drive them someplace more convenient for them to die. In the trunk of the Champagne Abomination, the Gray Man had fuel cans and two Peruvian pots that were too hot to sell yet wrapped in Dora the Explorer blankets, so he put the bodies in the backseat, buckling them so they wouldn’t flop around too much. He was sadly on his way to creating an incriminating stain in yet another rental car. His father was right: past performance really did seem to be the best indicator of future performance.
While he drove, he called the Veranda Inn and Restaurant and canceled his dinner reservation.
“Would you like to change it to a later time?” the hostess asked. The Gray Man liked how she said later. It was something like lyter, but with a lot more vowels.
“Tonight just won’t work, I think. Can I reschedule for . . . Thursday?” He took the exit for the Blue Ridge Parkway. The force of the turn knocked one of the thug’s heads against the window. The thug was beyond caring.
“Table for one, was it?”
He thought about Maura Sargent and her slender, bare ankles. “Make it two.”
He hung up the phone, put on the Kinks, and drove out along the parkway. He took turn after turn until the rental car’s GPS was hopelessly confused. With the rental car, he made his own path into the woods past a copse of no trespassing signs (the Gray Man had never regretted paying for the additional damage insurance on a rental). He parked in a small, idyllic clearing, rolled down the window, and cranked up the stereo. Pulling out Missile and Polo Shirt, he untied their shoes.
He had just put Polo Shirt’s shoes on his own feet when his phone rang.
The Gray Man picked it up. “Do you know who those men were?” he asked in place of a greeting.
Greenmantle’s voice was frenzied. “I told you. I told you there were others there.”
“You did,” the Gray Man agreed. He stomped the treads of Polo Shirt’s shoes full of good Virginia clay. “Are there more?”
“Of course,” Greenmantle said tragically.
The Gray Man switched to Missile’s shoes. The clearing was covered with their tracks. “Where are they coming from?”
“The readings! The machines! Anyone can follow the readings,” Greenmantle said. “We’re not the only ones with geophones lying about.”
In the background, the Kinks sang about demon alcohol. “How is it that you knew this thing existed, again?”
“Same way we know anything. Rumors. Old books. Greedy old people. What is that sound?”
“The Kinks.”
“I didn’t know you were a fan. In fact, it’s strange to think of you listening to music at all. Wait. I don’t know why I said that. I’m sorry, that sounded terrible.”
The Gray Man was not offended. It meant that Greenmantle thought of him as a thing instead of as a person, and he was all right with that. For a moment, they both listened to the Kinks sing about port, Pernod, and tequila. Every time the Gray Man put on the Kinks for any length of time, he considered getting back into academia. Two of the Kinks were brothers. Fraternity in the Rock Music of the ’60s and ’70s would be a fine title, he thought. The Kinks intrigued him because, although they fought continuously— one member famously spitting on another before kicking over the drums and storming offstage — they remained together for decades. That, he thought, was brotherhood.
“Will you be able to work around those two?” Greenmantle asked. “Will they be a problem?”
It took the Gray Man a moment to realize that he was referring to the Missile and Polo Shirt.
“No,” the Gray Man said. “They won’t be.”
“You’re good,” Greenmantle said. “It’s why you’re the only one.”
“Yes,” the Gray Man agreed. “I certainly am. Would you say that this thing is a box?”
“No, I wouldn’t say that, because I don’t know. Would you say that?”
“No. Probably not.”
“Why did you ask, then?”
“If it was a box, I could stop looking at things that weren’t boxes.”
“If I’d thought it was a box, I would’ve told you to look for a box. Would I say it’s a box. Why do you have to be so damn mysterious all the time? Do you get off on it? You want me thinking about boxes now? Because I am. I’ll look it up. I’ll see what I can do.”
Hanging up, the Gray Man assessed the scene. In a fortunate world, the two bodies before him would lay undiscovered for years, picked at by animals and worn away by the weather. But in a world where lovebirds thought they caught a strange smell or poachers tripped on leg bones or buzzards inconveniently circled for days at a time, all there would be to the scene would be two men with mud-clotted boots and defensive DNA clawed beneath their fingernails. In a way, two bodies made it easier. Made the story simpler. Two men up to no good on private property. A dispute between them. A fight that got out of hand.
One for loneliness. Two for a battle.
The Gray Man frowned and checked his watch. Hopefully these were the only bodies he’d have to bury in Henrietta, but one could never say.
26
When Blue arrived home in her soaking-wet clothing, Noah was kneeling in the tiny, shaded front yard of 300 Fox Way. Orla breezed right inside without saying hello to him. As a psychic, she probably saw him, but as Orla, she didn’t care. Blue, stopped, though. She was pleased to see him. She rearranged the Camaro wheel under her arm and wiped damp hair off her forehead.
“Hey, Noah.”
He was too busy being ghostly to attend to her, however. Currently, he was engaged in one of his most creepy activities: reenacting his own death. He glanced around the tiny yard as if appraising the forest glen containing only himself and his friend Barrington Whelk. Then he let out a terrible, mangled cry as he was struck from behind by an invisible skateboard. He made no sound when he was hit again, but his body jerked convincingly. Blue tried not to look as he bucked a few more times before falling to the ground. His head jerked; his legs bicycled.
Blue took a deep, uneven breath. Though she had seen him do it four or five times now, it was always unsettling. Eleven minutes. That was how long the entire homicidal portrait lasted: one boy’s life destroyed in less time than it took to cook a hamburger. The last six minutes, the ones that took place after Noah had first fallen but before he actually died, were excruciating. Blue considered herself a fairly steadfast, sensible girl, but no matter how many times she heard his torn-up breath seizing in his throat, she felt a little teary.