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Beyond the , under the low gray sky, the desert day caht

As here in Barstow, for a couple of weeks each spring, the desert around Pico Mundo suddenly blooht with heliotrope and fiddlenecks, poppies and red ht live to see the land around my hometown thus enraptured one more time

I said, "You didn’t for a moment think I was crazy when I told you that I see the dead"

"Of course not, child The world now is crazy You are as sane as the world once was"

Mrs Fischer insisted that the treat was on her, and she left a 100 percent tip in cash With the money, she put down a business card that had no nale presented only one of those perfectly round iconic cartoon faces with dots for the eyes and nose, and a big arc of a smile Instead of traditional yellow, the face was blue And very sh the diner to the cashier’s station As we arrived, Sandy finished pouring a refill for one of the customers seated at the counter, returned the coffeepot to the war up our bill

As the waitress and Mrs Fischer exchanged pleasantries, I spotted the stack of flyers on the counter beside the cash register MISSING! the headline declared Under that, a question: HAVE YOU SEEN THESE CHILDREN?

Here they were--the three faces froo with theht-year-old boy was Jessie Payton, the six-year-old was his sister Jas noticed my interest in the flyer, Sandy said, "Makes me sick to think about it"

When I looked up, unshed tears stood in her sea-green eyes I said, "When did they disappear?"

"Between seven and eight-thirty yesterday evening It’ll soon be twenty-four hours That can’t be good, no trace of thehbor, Ben Saht, went to check Eight-thirty he found poor Agnes"

"Agnes?"

The salt tide in Sandy’s eyes overflowed She couldn’t speak I understood why, earlier, she’d felt that laughter was not appropriate and why her voice had contained a note of sorrow not coht flowers

From a nearby stool, a burly man in khakis and a checkered-flannel shirt, whose coffee had been refilled a nes Henry Reverend Henry’s eet lady Did babysittin’ to stretch her Social Security Paytons’ trash cans are kept to one side of their back porch Ben Saht, so when he happens to look down, he sees a face in there Agnes Stabbed through the heart, stuffed in the can like garbage"

Wiping her eyes with a Kleenex, Sandy said, "Chet, good Lord, what’s the world co to, helpless children all over snatched away the same day?"

"It’s comin’ to the bad end it’s always been comin’ to," Chet said solemnly

For a beat, I didn’t understand the "All over? Other children? Where?"

Chet turnedstool "Two in Bakersfield, one up to Visalia"

All those diner sreasy,e of the slaughterhouse waited to assert the sacrifice that was the source of that pleasure The aroma of coffee now had the bitter smell of an emetic

"Two in Winslow, Arizona," Sandy said, "and four froas," Chet said "Kidnappers killed the parents to get at the young’uns And one froether," I said

"Maybe even others nobody knows of yet," Chet said "This smells like terrorism Don’t it to you? Who knohere it ends?"

Mrs Fischer crossed herself, the first indication of a traditional faith that I had witnessed fron of the cross with jaws clenched tight in anger and eyes as fierce as hers were just then Maybe she prayed the rosary every night, or maybe this terrible news reminded her of the Catholicism of her childhood and of why she’d once felt a need for it

"All these things happened in so many jurisdictions," Chet explained, "nobody saw the pattern till late this mornin’, early this afternoon By then those kids they could be anywhere"

"They’ve got to be connected, don’t they?" Sandy asked "The TV news says they’ve got to be"

"Not a ransoiveswith us till there’s some kind of end to this," Sandy revealed "Dad, Mo at ho"

On the road all day, with no interest in the radio, we had not heard the news Usually I spare anda, then it’s one threat or another exaggerated to the point of absurdity, or it’s the tragedy of storotry and oppression hteousness and honor called dishonorable, all jaecko sells insurance, a bear sells toilet tissue, a dog sells cars, a gorilla sells invester sells cereal, and an elephant sells a drug that will i in A, but trusts only the reco heard the news, I had been drawn to Ernestine’s to make an important discovery, and this was it The Payton kids were not the only souls in peril So thee before a select audience more perverse than I cared to consider

With ht be the only one who could find the abductees in tiation was so heavy that I didn’t know if I had the shoulders to carry it I have had successes but also failures, because whatever else I ht be, I am first and foreain To fail so many innocent children--or any of them--would leave me in a dark place, perhaps even blacker than the eh which I suffered in the weeks immediately after I lost Stormy Llewellyn I had no choice, of course, but to try

The likelihood of failure seeainst what seeularly brutal ene than their nuraces, criht be all of those things, yes, but they were also soerous At least two of them, the rhinestone cowboy and his stone-faced viper-eyed associate, possessed soe--unique to thee

Mrs Fischer deposited a few dollars of it into a clear-plastic collection bucket for the Special Olyister

Sandy wished us a safe journey

Mrs Fischer plucked a couple of complimentary cellophane-wrapped hard-candy mints from a plastic bowl beside the Special Olympics bucket

I opened the door for Mrs Fischer

Mrs Fischer gavethe day when all seems normal and when every action of your own and of those around you seems to be unremarkable, the appearance of ordinariness is an illusion, and just below the placid surface, the world is seething

Twenty

NOT ALL DESERTS ARE HOT ALL THE TIME THE HIGH ones can be as cold in winter as a Canadian plain We were near the end of winter, but a chill had cohtfall The breeze smelled faintly of the rain that we had outrun but that soon would catch us again

A huge tricked-up Harley-Davidson stood next to the liht with intricacies of chro off their helels Perhaps fifty, tall, muscular but lean, clean-shaven, the man had a salt-and-pepper lion’s mane of hair He was character-actor rather than lead-actor handsoels than to wind and sun, and never to Botox The woh cheekbones, proud but chiseled features, and polished-bronze coested she had floated into this world froene pool If Soldier of Fortune ht have been es I would have bet my liver that neither had the smallest tattoo or love handles, that they didn’t care what anyone’s opinion of theht to fashion yet owned not a single unfortunate ite, and that they didn’t tweet in any sense of the word

In a baritone voice as mellow as fifty-year-old port, the rapevine that Oscar coed the worave;me brûlée we ever had, and the maître d’ said nobody who ever died in that restaurant before had passed away ed Mrs Fischer, he said, "Oscar was always a class act"

"How’s his et to be a hundred and nine without having taken the world on your shoulders a tiht hand to me, the man said, "My name’s Gideon This is my wife, Chandelle You must be Edie’s new chauffeur You’re Thomas, aren’t you? May I call you Tom?"

"Yes, sir" I shook his hand "But I haven’t taken the job yet"

Mrs Fischer said, "He’s very independent, self-reliant"

"That’s the way, isn’t it," Gideon said

"That’s the way," Mrs Fischer confirmed

When the motorcyclist s way, as if all the good weather he had ever known had been stored up in his face but none of the bad