Stone Junction

‘Dinner around six?’ Daniel said.

Volta nodded in gratitude. ‘Bless you.’

While he was mashing potatoes, Daniel thought of a foolproof way to steal the Diamond. He could hardly wait to cheer up Volta. But when Daniel announced at dinner that he’d thought of a way to steal the Diamond, Volta brusquely said, ‘It can wait. Let’s devote our dinner conversation to a subject appropriate to the season, the erotic unfurling of Spring. Let’s talk about blow jobs.’

Daniel nearly dropped his fork. ‘What?’

‘Blow jobs. Cock-sucking. Fellatio. Let’s talk in particular about two blow jobs: the one you received the night before your mother died and one I was forced to witness while in jail.’

Daniel said, stunned, ‘You sent that girl, didn’t you?’

‘Daniel, think. I absolutely lack the imagination or style to garner information through sexual duplicity, sweet though it might have been. I’m convinced you didn’t tell this Miss Bardo anything that might have compromised the plutonium theft or jeopardized your mother, otherwise you wouldn’t have told me that you thought your mother’s death wasn’t accidental. But that doesn’t mean Miss Bardo couldn’t have found something – a note, a diary – or, acting as an agent for others, placed a bug in the house, or planted an electronic locator in a pocket of your lowered pants.’

Daniel was shaking his head. ‘How do you know she was there if you didn’t send her?’

‘I didn’t until you just confirmed it. Shamus talked to a McKinley Street neighbor of yours who had hosted the party from which your young ladyfriend wandered. The same young lady who announced, upon returning, that she’d just “come back from the Horsehead Nebula down the street” where she’d “sucked a young boy’s dick till his brain tore loose,” or words to that effect.’

‘How did you find out?’

‘Dolly Varden. Shamus called to use her as a go-between again.’

‘Between who?’

‘I’m not sure. I think he just wants you to know he knows, see how you respond.’

‘So he thinks I told Brigit, or that she was an agent. An agent for who?’

‘I have no idea how he’s thinking, Daniel. Dolly says he’s gone insane – not obviously, but she has an unerring sense for madness. He’s evidently been drinking hard for the past year, and the whiskey, grief, and guilt have dragged him over the edge. It wouldn’t surprise me if he thinks I’m somehow implicated, having brought you into AMO and favored you as a student, or for any number of demented reasons.’

‘I have no response,’ Daniel said, ‘except to say I didn’t tell her anything. We hardly talked. She was stoned. Really stoned. And if she was an agent, she wouldn’t have gone back to the party and announced it.’

‘I think that’s a fair and measured reply for the circumstances. You can talk to Dolly directly if you want, or I can just radio your answer.’

‘Go ahead. I have other things to concentrate on.’

‘Indeed. The second blow job, for instance.’ And Volta proceeded to recount the sergeant’s savage humiliation of the young boy, and how he’d been tempted to vanish and intervene, and why he hadn’t, and then seeing the Diamond in the mirror.

Daniel listened, sickened, slowly coming to understand the Diamond’s importance to Volta. ‘I think I get it,’ he said when Volta concluded. ‘If the Diamond is like the one you saw in the mirror, then it in some way confirms your decision not to vanish and try to stop it?’

‘Or rewards it. But something like that, yes.’

‘I think I would have tried to stop it. I’m not judging you, though, or no more than I’m judging myself.’

‘Of course you are. Not that you can. I was at a point with vanishing – a point you haven’t reached, and perhaps won’t – where I felt certain that if I disappeared even once more, I would not come back. Which meant I could have only borne invisible witness to that boy’s degradation, just as helpless as I was locked in my cell. If and when you come to that point yourself, see how you judge me then.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ Daniel said. ‘You sound defensive.’

‘Perhaps you’ve mistaken it for my annoyance at your glib judgments.’

‘Nope, I know that tone well. And really, I wasn’t criticizing your decision so much as …’ Daniel let the thought trail off, having realized Volta’s defensive tone had nothing to do with the decision he’d made in the cell.

Volta cocked his head. ‘Yes?’

‘The sergeant. Whatever happened to him?’

Volta nodded slightly and gave Daniel a weary smile. ‘I’m not sure if I should commend your insight or lament my transparency.’

Daniel waited for an answer.

Volta pushed his plate back. ‘The sergeant crawled under his bed, put his service revolver in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. This was four years later.’

‘Why?’ Daniel said.

‘Because I poured terror on his guilt.’

Daniel remembered Wild Bill’s mention of Ravens. ‘How did you do it?’

‘Slowly,’ Volta said. ‘It was almost a hundred days before he snapped, a hundred days believing that the kid’s ghost had sent me to exact revenge, a hundred days of raw fear to convince him justice would not be denied.’