He wasn’t hiding away in a cave, that wasn’t it at all. It just so happened that he’d had a fairly tough break. Losing a big chunk of your life, that qualified you for tough-break status, didn’t it?
And all the self-pity you can guzzle?
‘Fuck you,’ he muttered to himself. He went to the window and looked out. Nothing to see but snow falling in heavy, wind-driven lines. He hoped dad was being careful, but he also hoped his father would show up soon and put an end to this useless rat-run of introspection. He went over to the telephone again and stood there, undecided.
Self-pity or not, he had lost a goodish chunk of his life. His prime, if you wanted to put it that way. He had worked hard to get back. Didn’t he deserve some ordinary privacy?
Didn’t he have a right to what he had just been thinking of a few minutes ago – an ordinary life?
There is no such thing, my man.
Maybe not, but there was such a thing as an abnormal life. That thing at Cole’s Farm.
Feeling people’s clothes and suddenly knowing their little dreads, small secrets, petty triumphs – that was abnormal. It wasn’t a talent, it was a curse.
Suppose he did meet this sheriff? There was no guarantee he could tell him a thing. And suppose he could? Just suppose he could hand him his killer on a silver platter? It would be the hospital press conference all over again, a three-ring circus raised to the grisly nth power.
A little song began to run maddeningly through his aching head, little more than a jingle, really. A Sunday. school song from his early childhood: This little light of mine …I’m gonna let it shine … this little light of mine … I’m gonna let it shine … let it shine, shine, shine, let it shine…
He picked up the phone and dialed Weizak’s office number. Safe enough now, after five.
Weizak would have gone home, and big-deal neurologists don’t list their home phones.
The phone rang six or seven times and Johnny was going to put it down when it was answered and Sam himself said, ‘Hi? Hello?’
‘Sam?’
‘John Smith?’ The pleasure in Sam’s voice was Unmistakable – but was there also an undercurrent of unease in it.
‘Yeah, it’s me.’
‘How do you like this snow?’ Weizak said, maybe a little heartily. ‘Is it snowing where you are?’
‘It’s snowing.’
‘Just started here about an hour ago. They say John? Is it the sheriff? Is that why you sound so cold?’
‘Well, he called me,’ Johnny said, ‘and I’ve been sort of wondering what happened. Why you gave him my name?
Why you didn’t call me and say you had… and why you didn’t call me first and ask if you could.’
Weizak sighed. ‘Johnny, I could maybe give you a lie, but that would be no good. I didn’t ask you first because I was afraid you would say no. And I didn’t tell you I’d done it afterward because the sheriff laughed at me. When someone laughs at one of my suggestions, I assume, nub, that the suggestion is not going to be taken.’
Johnny rubbed at one aching temple with his free hand and closed his eyes. ‘But why, Sam? You know how I feel about that. You were the one who told me to keep my head down and let it blow over. You told me that yourself.’
‘It was the piece in the paper,’ Sam said. ‘I said to myself, Johnny lives down that way.
And I said to myself, five dead women. Five.’ His voice was slow, halting, and embarrassed. It made Johnny feel much worse to hear Sam sounding like this. He wished he hadn’t called.
‘Two of them teenage girls. A young mother. A teacher of young children who loved Browning. All of it so corny, nuh? So corny I suppose they would never make a movie or a TV show out of it. But nonetheless true. It was the teacher I thought about most. Stuffed into a culvert like a bag of garbage…
‘You had no damn right to bring me into your guilt fantasies,’ Johnny said thickly.