Doctor Sleep: A Novel

fast—”
    “We don’t,” Diesel Doug said. “And by the way, you smell a trifle rank, Gramps. No offense, but when was the last time you wiped your ass?”
    Grampa Flick bared his teeth—eroded and yellow, but all his own—at Doug. “Your wife wiped it for me just this morning, Deez. With her face, as it happens. Kinda nasty, but she seems to like that kind of thi—”
    “Shut your heads, both of you,” Rose said. Her voice was toneless and unthreatening, but Doug and Grampa both shrank away from her, their faces those of chastened schoolboys. “Go on, Jimmy. But stay on point. I want to have a concrete plan, and soon.”
    “The rest of them are going to be reluctant no matter how concrete the plan is,” Crow said. “They’re going to say it’s been a good year for steam. That movie theater thing, the church fire in Little Rock, and the terrorist thing in Austin. Not to mention Juárez. I was dubious about going south of the border, but it was good.”
    Better than good, actually. Juárez had become known as the murder capital of the world, earning its sobriquet with over twenty-five hundred homicides a year. Many were torture-killings. The pervading atmosphere had been exceedingly rich. It wasn’t pure steam, and it made you feel a little whoopsy in the stomach, but it did the job.
    “All those fucking beans gave me the runs,” Token Charlie said, “but I have to admit that the pickings were excellent.”
    “It was a good year,” Rose agreed, “but we can’t make a business of Mexico—we’re too conspicuous. Down there, we’re rich americanos . Up here, we fade into the woodwork. And aren’t you tired of living from year to year? Always on the move and always counting canisters? This is different. This is the motherlode.”
    None of them replied. She was their leader and in the end they would do what she said, but they didn’t understand about the girl. That was all right. When they encountered her for themselves, they would. And when they had her locked up and producing steam pretty much to order, they’d offer to get down on their knees and kiss Rose’s feet. She might even take them up on it.
    “Go on, Jimmy, but get to the point.”
    “I’m pretty sure what you picked up was a teen-slang version of Lickety-Split. It’s a chain of New England convenience stores. There are seventy-three in all, from Providence to Presque Isle. A grammar school kid with an iPad could have nailed that in about two minutes. I printed out the locations and used Whirl 360 to get pix. I found six that have mountain views. Two in Vermont, two in New Hampshire, and two in Maine.”
    His laptop case was under his chair. He grabbed it, fumbled in the flap pocket, brought out a folder, and handed it to Rose. “These aren’t pictures of the stores, they’re pictures of various mountain views that can be seen from the neighborhoods the stores are in. Once more courtesy of Whirl 360, which is far better than Google Earth, and God bless its nosy little heart. Take a look and see if any ring a bell. If not, see if there are any you can definitely eliminate.”
    Rose opened the folder and slowly went through the photographs. The two showing Vermont’s Green Mountains she put aside at once. One of the Maine locations was also wrong; it showed only one mountain, and she had seen a whole range of them. The other three she looked at longer. Finally she handed them back to Jimmy Numbers.
    “One of these.”
    He turned the pictures over. “Fryeburg, Maine . . . Madison, New Hampshire . . . Anniston, New Hampshire. Got a feel for which one of the three?”
    Rose took them again, then held up the photos of the White Mountains as seen from Fryeburg and Anniston. “I think it’s one of these, but I’m going to make sure.”
    “How are you going to do that?” Crow asked.
    “I’m going to visit her.”
    “If everything you say is true, that could be dangerous.”
    “I’ll do it when she’s asleep. Young girls sleep deeply. She’ll never know I was there.”
    “Are you sure you need to do that? These three places are pretty close together. We could check them all.”
    “Yes!” Rose cried. “We’ll just cruise around and say, ‘We’re looking for a local girl, but we can’t seem to read her location the way we normally can, so give us a little help. Have you noticed any junior high girls around here with precognition or mind-reading talents?’ ”
    Crow Daddy gave a sigh, stuck his big hands deep