Later

25

When I told Liz everything Therriault had said, she was excited and nothing else. I could understand that, she wasn’t the one looking at a man who’d pretty much blown off one whole side of his head. She told me she had to go into the store and get some stuff.

“And leave me here with him?”

“No, go back down the street. Wait by the car. I’ll only be a minute.”

Therriault was sitting there looking at me with the eye that was more or less regular and the one that was all stretched out. I could feel his gaze. It made me think of the time I went to camp and got fleas and had to have this special stinky shampoo like five times before they were all gone.

Shampoo wouldn’t fix the way Therriault made me feel, only getting away from him would do that, so I did what Liz said. I walked as far as the laundromat and looked in at the woman who was still folding clothes. She saw me and gave me a wave. That brought back the little girl with the hole in her throat, and how she had waved to me, and for one horrible moment I thought the laundromat lady was also dead. Only a dead person wouldn’t be folding clothes, they only stood around. Or sat around, like Therriault. So I gave her a return wave. I even tried to smile.

Then I turned back to the store. I told myself it was to see if Liz was coming out yet, but that wasn’t why. I was looking to see if Therriault was still looking at me. He was. He raised one hand, palm up, three fingers tucked into his palm, one finger pointing. He curled it once, then twice. Very slowly. Come here, boy.

I walked back, my legs seeming to move of their own accord. I didn’t want to, but couldn’t seem to help myself.

“She doesn’t care about you,” Kenneth Therriault said. “Not a fig. Not one single fig. She’s using you, boy.”

“Fuck you, we’re saving lives.” There was no one passing by, but even if somebody had been, he or she wouldn’t have heard me. He had stolen all of my voice but a whisper.

“What she’s saving is her job.”

“You don’t know that, you’re just some random psycho.” Still only a whisper, and I felt on the verge of peeing myself.

He didn’t say anything, only grinned. That was his answer. Liz came out. She had one of those cheap plastic bags they gave you in stores like that back then. She looked at the bench, where the ruined man she couldn’t see was sitting, and then at me. “What are you doing here, Cha… Jamie? I told you to go to the car.” And before I could answer, quick and harsh, like I was a perp in a TV cop show interrogation room: “Did he tell you something else?”

That you only care about saving your job, I thought of saying. But maybe I already knew that.

“No,” I said. “I want to go home, Liz.”

“We will. We will. As soon as I do one more thing. Two, actually, I’ve also got to get your mess out of my car.” She put an arm around my shoulders (like a good mom would) and walked me up past the laundromat. I would have waved to the clothes-folding lady again, but her back was turned.

“I set something up. I didn’t really think I’d have a chance to use it, but thanks to you…”

When we were next to her car, she took a flip-phone out of the store bag. It was still in its blister pack. I leaned against the window of a shoe repair place and watched her fiddle with it until she got it working. It was now quarter past four. If Mom went for a drink with Barbara, we could still get back before she came home… but could I keep the afternoon’s adventures to myself? I didn’t know, and right then it didn’t seem that important. I wished Liz could at least have driven around the corner, I thought she could have smelled my puke for that long after what I’d done for her, but she was too wound up. Plus, there was the bomb to consider. I thought of all the movies I’d seen where the clock is counting down to nothing and the hero is wondering whether to cut the red wire or the blue one.

Now she was calling.

“Colton? Yes, this is m… shut up, just listen. It’s time to do your thing. You owe me a favor, a big one, and this is it. I’m going to tell you exactly what to say. Record it, then… shut up, I said!”

She sounded so vicious that I took a step back. I’d never heard Liz like that, and realized that I was seeing her for the first time in her other life. The police life where she dealt with scumbuckets.

“Record it, then write it down, then call me back. Do it right away.” She waited. I snuck a look back at the store. Both benches were empty. That should have been a relief, but somehow I didn’t feel relieved.

“Ready? Okay.” Liz closed her eyes, shutting out everything but what she wanted to say. She spoke slowly and carefully. “‘If Ken Therriault was really Thumper…’ I’ll break in there and say I want to record this. You wait until I say ‘Go ahead, start again.’ Got that?” She listened until Colton—whoever he was—said he got it. You say, ‘If Ken Therriault was really Thumper, he was always talking about finishing where he started. I’m calling you because we talked in 2008. I kept your card.’ You got that?” Another pause. Liz nodding. “Good. I’ll say who is this, and you hang up. Do it right away, this is time-sensitive. Screw it up and I’ll fuck you big-time. You know I can.”

She ended the call. She paced around on the sidewalk. I snuck another look at the benches. Empty. Maybe Therriault —whatever remained of him—was heading back home to check out the scene at the good old Frederick Arms.

The drumbeat intro to “Rumor Has It” came from the pocket of Liz’s blazer. She took out her real phone and said hello. She listened, then said, “Hold on, I want to record this.” She did that, then said, “Go ahead, start again.”

Once the script was played out, she ended the call and put her phone away. “It’s not as strong as I’d like,” she said. “But will they care?”

“Probably not, once they find the bomb,” I said. Liz gave a little start, and I realized she had been talking to herself. Now that I’d done what she wanted, I was just baggage.

She had a roll of paper towels and a can of air freshener in the bag. She cleaned up my puke, dropped it in the gutter (hundred-dollar fine for littering, I found out later), and then sprayed the car with something that smelled like flowers.

“Get in,” she told me.

I’d been turned away so I didn’t have to look at what remained of my lunchtime ravioli (as far as cleaning up the mess went, I thought she owed me that), but when I turned back to get in the car, I saw Kenneth Therriault standing by the trunk. Close enough to reach out and touch me, and still grinning. I might have screamed, but when I saw him I was between breaths and my chest wouldn’t seem to expand and grab another one. It was as if all the muscles had gone to sleep.

“I’ll be seeing you,” Therriault said. The grin widened and I could see a cake of dead blood between his teeth and cheek. “Champ.”