So Cold the River

For Christine, who wouldn’t let me talk myself out of this one

Part One

CURER OF ILLS

1

YOU LOOKED FOR THE artifacts of their ambition. That was what a sociology professor had said one day in a freshman seminar, and Eric Shaw had liked something about the phrase, wrote it and only it in a notebook that would soon be forgotten and then discarded. Artifacts of their ambition. Only through study of those things could you truly understand people long departed. General artifacts could be overanalyzed, layered with undue importance. It was critical to find things that indicated ambitions and aspirations, that tired bit about hopes and dreams. The reality of someone’s heart lay in the objects of their desires. Whether those things were achieved did not matter nearly so much as what they had been.

The phrase returned to Eric almost two decades later as he prepared a video montage for a dead woman’s memorial service. Video life portraits, that’s what he called them, an attempt to lend some credibility to what was essentially a glorified slide show. There’d been a time when neither Eric nor anyone who knew him would have been able to believe this sort of career lay ahead for him. He still had trouble believing it, in fact. You could live a life and never comprehend exactly how you found yourself in it. Hell of a thing.

If he were fresh out of film school, he might have been able to convince himself that this was merely part of the artist’s struggle, a way to pay the bills before that first big break. Truth was, it had been twelve years since Eric claimed his film school’s highest honor, twelve years. Two years since he’d moved to Chicago to escape the train wreck of his time in L.A.

During his peak, thirty years old and landing bigger jobs with regularity, his cinematography had been publicly praised by one of the most successful movie directors in the world. Now Eric made videos for graduations and weddings, birthdays and anniversaries. And funerals. Lots of funerals. That had somehow become his niche. Word of mouth sustained a business like his, and the word of mouth about Eric seemed to focus on funerals. His clients were generally pleased by his videos, but the funeral parties were elated. Maybe on some subconscious level he was more motivated when his work concerned the dead. There was a greater burden of responsibility there. Truth be told, he operated more instinctively when he prepared a memorial video than when he did anything else. There seemed to be a muse working then, some innate guiding sense that was almost always right.

Today, standing outside a suburban funeral parlor with a service about to commence, he felt an unusual sense of anticipation. He’d spent all of the previous day—fifteen hours straight—preparing this piece, a rush job for the family of a forty-four-year-old woman who’d been killed in a car accident on the Dan Ryan Expressway. They’d turned over photo albums and scrapbooks and select keepsakes, and he’d gotten to work arranging images and creating a sound track. He took pictures of pictures and blended those with home video clips and then rolled it all together and put it to music and tried to give some sense of a life. Generally the crowd would weep and occasionally they would laugh and always they would murmur and shake their heads at forgotten moments and treasured memories. Then they’d take Eric’s hand and thank him and marvel at how he’d gotten it just right.

Eric didn’t always attend the services, but Eve Harrelson’s family had asked him to do so today and he was glad to say yes. He wanted to see the audience reaction to this one.

It had started the previous day in his apartment on Dearborn as he was sitting on the floor, his back against the couch and the collection of Eve Harrelson’s personal effects surrounding him, sorting and studying and selecting. At some point in that process, the old phrase came back to him, the artifacts of their ambition, and he’d thought again that it had a nice sound. Then, with the phrase as a tepid motivator, he’d gone back through an already reviewed stack of photographs, thinking that he had to find some hint of Eve Harrelson’s dreams.

The photographs were the monotonous sort, really—everybody posed and smiling too big or trying too hard to look carefree and indifferent. In fact, the entire Harrelson collection was bland. They’d been a photo family, not a video family, and that was a bad start. Video cameras gave you motion and voice and spirit. You could create the same sense with still photographs, but it was harder, certainly, and the Harrelson albums weren’t promising.

He’d been planning to focus the presentation around Eve’s children—a counterintuitive move but one he thought would work well. The children were her legacy, after all, guaranteed to strike a chord with family and friends. But as he sorted through the stack of loose photographs, he stopped abruptly on a picture of a red cottage. There was no person in the shot, just an A-frame cottage painted a deep burgundy. The windows were bathed in shadow, nothing of the interior visible. Pine trees bordered it on both sides, but the framing was so tight there was no clear indication of what else was nearby. As he stared at the picture, Eric became convinced that the cottage faced a lake. There was nothing to suggest that, but he was sure of it. It was on a lake, and if you could expand the frame, you’d see there were autumn leaves bursting into color beyond the pines, their shades reflecting on the surface of choppy, wind-blown water.

This place had mattered to Eve Harrelson. Mattered deeply. The longer he held the photograph, the stronger that conviction grew. He felt a prickle along his arms and at the base of his neck and thought, She made love here. And not to her husband.

It was a crazy idea. He pushed the picture back into the stack and moved on and later, after going through several hundred photographs, confirmed that there was only one of the cottage. Clearly, the place hadn’t been that special; you didn’t take just one picture of a place that you loved.

Nine hours of frustration later, nothing about the project coming together the way he wanted, Eric found the photo back in his hand, the same deep certainty in his brain. The cottage was special. The cottage was sacred. And so he included it, this lone shot of an empty building, worked it into the mix and felt the whole presentation come together as if the photograph were the keystone.

Now it was time to play the video, the first time anyone from the family would see it, and while Eric told himself his curiosity was general—you always wanted to know what your clients thought of your work—in the back of his mind it came down to just one photograph.

He entered the room ten minutes before the service was to begin, took his place in the back beside the DVD player and projector. Thanks to a Xanax and an Inderal, he felt mellow and detached. He’d assured his new doctor that he needed the prescriptions only because of a general sense of stress since Claire left, but the truth was he took the pills anytime he had to show his work. Professional nerves, he liked to think. Too bad he hadn’t had such nerves back when he’d made real films. It was the ever-present sense of failure that made the pills necessary, the cold touch of shame.

Eve Harrelson’s husband, Blake, a stern-faced man with thick dark hair and bifocals, took the podium first. The couple’s children sat in the front row. Eric tried not to focus on them. He was never comfortable putting together a piece like this when there were children to watch it.

Blake Harrelson said a few words of thanks to those in attendance, and then announced that they would begin with a short tribute film. He did not name Eric or even indicate him, just nodded at a man by the light switch when he stepped aside.

Showtime, Eric thought as the lights went off, and he pressed play. The projector had already been focused and adjusted, and the screen filled with a close-up of Eve and her children. He’d opened with some lighthearted shots—that was always the way to go at a heavy event like this—and the accompanying music immediately got a few titters of appreciative laughter. Amidst the handful of favorite CDs her family had provided, Eric had found a recording of Eve playing the piano while her daughter sang for some music recital, the timing off from the beginning and getting worse, and in the middle you could hear them both fighting laughter.

It went on like that for a few minutes, scattered laughter and some tears and a few shoulder squeezes with whispered words of comfort. Eric stood and watched and silently thanked whatever chemist had come up with the calming drugs in his bloodstream. If there was a more intense sort of pressure than watching a grieving group like this take in your film, he couldn’t imagine what it was. Oh, wait, yes he could—making a real film. That had been pressure, too. And he’d folded under it.

The cottage shot was six minutes and ten seconds into the nine-minute piece. He’d kept most pictures in the frame for no more than five seconds, but he’d given the cottage twice that. That’s how curious he was for the reaction.

The song changed a few seconds before the cottage appeared, cut from an upbeat Queen number—Eve Harrelson’s favorite band—to Ryan Adams covering the Oasis song “Wonderwall.” The family had given Eric the Oasis album, another of Eve’s favorites, but he’d replaced their version with the Adams cover during his final edit. It was slower, sadder, more haunting. It was right.

For the first few seconds he could detect no reaction. He stood scanning the crowd and saw no real interest in their faces, only patience or, in a few cases, confusion. Then, just before the picture changed, his eyes fell on a blond woman in a black dress at the end of the third row. She’d turned completely around and was staring back into the harsh light of the projector, searching for him. Something in her gaze made him shift to the side, behind the light. The frame changed and the music went with it and still she stared. Then the man beside her said something and touched her arm and she turned back to the screen, turned reluctantly. Eric let out his breath, felt that tightness in his neck again. He wasn’t crazy. There was something about that picture.

He was hardly aware of the rest of the film. When it ended, he disconnected the equipment and packed up to leave. He’d never done that before—he always waited respectfully for the conclusion of the service and then spoke to the family—but today he just wanted out, wanted back into the sunlight and fresh air and away from that woman with the black dress and the intense stare.

He’d slipped out of the double doors with the projector in his arms and was headed through the foyer and toward the exit when a voice from behind him said, “Why did you use that picture?”

It was her. The blond woman in black. He turned to face her, caught a blast of that stare again, able now to see that it came from intense blue eyes.

“The cottage?”

“Yes. Why did you use it?”

He wet his lips, shifted the weight of the projector. “I’m not really sure.”

“Please don’t lie to me. Who told you to use it?”

“No one.”

“I want to know who told you to use it!” Her voice a hiss.

“Nobody said a word to me about that picture. I assumed people would think I was crazy for putting it up there. It’s just a house.”

“If it’s just a house,” she said, “then why did you want to include it?”

This was Eve Harrelson’s younger sister, he realized. Her name was Alyssa Bradford now, and she was in several of the photographs he’d used. Back in the main room someone was speaking, offering tribute to Eve, but this woman did not seem to care in the least. All of her attention was on him.

“It felt special,” he said. “I can’t explain it any better than that. Sometimes I just get a sense. It was the only picture of the place, and there were no people in it. I thought that was unusual. The longer I looked at it… I don’t know, I just thought it belonged. I’m sorry if it offended you.”

“No. It’s not that.”

It was quiet for a moment, both of them standing outside while the service continued inside.

“What was that place?” he said. “And why are you the only one who reacted?”

She looked over her shoulder then, as if making sure the doors were closed.

“My sister had an affair,” she said softly, and Eric felt something cold and spidery work through his chest. “I’m the only person who knows. At least that’s what she told me. It was with a man she dated in college and during a rough time she had with Blake…. He’s a bastard, I’ll never forgive him for some of the things he did, and I think she should have left him. Our parents were divorced, though, and it was an ugly divorce, and she didn’t want to do that to her kids.”

This sort of disclosure wasn’t all that uncommon. Eric had grown used to family members sharing more than seemed prudent. Grief sent secrets spilling past the old restraints, and it was easier to do with a stranger sometimes. Maybe every time.

“That cottage is in Michigan,” she said. “Some little lake in the Upper Peninsula. She spent a week there with this man, and then she came back, and she never saw him again. It was the children, you know, they were all that kept her. She was in love with him, though. I know that.”

What could he say to that? Eric shifted the projector again, didn’t speak.

“She didn’t keep any pictures of him,” Alyssa Bradford said, and there were tears in her eyes now. “Tore apart the photo albums she had from college, too, and burned every picture he was in. Not out of anger, but because she had to if she was going to stay. I was with her when she burned them, and she kept that one, that single shot, because there was nobody in it. That’s all she kept to remember him.”

“It just seemed to belong,” Eric said again.

“And that song,” she said, her eyes piercing again after she’d blinked the tears back. “How on earth did you select that song?”

They made love to it, he thought, probably for the first time, or if not that, then certainly for the best time, the one that she remembered longest, the one that she remembered not long before she died. They made love to that song and he pulled her hair and she leaned her head back and moaned in his ear and afterward they lay together and listened to the wind howl around that cottage with the deep red paint. It was warm and windy and they thought that it would rain soon. They were sure of it.

The woman was staring at him, this woman who was the only person alive who knew of her dead sister’s affair, of the week she’d spent in that cottage. The only person alive other than the lover, at least. And now Eric. He looked back into her eyes, and he shrugged.

“It just felt right, that’s all. I try to match the music to the mood.”

And he did, on every project. That much was true. Everything else, that strange but absolute sense of the importance of the song, couldn’t possibly be more than trickery of the mind. Any other notion was absurd. So very absurd.

Eve Harrelson’s sister gave him a hundred-dollar bill before she left to return to the service, a fresh wave of tears cresting in her eyes. Eric wasn’t sure if it was a tip or a bribe for silence, and he didn’t ask. Once his equipment was packed up and he was sitting in the driver’s seat of the Acura MDX that Claire had paid for, he transferred the bill from his pocket to his wallet. He tried not to notice that his hands were shaking.

2

IT WASN’T THE FIRST time. Over the years, Eric had grown used to sensing some unexplained tug over a specific sight. It was one of the reasons his finest work came on historical projects. The last film of note that he’d worked on was an HBO historical drama about the flight of the Nez Perce in 1877, an amazing and tragic story, and one Eric connected with from the start. They’d been shooting in the Bear Paw Mountains in northern Montana, at the spot where the fifteen-hundred-mile retreat had ended about forty miles from the Canadian border, which the Indians were trying desperately to reach. There was a team of historians along, people who’d devoted countless hours to the story and believed they had an accurate sense of the key locations. The crew spent about six hours getting things set up and was nearly ready to shoot when Eric rode to a rise that looked down on another valley. This one was smaller and on the surface less visually appealing. A little bit of snow was blowing and the sun was losing a struggle with the clouds. It was as that last shaft of sunlight receded that he looked down at the smaller valley and knew that this was where they’d been. The Nez Perce. Chief Joseph and about seven hundred exhausted and starving followers, fewer than two hundred of them warriors. General William Tecumseh Sherman and two thousand well-equipped U.S. soldiers on their heels.

Eric spent a few more minutes up on the ridge, then rode back down and embarked on a furious argument to pack everything up and move the upcoming scene into the smaller valley. The director was Douglass Wainberg, a short Jewish guy who insisted on wearing cowboy hats throughout the whole project, and while he had plenty of faults, he also had a trust in talent. He relented after Eric went on a tirade about light and horizon lines that was total bullshit—the only reason he wanted to move was that he knew they were in the wrong valley—and they wasted most of a day relocating. One of the historians took issue with the decision, said it was sad to see accuracy sacrificed for lighting concerns, and Eric had ignored him, confident that the guy was wrong. The Nez Perce had never been in his damn valley.

That was the strongest sense he’d ever had about the significance of a single shot until the picture of the red cottage. And his previous senses had always seemed to be closer to illusions, something that vanished as soon as you tried to close your fist over it.

Eve Harrelson’s sister called a week after the service, around the time he’d begun to smile ruefully at the way his imagination had gotten away from him.

“I hope that you won’t let the… odd moment from Eve’s service discourage you from working with me” were Alyssa Bradford’s first words when they met the day after her call. They were sitting on the patio outside a coffee shop on Michigan Avenue, and she had two shopping bags on either side of her chair and wore probably two thousand dollars’ worth of clothes, carefully styled to seem casual. The woman reeked of money. Eric had no idea where it came from. He’d gotten to know the Harrelson side of the family, and they were middle class at best. Evidently, Alyssa had married up.

“Of course not,” he said. “I understand your reaction.”

“I called you only because of the quality of your film,” she said. “The way you worked it all together, and the music… just wonderful. Everyone who was there was touched by it. Everyone.”

“I’m glad.”

“It triggered something in my mind. Something I could do for my husband. My father-in-law—his name is Campbell Bradford—is in extremely poor health, close to the end, I’m afraid. But he’s a remarkable man, and has a remarkable story, and after seeing your film I thought, This would be perfect. An absolutely perfect tribute, something lovely for his family to have.”

“Well, I’m glad it made a favorable impression. After seeing that one, you have a pretty good idea of what I’ll need, and—”

He stopped talking when she held up a hand.

“We won’t be doing quite the same thing. See, I want to contract your services for a longer period of time. I’d like to send you somewhere.”

“Send me somewhere?”

“If you’re willing. You have experience with bigger projects is my understanding.”

Experience with bigger projects. He looked at her with a small smile and managed a nod, the shame landing on him again, almost enough to drive him from the chair.

“I’ve done a lot of work in film,” he said. It was as difficult a sentence as he’d ever uttered.

“That’s what I thought. I read about you online, and I was so surprised to see that you’d come back to Chicago.”

The sidewalk was calling to him now, screaming at him. Get up, get your ass out of that chair and walk away from this disrespect. You were big once. Big, and ready to be huge. Remember that?

“I thought that it was probably a family decision,” Alyssa Bradford said.

“Yes,” he said. A family decision that when your career imploded, it was time to come home.

“Well, this is a family matter, too. My father-in-law has an extraordinary story. He ran away from home in his early teens, came to Chicago in the midst of the Depression, and made a success of himself. A massive success. He’s worth well over two hundred million today. It was a quiet fortune, too. Until very recently, no one in the family knew exactly what he was worth. We knew he was rich, but not that rich. Then he got sick and the legal discussions started and it came out. Now can you see why I’d like to tell his story?”

“What did he do to make the money?”

“Investments. Stocks, commodities, bonds, real estate, you name it. He’s just had a golden touch.”

“I guess so.” Eric was having trouble looking her in the eye for some reason. Her stare, that intense blue-eyed stare, reminded him of the way she’d cornered him during the memorial service.

“The town where he was born, and where I want to send you, is in southern Indiana, a truly odd place, and beautiful. Have you ever heard of French Lick?”

“Larry Bird,” he said, and she laughed and nodded.

“That’s the general response, but at one point it was one of the great resorts in the world. There are two towns there, actually, West Baden and French Lick, side by side, and they each have a hotel that will take your breath away. Particularly the one in West Baden. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen, and yet it’s built out in the middle of nowhere, this tiny town in farm country.”

“You want me to go there?”

“That’s what I’m hoping, yes. It’s where my father-in-law is from, and he grew up in the era when it was really alive, when people like Franklin D. Roosevelt and Al Capone were visitors. That’s what he saw in his childhood. I visited the place for the first time last year after reading that they had restored the hotels. I was there only for a day, but long enough to see that the place is just surreal.”

“Are you looking for a video history of the place, or of his life, or—”

“A combination. I’m prepared to pay for you to be down there for two weeks, and then take whatever time you need to finalize it once you’re back.”

“Two weeks sounds like an inordinate amount of time. Not to mention cost.”

“I don’t think so. My father-in-law didn’t speak much of his childhood, or his family. He’d talk about the area, all these stories about the town and times, but hardly anything about his own life. All we know is that he ran away from home when he was in his teens. His relationship with his family ended then.”

“If that’s the case,” Eric said, “he might not enjoy seeing me present the family history on video.”

“You could be right. This isn’t just for him, though—it’s for my husband and the rest of the family.”

“I’m certainly interested,” he said, “but I do think two weeks sounds a bit—”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you the price. I’d pay twenty thousand dollars for the completed product. I’ll give you five of that in advance.”

It was amazing that his first instinct was to think that dollar figure unimpressive. His mind still went to real film budget numbers initially. Then he considered it again and realized that twenty thousand dollars was half of what he’d made all last year. And twenty thousand more than he’d made the year before that. He closed his mouth on the hedging I don’t know if I can invest all that time argument that had been forthcoming, leaned back in his chair, and raised his eyebrows at Alyssa Bradford.

“I don’t see how I can turn it down.”

“Excellent. Once you see the town and the hotels and learn about the history, I think you’ll find the whole project very suited to you. Suited to someone of your gifts.”

“My gifts.”

