Odd Hours

“Don’t be afraid.”
    To my surprise, Reverend Moran drew a pistol from under his jacket, and to my greater surprise, he shot his wife dead.
    He turned the pistol on me. In answer to my astonishment, he said, “She poured the first drink. She’d have suggested I pour a second.”
    I noticed the brand name on the bottle: Lord Calvert.
    The Lord is with us, Melanie.
    Charlie, dear, the Lord is at all times with us.
    “And when my hands were busy fixing the drink, she would have pulled the pistol under her jacket and shot me.”
    “But. She. You. Your wife.”
    “Of eighteen years. That’s why I could read her so well.”
    “Dead. Look. Dead. Why?”
    “The way this blew up, there’s not going to be enough money for both of us.”
    “But. You. Church. Jesus.”
    “I’ll miss the church. My flock.”
    “The bombs? You? Part of that?”
    Chief Hoss Shackett announced himself and cured my incoherence by slamming the flat of his hand so hard against the back of my head that I stumbled forward and fell too close to the dead woman.
    As I rolled onto my back and looked up, the chief loomed behind his mutant-pink-zucchini nose. “You knew he was part of it, shithead. That’s why you came here in the first place, nosing around.”
    Earlier in the night, I had arrived at the church with the dog, out of that unusually dense fog that had been more than a fog, that had seemed to me like a premonition of absolute destruction.
    On consideration, it made sense that if my blind wandering with the golden retriever had been a kind of waking premonition, then I might have found my way to a place that was associated with the truth behind that hideous vision.
    Shackett pointed his gun at me. “Don’t get cute.”
    Looking up at him, my ears ringing, I said, “I don’t feel cute.”
    Reverend Moran said, “Kill him.”
    “No flying furniture,” Shackett warned me.
    “None. No, sir.”
    “Starts moving, I blow your face off.”
    “Face. Off. I hear you.”
    “Kill him,” the minister repeated.
    “You sucker-punched me before,” Shackett said.
    “I felt bad about that, sir.”
    “Shut up.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “You see my gun, shithead?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Where is my gun?”
    “In my face, sir.”
    “Where it stays .”
    “I understand.”
    “How long to squeeze a trigger?”
    “Fraction of a second, sir.”
    “See that chair?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “If that chair moves?”
    “Face. Off.”
    “See that desk set?”
    “I see it, sir.”
    “If that desk set moves?”
    “Good-bye face.”
    “Kill the bastard,” Reverend Moran urged.
    The minister was still holding his pistol.
    His hand was twitching.
    He wanted to waste me himself.
    “Get up,” Shackett ordered me. “You’re gonna talk.”
    As I obeyed, Reverend Moran objected. “No talk.”
    “Control yourself,” Shackett admonished the minister.
    “Just kill him, and let’s go.”
    “I want answers.”
    “He won’t give you any.”
    “I might,” I assured them. “I will. I’d like to.”
    Shackett said, “Coast Guard’s reporting the tug is beached.”
    “Yes, sir,” I said.
    “I’m not talking to you, shithead.”
    “My mistake.”
    Reverend Moran said, “Beached where?”
    “The cove at Hecate’s Canyon.”
    Reverend Moran said, “Could we—”
    “No. Coast Guard’s all over it.”
    “Kill him,” Reverend Moran said more ferociously.
    “When it’s time.”
    Reverend Moran said, “It’s time now.”
    “It’s not time,” Shackett said.
    “It’s not,” I agreed.
    “Hoss, it’s over,” the minister said.
    His gun hand shook like a Pentecostal receiving the spirit.
    “I know it’s over,” Shackett said.
    “Do you really know it’s over?”
    “Oh, I really know,” Shackett said.
    “We gotta fly,” the minister said.
    Shackett said, “We have a little time.”
    “I want to be gone,” Reverend Moran insisted.
    “You can’t wait five minutes?”
    “I want to be gone now.”
    “You want to be gone now?”
    “Right now, Hoss. Gone. Now.”
    Hoss Shackett shot Reverend Moran in the head, said, “Now you’re gone,” and had his gun back in my face before I could blink.
    “This is bad,” I said.
    “You think this is bad, Harry?”
    “Oh, I know it’s bad. Very bad.”
    “It can get worse.”
    “Yes. I’ve seen how it can.”
    The Reverend and Mrs. Moran were not bleeding. This did not mean they were not human.
    They had not had time to bleed. They had died instantly. Neat