Strangers

depths of a murky sea, the shadow of fear, and Stefan confirmed that for some inexplicable reason the miracle occasioned dread in the doctor. "The torn vein healed itself, Father. I know the tear had been there. Clamped it off myself. My technician saw it. My nurse saw it. But when I was ready to sew it up, the rent was gone. Healed. I removed the clamps, and the blood flowed again through the vein, and there was no leakage. And later… when I excised the bullets, the muscle tissue appeared to… knit up before my eyes."
        "Appeared to?"
        "No, that's an evasion," Sonneford admitted. "It did knit before my eyes. Incredible, but I saw it. Can't prove it, Father, but I know those two slugs did smash Tolk's sternum and shatter his rib. They did send bone fragments through him like shrapnel. Major, mortal damage was done, had to have been. But by the time he was on the table in surgery, his body had almost entirely healed itself. The shattered bones had… reformed. The superior mesenteric artery and the intercostal vein were severed to begin with, which is why he lost blood so fast, but by the time I opened him, both vessels had knitted up except for a small tear in each. Sounds crazy, but if I hadn't moved to repair the artery, I'm sure it would've finished closing on its own… just as the vein did."
        "What did your nurse and other assistants think of this?"
        "Funny thing is… we didn't talk much about it. I can't account for how little we discussed it. Maybe we didn't talk about it because… we're living in a rational age when the miraculous is unacceptable."
        "How sad if true," Stefan said.
        With the shadow of dread still shimmering anemone-like in the depths of his eyes, Sonneford said, "Father, if there is a God - and I'm not admitting there is - why would He save this particular cop?"
        "He's a good man," Father Wycazik said.
        "So? I've seen hundreds of good men die. Why should this one be saved and none of the others?"
        Father Wycazik pulled a chair around from the side of the desk in order to be able to sit near the surgeon. "You've been frank with me, Doctor, so I'll be upfront with you. I sense a force behind these events that's more than human. A Presence. And that Presence isn't primarily concerned with Winton Tolk but with Brendan, the man… the priest who first reached Officer Tolk in that sandwich shop."
        Bennet Sonneford blinked in surprise. "Oh. But you wouldn't have gotten such a notion unless…"
        "Unless Brendan was linked to at least one other miraculous event," Stefan said. Without using Emmy Halbourg's name, he told Sonneford about the girl's mending limbs that had once been crippled by disease.
        Instead of taking hope from what Stefan told him, Bennet Sonneford shriveled farther in the heat of his strange despair.
        Frustrated by the physician's relentless gloominess, Father Wycazik said, "Doctor, maybe I'm missing something, but it seems to me you've got every reason to be joyous. You were privileged to witness what - I personally believe - was the hand of God at work." He held one hand out to Sonneford and was not surprised when the doctor gripped it tightly. "Bennet, why're you so despondent?"
        Sonneford cleared his throat and said, "I was born and raised a Lutheran, but for twenty-five years I've been an atheist. And now…"
        "Ah," Stefan said, "I see… "
        Happily, Stefan began angling for Bennet Sonneford's soul in the fish-lined den. He had no suspicion that, before the day was done, his current euphoria would be dispelled and that he would experience a bitter disappointment.
        
        Reno, Nevada.
        Zeb Lomack had never imagined that his life would end in bloody suicide on Christmas, but by that night he had sunk so low that he longed to end his existence. He loaded his shotgun, put it on the filthy kitchen table, and promised himself that he would use it if he was unable to get rid of all the goddamned moon stuff before midnight.
        His bizarre fascination with the moon had begun the summer before last, though at first it had seemed innocent enough. Toward the end of August that year, he had taken to going out on the back porch of his cozy little house and watching the moon and stars while sipping Coors. In mid-September, he purchased a Tasco 10VR refracting telescope and bought a couple of books on amateur astronomy.
        Zebediah was