Prodigal Son

by intense desire. His desire is to find happiness of the kind that he believes he has seen in the smile of Arnie O'Connor.
        In the virtual reality of New Orleans on his computer screen, one street leads to another. Every intersection offers choices. Every block is lined with businesses, residences. Each of them is a choice.
        In the real world, a maze of streets might lead him a hundred or a thousand miles. In that journey, he would be confronted with tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of choices.
        The enormity of this challenge overwhelms him once more, and he retreats in a panic to a corner, his back to his room. He cannot move forward. Nothing confronts him except the junction of two walls.
        His only choices are to stay facing the corner or turn to the larger room. As long as he doesn't turn, his fear subsides. Here he is safe. Here is order: the simple geometry of two walls meeting.
        In time he is somewhat calmed by this pinched vista, but to be fully calmed, he needs his crosswords. In an armchair, Randal Six sits with another collection of puzzles.
        He likes crosswords because there are not multiple right choices for each square; only one choice will result in the correct solution. All is predestined.
        Cross YULETIDE with CHRISTMAS, cross CHRISTMAS with MYRRH… Eventually every square will be filled; all words will be complete and will intersect correctly The predestined solution will have been achieved. Order. Stasis. Peace.
        As he fills the squares with letters, a startling thought occurs to Randal. Perhaps he and the selfish Arnie O'Connor are predestined to meet.
        If he, Randal Six, is predestined to come face to face with the other boy and to take the precious secret of happiness from him, what seems now like a long harrowing journey to the O'Connor house will prove to be as simple as crossing this small room.
        He cannot stop working the crossword, for he desperately needs the temporary peace that its completion will bring him. Nevertheless, as he reads the clues and inks the letters in the empty squares, he considers the possibility that finding happiness by relieving Arnie O'Connor of it might prove to be not a dream but a destiny.

CHAPTER 27
        
        DRIVING AWAY FROM the medical examiner's office, into a world transformed by what they had just learned, Carson said, "Two hearts? Strange new organs? Designer freaks?"
        "I'm wondering," Michael said, "if I missed a class at the police academy."
        "Did Jack smell sober to you?"
        "Unfortunately, yeah. Maybe he's nuts."
        "He's not nuts."
        "People who were perfectly sane on Tuesday sometimes go nuts on Wednesday."
        "What people?" she asked.
        "I don't know. Stalin."
        "Stalin was not perfectly sane on Tuesday. Besides, he wasn't insane, he was evil."
        "Jack Rogers isn't evil," Michael said. "If he's not drunk, insane, or evil, I guess we're going to have to believe him."
        "You think somehow Luke might be hoaxing old Jack?"
        "Luke 'been-interested-in-viscera-since-I-was-a-kid'? First of all, it would be a way elaborate hoax. Second, Jack is smarter than Luke. Third, Luke-he's got about as much sense of humor as a graveyard rat."
        A disguise of clouds transformed the full moon into a crescent. The pale flush of streetlamps on glossy magnolia leaves produced an illusion of ice, of a northern climate in balmy New Orleans.
        "Nothing is what it seems," Carson said.
        "Is that just an observation," Michael asked, "or should I worry about being washed away by a flood of philosophy?"
        "My father wasn't a corrupt cop."
        "Whatever you say. You knew him best."
        "He never stole confiscated drugs out of the evidence lockup."
        "The past is past," Michael advised.
        Braking to a stop at a red traffic light, she said, "A man's reputation shouldn't have to be destroyed forever by lies. There ought to be a hope of justice, redemption."
        Michael chose respectful silence.
        "Dad and Mom weren't shot to death by some drug dealer who felt Dad was poaching on his territory. That's all bullshit."
        She hadn't spoken aloud of these things in a long time. To do so was painful.
        "Dad had discovered something that powerful people preferred to keep secret. He shared it with Mom, which is why she was shot, too. I