She hesitated, the first time she’d shown anything but total self-assurance, and then said, “You know, taking things that are gone and bringing them back to life.”

Eric said, “I’d like to interview him. Something of this length, interviews will be important.”

She nodded, but the smile was fading. “I understand that, but I don’t know how much you’ll get. He’s ninety-five and in very poor health. Conversations are difficult.”

“Sometimes one sentence is enough to make a hell of a difference. If it’s the right words, the right sound… it can have an impact.”

“Then I’ll arrange a time for you to visit. I also know that you like to have photos and family artifacts. I already brought something for you.”

She reached into her purse and withdrew a glass bottle, maybe eleven inches tall. Her purse had been resting in the sunlight, but the bottle was surprisingly cold when she passed it into his hand. Light green glass, with etching across it that said Pluto Water, America’s Physic.

“Look at the bottom,” Alyssa Bradford said.

He turned the bottle over and found another etching, this one the image of a jaunty devil with horns, forked tail, and a sword in his belt. One hand was raised, as if in a wave. The word Pluto was etched beneath the figure.

“What is it?”

“Mineral water. That’s what made the town famous, and what built the hotels and brought people in from all over the world.”

There was a stopper held in place with a wire press-down, and below it the bottle was filled with a cloudy liquid the color of sandstone.

“They drank this stuff?” Eric said.

“Drank it out of the bottles, yes, but they also had spas, springs you’d sit in that would supposedly cure physical ailments. That was the big deal at the resorts. People would come from all over the world to visit those springs for the healing effects.”

Eric was running his thumb over that etched figure on the base, watching sediment rise and settle inside the glass with his motions.

“Isn’t it just a gorgeous bottle?” Alyssa Bradford said. “It’s the one thing I found that had something to do with his hometown. I think it’s fantastic that he kept it all these years. That bottle is about eighty years old. Maybe more.”

“What’s with the devil?”

“He’s Pluto. It’s the Roman version of Hades. God of the underworld.”

“Seems like a strange mascot for a company to choose.”

“Well, the mineral water came from underground springs. I suppose that inspired them. Anyhow, he’s a happy-looking devil, isn’t he?”

He was that. Cheerful, welcoming. That water inside the bottle, though, was a different story. Something about its odd color and those fine, grainy flakes of sediment turned Eric’s stomach, and he set the bottle on the table and slid it back to her.

“No, you can keep it for now,” she said. “I’d like you to take it with you. See if you can find someone who can give an accurate date for it.”

He didn’t want the bottle at all, but he accepted it when she pushed it across the table, wrapped his hand around it and felt that unnatural penetrating cold from within.

“What do you have in that purse, dry ice?”

“It always feels that way, actually,” she said. “I don’t understand why. Something about the mineral content? Or maybe that old glass.”

He put the bottle in his briefcase and refilled his coffee while she wrote him a five-thousand-dollar check, keeping his palm pressed against the warm side of the mug until she’d signed it and torn it free and handed it to him.

3

IT WAS THE SORT of story that begged for telling, and with the addition of those wild, extravagant hotels in so rural a place, it was a story with a strong visual component. Perfect for film. Maybe this could go somewhere beyond the Bradfords. Maybe, if he did it right, this could open some doors that had swung shut in his face out in L.A.

Before even setting foot in the town, Eric had swiftly developed a sort of possessive fear about the place, a worry that somebody else was going to get there first. The stories he’d found in his first pass of research were countless. Rich and poor, gangsters and politicians, the explosion and then death of the passenger trains, Prohibition and the effects of the stock-market collapse—all of it had swirled through these bizarre little towns. They were a microcosm, really, a story of America. It was a chance to do something real again.

Alyssa Bradford called him three days after their meeting to say he could check into the West Baden Springs Hotel on the first Friday of May. That was just one week away, and she’d arranged for him to have his first—maybe his only, depending on the man’s health—chance to talk with Campbell Bradford on the Thursday prior. Alyssa warned that the old man was not well, might not be able to communicate. Eric said he still wanted to give it a shot.

Claire called that night, and when he saw her number on the caller ID, he felt flushed with relief and gratitude—it had been a week since they’d spoken, and each day was drawing longer and harder on him. Then she said, “I was just calling to check on you,” and that was all it took to erase the positive feelings. Calling to check on him? Like he was suicidal or something now that they weren’t together, incapable of maintaining a life without her in it?

He made a few cutting remarks, threw in one jab about her father, and guided her toward an early hang-up like a dog herding cattle toward an open gate. When she invited him to give her a call in a few days, he said not to count on it.

“I’m headed out of town for a while,” he said. “Few weeks, maybe a month.”

“Spontaneous vacation?” she said after a beat of silence.

“Work.”

“And where are you going?”

“Indiana,” he said, biting off the word with pain.

“How exotic.”

“It’s a hell of a story. Believe it or not, those don’t always come from Maui or Manhattan.”

“I’m just kidding. Tell me about the story.”

“Maybe later. I’ve got a lot to do, Claire.”

“Okay.” Her voice had some sorrow in it, and that pleased him. “Well, I hope it goes great for you, whatever it is.”

He swung a closed fist toward the wall, pulled the punch at the last minute, and landed it with a soft thump, no real pain. Damn her hopes for him, her well wishes, and her blessings.

“I’m sure that it will,” he said. “I’ve got a good feeling about it. Things just seem to be looking up for me lately.”

That was a cruel parting line, and he knew from her frigid Good-bye, Eric, and the click of the breaking connection that it had scored a direct hit. He turned off his phone and went to the kitchen and poured himself two fingers of Scotch. No, hell with it, pour four. He dropped an ice cube into that—Water the drink down a touch, and the quantity becomes no problem at all, right?—and then went into the living room and began scanning through the DVD collection, looking for something to take his thoughts away. Something by one of his old favorites, Huston or Peckinpah, maybe. Yes, Peckinpah. Make it bloody and loud. That seemed right tonight.

He’d watched Straw Dogs and had another Scotch and tried without success to sleep before he found himself back at the computer, researching again. He’d found there were matches for the correct Campbell Bradford—though it appeared in most formal circumstances he referred to himself as C. L. Bradford—but all of them had to do with his philanthropy. For a man of such great wealth, he’d lived a remarkably quiet existence. Eric couldn’t find so much as a short bio paragraph on the Web, just the name on list after list of contributors for various causes. His donations spanned a wide spectrum, too wide to tell Eric much about the man, but it was obvious he was partial to liberal politics and a supporter of the arts, particularly music. He’d made sizable donations to various community orchestras, but Eric noted that they seemed to be small or rural groups, with names like Hendricks County Philharmonic, rather than the prestigious symphonies. Perhaps he assumed—correctly, no doubt—that the large ones were better funded.

After cycling through pages of results without finding anything of interest, Eric went back and ran a search for Campbell along with the words “West Baden” and got nothing. He tried again with “French Lick” and was surprised to find three results. A closer look revealed all three were basically the same thing—a request for information on Campbell and a handful of others posted by an Indiana University graduate student named Kellen Cage. The student explained that he was researching the area’s history for a thesis and was hoping for any information about a handful of people—particularly, he’d written, Campbell Bradford and Shadrach Hunter. The latter name meant nothing to Eric. There was an e-mail address listed, though, so Eric went ahead and dropped him a note. If the kid was intrigued by Campbell, that meant he’d heard some stories already, which put him well ahead of Eric. And, for that matter, Campbell’s family.

After exhausting the minimal possibilities for Campbell, he turned to searching for Pluto Water and soon found some old ads that he’d have to include in the film. They were priceless. Pluto Water cured damn near everything, it seemed. Alcoholism, asthma, obesity, paralysis, pimples, hives, influenza, insomnia, malaria, and venereal disease all made the list. It turned out the product was nothing more than a laxative, but even after that was known, the company still made millions bottling and selling it with the charming slogan When nature won’t, Pluto will.

The ads themselves were amazing things, too, perfect images of a time and place and people. Women in flowing gowns, men in suits, and that silly smiling devil always present. Eric was particularly taken with one of a man standing in front of a basin sink and mirror. In the illustration he looked back at himself in what appeared to be true and total horror, and the text beside his head read, What’s wrong with me?

He got to his feet, planning on another Scotch but then thought better of it. Maybe because the room reeled a little around him, maybe because he’d just seen the word alcoholism on those lists. Didn’t want to dance too close to that partner, no.

But he was on his feet, and he felt like he was in search of something.

The Pluto Water. He went into the living room and found his briefcase and opened it, wrapped his hand around the bottle. Still cold. Still oddly cold, in fact. How could water sit in a room for so long and never absorb its temperature? He hadn’t read anything about that quality in his research.

“Curer of ills,” he said, running his thumb over the etchings. The water looked hideous, but millions of bottles had been consumed over the years. Had to be safe. Mineral water didn’t go bad, did it? Then again, wouldn’t anything go bad after so long?

Only one way to find out, but of course he couldn’t do that.

Why not?

For one thing, the water could be tainted, could poison his ass, leave him dead on the living room floor from one tiny taste.

You know that won’t happen. That water is natural, came out of a spring, not a chemistry set.

But there were other reasons, those of the courteous, professional sort, not to crack into an artifact the old man had for some reason left untouched all these years.

It has a cap. You open it, take a sip, put the damn cap back on. Who’s to know?

He felt like a young boy standing in front of the liquor cabinet, pondering his first taste of the sauce. Drink some of it down, then fill it up with water—maybe apple juice for color—and they’ll never know. What the hell was his problem? It was a bottle of old mineral water. Why did he want to know what it tasted like? It tasted, no doubt, like shit.

Scared of it. For some reason, you’re scared of it, you pussy.

It was true, he realized as he stood there staring at the bottle, it was true and it was pathetic, and there was only one way to slap that fear down. He forced the old wires up and loosened the stopper. It was a terrible thing to do—he’d probably just cut the bottle’s value in half by opening it, and it wasn’t even his bottle—but after the whiskeys and the bad conversation with Claire and the realization that for some inexplicable reason he was frightened of this bottle, he no longer cared about that. He just wanted a taste.

There was a sulfuric smell to the water, and he felt mildly repulsed as he lifted the bottle to take a drink. He was almost unable to bear the smell of the stuff; how had so many people actually ingested it?

The bottle hit his lips and tilted and a splash of the contents sloshed over the rim and into his mouth and found his throat.

And Eric gagged.

Dropped to his knees and spat the foulness onto the carpet, the taste more corrupt than anything he’d ever experienced, a taste of rot, of death.

He set the bottle on the floor, spat onto the carpet again as he took a shuddering breath through his nose, and then felt another gag coming on and knew this time it wasn’t going to be so clean, made it halfway into the bathroom before vomiting violently onto the floor. The whiskey scorched through his throat and burned his nostrils and he fought his way to the toilet and hung on to the bowl and emptied again, felt his temples throb and saw his vision go cloudy with tears from the force of it, the terrible exertion.

The next bout was worse, an awful wrenching from deep in his stomach, like somebody twisting a wet towel until the fibers screamed with strain. When he finished, he was facedown on the floor, the tile cold on his cheek.

It was an hour before he left the bathroom. An hour before he felt strong enough to stand. He got out the mop and a bucket and some disinfectant spray and went to work. When the bathroom was clean, he returned to the living room, avoiding the clock that announced it was four in the morning, long past the hour that decent people had found their beds, and picked up the Pluto bottle. The smell rose again, and he clenched his teeth as he fastened the cap, holding his breath until the bottle was in his briefcase.

Curer of ills, indeed.

4

THE NEXT DAY HE took some Excedrin and drank about a gallon of iced tea and waited until evening to eat, and that night he did not allow himself so much as a beer or a glass of wine.

There were no other jobs in play, just the Bradford project, so he spent the rest of the week on research and equipment shopping, considering spending Alyssa Bradford’s advance check on a new camera. He wanted to upgrade partially for the quality improvement and partially to stop using the camera Claire’s father had given him as a present after things bottomed out in L.A. and Eric followed Claire to Chicago. That pretentious bastard. His latest novel had just come out this week. Eric wouldn’t read the book, that was for damn sure, but if he heard of a bad review, he’d absolutely read that.

He didn’t talk to Claire again before his meeting with Campbell Bradford. By the morning after their last phone call, which he awoke to with a headache that clearly intended to linger for a few hours, he wished that he’d told her more. It would’ve interested her, and she would’ve listened. One thing about Claire, she always listened.

But he didn’t call, and she didn’t either. He checked the caller ID every day, and that ritual became maddening—she was his wife, and here he was, checking to see if she might have called.

His wife.

He stopped by the apartment to pick up his equipment the night of his interview with Campbell Bradford and saw the message light blinking on the answering machine, thought perhaps Claire had called, then hated himself for such hopefulness. He didn’t allow himself to even check the message, ignoring the machine while he picked up his camera and tripod and briefcase. When he opened the case to put his recorder inside—always good to have an audio backup—he saw the pale green bottle and felt a wave of nausea. He started to remove the bottle, then changed his mind. Maybe he’d show it to old Campbell and see what sort of response it triggered.

Alyssa Bradford had told him to go by the hospital around seven. He went through the building as quickly as he could, long, fast strides, the camera bag banging against his leg. He hated hospitals, always had. When he found the right room number—712—he discovered the door was closed. Rapped lightly on it with his knuckles.

“Hello?” he said, pushing it open, poking his head inside. “Mr. Bradford?”

There were two beds in the room, but only one was occupied. The man in it turned to look at Eric, one half of his face lit by a small fluorescent lamp above the bed. Otherwise the room was dark. The sheets were pulled up to the man’s neck, and the face above them was weathered and gaunt, with sunken blue eyes that announced his sickness even more than the hospital room itself. Loose skin hung off a jaw that once would have been hard and square, and though the hands resting on top of the sheets were thin and brittle, they were large. Would have been powerful, once.

“Mr. Bradford?” Eric said again, and the old man seemed to nod.

“Your daughter-in-law said she told you I’d be coming,” Eric said, crossing to the foot of the bed and pulling up a plastic chair. “I hope I’m not here at a bad time.”

No answer. Not a word, or a blink. But the eyes followed Eric.

“I think Alyssa told you what I was going to be doing?” Eric said. He was reaching into his camera bag now, rushing things along because the old man’s unresponsive stare was unsettling.

“I was hoping I could hear some of the stories you’ve got to tell,” he continued as he removed the camera. “Alyssa promised me you’ve got some good ones.”

Campbell Bradford’s breath came and went in soft, barely audible hisses, and when Eric became aware of the sound, he wanted out of the room, cursed himself for forcing this suggestion on Alyssa in the first place. This man was dying. He was not months away, or even weeks away. Death was close. He could hear it in those little puffing hisses from Campbell’s nose.

It hadn’t been so many years ago that Eric could be in the presence of an old, sick person like this and feel sorrow. Now he felt fear. The buffer zone of years was thinning too fast. He’d be here soon.

“I’ll just let you talk as much as you want, and whenever you’re ready for me to go, I’ll get lost,” he said, unfolding the tripod and fastening the camera to it. When he stole a glance at Campbell, he saw the same blank face and thought, Well, this isn’t going to take long. The man was not going to be able to talk to him. Then Eric took the lens cap off and dropped his eye to the viewfinder to check the focus and felt his next words die in his chest, pulled down by a cold fist of fear. In the viewfinder Campbell Bradford was watching him with an entirely different expression, the blue eyes hard and penetrating and astonishingly alert. They were the eyes of a young man, a strong man.

Eric lifted his head slowly, turned from the camera to the man in the bed and felt that cold fist in his chest open and flutter its fingers.

Campbell Bradford’s face had not changed. The eyes looked just as dim, just as unaware. Eric looked at the door, wishing now that he’d left it open.

“You going to talk to me?” Eric asked.

A slow blink, another hissed breath. Nothing else.

Eric looked at him, then thought, Okay, let’s try it again, and lowered his eye to the viewfinder. There was Campbell, still in the bed, still watching him, still with alert blue eyes that looked nothing like the ones Eric had just been staring into.

He wanted to look up again but didn’t, kept his eye to the camera instead. Give Paul Porter credit—he might be an asshole, but the man bought one hell of a camera. It was amazing, the way the thing picked up the life in Campbell Bradford’s eyes.

“Are you going to talk to me tonight?” Eric asked again, this time with his eye to the camera.

“Yes,” Campbell Bradford said, voice clear and strong.

Eric jerked his head up, bumped the tripod with his knee, and nearly knocked the camera over. Campbell looked back at him, face empty.

“Great,” Eric said, steadying the camera and facing Campbell. “Where would you like to start? What would you like to tell me?”

Nothing.

What in the hell was this about? The old bastard spoke only when Eric was looking at him through the camera. He waited, and still Campbell was silent. Eric pursed his lips, exhaled, shook his head. Okay, Gramps, I’ll look away again. He put his eye to the viewfinder and said, “I’d like to ask you about your childhood. Is that okay?”

“I don’t really have much to say about that,” Campbell Bradford said. His face was unchanged in the camera, the skin still loose and sallow, the sickness still clear. In fact, nothing had changed except the look in his eyes. For the first time, Eric considered that the old man could be screwing with him. That blank-faced look could be forced.

“Can I ask you something off topic?” Eric said.

“Yes.” The voice was clear enough, but not youthful. It was an elderly man’s voice. A sick man’s voice.

“Are you going to talk to me only when I’m looking through the camera?”

Campbell Bradford smiled.

“That,” Eric said, “is one wicked sense of humor.”

He lifted his head again, and Campbell went back to the vacant expression, and Eric laughed.

“Okay, I’ll play the game.” He moved the camera over and flicked the viewing display open so he could look through the camera without having to keep his eye to the tiny viewfinder. “Why don’t you want to talk to me about your childhood?”

“Not much to say.”

The old man was good. He could time it right, speak just as Eric dropped his eyes to the display, stop just as he flicked his eyes up. What a case.

“Tell me about the town, maybe. West Baden, isn’t that it?”

“Nice town,” Campbell said, and his voice seemed tired now.

“Did you live by the hotel?” Eric said and waited a long time on this one, staring right at Campbell, waiting for him to crack. He didn’t, and Eric dropped his eyes to the camera, and Campbell said, “Sure.”

Shit, he wasn’t going to give it up.

“How long did you live there?” Eric said, eyes still on the camera.

“A while.” The fatigue appeared to be taking Campbell quickly, and Eric wondered if the game he’d played had sapped his strength.

Show him the bottle, maybe. Tell him the way that shit had tasted, see if he could get a laugh or a response of any depth. Eric took the bottle out. Damn but that thing was cold.

“Alyssa gave me this,” he said, pushing it into the old man’s hand, and for the first time Campbell’s face changed while Eric had his eyes away from the camera, went drawn and lined with concern.

“You shouldn’t have this,” he said.

“I’m sorry. She brought it to me.”

Campbell’s long, ancient fingers opened and he lifted his hand from the bottle, found Eric’s forearm and squeezed with surprising strength.

“It was so cold,” he said.

“The bottle? Yeah, I know. Weird stuff.”

“No!” Campbell’s eyes were wide now, full of emotion, the game forgotten.

“What?”

“Not the bottle.”

“Well, I thought it was plenty cold. When I touched—”

“Not the bottle.”

