By the light of the moon

in a church somewhere. It's going to happen.
And soon, I think. Murder. Mass murder. And somehow... we're going
to be there when it goes down.'
    'You see us there? In your visions?'
    'No. But why else would these same images keep coming to me
– the birds, the church, all of it? I'm not having
premonitions about train wrecks in Japan, airplane crashes in South
America, tidal waves in Tahiti. I'm seeing something in my own
future, our future.'
    'Then we don't go anywhere near a church,' Dylan said.
    'Somehow... I think the church comes to us. I don't think
there's any way we can avoid it.'
    A rapid moonset left the night with none but starlight, and the
Big Lonely seemed to get bigger, lonelier.
    * * *
    Dylan didn't pilot the Expedition as if it were a wingless jet,
but he pushed it hard. He completed what should have been more than
a three-hour drive in two and a half hours.
    For a town of five thousand, Holbrook boasted an unusual number
of motels. It provided the only convenient lodging for tourists who
wanted to visit the Petrified Forest National Park or various
Native American attractions at nearby Hopi and Navajo Indian
reservations.
    No five-star resorts were among the accommodations, but Dylan
wasn't looking for amenities. All he wanted was a quiet place where
the cockroaches were discreet.
    He chose the motel farthest from service stations and other
businesses likely to get noisy in the morning. At the registration
counter, he presented a sleepy-eyed desk clerk with cash in
advance, no credit card.
    The clerk required a driver's license. Dylan was loath to give
it, but refusal would arouse suspicion. He had already given an
Arizona license-plate number, and not the one on the plates that he
had stolen. Fortunately, the sleepy clerk seemed not to be
intrigued by the apparent conflict between a California license and
Arizona plates.
    Jilly didn't want adjoining rooms. After all that had happened,
even if they left the door open between rooms, she'd feel
isolated.
    They booked a single unit with two queen-size beds. Dylan and
Shep would share one, and Jilly would take the other.
    The usual decor of bold clashing patterns, calculated to conceal
stains and wear, gave Dylan a faint case of motion sickness. He was
bone tired, too, and grainy-eyed, suffering from a killer
headache.
    By 3:10 A.M., they had transferred the essential luggage to the
room. Shep wanted to bring the Dickens novel, and Dylan noticed
that although the boy had appeared to be absorbed in the book
throughout the ride north, he was on the same page that he'd been
reading in the restaurant, all the way back in Safford.
    Jilly used the bathroom first, and when she came out, teeth
brushed and ready for bed, she still wore street clothes. 'No
pajamas tonight. I want to be ready to move fast.'
    'Good idea,' Dylan decided.
    Shep had responded to an evening of chaos and shattered routines
with remarkable equanimity, so Dylan didn't want to push him
further by making him forgo his customary sleepwear. One straw too
many, and Shep might break out of his stoic silence into a
hyperverbal mode, which could last for hours, ensuring that none of
them got any sleep.
    Besides, Shep wore pretty much the same thing in bed and out of
it. His daytime wardrobe consisted of a collection of identical
white T-shirts featuring Wile E. Coyote, and a collection of
identical blue jeans. At night he put on a fresh Wile E. Coyote
T-shirt and a pair of black pajama pants.
    Seven years ago, in a state of hysterical despair over the
decisions required to dress each morning, Shep had rebelled against
a varied wardrobe. Thereafter, he would wear only jeans and Wile
E.
    The nature of his fascination with the infamous coyote was not
clear. When in the mood for cartoon mayhem, he watched Road Runner
videos for hours. Sometimes he laughed with delight; at other
times, he followed the action as solemnly as though it were the
moodiest of Swedish cinema; and on still other occasions, he
watched quietly, with bottomless sorrow, tears sliding ceaselessly
down his cheeks.
    Shepherd O'Conner was an enigma wrapped in a mystery, but Dylan
wasn't always sure that the mystery had a solution or that the
enigma possessed any meaning. The great stone heads of Easter
Island, as enigmatic as anything on earth, stared with mysterious
purpose toward the sea, but they were stone inside as well as
out.
    After brushing his teeth twice and flossing twice, after washing
his hands twice before toilet and