“Okay, sure,” Thomas said, and a big coldness rushed from somewhere and
filled him up. Each time Bobby mentioned the new case, the one with the
baby, his picture of worry was even easier to read.
Thomas wondered if this was the case where they were going to meet up
with the Bad Thing. He was pretty sure it was.
thought he should tell Bobby about the Bad Thing, but couldn’t find a
way. No matter how he told it, he’d sound I the dumbest dumb person who
ever lived at The Home. It better to wait until the danger was coming a
lot nearer,TV to Bobby a real hard warning that’d scare him into looking
out for the Bad Thing and shooting it when he saw it. Bob would pay
attention to a sent warning because he would know where it came from,
that it came from just a dumb person.
And Bobby could shoot, too, all private eyes could shoot because most
days it was bad out there in the world, and you knew you were going to
meet up with somebody who was going to shoot at you first or try to run
you down with a car or stab you or strangle you or, once in a while, try
to throw you off a building, or even Try To Make It Look Like Suicide,
and since most good guys didn’t carry guns around with them, private
eyes who watched over them had to be good shooters.
After a while Bobby had to go. Not to the bathroom but back to work. So
they hugged again. And then Bobby and Clint were gone, and Thomas was
alone.
He went to the window. Looked out. The day was good, better than
night. But even with the sun pushing most darkness out past the edge of
the world, and even with the rest of the darkness hiding from the sun
behind trees and buildings, there was badness in the day. The Bad Thing
hadn’t gone out past the edge of the world with the night. It was still
there, somewhere in the day, you could tell.
Last night, when he got too close to the Bad Thing and it tried to grab
him, he was so afraid, he pulled away quick like. He had a feeling the
Bad Thing was trying to find out who he was and where he was, and then
was going to come to The Home and eat him like it ate the little
animals. So he pretty much made up his mind not to get real close to it
again, stay far away, but now he couldn’t do that because of Julie and
the baby. If Bobby, who never worried, was so worried for Julie, then
Thomas needed to be even more worried for her than he was. And if Julie
and Bobby thought the baby should be watched over, then Thomas had to
worry about the baby, too, because what was important to Julie was
important to him.
He reached out into the day.
It was there. Far away yet.
He didn’t get close.
He was scared.
But for Julie, for Bobby, for the baby, he’d have to stop being scared,
get closer, and be sure he knew all the time where the Bad Thing was and
whether it was coming this way.
JACKIE JAxx did not arrive at the offices of Dakota & Dakota until ten
past four that Tuesday afternoon full hour after Bobby and Clint
returned, and to Julie’s annoyance he spent half an hour creating an
atmosphere that found conducive to his work. He felt the room was too
bright so he closed the blinds on the large windows, though the
approaching winter twilight and an incoming bank of clouds the Pacific
had already robbed the day of much of its light. He tried different
arrangements with the three brass lam each of which was equipped with a
three-way bulb, giving what seemed an infinite number of combinations;
he finally one of them at seventy watts, one at thirty, and one off
completely. He asked Frank to move from the sofa to one of chairs,
decided that wasn’t going to work, moved Julie’s chair out from behind