Forever Odd

options. There weren’t any.
        This was one of those moments when I wished that I had striven harder to overcome my deep-seated aversion to guns.
        On the other hand, when you shoot at people who also have guns, they tend to shoot back. This invariably complicates matters.
        If you don’t shoot first and aim well, maybe it’s better not to have firearms. In an ugly situation like this, people who have heavy weaponry tend to feel superior to people who don’t; they feel smug, and when they’re smug, they underestimate their opponents. An unarmed man, of necessity, will be quicker of wit-more aware, more feral and more ferocious-than the gunman who relies on his weapon to think for him. Therefore, being unarmed can be an advantage.
        In retrospect, that line of reasoning is patently absurd. Even at the time, I knew it was stupid, but I pursued it anyway, because I needed to talk myself out of that alcove and into action.
         Datura.
        The leaf in the moonlit water, sharing its essence with the pool, sinking deep and carried on a lazy current that pulls, pulls, pulls…
        I stepped out of the alcove, into the corridor. I turned left, proceeded north.
        Some tough, violent phone-sex babe, crazy as a mad cow, gets it in her addled head that she’s got to kidnap Danny so she can use him to force me to reveal my closely guarded secrets. But why does Dr. Jessup have to die, and in such a brutal fashion? Just because he was there ?
        This phone-sex babe, this nut case, has three guys-now two- who apparently are willing to commit any crime necessary to help her get what she wants. There’s no bank to be robbed, no armored car to be held up, no illegal drugs to be sold. She’s not after money; she’s after true ghost stories, icy fingers up and down her spine, so there’s no loot for the other members of her gang to share. Their reason for putting their lives and freedom on the line for her at first seems puzzling if not mysterious.
        Of course even nonhomicidal guys often think with the little head instead of with the big head that has a brain in it. And the annals of crime are replete with cases in which dim-bulb men in the thrall of bad women did the most vicious and idiotic things solely for sex.
        If Datura looked as sultry as she sounded on the phone, she would find it easy to manipulate certain men. Her kind of guy would have more testosterone than white blood cells in his veins, would lack a sense of right and wrong, would have a taste for excitement, would savor every cruelty he performed, and would have no capacity to think about tomorrow.
        Putting together her entourage, she would not have encountered a shortage of candidates. The news seemed to be full of such cold-blooded men these days.
        Dr. Wilbur Jessup had died not just because he was in the way, but also because killing him had been fun to these people, a release, a lark. Rebellion in its purest form.
        In the elevator alcove, I had found it hard to believe that she could have put such a crew together. While walking a mere hundred feet of hotel corridor, I had come to find them inevitable.
        Dealing with these kinds of people, I would need every advantage that my gift could provide.
        Door after door, whether open or closed, failed to entice me, until I stopped finally at 1203, which stood ajar.

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    THIRTY-ONE
        
        MOST OF THE FURNITURE HAD BEEN REMOVED FROM Room 1203. Only a pair of nightstands, a round wood table, and four captain’s chairs remained.
        Some cleaning had occurred. Although the space was far from immaculate, it looked more accommodating than any place I’d seen previously in the ruined hotel.
        The pending storm had dimmed the day, but fat candles in red and amber glass containers provided light. Six were arranged precisely on the floor in each corner of the room. Six more stood on the table.
        The pulse and flicker of candlelight might have been cheerful in other circumstances. Here it seemed cheerless. Menacing. Occult.
        Scented, the candles produced a fragrance that masked the bitter malodor of long-settled smoke. The air smelled sweet rather than flowery. I had never breathed anything quite like it before.
        White sheets had been tucked and pinned to the upholstery of the captain’s chairs, to provide clean seating.
        The nightstands flanked the big view window. On each