Hideaway

in spite of the bright morning sun, as if the killer cast a shadow vastly larger than himself, a shadow that lingered behind him even hours after he had gone. “Eighty … eighty-five … almost ninety miles an hour … able to see only a hundred feet ahead.” If any traffic had been there in the fog, the killer would have crashed into it with cataclysmic force. “He didn't take the first exit, wanted to get farther away than that … kept going … going.…”
    He almost didn't slow down in time to make the exit for State Route 133, which became the canyon road into Laguna Beach. At the last moment he hit the brakes too hard and whipped the wheel to the right. The Mitsubishi slid as they departed the interstate, but he decreased speed and immediately regained full control.
    “He got off here?” Lindsey asked.
    “Yes.”
    Hatch followed the new road to the right.
    “Did he go into Laguna?”
    “I … don't think so.”
    He braked to a complete halt at a crossroads marked by a stop sign. He pulled onto the shoulder. Open country lay ahead, hills dressed in crisp brown grass. If he went straight through the crossroads, he'd be heading into Laguna Canyon, where developers had not yet managed to raze the wilderness and erect more tract homes. Miles of brushland and scattered oaks flanked the canyon route all the way into Laguna Beach. The killer also might have turned left or right. Hatch looked in each direction, searching for … for whatever invisible signs had guided him that far.
    After a moment, Lindsey said, “You don't know where he went from here?”
    “Hideaway.”
    “Huh?”
    Hatch blinked, not sure why he had chosen that word. “He went back to his hideaway … into the ground.…”
    “Ground?” Lindsey asked. With puzzlement she surveyed the sere hills.
    “… into the darkness …”
    “You mean he went underground somewhere?”
    “… cool, cool silence …”
    Hatch sat for a while, staring at the crossroads as a few cars came and went. He had reached the end of the trail. The killer was not there; he knew that much, but he did not know where the man had gone. Nothing more came to him—except, strangely, the sweet chocolate taste of Oreo cookies, as intense as if he had just bitten into one.

9
    At The Cottage in Laguna Beach, they had a late breakfast of homefries, eggs, bacon, and buttered toast. Since he had died and been resuscitated, Hatch didn't worry about things like his cholesterol count or the long-term effects of passive inhalation of other people's cigarette smoke. He supposed the day would come when little risks would seem big again, whereupon he would return to a diet high in fruits and vegetables, scowl at smokers who blew their filth his way, and open a bottle of fine wine with a mixture of delight and a grim awareness of the health consequences of consuming alcohol. At the moment he was appreciating life too much to worry unduly about losing it again—which was why he was determined not to let the dreams and the death of the blonde push him off the deep end.
    Food had a natural tranquilizing effect. Each bite of egg yolk soothed his nerves.
    “Okay,” Lindsey said, going at her breakfast somewhat less heartily than Hatch did, “let's suppose there was brain damage of some sort, after all. But minor. So minor it never showed up on any of the tests. Not bad enough to cause paralysis or speech problems or anything like that. In fact, by an incredible stroke of luck, a one in a billion chance, this brain damage had a freak effect that was actually beneficial. It could've made a few new connections in the cerebral tissues, and left you psychic.”
    “Bull.”
    “Why?”
    “I'm not psychic.”
    “Then what do you call it?”
    “Even if I was psychic, I wouldn't say it was beneficial.”
    Because the breakfast rush had passed, the restaurant was not too busy. The nearest tables to theirs were vacant. They could discuss the morning's events without fear of being overheard, but Hatch kept glancing around self-consciously anyway.
    Immediately following his reanimation, the media had swarmed to Orange County General Hospital, and in the days after Hatch's release, reporters had virtually camped on his doorstep at home. After all, he had been dead longer than any man alive, which made him eligible for considerably more than the fifteen minutes of fame that Andy Warhol had said would eventually be every person's fate in celebrity-obsessed America. He'd done nothing to earn