Eric said, “What, then? What are you talking about?”

“So cold.”

“What was?”

“The river.”

“What river are you talking about?”

“It was so cold.”

Eric wanted to say something about Bradford’s sense of humor again, wanted to give him some credit for this unnerving and inventive-as-hell prank, but he couldn’t get the words out, couldn’t even get them formed, because he was staring into the man’s face and unable to believe that any drama school on earth had ever produced a talent like this. He wasn’t acting. He was lost in some frozen memory. One that terrified him.

“So cold the river,” Campbell Bradford repeated, his voice now dropping to a whisper as he lowered his head back to the pillow. “So cold the river.”

“What river? I don’t understand what you’re talking about, sir.”

Nothing.

Eric said, “Mr. Bradford? I’m sorry I brought the bottle.”

Silence. The amazing job of blank-faced posing he’d done before paled in comparison to this.

“Mr. Bradford, I was hoping to talk to you about your life. If you don’t want to talk about West Baden or your childhood, that’s fine with me. Let’s talk about your career, then. Your kids.”

But it wasn’t going to work. Not anymore. The old man was stone silent. Game or not, Eric wasn’t going to wait all night. He let five minutes pass, asked a few more questions, got no response.

“All right,” he said, removing the camera from the tripod. “I think you were messing with me earlier, and I hope you are now. I’m sorry if I upset you.”

That got a languid blink. When Eric picked up the bottle from the bed and put it back in his briefcase, Campbell followed it with his eyes but said nothing.

“Okay,” Eric said. “Take care, Mr. Bradford.”

He left the hospital and drove back to the apartment, opened a beer and leaned against the refrigerator while he drank it, holding the bottle to his forehead between sips. What a weird guy. What a weird night.

It was the sort of story he’d have shared with Claire once, and that thought reminded him of the message he still hadn’t checked. Maybe it was her. Hopefully, it was her. If she’d called, he was justified in calling her back. It would give him the excuse.

When he played the message, though, it wasn’t Claire’s voice.

“Eric, hey, I hope this catches you! This is Alyssa Bradford, and I’m calling to tell you not to waste your time driving to the hospital tonight. My father-in-law took a turn for the worse this week. I went down there yesterday and he couldn’t say a word, would just look at me and stare. The doctors said he hasn’t spoken since Monday. I’m so sorry it won’t work out. I wish you could have talked with him. He had such a sense of humor. I guess the last time he spoke, it was to tell the nurse she needed to get a new outfit. That was just like him. If those were his last words, at least they were a joke.”

She wished him luck in West Baden and hung up. Eric finished the rest of his beer in a long swallow and deleted the message.

“Hate to tell you, Alyssa,” he said aloud, “but those weren’t his last words.”

5

IT HIT NINETY ON the first Friday of May, and everyone Anne McKinney spoke with commented on the heat, shook their heads, and expressed disbelief. Anne, of course, had seen this coming about six weeks earlier, when spring arrived early and emphatically. It had been in the high sixties throughout the third week of March, and while the TV people were busy talking about when it would break, Anne knew by the fourth day that it would not. Not really, not in the way of a normal Indiana spring, with those wild swings, seventy one day and thirty the next.

No, this year spring settled in and put up its feet, and winter didn’t have much to say about it, just a few overnight grumblings of cold rain and wind. There had been five days in the eighties during April, and the rain that came was gentle. Nurturing. The entire town was in bloom now, everything lush and green and unpunished. The grounds around the hotel were particularly stunning. Always were, of course—full-time landscapers could do that for you—but Anne had seen eighty-six springs in West Baden, remembered about eighty of those pretty well, and this was as beautiful as any of them.

And as hot.

She couldn’t avoid the weather conversations even if she’d wanted to; it was her identity in town, the only thing most people could think to mention when they saw her. Sometimes the topic came up casually, other times with genuine interest and inquiry, and, often enough, with winks and smiles. It amused some people, her fascination with weather, her house on the hill filled with barometers and thermometers and surrounded by weather vanes and wind chimes. That was fine by Anne. To each his own, as they said. She knew what she was waiting for.

Truth be told, there were times when she thought she might never see it either. See the real storm, the one she’d been counting on since she was a girl. The last few years, maybe she’d let her eye wander a bit, let her interest dim. She still kept the daily records, of course, still knew every shift and eddy of the winds, but it was more observation and less expectation.

But now it was ninety on the first Friday of May, the air so still it was as if the wind had lost its job here, headed elsewhere in search of work. The barometer sat at 30.08 and steady, indicating no change soon. Just heat and blue skies and stillness, the summer humidity yet to arrive, that ninety more tolerable than it would be in July.

All peaceful signs really. Anne didn’t believe any of them.

She went into the West Baden hotel at three and sat in one of the luxurious velvet-covered chairs near the bar and had her afternoon cocktail. Brian, the bartender, gave a wink to one of his coworkers when he fixed Anne’s drink, as if she didn’t know he put only the barest splash of Tanqueray in the tonic before squeezing the lime. A splash was all she needed these days. Hell, she was eighty-six years old. What did the boy think she was coming down here for, to end up three sheets to the wind?

No, it was the routine. A ritual of thanks more than anything else, an appreciation for continued health, health that she couldn’t ask for at this age. She still made it up all those front steps, didn’t use a cane or a walker or a stranger’s arm. Walked in under the dome and had herself a seat and a sip. The day she couldn’t do that, well, go ahead and pop the lid on the pine box.

There wasn’t a soul in the world who would understand how it made Anne feel to come in here and see the place alive. The day it had finally reopened, she walked into the rotunda beneath that towering dome of glass and burst into tears. Had to sit down on a chair and cry, and people just smiled sympathetic-like at her, seeing an old woman having an old woman’s moment. They couldn’t understand what it meant, couldn’t understand the way this place had looked when she was a girl, the most amazing place she could ever have imagined in the world.

It had been mostly a ruin for years. Decades. She’d come and gone through the town daily, looking up to see the crumbling stone and cracked marble, and with every day and every look, a little piece of her died a wailing, anguished death.

But she’d never lost hope either. The place was special, and she just couldn’t imagine that it would go on like that forever. The hotel’s return, much like the big storm, was something she’d believed in without fail. You called that sort of thing faith.

Her faith had been rewarded. Bill Cook, the man’s name. Awful plain name, she thought, but he’d made a few billion dollars on it with a medical company up in Bloomington, and then he’d found his way down here and not only seen what had to be done but could afford to have it done.

So now they were back, both of them, the West Baden Springs Hotel and the French Lick Springs Resort, buildings that seemed as out of place in this valley as a pair of giraffes at a dog show, and though she had no use for the ugly fake riverboat casino that was built to draw people down, she understood its purpose. Most irksome part of that was that the thing wasn’t really a riverboat, was nothing but a building with a moat around it, but evidently that was enough to please the legislators, who wouldn’t allow anything but riverboat casinos in the state. You had to wonder what that said about the quality of brains in the statehouse, that they could fool themselves into thinking a building was a boat just because you filled a ditch around it with water, but Anne had been around for too many years to hold much hope for government anyhow. They could have declared the thing a spaceship for all she cared as long as it allowed the hotels to come back.

She’d lived to see it. That was a special thing, and one that returned her faith in the storm. It was coming, someday, a dark, furious cloud, and though she didn’t know what role she would play in that, she knew it was important that she be ready. Part of her wanted the storm; part of her dreaded it. As much as she loved them—those brilliant flashes of lightning, the terrible screaming winds—she feared them, too. They took all the powers of man and sneered at them.

A convention of some sort was in the hotel today, and the place was particularly active, echoing with voices and laughter and footfalls on the parquet. It soothed her like a hand on the shoulder. She asked Brian for one more, smiled to herself as she saw him fill the short glass with nothing but tonic and ice before adding the lime. He knew the rules. Anne was here for the sounds and the sights, not the sauce.

She took the tonic in slow, and by the time it was gone, that comforting noise and bustle and the soft velvet armchair were pulling her down to sleep, and she knew it was time to go. Start falling asleep down here and she’d begin to seem less charming to the staff. Right now, with her daily gin and her smiles and occasional barbed jokes, she was something of a local treasure. Valued, appreciated, even by the younger ones. She liked that role, and understood all too well that it could quickly be erased by one drooling nap.

She got to her feet, taking care to relish that tug of pain in her lower back, a tug that she wouldn’t have if she couldn’t still get to her feet. Left a few dollars for Brian—Thank you, Mrs. McKinney, have a good day and we’ll see you tomorrow—and walked away from the bar and back into the rotunda. Stood in the middle and looked up at the dome, with the sun shining down and the place glittering, took a deep breath, and thanked the good Lord for one more afternoon like this. Precious things. Precious.

Out the main doors and back onto the steps and what do you know—there was some wind to greet her. First she’d felt all day. Nothing of real notice, just a gentle, experimental puff, like the breeze wasn’t sure about it yet, but it was there all the same. She stood at the top of the steps and watched the bushes rustle and the leaves turn and flutter, saw that the wind was coming up out of the southwest now. Interesting. She hadn’t expected the shift today. The air was still hot, might’ve even pushed a few degrees past ninety by now, but she thought she could detect a chill to the wind, almost as if there was some cold trapped in it, surrounded by warmth but still there nevertheless.

She’d go home and take a few readings, see what sense she could make of it. All she knew now was that there was something in the air. Something on the way.

6

IT WAS A SIX-HOUR drive, the final third a hell of a lot more pleasant than the first two. Getting out of the city and into Indiana was a nightmare in itself, and then Eric was rewarded by only as bleak a drive as he could think of, Chicago to Indianapolis. South of Indy, though, things began to turn. The flatlands turned into hills, the endless fields filled with trees, the straight road began to curve. He stopped for lunch in Bloomington, left the highway and drove into town to see the campus, one he’d always heard was beautiful. It didn’t disappoint. He had a burger and a beer at a place called Nick’s, the beer something local, Upland Wheat. When in Rome, right? Turned out to be as good a warm-weather beer as he’d ever tasted, sort of thing made you want to stretch out in the sun and relax for a while. There was driving to be done, though, so he left it at just the one beer and got back into the Acura and pushed south.

Past Bloomington to Bedford, and then the highway hooked and lost a lane in a town called Mitchell and began to dip and rise as it carved through the hills. Everything was green, lush, and alive, and now and then flatbed trucks loaded with fresh-quarried limestone lumbered by. There weren’t many houses along this stretch of the highway, but if Eric had had a dollar for every one with a basketball hoop outside, he’d have been a rich man by the time he hit Paoli.

He knew from the map that Paoli meant he was close, and once he figured out what road to take away from the square—a mural covering the entire side of a building pointed the way to French Lick—he laid a little heavier on the gas, ready to have this drive done.

A dull, constant headache that had lodged in the back of his skull somewhere north of Indianapolis, then faded while he had his beer, now returned with a little stronger pulse to it, one that made him wince every now and then as it hit a particularly inspired chord. He had Excedrin in the suitcase, would have to take some as soon as he got to the hotel. He’d hoped things might turn a little more exotic as he neared West Baden and French Lick, but there was just more farm country. He ran past one white rail fence that seemed to stretch for a mile—would hate to paint that thing—and not much else that was worth notice. Then a few buildings began to show themselves, and a sign told him he’d reached West Baden, and he thought, You’ve got to be kidding me.

Because there was nothing here. A cluster of old buildings and a barbecue stand, and that was it. Then he felt his eyes drawn away from the road, up the hill to the right, and he let off the gas and felt his breath catch in his chest as the speed fell off.

There was the hotel. And Alyssa Bradford had used the correct word in describing it, because only one word came close—surreal. The place was that, and then some. Pale yellow towers flanked a mammoth crimson dome, and the rest of the structure fell away beneath, hundreds of windows visible in the stone. It looked more like a castle than a hotel, something that belonged in Europe, not on this stretch of farmland.

A horn blew behind him, and Eric realized he’d coasted almost to a stop in the middle of the road. He pushed on the gas again, found a set of twin stone arches that guarded a long, winding brick drive that led up to the hotel. West Baden Springs—Carlsbad of America, the arches said. He knew from his research that referred to a famed European mineral spa.

The place gave him an immediate desire to reach for the camera, get this recorded now, as if it might soon disappear.

He wasn’t certain the brick road was a legitimate entrance, so he drove past the stone arches in search of the parking lot and, within the space of a blink and a yawn, found himself in French Lick. Out of one town and into the other, all in what felt like six city blocks. They were separate towns, but the reality was, they felt like one place, and the only reason they hadn’t merged into one town over the years was those hotels. They’d been rivals at one time, French Lick and West Baden, and many locals just referred to the area as Springs Valley.

He passed the French Lick Springs Resort, which held the grandeur of its West Baden partner but not the magic. The architecture was more traditional, that was all. A good-looking building, but a building nonetheless. The West Baden hotel, with its dome and towers, quickened the pulse more. The owner of the French Lick hotel, Thomas Taggart, had been a fierce rival of the West Baden Springs Hotel owner, Lee Sinclair—in business and politics, with Taggart a key Democrat in the state and Sinclair an equally powerful Republican. For decades those two had dueled for superiority in the valley, and while Sinclair’s hotel may have won out, Taggart created a million-dollar business with his Pluto Water, while Sinclair’s Sprudel Water—virtually the same product—had somehow failed, eventually forcing him to sell his interest in the water to Taggart.

Eric turned at the casino and drove up the road in search of the entrance for the West Baden hotel. The parking lot was set to the side and above the hotel, and he parked and took his bags out and walked toward the entrance, looking out at the grounds as he went. A creek cut through the middle, surrounded by flowering trees and flowerbeds and emerald-colored grass. The smell of the grass was in the air, freshly cut, and something about that drew him away from the parking lot entrance and around to the front of the building. He set his bags down on the steps and inhaled and looked off down the long brick drive.

“What a place.” He said it aloud, but softly, and was surprised when someone said, “Wait’ll you see the inside.”

He turned and saw an elderly woman heading down the steps toward him. She looked at least eighty but walked with a firm, steady stride and wore makeup and jewelry, a pocketbook held between her upper arm and her side.

“I’m looking forward to it,” he said, stepping aside so she could come down. “Have been for a while.”

“I know the feeling,” she said. “And don’t worry, it won’t disappoint.”

He picked up his bags and went up the steps and through the doors and into the atrium. Made it about twenty feet inside before he had to drop the bags again—not because they were heavy but because taking the place in called for energy.

The dome was three times as wide as he’d expected and twice as tall, a tremendous globe of glass resting on white steel ribs. The design had been truly ingenious in its time—hell, it still was. Harrison Albright, the architect who had conceived of the whole amazing design, came up with the umbrella-like supports to hold the dome up, but he had concerns that temperature changes would cause it to expand and contract at a different rate than the building below—a sure recipe for disaster, a collapse of the dome that would shower those beneath with glass and humiliate its creator. As a solution, Albright rested the steel support ribs on ball bearings, allowing the dome to expand and contract at a different rate than the building below. This idea in 1901.

There were ten thousand square feet of glass in the dome alone. More glass than in any other building in the world at the time of its construction, more even than London’s Crystal Palace. It was one thing to read details like that on the Internet, another to see it. One of the stories Eric had found said that when they removed the supports beneath the dome, many spectators, including Sinclair, weren’t certain the thing would avoid collapse. In response, Albright insisted on climbing to the roof and standing dead center on top of the dome when they removed the last of the scaffolding. He’d been sure of his math, even if nobody else was.

The atrium stretched out beneath the dome, shining floor and ornate rugs and potted ferns, lots of gold trim on the perimeter. They’d redone the tile—twelve million marble mosaics were hand-laid in the original floor—and matched the paint to the original color, matched the rugs, matched damn near everything that could be matched. Eric had seen impressive renovations but nothing with such attention to detail.

Some of the rooms had balconies that looked out over the atrium, and he hoped Alyssa Bradford had come through with one of those for him. He wanted to sit out there at night and have a drink and watch the place quiet down. Probably see ghosts, he thought, and smiled.

The hotel had that kind of feel, though. It started with that misplaced quality, floating out here in the middle of nowhere, and then built on the astonishing design and a restoration job so carefully and perfectly completed that entering the building was like walking out of one century and into another.

He took a few steps away from his luggage, more into the center of the room, and then tilted his head back to look directly up at the dome. When he did that, the headache that had been momentarily forgotten bloomed bright behind his eyes, a swift, jagged pain. He winced and dropped his eyes, shaded them with his hand. Bad idea, looking up into the light like that. Light always exacerbated a headache.

He returned to his bags and brought them to the reception desk and checked in. Took the keycard for his room—418—and then went up and got the luggage stowed. The room was a reflection of everything else—ornate, luxurious, reminiscent of times gone by. And it had the balcony. Alyssa Bradford had done well.

He was distracted from enjoying the room, though, because the headache was getting to him now. He opened the suitcase and took out the Excedrin, shook three tablets into his palm, and went into the bathroom and poured a glass of water and washed them down.

That should help. A drink didn’t sound like a bad idea either. He wanted to sit down at the bar under the dome and sip one slow. Give the Excedrin a little while to work, and then he’d come back up and get the camera and start the job.

Josiah Bradford had hardly gotten his cigarette lit before Amos came boiling around the corner, telling him to put it out. Had one tantalizing puff and then he was smashing it under his foot and Amos was bitching at him.

“How many times I got to tell you, we don’t smoke on the job, Josiah. You think I want the guests to come outside to enjoy the day and have to breathe in the cigarette smoke from my landscaping crew? I swear, son, you get told and told again and it don’t mean a thing to you.”

Josiah bit down his response, shoved past Amos’s wide paunch and threw the cigarette into the trash, and took his weed eater and fired it up with a theatrical flourish, pumping the throttle trigger with his index finger to turn the thing’s whine into a scream and drown out Amos’s voice. Shit, it was a cigarette, not an atom bomb. Amos needed to get his ass some perspective.

Josiah went off down the brick road, trimming edges that didn’t need trimmed, keeping his back to Amos until he heard the Gator come to life and drive away. Then he let off the trigger, turned to Amos departing in the stupid little cart, and sent a thick wad of spit in his direction. Didn’t come close, but it was the gesture that counted.

It was too damn hot for May. The skin on Josiah’s arms and the back of his neck had gone dark brown by mid-April, and now he could feel the sweat soaking through his shirt and holding his hair to his neck in damp tangles. Had been a time, not all that long ago, that he’d been griping about the cold. Now he wished fall would hustle along.

He worked all the way down the brick drive to the stone arches and the old building beside them that had once been a bank. Then he crossed to the other side and paused before starting his return trip, looking up at the length of the drive at the work yet to be done. Looking up at that damned hotel.

Oh, he’d liked it at one time. Had been excited, same as everybody, when word came down that the place was going to be restored, that the casino was on its way. Jobs aplenty, that was the word. Well, he had his job now. Had his callused hands and sunburn. Some fortune.

The resorts were supposed to be a big deal for the locals. Provide a—what was the word that politician had said?—a boon, that was it. A boon. Shit.

