Odd Hours

reasonable measure of guilt guards against corruption.
    To dispel the apprehension that I had become someone different from the person I had once been, I turned my right hand palm up. My birthmark is a half-inch-wide crescent, an inch and a half from point to point, milk-white against the pink flesh of my hand.
    This was one of the proofs that Stormy and I were destined to be together forever, because she’d had a mark that matched it.
    Birthmarks and memories of the blue lake of abiding hope: They confirm that I remain Odd Thomas—perhaps different from what I once was, yet paradoxically the same.
    I carried the bag out to the foredeck, where the fog was as thick as ever and the night colder than I remembered.
    Here on the starboard side, a steep flight of narrow stairs led up to the top deck, where the bridge was located.
    Entering the bridge, I looked up as the woman at the helm turned to stare at me, her hands remaining on the wheel.
    I should have realized that with no one at the helm, the tugboat would have been subject to the actions of tides and currents, which would tend to turn it in a lazy vortex. While I had killed Utgard and Buddy, while I had opened the shipping crates, while I had gathered the bomb triggers, the boat had mostly held steady.
    I knew at once who she must be.

 
    THIRTY-NINE
    OVER WHITE SLACKS AND AN EXQUISITE BEADED sweater, she wore a gray coat of supple leather with fox fur at the collar, along the front panels, and at the cuffs.
    Setting the satchel on the floor, I said, “No doctor is going to believe you’ve been suffering from a bad shellfish reaction.”
    No older than twenty-five, she was beautiful not in the way that women in Joey’s copy of Maxim might have seemed beautiful to him, but as women in a Neiman Marcus catalog might be regarded as beautiful: sensuous but not common, elegant, a generous mouth, fine facial bones, large limpid blue eyes, and not a hard edge to her.
    Taking one hand from the wheel, she patted a pocket of her coat. “I’ve got a little bottle of nasty brew to drink before we dock. It fakes some of the classic symptoms.”
    Because the Coast Guard had been told that we had put to sea to retrieve a yacht passenger suffering a serious allergic reaction to shellfish, they might follow through with the local hospital to see if in fact such a patient had been admitted.
    The dialed-down ping of the radar drew my eyes to the screen. A few pips were revealed at the outermost azimuth rings. The only nearer pip, moving away, must be Junie’s Moonbeam .
    “Who’re you?” she asked.
    “Harry,” I replied.
    “The Harry. I didn’t know there was one.”
    “My mother would like to hear it put that way. She thinks I’m the only Harry there is or ever was.”
    “It must be nice to have a mother who’s not a bitch.”
    “What’s your name?” I asked.
    “Valonia.”
    “I’ve never heard that one before.”
    “It’s from the Latin for acorn . I guess my mother thought I would grow into a great hulking tree. Where’s Utgard?”
    From the bridge, she had no view of the afterdeck.
    I said, “He’s finishing with…things.”
    She smiled. “I’m not a fragile flower.”
    I shrugged. “Well.”
    “He told me that he would be winnowing the crew.”
    “Winnowing. Is that what he called it?”
    “You don’t approve of his word choice?”
    “I approve that I’m not one of the winnowed.”
    “I suppose it matters more to you.”
    “Why should it?”
    “You knew them, they’re your mates,” Valonia said. “I didn’t know them.”
    “You didn’t miss much.”
    She liked the ruthlessness. She regarded me with greater interest than before.
    “What role do you play in the cast, Harry?”
    “I’m a Guildenstern, I guess.”
    She frowned. “A Jew?”
    “It’s a reference to Shakespeare.”
    The frown sweetened into a delicious pout. “You don’t seem like a boy who would live in dusty old books.”
    “You don’t seem like a girl who would blow up cities.”
    “Because you don’t know me well.”
    “Is there a chance I might get to?”
    “Right now, I’d say fifty-fifty.”
    “I’ll take those odds.”
    Because I could not sense whether she was suspicious of me to any extent, I had not ventured closer to Valonia. The more relaxed she became with me, the easier I would be able to subdue her without breaking any pretty thing. She would be a trove of information for the authorities.
    Leaning against the doorjamb, I said,