of dust or lint could be seen on any surface.
From this perch, I surveyed the study, trying to understand how it could have become the black room and then could have reverted to this ordinary space again.
No residual St. Elmo's fire of supernatural energy glimmered along the metal edges of the file cabinets. No otherworldly presences revealed themselves.
For a while, this room had been transformed into… a portal, a doorway between Pico Mundo and somewhere far stranger, by which I do not mean Los Angeles or even Bakersfield. Perhaps for a while this house had been a train station between our world and Hell, if Hell exists.
Or if I had reached the bloody red light at the center of that otherwise perfect darkness, perhaps I would have found myself on a planet in a remote arm of the galaxy, where bodachs ruled. Lacking a boarding pass, I had instead been flung into the living room and the past, then into the carport and the future.
Of course I examined the possibility that what I had seen could have been mere delusion. I might be as crazy as a laboratory rat that has been fed a diet of psychosis-inducing toxins and forced to watch TV 'reality' shows that explore in detail the daily lives of washed-up supermodels and aging rock stars.
From time to time, I
I saw no reason to search the study for a hidden switch that might convert it again into the black room. Logic suggested that the formidable power needed to open that mysterious doorway had been projected not from here but from the other side, wherever that might be.
Most likely Fungus Man was unaware that his sanctum served not merely as a catalogued repository for his homicidal fantasies but also as a terminal admitting bodachs to a holiday of blood. Without my sixth sense, perhaps he could sit here, happily working on one of his grisly files, and not be conscious of the ominous transformation of the room or of the arriving hordes of demonic entities.
From nearby came a
I rose from the chair and listened, alert.
Tickless seconds passed. A rattle-free half minute.
A rat, perhaps, had stirred in the walls or attic, made sick and restless by the heat.
I sat once more and opened the desk drawers one by one.
In addition to pencils, pens, paper clips, a stapler, scissors, and other mundane items, I found two recent bank statements and a checkbook. All three were addressed to Robert Thomas Robertson at this house in Camp's End.
Good-bye, Fungus Man; hello, Bob.
The four-page statement from Bank of America reported upon a savings account, two six-month certificates of deposit, a money-market account, and a stock-trading account. The combined value of all Robertson's assets at Bank of America amounted to $786,542.10.
I scanned the figure three times, certain that I must be misreading the placement of the comma and the decimal point.
The four-page statement from Wells Fargo Bank, accounting for investments in its care, showed a combined value of $463,125.43.
Robertson's handwriting was sloppy, but he faithfully kept a running balance in his checkbook. The current available resources in this account totaled $198,648.21.
That a man with liquid assets of nearly one and a half million dollars should make his home in a shabby, sweltering casita in Camp's End seemed downright perverse.
If I had this much green at my command, I might continue to cook short-order now and then purely for the artistic satisfaction, but never for a living. The tire life might not in the least appeal to me any longer.
Perhaps Robertson required few luxuries because he found all the pleasure he needed in ceaseless bloody fantasies that gouted through his imagination.
A sudden frenzied flapping-rattling almost brought me up from the chair again, but then a sharp and repeated
I am not afraid of crows.
In the checkbook register, I pored back through three months of entries but found only the usual payments to utilities, credit-card companies, and the like. The sole oddity was that Robertson had also written a surprising number of checks to
During the past month alone, he had withdrawn a total of $32,000 in $2,000 and $4,000 increments. For the past two months, the total reached $58,000.
Even with his prodigious appetite, he couldn't eat that much Burke amp; Bailey's ice cream.
Evidently he had expensive tastes, after all. And whatever indulgence he allowed himself, it was one that he couldn't purchase openly with checks or credit cards.
Returning the financial statements to the desk drawer, I began to sense that I had stayed too long in this place.
I assumed that the engine noise of the Explorer pulling into the carport would alert me to Robertson's return and that I would be able to slip out of the front as he entered by the side door. If for any reason he parked in the street or came home on foot, however, I might find myself trapped before I discovered that he had arrived.
McVeigh, Manson, and Mohammad Atta seemed to watch me. How easily I could imagine that genuine awareness informed the intense eyes in those photographs and that they glinted now with wicked expectation.
Lingering a moment longer, I turned backward through the small, square day-date pages on the desk calendar, searching for notations of appointments or other reminders that Robertson might have written during recent weeks. All the note lines were blank.
I returned to the current date-Tuesday, August 14-and then flipped forward, into the future. The page for August 15 was missing. Nothing had been written in the calendar after that date for as far