Thing these damn hotels provided, so far as Josiah was concerned, was torment. Rich folks coming in again, the way they had so long ago, and all of a sudden you were more aware of your place in the world. More aware of your fifteen-year-old Ford pickup when it was idling next to a Mercedes with Massachusetts plates, waiting for a green light. More aware of the Keystone Ice you bought in thirty-packs when you saw somebody in an Armani suit throw down a twenty for a Grey Goose martini and then wave off the change.

They said all this was going to boost the local economy, and they’d been right. Josiah made eight thousand dollars more per year now than he had before the restorations began. But he did it trimming weeds in front of people who made eighty grand more than that. Eight hundred grand more than that. Worse than the money was the anonymity—people coming and going right past you all day and never giving you so much as a blink. Wasn’t that they disrespected you outright; they didn’t even realize you were there.

It vexed him. Had almost from the day the hotel doors opened and he saw all that gold and glitter, from the first time he’d walked through the casino with his hand wrapped tight around the ten-dollar bill that was all he could afford to gamble with. Because Josiah Bradford’s family had been in this valley for generations, and there was a time, back when the resorts were flourishing in the Prohibition days, when they were powerful. Noticed and known. Somehow, seeing the place come back to life while he held a weed eater in his hands felt beyond wrong—felt intolerable.

Why, wasn’t but a month ago that some black kid from IU came to Josiah’s home in a damned Porsche Cayenne, just dripping money, and said he wanted to talk about Josiah’s great-grandfather, Campbell, the man who’d controlled this valley once. Granted, he’d run off and left his family, taking with him every dime they had—and according to the stories, plenty of dimes they didn’t have, too—but in his time he’d been as powerful as anyone who ever walked through that damn rotunda. A behind-the-scenes sort of influence, the kind you built with brass knuckles and brass balls, the only kind Josiah’d ever respected. Campbell’s legacy was an infamous one, but Josiah had always felt a strange kind of pride in him anyhow. Then the black kid showed up, some rich student, wanting to talk about the tales, put his own version of the Bradford family history down on paper. Josiah threw him the hell out of his house and hadn’t heard from him since, but the car was around often enough, a 450-horse motor in a frigging SUV, dumbest thing Josiah had ever seen, seventy thousand-some dollars’ worth of stupid.

Every insult was fuel for the fire, though. That’s what he told himself day in and day out, what kept him here, putting cigarettes out before he’d even had a chance to smoke them, saying yessir and nosir to that fat bastard Amos. It wouldn’t last forever. You could bet your sweet ass on that. There’d come a day when he’d walk back into this shit-hole town and make ’em stir, swagger into that casino and toss a few thousand on the table, look bored when he won and amused when he lost, have the crowd hanging on it.

You had to be ambitious. Josiah figured that out early, knew even when he dropped out of high school that he would rise above all this crap. He didn’t need high school, that was all. Had all As and Bs except for a C in chemistry when he quit. But what was he going to do, earn a scholarship, go up to IU or Purdue and get some bullshit degree that landed him a four-bedroom house with a thirty-year mortgage and a leased Volvo? Please. What he had his sights on was a good deal bigger than that, and you didn’t need the schooling to get it. What you needed was the hunger. And Josiah Bradford had that in spades. Fire in the belly, his old man had called it just before tying one on up in Bedford and wrapping his Trans Am around a tree on US 50, killing himself before Josiah had the pleasure.

Better believe it was a fire. Burned hotter every day, but Josiah was no idiot, knew that it required a touch of patience, required waiting for the right opportunity.

The puttering sound of the Gator’s little motor broke him out of his reverie, and he bowed his head and extended the weed eater again, let the sun scorch on his back as he began to make the slow trip back up the brick drive to the hotel.

The Bradford name had meant something in this town once.

It would again.

7

THERE WAS A COCKTAIL waitress at the bar who reminded Eric of Claire, the same willowy build and glossy dark hair and easy laugh, so he decided not to linger over that drink so long after all. He settled for one beer again and then went up to the room and took his shoes off and lay on the bed, thinking he’d rest for a few minutes. Evidently the drive and the beer were enough to coax sleep along, because when he opened his eyes again the bedside clock showed that he’d slept for nearly two hours. It was past five now. Time to get into action.

He sat up with a grunt, still feeling foggy with sleep, and swung his feet to the floor and went to get his briefcase. There was a legal pad in it on which he’d sketched a rough outline of what he wanted to get done first. All he had scheduled for today was an evening meeting with that graduate student who’d posted about Campbell on the Internet, but he’d like to get some film done, too, get things rolling as much as possible.

Inside the briefcase he found the legal pad and the bottle of Pluto Water, which reminded him that he needed to check on that, get an accurate date if possible.

When he took the bottle out of the briefcase, he could’ve sworn it was even colder than when he’d last touched it in Chicago. It had always been unnaturally cool, but now it felt as if it had just come out of a refrigerator. It was hard to believe, considering his last experience with it, but somehow the bottle looked almost tempting today. Almost refreshing.

“No way,” he said, thinking about another taste. He couldn’t ever stomach that again. Who knew what was wrong with it. Stuff would probably kill you.

All the same, he loosened the cap again. Lowered his nose to it and took a quick sniff, bracing for that noxious, stomach-turning scent.

He didn’t get it. A trace, maybe, but nothing so foul as last time. In fact, it smelled mild now, almost sweet. That was odd. Must have released the worst of the smell as soon as it was opened. Maybe that’s how they did it in the old days, let the stuff sit open for a while before consumption.

Oh, hell, he thought, go on and get a little on your tongue.

He poured a few drops into a cupped palm, then held it to his face and dipped the tip of his tongue into it, expecting the worst.

It wasn’t so bad at all. Just a barely perceptible sweetness. It must have needed to breathe a little. No way he was going to brave an actual swallow of it again, though. No way.

He put the cap back on and left the room.

That first afternoon it felt right to just wander. He opened with a few shots of the dome and the atrium and the rest of the interior splendor, then moved on outside and explored the grounds. There were a handful of beautiful but small stone buildings that had once housed some of the mineral spas. A fountain highlighted the center of the garden, and Eric discovered there was a small cemetery on the hill above, looking down at the dome. He took a few experimental shots from the ground, shooting at the hotel past the tilted gravestones, and was pleased with the results. This spot needed to be incorporated into whatever he did—anytime you could shoot down on something so grand with gravestones in the forefront, you should.

He went back down the hill, amazed at the heat on this first weekend of May, his shirt already clinging to his back, his forehead wet with perspiration, and then walked to the end of the brick drive—past an even more sweat-soaked man with a weed eater, who returned Eric’s nod with a surly look—and then stood beneath the stone arches and shot back up at the hotel. The sun was still high, glaring off the dome, and he thought that it would probably be pretty powerful if he could catch it at just the right stage of twilight some night, as the sun fell and those old-fashioned lamps came on.

There was no shortage of options and angles here; the place offered a sort of visual potential he hadn’t seen anywhere else. He took some shots up from outside the arches, using a slow zoom up the brick drive, trying to create the effect of walking up on the place, then went back to the car and headed toward French Lick. It was within walking distance, but not when lugging his equipment under the scorching sun.

Once inside, he had to give the French Lick hotel a bit more credit—it was pretty amazing in its own right. It would have seemed extraordinary in this little town were it not for the big brother up the road. As he walked through, Eric felt a mild sense of sympathy for Thomas Taggart. He’d built a hell of a place here, only to have it outshined by something a mile away. That’s how it could go, though—there was always somebody a little bit better.

He shot video in the hotel and the casino, wandering, and found himself drinking another beer in a basement bar, where the walls were adorned with antique electrical switchgear. The Power Plant, they called it. Whatever—the beer was cold, and the lights were dim, and that helped his headache. He wasn’t sure what that was all about. Eric had never been prone to headaches, but this persistent little bastard had been with him all day. Could be he was coming down with something.

He ate dinner at the casino’s buffet, taking his time, nothing left to do until nine, when he was supposed to meet the graduate student. The kid had told Eric he’d be driving down from Bloomington that night, so they’d agreed to meet late and grab a drink at the hotel bar. Not much else had been said in the e-mail exchange, so Eric had no idea how helpful the kid might be.

When he got back outside, the grounds were bathed in long shadows, the sun fading behind the tree-covered hills above. There was a back road connecting the two hotels and the casino, used by shuttles to ferry gamblers back and forth, and he took that on the return trip. Ahead of him was an old Chevy Blazer with a worn-out muffler, steep tree-lined hills on the left, a low valley with train tracks on the right. Four deer stood grazing in the valley, regarding the cars curiously but not fearfully. He had the windows down and his arm resting across the door and his mind was on Claire, disconnected from his surroundings, until he saw the leaves.

They were down on the right, in a short field that ran between the railroad tracks and a creek. A cluster of dead leaves soaked by winter snows and spring rains and then baked to parchment under this unseasonable sun. He looked away from the road as the Blazer in front of him crackled and roared and pulled away, put his foot on the brake and turned the wheel, and brought the Acura to a stop on the side of the road, watching.

The leaves were spinning in a circle, rising several feet off the ground but remaining tightly packed, swirling in a perfect vortex. It was the sort of thing you’d see during the fall in Chicago, where the winds eddied between buildings, trapped by tons of concrete and steel and forced into unusual patterns. But out here, in an open field, when the wind seemed to blow only out of the west and had nothing to redirect it, that circle was unusual. Even the wind itself seemed tremulous, lending an uneasy quality to the way those leaves danced and spun. Yes, that was the word. Uneasy.

He put the car in park and opened his door and stepped out into the wind, felt it wrap his shirt around his body and lift warm road dust to his nostrils, a smell that reminded him of summer labor during college, when he’d hauled wheelbarrows around construction sites for a Missouri masonry company. He left the road with the car running and the door only half closed, an electronic chime pinging after him, and walked down the short hill and into the tall grass on the other side. Up the little ridge and onto the tracks, and then he stopped, looking down at those leaves.

The vortex had thickened now, attracting more leaves. It was at least eight feet tall and maybe four feet in diameter at the top and one foot at the bottom. Swirling clockwise, a little rise and fall in the motion, but generally a perfect circle.

For a moment he was completely captivated, holding his breath and staring, but then his mind kicked into gear and he thought, Get the camera, dumbass.

He hurried back to the Acura and dug the camera and tripod out, sure that when he turned his back, the leaves would have settled, this rapturous moment gone. They were still turning, though, and he walked up to the gravel ridge where the train tracks ran and got the camera set up and turned on.

For this he wanted the zoom reduced as much as possible, a wide-angle shot that captured the bizarre look. The light was poor, the gray gloom of twilight, but it was enough to work with. Behind the swirling leaves the deer stood at the edge of the tree line and stared at him. He’d been standing with his eye to the viewfinder for a few seconds before their ears rose and, one after another in a silent sequence, they took quick leaps into the trees and vanished. It wasn’t until the last one disappeared that he became aware of a sound, faint at first but building rapidly. Wind was part of the sound—more wind in his ears than there was in the air, heavy and roaring. There was something else over the top of it, though, light and lilting. A violin.

Now a third sound joined in, lower than both the violin and the wind, and at first he thought it was the steady plucking of a cello or bass. Then it grew louder and he realized it wasn’t an instrument at all, but an engine, the sound of heavy gears straining, pounding along in constant rhythm. The violin rose to a frantic shrieking and then vanished abruptly, and the wind died down and the leaves fell out of the vortex and scattered over the ground, one blowing across the grass and trapping itself against Eric’s leg.

The engine sound was louder than ever, approaching fast, and Eric turned from the camera and looked up the railroad tracks and saw the cloud. It was a roiling, midnight-colored mass sitting low on the horizon and blowing in fast. He stood in the middle of the tracks and stared up at it, feeling the fading sun on the back of his neck but seeing nothing but darkness ahead, and then the clouds parted and fell back and a train emerged from the center.

It was a locomotive, and that malevolent dark cloud was boiling out of its stack, thick snakes of black steam. A whistle screamed, and Eric could feel the vibrations under his feet now, the rails trembling with the approaching weight, loose gravel rattling.

The train was moving faster than any he’d ever seen, and he was standing right in its path. He stepped to the side and caught the tip of one shoe on the rail, stumbled and almost fell as he lifted the tripod and scrambled down off the tracks and into the grass where the fallen leaves lay. When the locomotive thundered by him, he had to turn from the tracks and lift one arm to shield his face. Then the whistle split the air again and he looked up at the boxcars whirling by and saw that the train was colorless, all shades of black and gray except for one white car with a splash of red in the Pluto Water logo. The door of this car was open and a man hung from it, his feet inside the car and his torso extended, weight resting on the hand clasped to the edge of the door. He wore an old-fashioned suit with a vest and a bowler hat. As the car approached he looked at Eric and smiled and tipped his hat. It seemed like a gesture of gratitude. His dark brown eyes held a liquid quality, shimmering, and Eric could see that he was standing in water, some of it splashing over the side, glistening in the darkness that surrounded the train.

Then the train was by, an all-black caboose at the end, and the accompanying cloud lifted and Eric stood staring into the sky, looking at nothing. A car came down the road, swerving into the oncoming lane briefly as it passed the Acura, and the woman behind the wheel gave Eric a curious look but didn’t slow, went on toward West Baden Springs on the heels of a train she clearly hadn’t seen.

8

THE SENSE THAT CREPT over him then was unlike anything he’d ever experienced before, reality and the world he knew separating and speeding away from each other. He’d seen the train so clearly, had smelled the heat and felt the earth shudder. It had been real, damn it.

But now it was gone. Faded into the evening air like an apparition, and he was sure that the woman who’d just passed by had not seen a thing. There was not so much as a trace of smoke in the sky.

Even the wind was gone. That thought brought the spinning leaves back into his mind, and he turned to the camera and flicked open the display window. The leaves had been real. He had that crazy shit on tape.

He punched the rewind button and then play, jumped through some film from the casino until he reached the gloomy field and train tracks and the…

empty sky.

There were no leaves in the air on this tape. Nothing except the tracks and the trees and the tall grass waving in the wind.

He went back to the casino shots again, played the video all the way through, squinting at the screen, and again saw no trace of the spinning leaves.

“Bullshit,” he said aloud, staring at display. “Bullshit, you are so full of shit…”

“I thought a camera could never lie,” someone said from above him, and Eric lifted his head and looked up to see a young black guy watching him. He’d pulled up behind the Acura and gotten out of his car and Eric hadn’t noticed any of it as he stood there staring obsessively at a camera that was calling him a liar.

“I’m not certain,” the guy said, “but I think I was on my way to meet you.”

Eric cocked his head and gave a closer look. The guy was tall, probably six four at least, and very dark, with short hair and wide shoulders. Dressed in jeans and a white button-down shirt that hung loose and untucked.

“Kellen Cage?” Eric said. This was not who he’d expected to be doing a thesis on the history of a rural Indiana town.

“Ah, so you are Eric.”

“How did you figure that out?”

“In your e-mail you said you were working on some sort of film project. And I’m no detective but I can’t imagine there are many people walking around here with a camera like that.”

“Right.”

“What are you shooting?” Cage said, surveying the area.

“Ah, nothing. Landscape, you know.”

“Yeah? Well, you ought to park somewhere else, man, or at least close the door. Somebody’s gonna take it off, you leave it like that.”

Kellen Cage had walked closer, all the way down the hill, and he looked even younger now. Maybe twenty-five, twenty-six at best. His size was more evident down here, too. Eric wasn’t a small guy—six feet and one hundred and eighty pounds that had been pretty hard pounds before he’d left L.A.—but this Kellen Cage, taller and broader and knotted with muscle, made Eric feel tiny.

“So what’s the problem with your camera?” Cage said when Eric didn’t respond.

“Nothing, man. Nothing.”

“You were giving it one hell of a lecture over nothing.” He had his head leaned to the side, was studying Eric with a skeptical look. Eric didn’t answer, just set to work removing the camera from the tripod and replacing it in its case.

“So what kind of film are you doing?” Kellen Cage asked.

“Oh, just a minor thing, nothing worth talking about but something that pays, and considering doing more. What about you?”

He was struggling with the camera because his hands were shaking, and he hoped Cage hadn’t noticed.

“Been coming down here for months,” Cage said. “Working on a thesis for my doctorate up at Indiana. I’d like to get a book out of it, though. Came down and thought, man, there’s a lot here. Hate to waste it.”

“Focusing on the hotel?”

“Nope. All the historical attention paid to this place has revolved around the hotels and Taggart and Sinclair, but there’s a strong black history, too. Joe Louis came down here all the time, used to train here before big fights, thought there was some sort of magic to the springs. Swore he never lost a fight after leaving the place. He didn’t stay in this hotel, though—stayed at a place called the Waddy that was for blacks. And they had a baseball team made up of porters and cooks and groundskeepers from the hotels who played with the major-league clubs that came down here for spring training. Played well with them, is the way it’s told, beat the Pirates once. The black teams they had down here could’ve played with anybody.”

Eric finally had the camera in the bag. It took him a few seconds to realize that Kellen Cage had stopped talking and was waiting on a response.

“I read some about Louis,” Eric said. “Didn’t know the baseball stuff.”

“Oh, there’s plenty of more important elements to it, but I always catch myself telling the sports side first. Most of what I’m doing is focused around that Waddy Hotel. It’s important to bring these two hotels back to life. I just want to make sure the Waddy doesn’t get forgotten.”

Eric slid the camera bag over his shoulder, then went to pick up the tripod, dropped it, and nearly lost the camera bag when he bent over to pick it up. Kellen Cage reached down and took the tripod.

“You want to go on to the hotel and grab that drink as planned?” he said. “No offense, my man, but you look like you need one.”

“Yeah,” Eric said. “Yeah, I could definitely use a drink.”

9

HE DIDN’T GO UP to the room, choosing instead to bring the camera along with him as they walked across the atrium, Kellen explaining something about the bar’s hours and Eric hardly hearing him.

Don’t overthink it, Eric, the way you did with the Harrelson tape. The way you did in that valley in the Bear Paws. In fact, those aren’t fair comparisons. There might have been some sort of a tug, those times. Some sort of intuition. But this thing? That train was in your imagination, brother. Nothing else.

Eric was actually pleased to have Kellen Cage walking alongside him now. Cage promised something valuable—a distraction. Talk to him, have a few drinks, forget this moment. Forget this trembling in the gut, this foolish, ominous sense.

“What’re you having?” Cage said when they reached the bar.

“Grey Goose on the rocks with a lemon.”

Cage turned and spoke to the bartender and Eric eased onto the stool, turned and looked back at the sprawling atrium and took a deep breath. He just needed to relax. This thing, well, it wasn’t anything, really. Not even worth analyzing. Just forget it.

“So, I’m truly happy to hear you’re interested in Campbell Bradford,” Kellen said, “because he’s one of the biggest question marks I’ve got left. The old boy just disappeared when he left town.”

“Made a pile of money after he went,” Eric said. “His daughter-in-law’s the one who hired me. Said he’s worth two hundred million or somewhere in that neighborhood.”

“You mean he was worth that much,” Kellen said. “Not is. Was. Has to be dead.”

“No, but he’s close.”

Kellen tilted his head back and arched an eyebrow. “The man is alive?”

“He was when I left Chicago, at least.”

Kellen shook his head. “No way. Not the same Campbell.”

