Odd Thomas

hard."
        "I know."
        "So unfair."
        "What death isn't?"
        She rose from her chair. "You won't let her die, will you, Oddie?"
        "I'll do what I can."
        We went outside, hoping to be gone before the promised police officer arrived and became curious about my involvement.
        No cops on the Pico Mundo force understand my relationship with Chief Porter. They sense that something's different about me, but they don't realize what I see, what I know. The chief covers well for me.
        Some think that I hang around Wyatt Porter because I'm a cop wannabe. They assume that I yearn for the glamour of the police life, but that I don't have quite the smarts or the guts to do the job.
        Most of them believe that I regard the chief as a father figure because my real father is such a hopeless piece of work. This view contains some truth.
        They are convinced that the chief took pity on me when at the age of sixteen I could no longer live with either my father or my mother, and found myself turned out into the world. Because Wyatt and Karla were never able to have children, people think that the chief has a fatherly affection for me and regards me as a surrogate son. I am deeply comforted by the fact that this seems to be true.
        Being cops, however, the members of the Pico Mundo PD sense instinctively that they lack some crucial knowledge to be able to fully understand our relationship. Likewise, although I appear uncomplicated and even simple, they regard me as a puzzle with more than one missing piece.
        When Stormy and I stepped out of Green Moon Lanes at ten o'clock, an hour after nightfall, the temperature in Pico Mundo remained over a hundred degrees. By midnight the air might cool below triple digits.
        If Bob Robertson was intent on making Hell on Earth, we had the weather for it.
        Walking toward Terri Stambaugh's Mustang, still thinking about the death-marked blond bartender, Stormy said, "Sometimes I don't know how you can live with all the things you see."
        "Attitude," I told her.
        "Attitude? How's that work?"
        "Better some days than others."
        She would have pressed me for a further explanation, but the patrol car arrived, pinning us in its headlights before we reached the Mustang. Certain that I would have been recognized, I waited hand-in-hand with Stormy for the cruiser to stop beside us.
        The responding officer, Simon Varner, had been on the force only three or four months, which was longer than Bern Eckles, who had regarded me with suspicion at the chief's barbecue, but not long enough for the sharp edge to have been worn off his curiosity about me.
        Officer Varner had a face as sweet as that of any host of a children's TV program, with heavy-lidded eyes like those of the late actor Robert Mitchum. He leaned toward the open window, his burly arm resting on the door, looking like the model for a sleepy bear in some Disney cartoon.
        "Odd, pleasure seeing you. Miss Llewellyn. What should I be looking for here?"
        I was certain that the chief had not used my name when he had dispatched Officer Varner to the bowling center. When I was involved in a case, he made a point of keeping me as invisible as possible, never alluding to information acquired by preternatural means, the better not only to protect my secrets but also to ensure that no defense attorney could easily spring a murderer by claiming that the entire case against his client had been built upon the word of a flaky, self-proclaimed psychic.
        On the other hand, because of my intrusion at the barbecue that resulted in the effort by the chief and Bern Eckles to put together a quick profile of Robertson, Eckles knew that I had some connection to the situation. If Eckles knew, then word would get around; it might already be on the police-department grapevine.
        Still, it seemed best to play dumb. "What should you be looking for? Sir, I don't understand."
        "I see you, I figure you told the chief something that makes him send me out here."
        "We were just watching some friends bowl," I said. "I'm no good at it myself."
        Stormy said, "He owns the gutter."
        From the car seat beside him, Varner produced a computer-printed blow-up of Bob Robertson's driver's-license photograph. "You know this guy, right?"
        I said, "I've seen him twice today. I don't really know