Odd Thomas

would have lurked in my bathroom or kitchenette, waiting for me to come home, eager to threaten and harass me as he had done at the church. You would be wrong because you forget that these restless souls who linger in this world do so because they cannot accept the truth of their deaths.
        In my considerable experience, the last thing they want to do is hang around their dead bodies. Nothing is a more poignant reminder of one's demise than one's oozing carcass.
        In the presence of their own lifeless flesh, the spirits feel more sharply the urge to be done with this world and to move on to the next, a compulsion that they are determined to resist. Robertson might visit the place of his death eventually, but not until his body had been removed and every smear of blood had been scrubbed away.
        That suited me fine. I didn't need all the hullabaloo associated with a visitation by an angry spirit.
        The vandalism in St. Bart's sacristy had not been the work of a living man. That destruction had been wrought by a malevolent and infuriated ghost in full poltergeist mode.
        In the past, I'd lost a new music system, a lamp, a clock radio, a handsome bar stool, and several plates during a tantrum by such a one. A short-order cook can't afford to play host to their kind.
        This is one reason why my furnishings are thrift-shop rejects. The less that I have, the less I can lose.
        Anyway, I looked at the lividity in Robertson's flabby chest and sagging belly, quickly made the aforementioned deductions, and tried to button his shirt without looking directly at his bullet wound. Morbid interest got the best of me.
        In the soft and livid chest, the hole was small but ragged, wet, - and strange in some way that I didn't immediately grasp and that I didn't want to contemplate further.
        The nausea crawling the walls of my stomach slithered faster, faster. I felt as if I were four years old again, with a dangerously virulent case of the flu, feverish and weak, staring down the barrel of my own mortality.
        Because I had enough of a mess to clean up without reenacting Elvis's historic last spew, I clenched my teeth, repressed my gorge, and finished buttoning the shirt.
        Although I surely know more than the average citizen about how to read the condition of a corpse, I am not a specialist in forensic medicine. I couldn't accurately determine, to the half hour, the exact time of Robertson's death.
        Logic put it between 5:30 and 7:45. During that period, I had searched his Camp's End house and explored the black room, had driven Elvis to the chief's barbecue and subsequently to the Baptist church, and had cruised alone to Little Ozzie's house.
        Chief Porter and his guests could verify my whereabouts for part of that time, but no court would look favorably on the claim that the ghost of Elvis could provide me with an alibi for another portion of it.
        The extent of my vulnerability became clearer by the moment, and I knew that time was running out. When a knock at the door eventually came, it would most likely be the police, sent here by an anonymous tip.
        

CHAPTER 34
        
        A SENSE OF URGENCY BORDERING ON PANIC GAVE me new strength. With much grunting and the invention of a few colorful obscenities, I hauled Robertson out of the bathtub and flopped him onto the sheet that I'd spread on the bathroom floor.
        Remarkably little blood had spilled in the tub. I cranked on the shower and washed the stains off the porcelain with steaming-hot water.
        I'd never be able to take a bath here again. I would either have to go unwashed for the rest of my life or find a new place to live.
        When I turned out Robertson's pants pockets, I found a wad of cash in each: twenty crisp hundred-dollar bills in the left pocket, twenty-three in the right. Clearly, he hadn't been killed for money.
        I returned those bankrolls to his pockets.
        His billfold contained more cash. I stuffed that money in one of his pockets, as well, but kept the wallet with the hope that it might contain a clue to his murderous intentions when I had time to examine its remaining contents.
        The corpse gurgled alarmingly as I wrapped it in the sheet. Bubbles of phlegm or blood popped in its throat, disturbingly like a belch.
        I twisted the ends shut at the head and feet, and tied them as securely as possible with the