Eric frowned. “His daughter-in-law told me he’d grown up here and then ran away as a kid.”

“The Campbell Bradford I know of ran away from town, too. But he was a grown man, left a wife and kid behind. And he was born in eighteen ninety-two, which would put him at, what, one hundred and sixteen now? Your man can’t be that old, right?”

“He’s ninety-five.”

“Then he ain’t the same guy.”

“Well, must be two people with that name. Maybe my guy is your guy’s son?”

“He had a son named William who stayed in town.” Kellen’s face was tinged with disappointment. “Hell, you’re not going to be able to help me. We got two different people.”

“They have to be connected,” Eric said. “Name like that, town like this? Have to be related somehow.”

Kellen took a drink, then said, “The Campbell I know of, he was a dark man.”

“How so?”

“There was a time this area was a gambler’s paradise, back in the twenties. Bunch of money poured in, bunch of debts piled up, and Campbell Bradford was the man who saw to balancing the scales.”

“Some sort of enforcer?” Eric said.

“You got it. He was the muscle, the debt collector. People were terrified of the man. Thought he was evil. The story I’m interested in, the way this guy intersects with my own project, is that there’s a legend he murdered Shadrach Hunter after the stock market collapsed in 1929, just as this town dried up. It’s unreal how fast this place emptied out after Black Tuesday. One day this was among the world’s elite resorts, a year later it’s empty and on its way to being a ruin. Pretty damn fast change, you know?”

“Who was Shadrach Hunter?”

“Ran the black casino,” Kellen said. “And, yes, there was such a thing. Started out as a small poker game in a shitty back room, and grew. There were so many blacks down here working at the hotels, but they couldn’t socialize there, so they threw dice and played cards down at Shadrach’s. Before long, though, the thing grew some legs. Campbell Bradford was helping control all the gaming in the valley for white people—working with Ed Ballard, who owned this hotel, only Campbell was a lot dirtier than Ballard, who was far from clean himself—but he didn’t have anything to do with Shad’s game. According to the legend, Shad was a miser, skimmed money from every game and saved it, just stockpiled. Always wore a gun in his belt and had a couple big guys running with him at all times, bodyguards.

“Well, after the market crashed, this whole town shut down and the cash flow vanished. ’Round that time, Shadrach Hunter was murdered, and Campbell Bradford disappeared, leaving his family penniless.” Kellen spread his hands. “So, you can see where the myth developed. I’ve got some great stories about it but damn few facts. Was hoping you could offer some.”

“All I’ve got is a dying old millionaire in Chicago who goes by the same name.”

“No way it can be the same guy?”

“He’s old, but he’s not a hundred and sixteen.”

“Well, I’ll put you in touch with a man named Edgar Hastings tomorrow,” Kellen said. “I’ll be interested to see what he thinks. He knew the family, is one of the last people alive in this town who has clear memories of Campbell Bradford. Campbell’s got a great-grandson left in the area, too, but I won’t put you in touch with him.”

There was a dry smile on his lips. Eric said, “What’s his deal?”

“Oh, a bit on the surly side. Edgar warned me, said it would be best not to talk to him, but I ignored that advice and went to his house. Took about two minutes for him to run me off the place. Threw a beer bottle at my car as I was leaving.”

“Charming.”

“Hospitable, no question. But assuming he isn’t going to be more helpful with you than he was with me, Edgar’s all I have to offer.”

“Okay.”

“So, how’d you get into this business?” Kellen said. “Want to be a filmmaker all along, or was it a hobby that turned professional, or…?”

He let his voice trail off, waiting, the question asked in absolute innocence, but Eric was feeling anger bleed through him. I was a filmmaker, he wanted to shout, and if a few breaks had gone my way and a few assholes had stayed out of it, you’d be asking me for an autograph right now.

“I went to film school,” he said, trying to keep his voice loose. “And then I worked out in California for a while. I was a director of photography on some stuff.”

“Things I’d know?”

Yes, things he would know. But if he named those, he saw the inevitable follow-up question—What films have you worked on recently? And what would Eric say to that? Why, you mean you haven’t seen the Anderson wedding video? Or the Harrelson funeral piece? What, you live in a cave, man?

“Probably not,” he said. “I couldn’t stick it out there, so I came back to Chicago and started doing my own thing.”

Kellen nodded. “‘Director of photography’—what’s that mean, exactly?”

“You run the cameras and the lighting crew. The director’s in charge of the film as a whole, obviously, but the DP is in charge of the images.”

“Getting the ones the director wants?”

Eric gave a small smile. “Getting the ones he needs. Sometimes those are the same. Sometimes they aren’t.”

Kellen’s face was showing genuine interest, but Eric didn’t want to step any deeper into this conversation. He said, “You know, I’d actually like to get a few shots in here,” basically just to buy some silence.

“You got plenty to work with,” Kellen said. “Check out the fireplace.”

Eric turned to look at the fireplace near the bar. It, like the hotel, was both beautiful and massive. The facade was built out of river stones, with a mural painted across their surfaces. The mural depicted swirling blue waters and lush green fields, a small image of the hotel set back and to the left, behind a buckeye tree. In the upper-right corner, perched above the tumbling water, was Sprudel—the West Baden companion to French Lick’s Pluto, god of the underworld. He looked more like a gnome than a devil, but it was enough to remind Eric of the black train, and that sent a dark flourish through him. He had seen the train. No doubt about it. So what the hell did that mean? Was he losing his damn mind?

“Was a time they burned fourteen-foot logs in there,” Kellen said. “Imagine that, right? Like cutting telephone poles in half and tossing them into the fireplace. You ought to get a shot of it.”

Eric nodded, got the camera out but didn’t put it on the tripod, just stood and held it up to his shoulder, turned and focused on the mural and watched the Sprudel figure fill the lens.

There was a piano not far from the bar, a full-size grand, and a man in a tuxedo was playing it. Eric swiveled to catch a shot of it, and the piano player saw him, looked back at the camera and winked. For some reason that made Eric turn away immediately, lower the camera and click it off and put it back in the bag. When he straightened from the bag he was dizzy, and squares of light floated in front of his eyes when he faced the rows of bottles behind the bar.

“Did that quick,” Kellen said.

“Light’s wrong,” Eric muttered, reaching for his drink. He took a long swallow and blinked a few times, waiting for steadiness to return. It didn’t.

The size of the rotunda was getting to him now, giving him a strange sense of vertigo even though he was standing at the bottom of it, feet firm on the floor. The place was just too damn open and too damn big. He and Kellen were standing at the short length of bar that extended into the atrium, but opposite them the bar was enclosed, secluded in a small room with wood paneling and dim lights. He suddenly wanted to get in there. Into the tighter space, into the dark.

But Kellen Cage was still talking, going on about the Waddy Hotel and a Negro League baseball team called the Plutos, so Eric put one hand on the bar and one foot on the brass rail to steady himself, had another long pull of the Grey Goose. Let the guy talk, don’t freak out. There was no problem here. Everything was fine.

His mouth was dry despite the drink, and Kellen Cage’s voice seemed to be coming from far away, with a trace of an echo to it. The lights in the atrium were growing brighter, slowly but obviously, as if someone had a hand on a dimmer switch and was rotating it gently, turning up the wattage. The headache was back, a faint throb down at the base of his skull, and that too-large buffet dinner was shifting in his stomach.

He put both hands on the bar, leaning onto the cold granite top, and was about to interrupt Kellen Cage to say he needed to step outside and get some air, when a new sound replaced that strange, echoing conversation around him. Music, a clear melody, pure and beautiful. Strings. A cello in the background, maybe, but at the forefront was a violin, a violin played as sweetly as anything Eric had ever heard. It was a soothing sound, a caress, and he felt the trapped air leave his lungs and the headache fade and his stomach settle. The cello hit on a low, long note and then the violin came back in over the top, soaring now, exuberant, and Eric was in awe of the beauty of it, turned to look for the source. It had to be live; he’d been around a lot of recording equipment and was certain they had yet to invent something that could capture sound this well.

The atrium was empty except for a few people in chairs, no band in sight, nothing but the piano player. He turned to look at him again then as the violin music dipped away, the song sad and sweet again. The piano player had his head bowed, and his hands were flying along, their motions completely out of sync with the strings. But the violin piece was coming from the piano. There wasn’t any doubt about it. The thing was no more than thirty feet away and Eric, blessed with good ears and better vision, knew without question that the violin music was coming from beneath the lid of that grand piano.

“You dig the music, huh?” Kellen Cage said.

Eric was still staring, waiting for something that showed him he was wrong but finding nothing—the piano, somehow, was playing a strings melody. The most beautiful strings melody he’d ever heard. But the hands didn’t match. The hands were not playing this song.

“What’s this song?” he said. His voice was a rasp.

“Huh?” Cage said, leaning closer, smelling of cologne.

“What’s the name of this song?”

Kellen Cage pulled his head back and gave Eric a curious smile. “You kidding me? It’s the thing from Casablanca, man. Everybody knows this one. ‘As Time Goes By.’”

That wasn’t the song Eric was hearing, but he could tell that Kellen was right from the way the piano player’s hands moved, locked in that gentle, familiar rhythm.

“I mean the violin thing,” Eric said.

“Violin?” Kellen said, and then the piano player’s tuxedo was gone and in its place he wore a rumpled suit and a bowler hat, and if Kellen said anything else, Eric did not hear it. He was staring at the piano player, whose face was hidden by the angle and by the bowler hat. Just over his shoulder, standing not five feet away, was a tall, thin boy with a violin at his shoulder, his eyes squeezed tightly shut. He wore ill-fitting clothes, his bony forearms protruding from the shirtsleeves and several inches of socks exposed. His blond hair had not been cut in many weeks. There was an open violin case at his feet with scattered bills and coins tossed inside.

For a moment they just played on in that soft duet, the boy always with eyes shut, and then the man at the piano looked up. He lifted his head and looked Eric full in the face and smiled wide, and when he did, the beautiful, haunting strings melody shattered once again into a violent, urgent sawing, the notes frenzied and terrifying.

Eric opened his hand and the glass fell from it and hit the edge of the bar before dropping to the tile floor and breaking, sending splinters of glass sliding in all directions. The moment the glass broke, the music vanished. Cut off in midnote, like somebody had jerked out a stereo power cord. With it went the boy with the violin and the man in the bowler hat, replaced by the first piano player, who frowned but didn’t stop playing, bowed his head again, and now Eric could hear the song—“You must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss…”

“As Time Goes By.” Made famous by Casablanca. Kellen was right, everybody knew this one.

“Uh-oh, going to need a mop if you want to finish that drink,” the bartender said, smiling, jocular. Eric felt Kellen’s hand on his arm, the grip strong.

“You okay? Eric? You all right?”

He was now. On one level, at least. On another…

“You mind if we go somewhere else?” Eric said. “There’s gotta be someplace to get a drink that isn’t in this hotel.”

Kellen Cage was watching him with raised eyebrows, but he gave a slow nod and set his drink down and released Eric’s arm.

“Sure, man. There’s places.”

He felt better as soon as they were outside. It was still warm, had to be close to eighty, but some of the humidity had left with the sun, and the air outside the hotel was fresh and fragrant, pushed by a mild breeze.

“You didn’t look so good back there,” Kellen said as they went around the building and up toward the parking lot.

“Got a little dizzy,” Eric said.

“What were you talking about with the violins, though?”

“Just confused.”

Logical thing to do was shake Kellen’s hand, tell him it had been good talking, and then go up to the room and get some sleep. Something seemed to be tugging him elsewhere, though. He wanted to be away from the hotel.

“Head up to the casino?” Kellen asked as they approached the parking lot.

Eric shook his head. “No, I’d rather find someplace”—without so many lights—“quieter. Smaller.”

Kellen pursed his lips, thinking. “Be honest with you, there aren’t many places around here. There’s a little bar up the road that’s decent, though. Called Rooster’s. Went in there a couple times for lunch. Friendly woman behind the bar, if nothing else.”

“That’ll do.”

Kellen lifted his hand and punched a button on his key chain and the lights of a car in front of them flicked on. A black Porsche Cayenne that looked brand-new.

“They must pay students better than they did when I was in school,” Eric said.

“Nah, I bought this with my side venture. Sling a little bit of that crack.”

“I’m sure you do.”

Kellen smiled. “One of these days I’m going to get a white guy to believe that.”

“Matter of time,” Eric agreed, walking around to the passenger side, opening the door, and sliding into the leather seat. “It is a damn nice car, though.”

“My brother gave it to me,” Kellen said. “Twenty-fifth birthday present.”

Eric raised his eyebrows. “That’s one hell of a present. What’s he do?”

“I’ll show you in a while,” Kellen said, and he didn’t elaborate as he started the engine and drove them away from the hotel. Eric didn’t question him. On another night, the remark might have caught his curiosity more. Tonight, all he wanted to do was press his head back against the seat, shut his eyes, and believe that when he opened them again, the only things he’d see would be of this world.

10

JOSIAH BRADFORD WOULDN’T HAVE minded just sitting on the porch with his feet up and having a few beers in privacy that night, waiting on the heat to settle and letting a day’s work ease out of his muscles. Danny Hastings had a wild hair in him, though, way Danny tended to on Fridays, and so Josiah found himself away from the porch and at the casino instead.

Danny was maybe the dumbest son of a bitch had ever learned to walk upright, but he still had more brains than money. Despite that, he found his way down to that casino about weekly. He was the sort of dumb that thought he was one pull of the slot lever away from rich, one righteous shuffle and deal away from flying first class to France.

Pathetic shit, if you asked Josiah.

Could’ve stayed home, of course, but once Danny called, Josiah relented pretty easy. That had nothing to do with Danny or the casino and more to do with the fact that Josiah’s mood was darker than normal after working in that blistering sun and dodging Amos and watching the weekend crowd arrive at the hotel. A distraction seemed like a good choice. Josiah knew his own moods pretty well by now, saw ’em coming like storm clouds, and tried to get out of their way when he could. There’d be times, though, when he’d see them on the horizon and just not give a shit, let them come on and wash over him. And on those occasions, heaven help you if you got in his way.

He was inclined, as he often was, for a good screw. That was fortuitous, because the women did more drinking on a weekend night, a circumstance in his favor. He and Danny got to the casino around eight, and Josiah downed a few bourbons and watched Danny gamble away the forty bucks he had in cash—money that was supposed to get him through till next Thursday’s paycheck—then go to the ATM and take out a fifty-dollar cash advance on the last credit card any bank would ever be fool enough to give him. Josiah left the blackjack table then, ordered another drink, and shot the shit with a few old boys he knew who were hanging around the bar waiting for Danny to get cleaned out one more time.

It was carrying on toward ten when he walked by the blackjack tables on his way to take a piss and saw Danny haggling with the dealer, two dollars in chips left in front of him. Couldn’t do nothing but shake your head at that. Stupid bastard.

Josiah took a leak and came out and stared around the room, feeling the weight of his anger again, anger driven even deeper because he hadn’t found a woman. Oh, there were some tens around, no mistake about that, but they were all hanging off somebody else’s arm already, rich bitches come down for the weekend with their boyfriends. Wouldn’t look at Josiah but would look through him, same as the hotel guests always did. There were people—Danny Hastings, for one—who were comfortable with that sort of thing, slipped into their anonymous little life like it was skin that fit them. Didn’t fit Josiah, though. He wasn’t the sort who could tolerate being an unknown. That was what he realized as he studied some of the men in the casino, men who controlled whatever crowd of assholes they’d arrived with. He didn’t want their damn money or their slut wives or their ass-kissing buddies. What he wanted—deserved—was the role. People took notice of these pricks and treated Josiah like he was furniture.

Hell with it. He’d have one more drink and call it a night.

He was halfway back to the bar when he heard someone scream, a wild impression of a rebel yell that came out more like a little girl’s sound, or maybe a pig’s squeal, something that made the hair rise up along his arms and neck, not because it frightened him but because he knew the source—it was Danny.

Danny had won.

There were wild bells and chimes going off somewhere back among the slot machines, and Josiah fell in grudging step with a handful of other onlookers and walked toward the sound.

“Josiah! Josiah, where you at? You got to see this!”

Danny shouting for him even though Josiah was just five steps away now.

“Josiah!”

“Shut up, I’m right here.” He shouldered up beside Danny to look at the display. Dollar slot machine, thing still buzzing and clattering, designed to draw a crowd of fools who’d want to rush off and shove their own cash into one of these glittering garbage disposals. It took him a second to find the figure—$2,500.

“You see that, Josiah? Twenty-five hunnert!” Danny gave another one of those damn squeals and slapped Josiah on the back. It took all Josiah had not to knock his ass to the ground.

“I put in a dollar, was all. One dollar, you believe that? Had myself some luck on over at the blackjack table, was starting to feel it ’cept for the last hand.”

Except for the last hand. Brilliant. How many broke sons of bitches had said that?

“So I’d lost my money but I knew I had the luck going, right? Didn’t have nothing but two dollars left, and I only played one of them here. Took a pull and won, took another and won, and then this one, this one was just the third pull.”

Some stupid blond chick was clapping for him now, trying to get others involved, and Danny turned and grinned at them and held his hands up over his head, clasped them together like a boxing champ. Shit, but he was ugly. Josiah didn’t know that he’d ever yet seen anyone uglier. Ugly breed, of course, redheaded men. Women could pull red hair off, but men? Damned disgusting.

Danny was heavy with beer weight, too, and freckled and sweaty. Looking at him now was almost too much to bear. Dancing around with his hands over his head like that, all over twenty-five hundred bucks. He’d give every cent back to the casino by next weekend, still be telling this story like it was some sort of accomplishment.

“I’ll tell you one thing, hoss,” Danny said, hitting the print button and watching his ticket come out, the blond girl still whistling and clapping. “Drinks is on me for the rest of the night.”

“Better believe it,” Josiah said, reaching out and—this took great effort—punching Danny in the shoulder, light, friendly. “Go on and cash that out, then come on back to the bar and spend it.”

“I always said it, I always said it,” Danny crowed, his voice thick with booze and excitement, “one day, the name Danny Hastings will be anonymous with success!”

Anonymous with success. Holy shit, he’d actually said that, and not on purpose.

“It already is,” Josiah said, and Danny just grinned and slapped him on the shoulder again, still not getting it, as the rest of the onlookers snorted with laughter.

“Like I said, go on and cash that out. I’ll be at the bar,” Josiah said.

Danny was gibbering on enthusiastically as he went. Josiah let him get all the way up to the cashier before he circled around the slot machines and left the casino.

He found his Ford Ranger in the parking lot and fired it up, drove away from the casino, and then hesitated on 56, unsure of which way to turn. He sure as shit wasn’t going to be able to sit in there and watch Danny carry on all night, not in this mood. Maybe if he’d been a little drunker. But he was still sober, and still angry. Could go home, but home was out in the hills between Orangeville and Orleans, and driving away from town now felt like cowardice, running off to sulk. No, go on to another bar.

By Monday—hell, maybe by Sunday—he’d feel some sense of regret for leaving like this. Mostly because Danny was going to be dumb enough to buy drinks all night; partially because the idiot had actually wanted Josiah around to share his windfall. Right now, though, there wasn’t any way he could take it. It was only twenty-five hundred dollars, but it had fallen into Danny’s fat, sweaty palm, not Josiah’s.

