the room at Hal. When she glanced the other way she could see Bobby.
But because of the privacy curtain that was drawn along the side of the
bed with the missing railing, Hal and Bobby were not in each other’s
line of sight.
She wondered if Hal would have been astonished to see how quickly Bobby
went to sleep. Hal was still pumped up by what had happened, and Julie,
only having heard about Frank’s sorcerous disappearance second-hand, was
nonetheless eagerly nervously-anticipating the chance to witness the
same bit of magic herself. Bobby was a man of considerable imaginative
powers, with a childlike sense of wonder, so he was probably more
excited about these events than either she or Hal was; furthermore,
because of his premonition of trouble, he suspected that the case was
going to be full of surprises, some nasty, and these events no doubt
alarmed him. Yet he could slump against the inadequately padded arm of
his chair, let his chin drop against his chest, and doze off. He would
never be felled by stress. At times his sense of proportion, his
ability to put anything in a manageable perspective, seemed superhuman.
When Bobby McFerrin’s song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” had been a hit a
couple of years ago, she had not been surprised that her own Bobby had
been enamored of it; the tune was essentially his personal anthem.
Apparently by an act of will, he could readily achieve serenity, and she
admired that.
By 4:40, when Bobby had been slumbering contentedly for nearly an hour,
she watched him doze with admiration that rapidly escalated to unhealthy
envy. She had the urge to give his chair a kick, toppling him out of
it. She restrained herself only because she suspected that he would
merely yawn, up on his side, and sleep even more comfortably on the
floor at which point her envy would become so all-consuming she would
simply have to kill him where he lay. She imagined herself in court: I
know murder is wrong, Judge, but he was just too laid-back to live.
A cascade of soft, almost melancholy notes fell out of the air in front
of her.
“The flute!” Hal said, leaving his chair with the suddeness of a
popcorn kernel bursting off a heated pan.
Simultaneously, a breath of cool air stirred through the room, without
apparent source.
Getting to her feet, Julie whispered,
“Bobby!” She shook him by the shoulder, and he came awake just as the
music faded and the air turned crypt-still.
Bobby rubbed his eyes with his palms, and yawned.
“What’s wrong?”
Even as he spoke, the haunting music swelled again, but louder than
before. Not music, actually, just noise. Hal was right: listening
closely, you could also tell it was a flute.
She stepped toward the bed.
Hal had left his station by the door. He put a hand on her shoulder,
halting her.
“Be careful.” Frank had reported three-maybe four-separate trips of the
faux flute, and as many agitations of the air, before Blue Light had
appeared on his trail that night in Anaheim and Hal had noticed that
three episodes had preceded each of Frank’s own reappearances. However,
those accompanying phenomena evidently could not be expected in an exact
pattern, for when the second rivulet of unharmonious finished spilling
out of the wether, the air immediately above the bed shimmered, as if a
double handful of pale tarnished sand had been swept up and set aflutter
in rising currents of air and suddenly Frank Pollard winked into
existence atop rumpled sheets.
Julie’s ears popped.
“Holy cow!” Bobby said, which was just what Julie would have expected
him to say.
She, on the other hand, was unable to speak.
Gasping, Frank Pollard sat up in bed. His face was bloodless. Around
his rheumy eyes, the skin looked bruised. Sour perspiration glistened
on his face and beaded in his beard stubble.
He was holding a pillowcase half filled with something. The end was
twisted and held shut with a length of cord. He let go of it, and it
fell off the side of the bed where the railing was missing, striking the
floor with a soft plop.