Odd Thomas

Gene Kelly.
        I started the car and punched up some random-play music on the CD box. Terri keeps the six-disc magazine stocked with the best work of her idol.
        When "Suspicious Minds" came from the speakers, Elvis seemed to be pleased. With his fingertips, he tapped the rhythm on the dashboard as I drove out of Camp's End.
        By the time we reached Chief Wyatt Porter's house in a better neighborhood, we were listening to "Mama Liked the Roses," from Elvis's Christmas Album, and the King of Rock and Roll had succumbed to quiet tears.
        I prefer not to see him like this. The hard-driving rocker who sang "Blue Suede Shoes" wears a cocky smile and even a sneer better than he does tears.
        Karla Porter, Wyatt's wife, answered the door. Willowy, lovely, with eyes as green as lotus petals, she unfailingly projects an aura of serenity and quiet optimism that is in contrast with her husband's doleful face and mournful eyes.
        I suspect Karla is the reason that Wyatt's job has not worn him down to total ruin. Each of us needs a source of inspiration in his life, a cause for hope, and Karla is Wyatt's.
        "Oddie," she said, "what a pleasure to see you. Come in, come in. Wyatt is out back, getting ready to destroy some perfectly good steaks on the barbecue. We're having a few people to dinner, we've got plenty extra, so I hope you'll stay."
        As she led me through the house, unaware that Elvis accompanied us in a "Heartbreak Hotel" mood, I said, "Thank you, ma'am, that's very gracious of you, but I've got another engagement. I just stopped by to have a quick word with the chief."
        "He'll be delighted to see you," she assured me. "He always is."
        In the backyard, she turned me over to Wyatt, who was wearing an apron bearing the words BURNT AND GREASY GOES BETTER WITH BEER.
        "Odd," Chief Porter said, "I hope you've not come here to ruin my evening."
        "That's not my intention, sir."
        The chief was tending to two grills - the first fired by gas for vegetables and ears of corn, the second by charcoal for the steaks.
        With the sun still more than two hours above the horizon, a day of desert sunshine stored in the patio concrete, and visible waves of heat pouring off both barbecues, he should have been making enough salt water to reconstitute the long-dead sea of Pico Mundo. He was, however, as dry as the star of an antiperspirant commercial.
        Over the years, I have seen Chief Porter sweat only twice. On the first occasion, a thoroughly nasty man was aiming a spear gun at the chief's crotch from a distance of just two feet, and the second occasion was much more unnerving than that.
        Checking out the bowls of potato salad, corn chips, and fresh fruit salad on the picnic table, Elvis seemed to lose interest when he realized that no deep-fried banana-and-peanut-butter sandwiches would be provided. He wandered off to the swimming pool.
        After I declined a bottle of Corona, the chief and I sat in lawn chairs, and he said, "You been communing with the dead again?"
        "Yes, sir, off and on all day. But this isn't so much about who's dead as who might be soon."
        I told him about Fungus Man at the restaurant and later at Green Moon Mall.
        "I saw him at the Grille," the chief said, "but he didn't strike me as suspicious, just… unfortunate."
        "Yes, sir, but you didn't have the advantage of being able to see his fan club." I described the disturbing size of Fungus Man's bodach entourage.
        When I recounted my visit to the small house in Camp's End, I pretended, rather ludicrously, that the side door had been standing open and that I had gone inside under the impression that someone might be in trouble. This relieved the chief of the need to conspire with me, after the fact, in the crime of breaking and entering.
        "I'm not a high-wire artist," he reminded me.
        "No, sir."
        "You expect me to walk a dangerously narrow line sometimes."
        "I have great respect for your balance, sir."
        "Son, that sounds perilously like bullshit."
        "There's some bullshit in it, sir, but it's mostly sincerity."
        Telling him what I found in the house, I omitted any mention of the black room and the traveling swarm. Even a man as sympathetic and open-minded as Wyatt Porter will become a skeptic if you force too much exotic detail upon him.
        When I