He was at the parking lot exit, foot on the brake, waiting for a chance to pull out, not paying any of the passing cars a bit of attention except to look for a gap, until he saw a black Porsche Cayenne fly by.

That son-of-a-bitch student, still in town. The car incensed him, made him want to stamp on the Ranger’s accelerator and ram right into the back of it, watch those taillights bust. He pulled out behind it and did hit the gas a touch, as much of a burnout as his worn tires would allow, then felt stupid for it. Peeling out in front of the casino on a Friday night was almost like yelling for the police on a bullhorn, asking to be arrested.

He drove more slowly but stayed behind the Porsche, followed it up the hill and out of town and then thought, Oh, man, it’s going to be hard to pass this one up, when he saw its turn signal come on just in front of Rooster’s, then watched it slow and pull into the bar’s gravel parking lot. Just what he needed to tempt him tonight—some rich kid going into a local bar like it was a damn tourist attraction. Stare at the country folk, maybe take some pictures. Ask more questions about Josiah’s own flesh and blood.

He pulled into the parking lot and watched the driver’s door of the Porsche open and the kid step out, big as a damn barn. Josiah had him in the headlights, could see the muscled-up shoulders and chest. There was someone with him this time. The second guy was white, with short hair and one of those three-day beards that was supposed to make him look casual, indifferent. Older than the black kid, but not so old you’d have to feel bad about beating the shit out of him.

They disappeared inside and Josiah cut his ignition and shut off the lights. He’d been spoiling for a fight all day, and now he was going to get it. Size of that black kid, it was clear this one would be a sight. Wasn’t nobody going to be talking about Danny Hastings and his twenty-five hundred bucks once Josiah finished this.

11

THE RAMSHACKLE JOINT Kellen drove them to had a neon rooster on its sign, but no name. Maybe the bar wasn’t even called Rooster’s. Could be they’d just taken a shine to that sign. Inside, it was a warm-looking place, old but clean. A handful of people were sitting in the booths that lined one wall, maybe six more scattered around the bar. Two guys tossing darts in a corner.

“You again!” the blond woman behind the bar said, squinting at Kellen. “Give me a minute, I’ll remember it. Hmm… got a K in it. Kelvin?”

“Kellen.”

“Darn! Should’ve had it. But you haven’t been down here in a long time either, so it’s really your fault.”

“Can’t argue with that,” he said, and ordered a beer, asking for whatever was light and on draft. Eric held up two fingers, figuring it would be a good idea to shade on the light side for the rest of the evening anyhow, the way his mind was playing tricks.

“You need anything else, yell for Becky,” the woman said, sliding the beers over.

Kellen nodded. “I’ll remember it. Now, think you could find TNT on that TV?”

Becky tried the remote and didn’t have any luck getting a response, tossed it down and stretched up on her toes to reach the TV. Good long legs, nice tan. Maybe forty-five. Older than Claire by a decade. Claire had great legs…

“Here we go,” Kellen said. “Thank you.”

He’d requested a basketball game, Timberwolves playing the Lakers. Eric despised the Lakers. He used to get dragged down to the games now and then by a producer friend who always considered it a business venture and spent the game with his back to the court, peering around the stands in search of A-listers. Eric, who’d been a pretty big basketball fan at one time, particularly of college ball, had hated the Hollywood aspect of the Lakers games, Jack Nicholson down there courtside in his damn sunglasses barking at the refs, other stars miraculously finding their way to the games only when they were on national TV.

“You wanted to know what my brother did,” Kellen said, and nodded at the TV. “Number forty for Minnesota.”

“No shit?” Eric said.

“None. I was recording this, hate to miss any, but what the hell.”

Eric found number forty and saw the resemblance immediately. A few inches taller than Kellen and lankier, without the bulked-up muscle, but the head shape and the facial features were clear matches.

“What’s his name?” Eric said.

“Darnell.”

“Younger or older?”

Kellen hesitated for just a beat, and his eyes flicked sideways before he said, “Younger. Three years younger,” in a voice that was softer than it had been.

They watched as the ball found its way to Darnell Cage. He took a kick-out behind the three-point line on a fast break, shot-faked and then drove to the foul line and put up a floater that caught the back of the rim and bounced long.

“Come on, D, come on,” Kellen said. “Give that ball up. Had the cutter.”

The teams went back and forth without Cage touching the ball. Then the Lakers scored and Minnesota ran a post set that didn’t generate anything, threw it back out, and worked it around the perimeter. There were eight seconds left on the shot clock when the ball came to Darnell Cage on the left baseline, and Kellen laughed. It was a low, almost devious sound.

“Oh, they in trouble now,” he said.

Darnell Cage faced up to his defender, ball held back on his hip, leaning forward.

“Crossover coming,” Kellen said.

Darnell Cage gave a slight shoulder fake, then put the ball on the floor, moving left before shifting to the right, the defender sliding with him, not fooled by the fake. Then came the crossover, a wickedly fast between-the-legs dribble back to his left hand, and Darnell Cage blew down the rest of the baseline in about two strides before going into the air and finishing with a tremendous one-handed dunk that brought the home crowd to its feet.

“Wow,” Eric said.

Kellen was grinning. “He owns that left baseline, man. Owns it. He’s a lefty, and you can give him some trouble if you force him to the right, but if he gets you off balance on that left baseline, you’re done. Just too damn fast. He gets you rocked at all, then there’s nothing to do but watch.”

Kellen had turned to look at Eric but now his eyes drifted higher and his brow furrowed and he said, “You got to be kidding me.”

“What?”

“You want to meet a relative of Campbell Bradford? My Campbell? He’s standing back there by the pool table. This is the cat who threw the bottle at me. Josiah.”

Eric turned and found himself staring into the dark eyes of a guy with shaggy brown hair and a black polo shirt who was standing beside the pool table, watching them.

“Appears he remembers you as well,” Eric said.

“Uh-huh. I don’t think I’ll ask him any more questions about the family tree.”

“I can’t believe he’s here.”

“Small town,” Kellen said. “Not many bars.”

But he didn’t seem confident about it.

“Well, there you go,” Kellen said, turning back to the TV. “There’s my brother, the family talent.”

“You got one in the NBA and another getting a doctorate?” Eric said. “What are the rest of your siblings, astronauts?”

Kellen laughed. “Just the two of us.”

There was someone beside them at the bar now, standing close and staring at Kellen. Josiah Bradford. He didn’t so much as glance at Eric, and Kellen seemed well aware of his presence but did not turn to face him, choosing instead to continue to watch the game. After a while, Josiah Bradford reached across the bar and grabbed the remote and hit a button. It exasperated him when nothing happened.

“Becky, I want this channel changed,” he hollered. “And bring me a Budweiser.”

“Those guys are watching the game,” she responded without looking back. “Come down here, change this one.”

The man dropped his eyes to Kellen. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“How you doing, Josiah?” Kellen said, finally looking at him. “Been a while.”

The guy didn’t respond, just stood there staring into Kellen’s eyes. Becky seemed to sense the building tension when she set his Budweiser down and came over to talk to Kellen and Eric as if to diffuse it.

“You hear about the old guy whose wife makes him stop drinking, won’t let him go up to his favorite neighborhood pub anymore?” she said.

“Can I get that channel changed?” Josiah said. “These boys don’t mind at all.”

“In a minute, maybe,” Becky said, not even glancing at him as she continued with her joke. “Well, the wife keeps him from drinking, but she has to go out of town for a few days, visit her sister. Leaves him with clear instructions—you don’t even think about going to the pub, buddy.”

“I wouldn’t last long with a woman like that,” Josiah said, and then he turned away from the bar. When he did it, his shoulder collided with Kellen’s. Hard. Too hard for accidental contact.

“Watch it, Josiah,” Becky snapped, and Kellen just looked up at him and didn’t say a word, didn’t change his expression.

“Oh, he’s big enough it didn’t hurt him,” Josiah said. “Ain’t you big enough?”

Kellen held his eyes for a moment, then said, “Sure,” and turned back to Becky. “Let’s hear the rest of that joke.”

Josiah seemed disappointed.

“Okay,” Becky said. “So the old guy, he figures, how’s she gonna know, right? First night she’s gone, he heads up the street. Place is only a block away. Goes in and has a few, then a few more, and a few more after that. By the end of the night it’s catching up with him and the room’s starting to spin. Decides he better head on home. So he stands up to pay the bill and almost falls on his face, has to hold on to the bar to keep himself up. Puts his money down, takes a few steps and, whap, he falls down, smack on the floor. Has a hard time getting up, and now he knows he’s had too much. Good thing his wife won’t know. So he crawls to the door, pulls himself up, and steps outside and falls over again.”

Kellen was smiling, watching her, but Eric kept his eyes on Josiah. That shoulder move didn’t promise good things.

“Old guy has to crawl on his belly whole way home,” Becky was saying. “Drags his butt into bed. Next morning he’s hardly awake when the phone rings. Wife calling. Starts yelling at him for going drinking and he says, ‘How do you know?’ And she tells him, ‘Bartender called. Said you left your wheelchair down there again.’”

Kellen and Eric both gave it more of a laugh than it deserved and Josiah stood in silence. Waited until they’d stopped laughing before he said, “I got a joke.”

Nobody reacted. Not even Becky. Eric didn’t like the guy’s tone at all, and he twisted his bar stool just a touch so he was facing him, then cleared his feet from the rail.

“Bunch of good ol’ boys are down at their bar, gettin’ lit up,” Josiah said. “Big-ass bear comes into the parking lot, looking for food. Knocks the door open, goes inside. Shit’s in the fan then, old boys running around, bear growling and knocking tables and chairs and shit over. Bear wrecks the place, then breaks the door down and goes away.”

He paused for a long, dramatic drink of his beer.

“The drunk boys stand up, dust themselves off, and one says to his buddy, ‘Damn. Put a nigger in a fur coat and he acts like he owns the place.’”

Eric got to his feet and Becky said, “Shut your fool mouth, Josiah,” as Josiah smiled, looking at Kellen.

“Get the hell out of here,” Becky said. “Now.”

Josiah flicked his dark eyes up to Eric, just a cursory glance, and then back down at Kellen.

“What? Don’t like my joke?”

Eric moved another step away from his stool, sure now that a fight was coming. Kellen reached out, though, put up a warning hand.

“It’s fine,” he said. “We’re all telling jokes, right? Just having some fun.”

The look that crossed Josiah’s face was disgusted and disappointed. He snorted.

“Oh, you like that joke? Well, I got a few more like it. Might enjoy them, too.”

“Let me tell one first,” Kellen said.

Josiah waited, feet spread, hands at belt level.

“You hear the one about the redneck with a hard-on who ran into a wall?” Kellen said. Paused one beat, then finished: “He broke his nose.”

Josiah threw the first punch, but Eric was already coming at him, knocked him off balance so that the blow missed Kellen’s head. Eric slammed him into the bar and then leaned back just enough to throw the uppercut he wanted to put into the son of a bitch’s jaw. He didn’t get it there, though. Caught a knee directly in his groin first and then his lungs turned to vacuums as bright, shining agony radiated through his abdomen and filled his chest. He took a stumbling step back and managed to get his head down to avoid Josiah’s fist and catch the bottom of his forearm instead. The blow landed flush on his nose, which promptly opened up and leaked blood over his lips and onto his chin as Josiah just missed with another punch, his fist sliding across Eric’s face, a streak of his blood showing bright on Josiah’s hand now. All this happening as Becky shouted at them from behind the bar and Kellen Cage slipped off his stool without a word.

Josiah seemed to have lost interest in Eric, turned from him back to Kellen with a wide grin on his face and said, “Come on, boy.”

Kellen hit him. A flicking left that looked more like a snakebite than a punch, and Josiah’s head snapped back as Kellen easily deflected the return punch and then hit him again, this time in the stomach.

Josiah’s knees sagged as he stumbled backward, but he took it better than most could have and was coming back for more as Kellen waited on him quietly and Eric straightened with an effort and Becky chambered a round into a shotgun with a ratcheting sound as loud as a bell choir.

Everybody stopped. For the first time Eric was aware that two men had risen from a booth and were advancing—toward Josiah. Now they stopped short, too.

“You want to wait on the police,” Becky said, her voice soft and steady as she braced the Remington twelve-gauge on the bar, “that’s fine by me. Otherwise, you better get the hell out of here, Josiah.”

He gave her a sneer and then turned to the rest of the room, saw no support there. Looked back at Kellen and said, “We’ll finish this’n later.”

“If you do,” said one of the men from the booth, “he’ll have you swallowing your teeth, Josiah. Now listen to the lady and get your sorry ass out the door.”

Josiah shoved past Eric, holding the stare with Kellen for a moment before turning to the door. He kicked it open with the heel of his boot and then stepped outside as the door banged off the wall and shuddered slowly back and Eric’s blood dripped onto the floor.

12

BACK IN THE PORSCHE, after getting Eric’s nose to stop bleeding and then drinking one more beer to assure Becky that they were at peace with the bar, Kellen turned to him.

“Well, I’m sorry that happened, because that idiot is in no way representative of my experience in this town.”

“Shouldn’t have dragged you out to a place like that.”

“No, man, that’s what I’m saying—it wasn’t the place. I’ve been in there before. In fact, I’ve been in this town a lot, and that’s the first time I’ve ever had anything like that pulled. Which was, to be honest, against my expectation.”

“Yeah?”

Kellen nodded as he started the engine. “Some racist history to this state, really. First hotel down here was built by a guy named William Bowles, who was tried for treason because he was involved with something called the Knights of the Golden Circle, which was pro-Confederacy and a forerunner to the KKK. He was a real good guy—indicted for grave robbery, of all things. Wasn’t all him, though. Back when the area was really booming, blacks weren’t allowed to stay in these hotels. Joe Louis wasn’t allowed to stay in these hotels. All the local tourism stuff uses his name today, brags on him being a frequent visitor, but the reality is, he always stayed at the Waddy.”

They pulled out of the parking lot, Kellen driving with one wrist hooked over the wheel.

“So when I came down here, wanting to write the black history of the area, I maybe had a sour taste in my mouth from what I knew of the past. As long as I’ve been down here, though, people have been nothing but friendly—with the one exception being our buddy back there, Mr. Bradford. He would be the last of my Campbell’s line. I hope you’re right and you’re looking for a different guy. Because Josiah isn’t going to be a help to you.”

“I’d say not,” Eric agreed. “But you’ve got to figure my guy is related to him.”

“I know it. And that’s why I’ll be interested to see what Edgar Hastings has to say. He’s the only person I’ve found in town who has any clear memories of Campbell. But he’s also something of a foster father to Josiah, so best not to mention what happened tonight, I guess. You free tomorrow if I get something set up with him?”

“Sure.” Eric was touching his face with his fingertips, assessing damage. His lip would be a little swollen in the morning, but he’d kept a cool beer to it, so he wouldn’t look too much the worse for wear.

“I’ve never heard of another Campbell Bradford,” Kellen said. “It’s strange.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Eric said, thinking that the least strange thing in his day was confusion over the man’s identity. That didn’t come close to the black train or the leaves or that man in the bowler hat, no.

Kellen dropped him off with a handshake and a promise that he’d call Edgar Hastings the next day. Eric was almost nervous going back into the hotel alone and felt a childish desire to run back into the parking lot and flag Kellen down, ask him to have one more drink. Just stay with me for twenty minutes, buddy, enough so I can look around and make sure the place is an ordinary hotel again and not the friggin’ Overlook.

For some reason, thinking of Stephen King’s hotel horror story made him smile as he walked back into the atrium and looked around. Yeah, Kubrick would’ve salivated over shooting in this location. It had everything a filmmaker desired—beauty, grandeur, size, history, and, at least for Eric tonight, a King-size dose of creepy.

“Couldn’t ask for anything more,” he said under his breath. The hotel had quieted a bit, with just a handful of people left at the bar, the piano player gone, and the piano itself covered up. He didn’t see anything out of place, didn’t hear anything out of place. The hotel seemed sane again.

He headed upstairs to his room, where he put on every light and then immediately went around turning them back off when the brightness made his headache flare. It was past eleven now. The strangest day of his life was almost done. He felt a powerful need to call Claire, tell her every weird and frightening detail and hear her responses. No, the hell with calling Claire, he wanted to talk to her face-to-face, to see her in this bedroom. And the hell with talking to Claire, he wanted to take her right here on this large, luxurious bed. Wanted to be tugging her jeans off those long legs, wanted to feel them catch on the rise of her ass the way they always did.

Damn, but he missed her. Felt it the way old people feel arthritis in their bones, an unrelenting agony carried every day, every hour, every minute.

He’d met her at a deli in Evanston, where she was in her first year of law school at Northwestern and he was merely passing through after visiting a friend, this the summer before he’d moved to L.A. He had finished a sandwich and was sitting at the table with a newspaper, almost ready to go on his way, when she’d walked in with a friend and sat down across the room. He’d watched her cross the room—something about the way the girl moved that loosened his jaw, left him staring with his mouth half open—and she looked over and gave him the smallest of smiles, an awkward gesture more than anything, forced politeness in response to the unanticipated eye contact.

What he’d read in the newspaper over the next twenty minutes, he couldn’t say. He kept his eyes on it only to avoid staring, and he sneaked looks as often as he dared, watching her talk and laugh and eat a Caesar salad, gesturing with her fork every now and then, waving bits of lettuce around in the air. She was facing him, caught his eye a few more times, gave him another cursory smile. She was eating too quickly, though, and so was her friend, and both were nearly finished with their food and ready to move on into the day before he ever said a word to her. He wanted so badly to say a word to her. He was not insecure with women, had no trouble asking for dates, but approaching a strange woman at a deli at noon on Tuesday was a hell of a lot different than approaching one in a bar at midnight on Friday. And with her friend there, there was that extra barrier of potential eye rolls and laughter.

Then the friend stood up and left the table, walking to the bathroom. Fate, Eric decided, it had to be fate, because the friend was the last excuse he was giving himself, and now she’d just checked out. He set the paper down and walked over to this dark-haired girl with the wry smile and the amused eyes and said, “My name is Eric, and I would love to buy you a drink.”

What a breathtakingly original pickup line. She regarded him for a few seconds without speaking, then said, “It’s a deli. They don’t serve alcohol here.”

To which Eric had responded, “Well, then, how do you feel about lemonade?”

They’d had the lemonade, and later that night the real drink, and a day later the first kiss and fifteen months after that the wedding vows and the honeymoon.

“Shit,” he said now, lying on his back in a hotel room in Indiana, Claire a couple hundred miles away. He sat up and reached for the remote, seeking distraction. Don’t let this start. Don’t let these thoughts be the cap to the kind of day you already had.

He found the remote, then leaned back in bed again and kicked his shoes off and turned to look at TV. When he did, his eyes caught the bottle of Pluto Water on the desk. He frowned, stood up, and walked over to it. The damn thing was sweating. Covered in beads of moisture, a wet ring beneath it.

