Strangers

Only four minutes had passed since the rifle-shot that had blown out the truck's right front tire.
        Clockwork.
        As Zepp slung the SLICKS over his shoulder again, Pollard opened the rear doors of the armored car. The money was theirs for the taking.
        Zepp laughed with delight. With a gleeful whoop, Pollard clambered into the truck and began to push out bulging canvas bags.
        But Jack still felt empty and cold inside.
        A few snow flurries suddenly appeared in the wind.
        The unexplained change in Jack, which had begun weeks ago, had now reached completion. He no longer cared about getting even with society. He felt purposeless, as adrift as the wind-borne flakes of snow.
        
        Elko County, Nevada.
        Faye Block had turned on the NO VACANCY notice to ensure that they would not be disturbed.
        Sitting around the table in the cheery kitchen of their apartment above the motel office, with the blinds shut against the night, the Blocks sipped coffee and listened spellbound as Dom told his story.
        The only point at which they registered disbelief was when he told them of the impossible dance of paper moons in Zebediah Lomack's house in Reno. But he was able to describe that startling event in such sharp detail that he felt gooseflesh pimpling his arms, and he saw that his own awe and fear were being transmitted to Faye and Ernie.
        They appeared most impressed by the two Polaroid photographs that had arrived in the mail from the unknown correspondent two days before Dom had flown to Portland. They studied the picture in which the zombie-faced priest was sitting at a writing desk, and they were certain it had been taken in one of their motel rooms. The photo of the blond in bed with an IV line in her arm was a closeup that showed nothing of the room, but they recognized the floral-patterned bedspread visible in one corner of the shot; it was the kind that had been in use in some units until ten months ago.
        To Dom's surprise, they had been sent a similar photograph. Ernie remembered receiving it in a plain envelope on December 10, five days before thee had flown to Milwaukee. Faye got it from the center drawer of the desk in the downstairs office, and they hunched conspiratorially over the kitchen table, studying the print. It was a shot of three people - man, woman, child - standing in sunshine by the door to Room 9.
        All three were dressed in shorts, T-shirts, and sandals.
        "Do you recognize them?" Dom asked.
        " No," Faye said.
        "But I feel like I ought to remember them," Ernie said.
        Dom said, "Sunshine… summer clothes… so we can almost certainly conclude it was taken the summer before last, that weekend, between Friday the sixth of July and the following Tuesday. These three people were part of whatever happened. Maybe innocent victims like us. And our unknown correspondent wants us to think about them, remember them."
        Ernie said, "Whoever sent the pictures would've been one of the people who erased our memories. So why would he want to stir us up like this after so much trouble was taken to make us forget?"
        Dom shrugged. "Maybe he never believed it was right - what was done to us. Maybe he only went along with it because he had to, and maybe it's been on his conscience ever since. Whoever he is, he's afraid to come right out with what he knows. He's got to do it indirectly."
        Abruptly, Faye pushed her chair back from the table. "Five weeks of mail piled up while we were away. Might be something more in it."
        As the sound of Faye's descending footsteps echoed up from the stairs, Ernie said, "Sandy - that's our waitress at the Grille - sorted through the mail and paid the bills as they arrived. But the rest of the mail she just dropped in a paper sack. Since we came back this morning, we've been so busy getting the place open, we didn't bother looking to see what the postman brought."
        Faye returned with two plain white envelopes. In a state of high excitement, they opened the first. It contained a Polaroid of a man lying on his back in bed, an intravenous needle in his arm. He was in his fifties. Dark hair, baking. In ordinary circumstances, he probably had a jovial look, for he resembled W. C. Fields. But he was staring blankly toward the camera, face bleak. Zombie eyes…
        "My God, it's Calvin!" Faye said.
        "Yeah," Ernie said.