Forever Odd

came through the door, “thank God. I was sure you were dead.”
        Switching on the flashlight, handing it to him to hold, matching his whisper, I said, “Why didn’t you tell me what a lunatic she is.”
        “Do you ever listen to me? I told you she was crazier than a syphilitic suicide bomber with mad-cow disease!”
        “Yeah. Which is as much of an understatement as saying Hitler was a painter who dabbled in politics.”
        The running-rat patter proved to be rain slanting into the room through one of the three window panes that were broken, rattling against a jumble of furniture.
        I leaned the shotgun against the wall and showed him the remote control, which he recognized.
        “Is she dead?” he asked.
        “I wouldn’t count on it.”
        “What about Doom and Gloom?”
        I didn’t have to ask who they might be. “One of them took a hit, but I don’t think it did him serious damage.”
        “So they’ll be coming?”
        “As sure as taxes.”
        “We gotta split.”
        “Splitting,” I assured him, and almost pressed the white button on the remote.
        At the penultimate instant, thumb poised, I asked myself who had told me that the black button would detonate the explosives and the white would disarm them.
         Datura.

----

    FORTY
        
        DATURA, WHO HOBNOBBED WITH THE GRAY PIGS OF Haiti and observed seamstresses being sacrificed and cannibalized, had told me that the black button detonated, that the white disarmed.
        In my experience, she had not proved herself to be a reliable source of dependable fact and unvarnished truth.
        More to the point, the ever-helpful madwoman had volunteered this information when I had asked if the remote on the table might be the one that controlled the bomb. I couldn’t think of any reason why she would have done so.
        Wait. Correction. I could after all think of one reason, which was Machiavellian and cruel.
        If by some wild chance I ever got my hands on the remote, she wanted to program me to blow up Danny instead of save him.
        “What?” he asked.
        “Gimme the flashlight.”
        I went around behind his chair, crouched, and studied the bomb. In the time since I had first seen this device, my subconscious had been able to mull over the tangle of colorful wiring-and had come up with zip.
        This does not necessarily reflect badly on my subconscious. At the same time, it had been presented with other important tasks- such as listing all the diseases I might have contracted when Datura spat wine in my face.
        As previously, I tried to jump-start my sixth sense by tracing the wires with one fingertip. After 3.75 seconds I admitted this was a desperation tactic with no hope of getting me anything but killed.
        “Odd?”
        “Still here. Hey, Danny, let’s play a word-association game.”
        “Now?”
        “We could be dead later, then when would we play it? Humor me. It’ll help me think this through. I’ll say something, and you tell me the first thing that comes into your mind.”
        “This is nuts.”
        “Here we go: black and white.”
        “Piano keys.”
        “Try again. Black and white.”
        “Night and day.”
        “Black and white.”
        “Salt and pepper.”
        “Black and white.”
        “Good and evil.”
        I said, “Good.”
        “Thank you.”
        “No. That’s the next word for association: good.”
        “Grief.”
        “Good,” I repeated.
        “Bye.”
        “Good.”
        “God.”
        I said, “Evil.”
        “Datura,” he said at once.
        “Truth.”
        “Good.”
        I sprang “Datura” on him again.
        At once he said, “Liar.”
        “Our intuition brings us to the same conclusion,” I told him.
        “What conclusion?”
        “White detonates,” I said, putting my thumb lightly on the black button.
        Being Odd Thomas is frequently interesting but nowhere near as much fun as being Harry Potter. If I were Harry, with a pinch of this and a smidgin of that and a muttered incantation, I would have tossed together a don’t-explode-in-my-face charm, and everything would have turned out just fine.
        Instead, I pushed the black button, and everything seemed to turn out just fine.
        “What happened?” Danny asked.
        “Didn’t you hear the boom? Listen