When he reached out and touched the bottle, he found it even colder than before. How was that possible? And while on that topic, how was it possible for the thing to be so wet, like a frosted mug of beer sitting in the sun? Could it be leaking? He ran his finger up the outside, collecting the moisture, then lifted his finger first to his nose and then to his lips and dabbed it against them. There was the same faint sweetness, almost like honey. Nothing close to the terrible foulness that had put him on his knees a few days earlier.

That had been the booze, though. Right? Wasn’t that what he’d told himself? He loosened the old cap again, took a sniff and, yes, there was a touch of honey. It didn’t smell anything like what he’d remembered.

“Don’t even think about it,” he said aloud, looking at the liquid inside. He’d read enough about the mineral water to understand that it was potent stuff, but nothing he’d read explained its behavior, particularly how it managed to stay so cold, let alone its shifting smells and flavors.

There was still a Pluto Water plant in town, directly across from the French Lick Springs Resort. Tomorrow he’d have to drop in and ask them for some details. That would be the second order of business if the visions kept up, though. If they did, a call to the doctor would come first.

The black kid had given Josiah something to remember him by, a left eye that was already going purple by the time he got home and studied himself in the mirror, holding a cold can of Keystone to his eye socket and burning with anger and shame.

He’d taken the only visible damage from the encounter, and that was as bullshit as bullshit got. He was supposed to put that guy on his big black ass. Instead, he hadn’t even landed a real punch. Josiah had lost a fight or two along the way, but he’d never failed to do some damage.

Shit, he hadn’t even gotten in the better insult. The black kid’s line about Josiah’s pecker was better than that dumb nigger joke. Funny thing was, Josiah wasn’t even racist. Oh, he supposed he could be considered so, but he could be considered anything that was accompanied by a bad attitude and a chip on the shoulder. Didn’t matter if you were white or black or Mexican or whatever. It was a disrespectful world, he’d seen that clear enough since he was a kid, and wasn’t nobody disrespected the world better than Josiah Bradford.

He used to have some patience. He’d done a good job of waiting, went through each day knowing he’d leave his mark and trying to wait on the right opportunity. Today, though, the patience had slipped away, pulled from his soul by some unseen force the way the moon ebbed the tides back from the beach. It had started with the heat and been furthered by Amos before draining away altogether when Danny Dumb-shit Hastings hit a twenty-five-hundred-dollar jackpot and took to squealing and hollering and drawing a crowd of people who stared at his fat ass like he was somebody special.

No, Josiah Bradford didn’t have any patience left. And something told him, something in the humid, black night, that it wasn’t going to be coming back anytime soon either.

He still had the white guy’s blood on his hand, he realized, as he went for another beer. A long streak of it, dried to a rust color. He went to the sink and ran warm water, scrubbed his hand with a bar of soap, and put it under the water to rinse it clean.

Strangest damn thing happened then—the water went cold. As the blood rinsed off his hand, the warm water went cold, then drove the blood down the drain in a pink-tinged swirl. Soon as the last trace of blood was gone, the water was warm again. It had been a quick thing, an instantaneous shift.

“Old pipes,” Josiah muttered. Made sense that the plumbing, like everything else in this house, was turning to shit.

He went ahead and washed his hand a second time.

Anne McKinney woke just after two a.m., sat up in bed, and blinked against the darkness, short of breath, her chest tight. Heart attack, she thought. Eighty-six years of good health and now death is going to steal in like the proverbial thief in the night, take me in my bed.

But her breath came back then, and when she laid her palm beneath her left breast she felt her heart thumping along slow and steady. She pushed up on the pillows, wincing as her back howled in pain, and then swung her feet down to the cool floorboards, keeping both hands on the bed as she stood up. Out in public, Anne walked with her hands free as much as possible, but here at home it was different. Here she had to use a higher level of caution, because she’d lived alone since the heart attack that took Harold back in March of ’ninety-two, middle of that Duke ballgame with the Hoosiers, the refs making one more terrible call than Harold’s poor sweet heart could take. That was almost twenty years past, and nobody but Anne had spent a night in the house since. She knew it would be a long time before anybody found her if she took a fall in here.

Originally her bedroom had been a library of sorts, or at least that had been the idea. Mostly, it had been used by the children for games and by Harold for storing odds and ends that Anne wouldn’t tolerate in the living room. She’d stayed in their old bedroom until she was eighty-one, but then the daily back-and-forth on the stairs began to wear on her. She hadn’t admitted it at the time—stubbornness was her most deeply ingrained trait—choosing instead to tell herself that it was simply time for a redecorating and, what the heck, might as well move downstairs for a change of scenery. Now she hadn’t been upstairs in more than a month.

She stood with her hand resting on the desk beside the bed, giving her legs a few seconds to warm up. Just like a car in cold weather, that’s how you had to look at it. Wasn’t that the car was done if it did a bit of grumbling on a winter morning, it just needed some time. Once you gave it that, it would run as good as ever. Or close to it, at least. Well, it would run. That was the point. It would still run.

The surface of the little desk was empty except for the things she needed most: her pills, divided into one of those seven-day containers, a wicker basket for mail that was generally empty (nobody wrote Anne much these days), and one of her weather radios. This one wasn’t but a scanner; the ham radio was down in the basement. There were times that she wished to have it upstairs, close at hand, but she wouldn’t ever allow herself to seriously entertain such a notion. The shortwave needed to be in the most stormproof room of the house, and that was the basement. Concrete block walls and only two small windows up at the top of the western wall, right at ground level. When a big one blew in, the basement was the place to be, which meant that was where the radio needed to be.

Anne had been a weather spotter for decades now, and it was a job she took seriously. All the gauges in the world wouldn’t mean a thing if you couldn’t make contact, and in bad storms the phone lines went down. The radio in the cellar was nearly thirty years old, but it still worked just fine. It was an R. L. Drake TR-7, built by the first—and best—company that ever dealt with ham radio. Harold had bought it for her and set up a powerful antenna and showed her how to use it. He’d never been one who thought things like machinery and electronics were beyond the grasp of women, a trait that made him rare for a man of his time. It hadn’t been long until she understood the Drake better than he did.

Her legs felt steady beneath her now, tingling with circulating blood, and she took her hand from the desk and moved for the door. The moonlight left a white streak across the floorboards, almost like a path in the darkness, and she followed it out of the bedroom and into the living room, crossed that, and opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch, still wondering what in the world had her up and wandering. Then she heard the chimes jingling, louder and faster than they had that evening, and she knew what had stirred her from sleep—the wind.

It had risen while she slept, was still blowing out of the southwest but was firmer now, really pushing. Had itself some confidence again.

Shuffling out to the end of the porch and taking the rail in her hands, she breathed the air in and shivered a little in its grasp. There was a barometer on the porch—there was a barometer in every room of the house—and it told her the pressure was 30.16. A rise from this afternoon.

The shift didn’t make sense. Or maybe it did. Yesterday the gauges told her it would be another hot, peaceful day with steady pressure. But what her mind told her, a mind seasoned by eighty-six years of study and experience, was that it had been too hot and still, and for too long.

So maybe this made plenty of sense. She just didn’t know what was coming next. The wind had blown up unexpectedly, and that was fine, but what was chasing on its heels?

13

THE SUN CAME INTO his room early, and it came in hot. Eric woke squinting against it, feeling the warmth on his face, and almost before he was fully coherent he knew the headache was back.

Back like a bastard, too, a motorcycle gang passing through town and revving engines. He groaned and covered his eyes with the heels of his hands, pressed hard into his temples with his fingertips. This was as bad as any hangover headache he’d ever had, and it wasn’t from a hangover.

When he was on his feet, he took three Excedrin with a glass of water, not feeling overly optimistic—the Excedrin hadn’t been effective yesterday—and then showered in the dark. Light seemed to be a problem. When he was out of the bathroom, he kept the lights off and the curtains pulled, then put on a pair of jeans and a short-sleeved button-down made from some sort of khaki-style material. It was a good-luck shirt. He’d worn it one afternoon in Mexico, where they were shooting a Western that flopped at the box office despite a terrific script and strong cast, and he’d gotten some of his all-time favorite film that day. The director on that one had been an absolute joy, one of the guys who was more focused on supervising the whole production than on telling his cinematographer how to do his job. Those were the directors of Eric’s dreams, guys who trusted you and let you shoot, and he’d found far too few of them in Hollywood. Particularly after he’d broken Davis Vassar’s nose.

Vassar was the biggest name Eric had ever worked with—and a man who’d made certain that he was also the last big name that Eric ever worked with. They’d hit it off well enough at the start, the project something Eric truly liked, an on-the-road thriller involving a hitchhiker who witnessed the execution-style killing of a journalist. It was a great story, gripping as hell, and the day Eric was hired, he bought four bottles of champagne and drove with Claire up to a beautiful inn near Napa and they had sex five times in the first twelve hours. Wild, playful, laughing, gasping sex. Victory sex.

There’d never been anything quite like that for them again.

You had heavy-handed directors and then you had Davis Vassar, who evidently hired a cinematographer just so he had someone else to bark orders at. Talent meant almost nothing to him, professional judgments even less. Eric fought through a month of it before the first blowup, and two days after that, his fist was connecting with Vassar’s face and a waitress was screaming and Eric Shaw’s Hollywood career was ending.

Temper, temper, temper. You have to watch your temper.

The moment it had started to go south with them was crystallized in his memory. Eric had come to the production company office for a meeting with Vassar and two of the producers. They’d been sitting in a room that looked out onto Wilshire, and Vassar made the three of them wait on him for twenty minutes. There was a glass-topped coffee table in the middle of the room, and when he finally swaggered in, he plunked himself down in one of the black leather chairs and put his feet up on the table. Banged the heels of his shoes down on the glass with an unnecessarily loud flourish. The message: I’m a Big Fucking Deal.

They’d talked for nearly an hour, and Eric still couldn’t remember what had been said. He was an image guy, and that image—Vassar’s shining black shoes on that glass tabletop—wouldn’t leave his mind. He stared at those shoes and listened and watched the producers cowering and sniveling with Vassar and thought, This is bullshit. They’re listening to you because of your damn name, not talent. Because you caught some breaks and rode somebody else’s phenomenal acting performance into an Oscar nomination. You don’t even see this story; you don’t have the first damn clue how it should be told. I do. I should be directing this, not you, but I don’t have the name. And so I have to sit here and watch you put your shoes up on somebody else’s table and mouth off while looking at your BlackBerry every two minutes to remind us all how important you are.

He’d made it out of that meeting peacefully. He didn’t make it out of the film the same way.

“And this,” Eric said aloud, “is how you ended up in Indiana. Well done.”

He could shake the memory off for the morning, but not the headache. Food might help, or some black coffee at least, so he left the room and walked down the steps and out into the atrium again. Made it only twenty paces across before the light shining in through the dome brought him to a halt, and he turned on his heel, gritting his teeth, and retreated to the darker corridor that circled the atrium. Found his way to one of the dining rooms, took a table, and ordered an omelet and coffee. Hurry on the coffee, please.

He drank two cups and felt no effect, picked at the omelet and got maybe three bites down before giving up, tossing cash on the table, and returning to his room. This was bad. Headaches like this one, so sudden, so blinding in their pain… they were harbingers. Eric knew enough to understand that, and the possibilities chilled him. Brain tumor, blood clot, cancer. Aneurisms and strokes and heart attacks.

Time to call Dr. Sharp in Chicago. That was all there was to it.

He called from his cell phone. Only when he reached the robotic-voiced menu did he remember that it was a Saturday, and therefore getting the good Dr. Sharp on the line was going to be impossible. His office was closed weekends, and the monotone message suggested Eric visit the emergency room if his condition was serious.

It felt awfully serious to him, but it was also only a headache. You didn’t walk into an emergency room with one of those. And where was a hospital around here anyhow?

He wasn’t sure if he looked at the Pluto Water because he thought of it, or if he thought of it because he looked at it. The chain of logic wasn’t clear, but somehow he found himself staring at the bottle on the desk and thinking, Why the hell not? It was supposed to cure headaches, wasn’t it? He was sure he’d seen that on the lists of ailments the mineral water boasted it could handle. Granted, damn near every other affliction of the early twentieth century had been on those lists, but the stuff couldn’t have gotten its reputation by being a pure placebo. It had to help some problems.

He walked over to the desk and reached for the bottle but stopped with his hand about six inches away, tilted his head, and stared at it. There was a glaze over the bottle now. It looked almost like…

Frost. Son of a bitch, it was frost. He wiped some of it off with his thumb, found it just like wiping clear a streak on the window on an early winter morning in Chicago.

“I’ve got to figure you out,” he said.

He wasn’t going to figure anything out if he had to hole up in this room, sitting on the floor and chewing Excedrin like they were Skittles. So why not give the water a try?

He unfastened the cap and took a small, hesitant swallow.

Not bad. If anything, the sulfuric taste was down and more of the sugary flavor was present in its stead. He took a full swallow, and the taste drove him on for another and then a third, the stuff going down like nectar now. It took a conscious effort to stop, and when he lowered the bottle he saw that more than half of the contents were gone—the same liquid that had made him gag back in Chicago at the smallest of tastes.

The flavor might have improved, but it had no effect. The headache pounded on, that motorcycle gang still circling through town, racing one another.

Okay, the Pluto Water wasn’t going to do the job. Dumb idea, fine, but he was willing to try a dumb idea if it meant he could go about his day.

He went back to the bed and stretched out on his stomach, slid his face under the pillows and held them to his head. Maybe he should go to the hospital. Probably was crazy not to. If Claire were here, it wouldn’t even be an issue; they’d be driving these rural highways right now, looking for the telltale blue-and-white sign. She was a worrier. Protective of him, too. Would defend him to the end.

Well, almost to the end. She’d stuck with him through it all in California, but once they were back in Chicago, back around her family and their judgmental whispers, her resolve had wavered. The questions started then, asking him what came next, saying that it was fine if he needed out of the movie business but what business was he going to find for the future, what would he do? He’d needed time, that was all, and she didn’t have enough of it for him, evidently. Didn’t have enough…

His thoughts left Claire, and, very slowly, he removed the pillows and lifted his head. Cocked it to the side, as if he were listening for something in the distance.

“It’s going away,” he said.

The damned headache was fading. Still present, but the biker gang was driving away now, heading uphill on the roads that led out of town.

14

HE DIDN’T TRUST IT at first, maybe didn’t want to trust it. He went onto the balcony and sat overlooking the atrium for fifteen minutes as the headache continued to fade and then was gone. No, he thought, it can’t really be gone. You’ve just adapted to the light.

So he went outside and walked the grounds for half an hour in the stark sunlight, waiting for the pain to return. It did not. The Pluto Water had done the job, done it with astonishing speed and efficiency.

He had to find out what the hell was in that stuff. And, why, if it was so incredibly effective, had the product vanished over the years? Did you build up a tolerance, or did it have unwelcome side effects? There had to be some problem, because anything that could obliterate a migraine like that would’ve been raking in billions a year by now.

The Pluto Water research would be a priority for the day, he decided as he walked back into the hotel and up to his room, feeling wonderful now, fit and energetic. But before he got to that, he had to call Alyssa Bradford.

He called from the balcony, looking down on a group of high school students on a tour, a man with a country drawl filling them in on the history of the hotel. Eric could catch pieces of his talk—“The first West Baden hotel was destroyed by fire, and Lee Sinclair was bound and determined to replace it with something incredible…. They built this place in under a year, and that was in an era without modern construction equipment…. If you laid the glass in that dome end-to-end you’d have a path sixteen inches wide and nearly three miles long”—as he located Alyssa’s number and dialed.

“Well, Eric, what do you think?” she said. “Pretty amazing, isn’t it?”

“It absolutely is,” he said, and right now, free of headaches and troubling tricks of the mind, he was able to say that and mean it again, to really feel happy to be here. “I’d seen pictures, but it still took my breath away. Because it just doesn’t seem to fit.”

“It doesn’t! That place belongs in Austria, not Indiana. Have you had much luck finding out about my father-in-law?”

“Only that there’s some dispute over his age,” Eric said. “Any chance he’s really one hundred and sixteen?”

“What?” she said and laughed. “No, I don’t think there’s any chance of that. How did you arrive at that question?”

He told her about his first day in town—at least the research end of it. No need to enlighten her about the vanishing train or the violins in his head. Professional reputation to uphold and all that. Hate to lose out on future wedding videos over rumors of insanity.

“Campbell Bradford isn’t a common name,” she said. “The other one has to be a relative.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Eric said, “but my contact here assures me that the Campbell he knew of ran out on his family in nineteen twenty-nine. He left a son named William behind, but William stayed in town, and died in town.”

“I have no idea what to think of that,” she said, “only it can’t be my father-in-law. The age is too far off.”

“Right. Your father-in-law could have been a son this guy had after he left, but—”

“My father-in-law grew up in the town.”

“Yeah. As an aside, I might have found a cousin for you. But I don’t think he’s a guy you’ll be inviting to any family reunions.”

He told her about Josiah and the fight with Kellen Cage.

“I certainly hope he’s not family,” she said. “But if you find out he is some distant relative, let’s go ahead and leave him off the film.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t be asking him for any interviews.”

“Have you spent any time with the bottle yet?” Alyssa asked.

“Spent time with it?”

“Yes. Or, you know, tried to find anything out about it.”

“No,” Eric said slowly, “not yet.”

He’d spent some time with it, certainly, but that level of research wasn’t something he wanted to disclose.

“It seemed to upset him when I brought it to the hospital,” he said.

“What? You went to the hospital?”

“Yeah. I didn’t get your message until Thursday night. I went down to see him that evening, tried to talk with him. He got upset when I showed him the bottle, so I left.”

There was a moment of silence and then she said, “Eric… the doctors told us he hasn’t spoken a word since Monday. He hasn’t been able to communicate with family, and the doctors don’t think he will. He’s very close to the end now. The mind is already gone, but the body is hanging on.”

“Well, he talked to me. Showed a little of that sense of humor, too, tried to play a trick on me.”

But even as he said it, he felt a cold shroud settle around him.

“A trick? I can’t believe that. And you have it on video?”

“Yes,” he said. Tried to say.

“What was that?”

“Yes,” he said. “I should have it on video.”

“That will be very special to us. I just can’t believe it. Thursday night, you said? That was three days after he stopped speaking.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “Hate to cut you off, Alyssa, but I’m going to have to go. I’ve got… one of my sources is calling. So I’ll need to let you—”

“Of course, take it. Keep me updated, and enjoy your stay down there.”

“I’m going to try real hard to do that,” he said and disconnected. Below him the tour guide droned on. The kids in the group looked to be around sixteen, the classic bored-with-everything age, yet they were quiet, staring around almost in awe. Eric understood that. It was the kind of place that could grab your attention and hold it.

He stood up slowly and went into the room and got the camera out. It used miniature DVDs, and he’d put in a fresh one before he set out on foot the previous day. The DVD he’d removed from the camera then had been the one from his visit to Campbell Bradford. Now he took the West Baden DVD out and replaced it with the Bradford disc. He took a long, deep breath and looked up at the ceiling.

“He talked, and it’s going to be on here,” he said. “It is going to be on here.”

He pressed play.

