And even if they don’t know they’re twins, even if each of them was told
he was an only child when he was adopted, they’ll sense each other out
there, across the miles, even if they don’t know who or what they’re
sensing.
They have a bond that no one can explain, not even geneticists.”
“So how does this apply to you?”
He hesitated, then picked up his fork. He wanted to eat instead of
talk.
Eating was safe. But she wouldn’t let him get away with that. His eggs
were congealing. His tranquzirers. He put the fork down again.
“Sometimes,” he said, “I see through this guy’s eyes when I’m sleeping,
and now sometimes I can even feel him out there when I’m awake, and it’s
like the psychic crap in movies, yeah. But I also feel this …
this bond with him that I really can’t explain or describe to you, no
matter how much you prod me about it.”
“You’re not saying you think he’s your twin or something?”
“No, not at all. I think he’s a lot younger than me, maybe only twenty
or twenty-one. And no blood relation. But it’s that kind of bond, that
mystical twin crap, as if this guy and I share something, have some
fundamental quality in common.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. I wish I did.” He paused. He decided to be entirely
truthful. “Or maybe I don’t.”
Later, after the waitress had cleared away their empty dishes and
brought them strong black coffee, Hatch said, “There’s no way I’m going
to go to the cops and offer to help them, if that’s what you’re
thinking.”
“There is a duty here-”
“I don’t know anything that could help them anyway.”
She blew on her hot coffee. “You know he was driving a Pontiac.”
“I don’t even think it was his.”
“Whose then?”
“Stolen, maybe.”
“That was something else you sensed?”
“Yeah. But I don’t know what he looks like, his name, where he lives,
anything useful.”
“What if something like that comes to you? What if you see something
that could help the cops?”
“Then I’ll call it in anonymously.”
“They’ll take the information more seriously if you give it to them in
person.”
He felt violated by the intrusion of this psychotic stranger into his
life.
That violation made him angry, and he feared his anger more than he
feared the stranger, or the supernatural aspect of the situation, or the
prospect of brain damage. He dreaded being driven by some extremity to
discover that his father’s hot temper was within him, too, waiting to be
tapped.
“It’s a homicide case,” he said. “They take every tip seriously in a
murder investigation, even if it’s anonymous. I’m not going to let them
make headlines out of me again.”
From the restaurant they went across town to Harrison’s Antiques, where
Lindsey had an art studio on part of the top floor in addition to the
one at home. When she painted, a regular change of environment
contributed to fresher work.
In the car, with the sun-spangled ocean visible between some of the
buildings to their right, Lindsey pressed the point that she had nagged
him about over breakfast, because she knew that Hatch’s only serious
character flaw was a tendency to be too easy-going. Jimmy’s death was
the only bad thing in his life that he had never been able to
rationalize, , and put out of mind. And even with that, he had tried to
suppress it rather than face up to his grief, which is why his grief had
a chance to grow.
Given time, and not much of it, he’d begin to downplay the importance of
what had just happened to him.
She said, “You’ve still got to see Nyebern.”
“I suppose so.”
“Definitely.”
“If there’s brain damage, if that’s where this psychic stuff comes from,
you said yourself it was benevolent brain damage.”
“But maybe it’s degenerative, maybe it’ll get worse.”
“I really don’t think so,” he said. “I feel fine otherwise.”
“You’re no doctor.”
“All right,” he said. He braked for the traffic light at the crossing
to the public beach in the heart of town. “I’ll call him. But we have