That qualified assurance didn’t improve Dylan’s mood.
‘I’m ashamed to say cowardice is another of my character flaws. I’m a genius, certainly, but I’m not a fit role model for anyone.’
The man’s self-justification through self-deprecation had lost what little fizz it might at first have possessed.
‘As I explained, the stuff produces a different effect in each subject. If it doesn’t obliterate your personality or totally disrupt your capacity for linear thinking, or reduce your IQ by sixty points, there’s a chance it’ll do something to greatly enhance your life.’
On further consideration, this guy didn’t have the bedside manner of Dr. Frankenstein. He had the bedside manner of Dr. Satan.
‘If it enhances your life, then I’ll have paid some reparations for what I’ve done. Hell’s got a bed waiting for me, sure enough, but a successful result here would compensate at least a little for the worst crimes I’ve committed.’
On the motel-room door, the security chain rattled and the dead-bolt lock scraped steel against steel as Doc disengaged them.
‘My life’s work depends on you. It now is you. So stay alive if you can.’
The door opened. The door closed.
With less violence than on arrival, the maniac had departed.
At the desk, Shep no longer waved. He worked the jigsaw puzzle with both hands. Like a blind man before a Braille book, he seemed to read each piece of pasteboard with his sensitive fingertips, never glancing at any scrap of the picture for longer than a second or two, occasionally not even bothering to use his eyes, and with uncanny speed, he either placed each fragment of the image in the rapidly infilling mosaic or discarded it as not yet being of use.
Foolishly hoping that recognition of the desperate danger would transmit by some miraculous psychic bond between brothers, Dylan tried to shout ‘Shepherd.’ The soggy gag filtered the cry, soaked up most of the sound, and let through only a stifled bleat that didn’t resemble his brother’s name. Nevertheless, he shouted again, and a third time, a fourth, a fifth, counting on repetition to gain the kid’s attention.
When Shep was in a communicative mood – which was less often than the frequency of sunrise but not as rare as the periodic visitation of Halley’s comet – he could be so hyperverbal that you felt as if you were being hosed down with words, and just listening to him could be exhausting. More reliably, Shep would pass most of any day without seeming to be aware of Dylan. Like today. Like here and now. In a puzzle-working passion, all but oblivious of the motel room, living instead in the shadow of the Shinto temple half formed on the desk before him, breathing the freshness of the blossoming cherry trees under a cornflower-blue Japanese sky, he was half a world removed in just ten feet, too far away to hear his brother or to see Dylan’s red-faced frustration, his clenched neck muscles, his throbbing temples, his beseeching eyes.
They were here together, but each alone.
The pocketknife waited, point buried in the arm of the chair, posing as formidable a challenge as the magic sword Excalibur locked in its sheath of stone. Unfortunately, King Arthur was not likely to be resurrected and dispatched to Arizona to assist Dylan with this extraction.
Unknown stuff currently circulated through his body, and at any moment sixty points might drop off his IQ, and faceless killers were coming.
His travel clock was digital and therefore silent, but he could hear ticking nonetheless. A treacherous clock, from the sound of it: counting off the precious seconds in double time.
Accelerating the pace of resolution, Shep worked the jigsaw ambidextrously, keeping two pieces in play at all times. His right hand and his left swooped over and under each other, fluttered across the pile of loose pieces in the box, flew sparrow-quick to blue sky or cherry trees, or to unfinished corners of the temple roof, and back again to the box, as if in a frenzy of nest-building.
‘Doodle-deedle-doodle,’ Shep said.
Dylan groaned.
‘Doodle-deedle-doodle.’
If past experience was a reliable guide, Shep would repeat this bit of nonsense hundreds or even thousands of times, for at least the next half-hour and perhaps until he fell asleep nearer to dawn than to midnight.