There was Campbell Bradford in the hospital bed. His face looked as Eric remembered—haggard, weary, fading. None of the spark in his eyes yet, but that had taken a moment. Eric turned up the audio volume, heard his own voice.

You going to talk to me?

On the screen, Campbell Bradford blinked slowly and took a hissed breath.

Are you going to talk to me tonight?

This was where he’d responded, right? Eric had dropped his eye to the viewfinder after asking that question, and Bradford had spoken for the first time.

But now as he watched, nothing happened. Bradford stayed silent. Okay, maybe Eric had the wrong spot. Maybe he’d talked for a while before the old man embarked on his game.

His own voice continued:

Great. Where would you like to start? What would you like to tell me?

Oh, shit. He was responding to Bradford now, wasn’t he? Had to be. On the screen, though, the old man hadn’t said a word, hadn’t lifted his head or moved his lips.

Can I ask you something off topic?

Pause. No response from Bradford.

Are you going to talk to me only when I’m looking through the camera?

In his memory, clear as anything, Eric recalled the old man smiling here. On the screen, his mouth didn’t so much as twitch.

That is one wicked sense of humor.

“No, no, no,” Eric said. “He was talking. He was talking.”

But he wasn’t talking. Hadn’t said a word, hadn’t moved a muscle. And there in the background was Eric, gibbering along, carrying on a conversation with no one, sounding like… a crazy person.

“I’m not crazy,” he said. “I’m not. You were talking, old man, you were talking and I’m sure of it, and I don’t know why this piece-of-shit camera won’t show it!”

He was half shouting now but through clenched teeth, and he got to his feet with the camera in his hands, his eyes still locked on the display. He could see himself on the screen now, the green bottle in his hand. This was when Campbell had gotten upset. When he’d moved, grabbed Eric’s arm, and started to talk about the river.

What?

Well, I thought it was plenty cold. When I touched—

Eric’s voice cut off on the audio then, and he remembered Campbell had interrupted him, but it didn’t play that way. Instead, it sounded like he’d just cut himself off in midsentence. The man in the hospital bed had not moved or spoken.

What, then? What are you talking about?

“He talked about the river,” Eric said. “The cold river.”

But talk he did not. Only Eric spoke. Responding, according to the camera, to utter silence.

What river are you talking about?

What river? I don’t understand what you’re talking about, sir.

Mr. Bradford? I’m sorry I brought the bottle.

Mr. Bradford, I was hoping to talk to you about your life. If you don’t want to talk about West Baden or your childhood, that’s fine with me. Let’s talk about your career, then. Your kids.

All Eric’s voice. Not a single whispered word from Campbell Bradford. The video went blank then, the recording over, and Eric was left standing there in the hotel room with the camera in his hands, staring at a blue screen.

Crazy, a voice whispered in Eric’s mind, you’re going insane. Truly, literally, out of your mind. Seeing things that aren’t there is one thing, but you had a conversation that wasn’t there, buddy. That’s the sort of thing that only happens to—

“I didn’t imagine shit,” Eric said. “Didn’t imagine a single damn thing. It was all real, and I don’t know why this thing won’t show it.”

He rewound, played part of it again, saw the same thing he’d seen before, and now his heart was thundering.

“Bullshit,” he said. “It happened, and the camera was on. So why didn’t you record it, you piece of shit? Why didn’t you record it!”

The video played on, no voice but Eric’s audible.

“Fuck you,” he told the camera, his voice shaking. “It’s you. It’s your fault.”

That had to be it—the camera. The thing was… not broken, but what? Evil, that was it. This camera was evil. Because Eric knew he’d had a conversation with Campbell Bradford, knew it as surely as he knew his own name, and he knew he’d seen the train and spinning leaves last night, and yet those things had not been recorded and that left no other option but that this shitty camera was corrupt, malevolent, evil…

He lifted it above his head and smashed it on the edge of the desk. A crack appeared on the casing but the rest of the camera stayed intact. Well-built, sturdy. Thanks, Paul. He lifted it and smashed it again. And again.

By now he was shouting, not words so much as guttural oaths as he lifted and smashed, lifted and smashed, lifted and smashed.

He didn’t stop until the casing was shattered and the carpet was littered with plastic shards. Then he dropped it to the floor, breathing hard, and kicked it, sent the camera rolling across the floor, leaving a trail of broken pieces in its wake.

“There you go,” he said softly, and then he fell back onto the bed, dropping his head to his hands as his chest rose and fell in deep, fear-fueled breaths.

Part Two

NIGHT TRAINS

15

THERE’D BEEN ELEVEN CANS of Keystone Ice in the fridge when Josiah got home Friday night, and he drank nine of them before falling asleep sometime in those silent hours before dawn. He fell asleep out on the porch, could remember that the wind had been starting to stir right toward the end and he’d had a notion that it was time to go inside, but alcohol-induced sleep crept on and held him down with heavy hands.

Dreams came for him then.

In the first one he was in a city, on some street of towering buildings unfamiliar to him. Everything was a dusty gray, like an old photograph, and the wind howled around the concrete corners and swirled dust into his eyes. The dust was painful, made him wince and turn away, and when he did, he saw that the cars lining the street were old-fashioned, every last one of them, roadsters with headlights the size of dinner plates and long, wide running boards.

There was no one on the sidewalks, no one in sight, but despite that, he had the sense that the place was bustling, busy. A powerful, impatient humming noise contributed to that impression, and then he heard a steam whistle ring out loud above it and he knew that a train was near. He turned back again, into the wind and the dust, and now he could see the train coming right down the sidewalk toward him. He stepped back as the locomotive roared up and went by in a blur that lifted more dust into his eyes and flapped his clothes against his body. The huge metal wheels were going right over the sidewalk, no rails beneath them, grinding off a fine layer of concrete, and Josiah knew then where all the dust was coming from.

He had his hands up, shielding his face, when he heard the locomotive slow, and the cars that had been flying by began to take shape, corrugated doors and iron ladders and couplers like clasped fists of steel. All a dirty gray; nothing in this world had color. Then he turned to his left, looked down at the long snake of train cars yet to come, and saw a splash of red on white. The red was in the shape of a devil, with pointed tail and pitchfork in hand, the word Pluto written above it, all this on the side of a clean white boxcar. As this car approached, he could see there was a man leaning from it, hanging out of the open door of the boxcar with just one hand to support him and waving with the other. Waving at Josiah. The man wasn’t familiar but Josiah knew him all the same, knew him well.

The train was at a crawl now, and Josiah stepped closer to it as the Pluto boxcar approached. The man hanging from it wore a rumpled brown suit with frayed cuffs above scuffed shoes, a bowler hat tilted up on his head, thick dark hair showing underneath. He smiled at Josiah as the steam whistle cut loose with another shriek and the train shuddered to a halt.

“Time to be getting on,” the man said. He was hanging out of the boxcar right above Josiah now, almost close enough to touch.

Josiah asked what he was talking about.

“Time to be getting on,” the man said again, and then he removed his hat and waved it at the locomotive. “Won’t be stopped here forever. You best hurry.”

Josiah inquired where they were bound.

“South,” the man told him. “Home.”

Josiah admitted that he wouldn’t mind heading home, didn’t know this place, didn’t like much about it. How was he to be sure the train was heading home, though? Home was a place called French Lick, he said, home was Indiana.

“This is the Monon line,” the man said. “The Indiana line. ’Course we’re going to French Lick. West Baden, too. Best be getting on now.”

Josiah said, As he recollected the Monon hadn’t carried a car in upwards of forty years. That got the man smiling as he set his hat back on his head and the whistle blew.

“Could be so,” he said. “But if there’s another way of getting home, I don’t know it.”

He shifted then, stepped back into the boxcar. Something splashed and Josiah looked down and saw the man was standing in water now, had soaked his shoes and those frayed pant cuffs.

“Best be getting on,” the man said again, and the train began to move, water sloshing out of the boxcar and splattering the sidewalk. “I told you, we don’t stop here forever.”

Josiah asked whether the man was certain they’d be headed in his direction.

“Of course,” the man said. “We’re going home to take what’s yours, Josiah.”

The train was pulling away, and Josiah started walking after it and then broke into a jog and still wasn’t fast enough, and then he was running all out, his breath coming in jerking gasps. He got too close to the train, though, and the force of the cars thundering by spun him and he stumbled, and then that dream was gone and he was into another.

Out in a field this time, a field of golden wheat turned blood red by sunset and bent double from a stiff wind. Shadows lay at the opposite end of the field, a row of trees there, and above them the dome of the West Baden Springs Hotel rose mighty and shining into the sky. It was time to head over there and get to work; Josiah knew that and knew he’d have to hustle because this was a mighty long field and that wind was pushing hard against him, making the walk difficult.

He leaned into it, walking hard, but the sun was sliding away fast and the moon was rising beside it at the exact same tempo, like someone pulling a clock chain that was attached to both. The dark fell fast and heavy and the hotel dome gleamed under the moon and the wind was colder now, so cold, and yet Josiah didn’t appear to have gotten anywhere at all, had just as much of the wheat field ahead as he’d always had. As the dark gathered, he could make out a man at the tree line, the same man from the train, wearing his bowler hat and with hands jammed into his pants pockets. He was shaking his head at Josiah. Looked disgusted with him. Disgusted and angry.

The second dream faded and heat replaced it, an uncomfortable black warmth that eventually roused Josiah from sleep. When he opened his eyes, he saw that the sun was up and shining off the windshield of his pickup truck and right in his face.

He rose with a grunt, stumbled forward and leaned on the porch rail, felt the old paint flake under his palm. A dull throb came from his face, and only then did he remember the previous night, the white guy with the scruffy beard and the black kid with the blisteringly quick left hand. He felt around his eye with his fingertips, knew from touch alone how it must look, and felt the anger that had chased him into sleep return.

The beer had left his mouth dry, but his stomach was settled and his head was clear. Hell, he felt good. He’d taken a punch to the eye and then tied on a good drunk and slept sitting upright in a plastic chair, but somehow he felt good. Felt strong.

The phone started ringing, and he went inside, picked it up off the table, answered and heard Danny’s voice.

“Josiah, what’n hell you’d take off for last night?”

“Wasn’t feeling so hot. Needed some sleep.”

“Bullshit. I heard you went to Rooster’s and got knocked in the face by some—”

“Never mind that,” Josiah said. “Look, you done crowing over your twenty-five hundred yet?”

“That what got you upset, that I had some luck? Downright shitty, Josiah.”

“That wasn’t it. I’m asking, though, you still feeling big about it?”

“Feeling happy is all. Took a little beating later on, lost about eight hundred, but I still got more than fifteen of it left. That ain’t a bad night.”

“No, it ain’t. But is it a good enough night? It all you need?”

“What do you mean?”

Josiah turned and looked out the window, out into that sun-filled day.

“Time’s come to make us some real money, Danny. Time’s come.”

16

AN HOUR AFTER ERIC played the video, he was still staring at the wreckage that remained from his camera, trying to understand what in the hell was going on, when his cell phone began to ring.

It was Claire. Calling him even though he’d told her he would not be available for a few weeks. He held the phone in his hand but didn’t answer. He could not talk to her now, not in this state. A minute after it stopped ringing he checked the message, and the sound of her voice broke something loose inside him, made his shoulders sag and his eyes close.

“I know you’re in Indiana,” she said, “but I just wanted to check on you. I was thinking of you…. You can call if you want. If not, I understand. But I’d like to know you’re all right.”

A week ago, he’d have bristled. Check on me? Like to know if I’m all right? Why would I not be? Just because you’re not here, I’m not going to be okay? Today, though, sitting on the hotel room floor surrounded by his broken camera, he couldn’t muster that response. Instead, he called her back.

She answered. First ring.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey. You got my message?”

“Yes.”

Silence.

“Well, I didn’t want to bother you. It’s just that you hadn’t really said anything about where you were going or when you might be back, so—”

“It’s fine. I should have explained more. I’m sorry.”

She was quiet for a moment, as if the phrase had surprised her. Probably it had.

“Are you okay?” she said. “You sound a little off.”

“I’ve been… Claire, I’m seeing things.”

“What do you mean, you’re—”

“Things that aren’t there,” he said, and there was something thick in the back of his throat.

Silence, and he braced himself for the scorn and the ridicule she’d have to levy now, the accusations. Instead he heard a door swing shut and latch and then a metallic clatter that he recognized so well—she’d tossed her car keys into the ceramic dish she kept on the table by the door. She’d been going out, and now she stopped.

“Tell me about it,” she said.

He talked for about twenty minutes, gave her more detail than he’d planned, recalled every word Campbell Bradford had said about the cold river, described the train right down to the gravel vibrating under his feet and the furious storm cloud that came from its stack. Through it all, she listened.

“I know what you’re going to say,” he said when he was through recounting the story of the man in the boxcar. “But it’s not booze and it’s not pills and it’s not—”

“I believe you.”

He hesitated. Said, “What?”

“I believe that it’s not booze or pills,” she said. “Because this has happened before. You’ve had visions like this before.”

“Not like this,” he said. “You’re thinking of that time in the mountains, but—”

“That’s one of them, but there were others. Remember the Infiniti?”

That stopped him. Shit, how could he have forgotten about the Infiniti? Maybe because he’d wanted to.

They’d been looking for a new car for Claire, back in California when things were good and the job offers were rolling in, and had gone to an Infiniti dealership to test-drive a red G35 coupe she’d liked. The car was brand-new, and she hadn’t wanted to spend that kind of money, but Eric was feeling cocky and flush and insisting cash wasn’t an issue. So they’d taken the car out, the two of them in front and a paunchy salesman with effeminate hands wedged into the back, jabbering on about the car’s amazing and apparently endless features: navigation, climate control, heated seats, pedicures, tranquilizers, a hand that came right out from under the dash and powdered your balls when you needed it. His voice was grating on Eric, but Claire was driving and it was her car to choose anyhow, so Eric had leaned back and closed his eyes for a moment.

He swore, even hours later, that he’d heard metal tear. He believed that in his heart. He’d heard the jagged, agonized rip of metal from metal, a sound that belonged at junkyards or disaster sites, and jerked up in his seat and opened his eyes to see the windshield splintered and spider-webbed, turned to Claire and saw ribbons of blood spreading across her forehead and over her lips and down her chin as her neck sagged lifelessly to the right.

He’d gotten out some sort of gasp or grunt or shout and Claire had hit the brakes and turned to him as the guy in back finally shut up, and then Eric had blinked and the freeway spun around him and then he focused again and could see that they were all fine, that the car was intact and the windshield was whole and Claire’s face was smooth and tan and blood-free.

The excuse he manufactured at the time—something about a sudden stomach cramp—had satisfied the salesman but not Claire, and when they got back to the lot she pulled him aside and asked him what was wrong. All he’d said: Don’t you even think about buying this car. He couldn’t tell her any more than that, couldn’t describe the way her face had looked in that terrible flash.

Five days later, she’d brought him a copy of the Times as he drank coffee at the kitchen table, dropped it in front of him and pointed to an article detailing how a music executive’s daughter had wrapped her fresh-off-the-lot Infiniti G35 around a utility pole, doing about a hundred and ten. The car was red and had just been purchased from Martin Infiniti, the same dealership they’d visited. Eric had finally told her, told her what she already knew. Then he’d tried to convince her it could easily be a different car.

“I actually forgot about that,” he told her now. “But even that can’t touch what I’ve been seeing lately, Claire. That conversation with the old man, and then the train… they felt real. During those moments, they were absolutely real.”

“But in the past you’ve had psychic—”

“Oh, stop, I don’t want to hear that word.”

“In the past you’ve had odd visions—better?—that have been very real, too. You’ve been able to connect objects or places with things that had happened or were going to happen. So why wouldn’t you believe this is similar?”

“This is so much more intense…”

“And those other experiences were from outside contact,” she said. “You ingested that water, Eric. You put it inside you.”

“The water.”

“Of course. Don’t you think that’s what you’re reacting to?”

Actually, I suspected your dad’s camera. Had to beat the thing to death, in fact. How’s that for a logical reaction?

“I haven’t really had time to consider it yet,” he said. “But that trip to see the old man in the hospital, that was days after I first tasted the water. Seems like a long time for a drug to stay in your system.”

“It’s not a drug, Eric. It’s you.”

“What?”

“You’re connecting to it, just like you have to things before. The car, the old Indian camp in the mountains, things like that. And I’m not surprised you think this experience is stronger, more intense, because those were just things you looked at. This stuff, you consumed.”

They talked for a while longer, and it was amazing how much better he felt after he finally hung up with her. Claire had not only accepted his version of what was going on but had also offered a memory that validated it. Sane once again. How lovely to be back.

He felt a mild tug of shame at the way he’d gone to her with this, and the way she’d listened. After all his recent coldness, he’d turned to her quickly in a moment of need, and she had allowed him to.

It was, he realized, the longest conversation they’d had since he left. The first long one, in fact, that hadn’t involved heavy arguing or his shouting or her tears. They’d talked like companions once again. Almost like husband and wife.

That didn’t change anything, of course. But she’d been there when he needed her, and that was no small thing. Not at all.

There when she was needed, that was Claire. Always and forever, that had been Claire. Until the return to Chicago, until he had no work and no clear prospects. Then where had she been?

There. In your home. And you walked out and never went back, and she’s still there, she’s still there and you’re the one who left…

Hell with it. One phone call did not a marriage fix, but it had been good to talk with her and he felt far better now than he had before, shaken but relieved. It was the way you felt after getting sick to your stomach—unsteady, but glad that was over.

The water made sense. The water applied some element of logic to what had, an hour ago, seemed utterly illogical. And terrifying.

All right, then, time to move on into the day. There was research to be done, and he figured it would be a damn good idea to start with the mineral water. At any rate, he didn’t need to stay in this room, cowering and questioning his own sanity. The headaches would be gone for a while now. Might as well get to work. Too bad he no longer had a camera with which to do his job.

Breaking it had felt good, though. Watching it shatter, throwing his full strength into those smashes against the edge of the desk, seeing something else pay a price for his own pain, his own fear. Yes sir, that had felt nice.

He wondered how Claire would respond to that notion. Something told him it wouldn’t be with surprise.

The Pluto company was housed in a long stone building of a buttery color. There were two large holding tanks outside and banks of old-fashioned windows, some forty panes of glass in each one, a few of them opened outward to let the air circulate. The entrance led Eric to a flight of stairs, and at the top he found the office, went in, and explained what he wanted to a pretty, brown-haired woman behind one of the desks.

“You want to talk about the history of the company, your best bet is up at the hotel,” she said.

“I’m interested in the history, yes, but I’m also interested in the actual water. What’s in the water, and what it does.”

“What it does?”

“I’ve seen some of the old promotional materials, things that claimed it would fix just about anything.”

“There was only one thing that water ever fixed.” She waited for a response and didn’t get it, then leaned forward and said, “It made you shit, mister. That’s all it did. Pluto Water was nothing but a laxative.”

He smiled. “I understand that, but I’m trying to find out something about the legends that surrounded it, the folklore.”

“Again, we’re not going to be able to answer that. The only thing we’ve got in common with the original company is the name. We don’t produce that water anymore.”