Page 39 of Dead Beat

Tripp set it in Theo’s other hand, and he gripped it like a rosary. The bear. Kittscher’s salt guardian. Had it tried to protect Theo too?

She looked into his eyes, searching for permission, maybe for absolution. “You’re sure?”

Again his fingers flexed against hers. One blink. Yes.

“Okay,” she said, though she didn’t want to. “Then come with me.”

Gently, so gently, she tugged. He didn’t fight. His soul flowed into her eagerly, without opposition.

It was slight, a gust, not a gale of power, the barest lapping of the tide, the last effort of the last wave, soft on the sand. She was sad, sadder than she’d ever been, trapped and alone, helpless. Every day she stared out at the sea, too weak to move, too weak to speak. The thing that looked like him was always there, laughing at him, combing his hair, helping him to the bathroom, doing all the tasks Theo had taken pride in doing with kindness. The thing that looked like him called his mother, put her on speakerphone. “Mamá, qué hubo?”

His mother’s voice, warm and easy on the other side of the line. Chattering on about work, about the last episode of Real Housewives, about his sister’s boyfriend and if he was ever going to propose.

Theo couldn’t speak, couldn’t cry out. He wept until he was too tired to weep.

He was standing outside the little white fence on his first day of work. He felt like he’d arrived. Maybe he could bring his mother and sister here on a summer day. They could sit on the sand, drink lemonade in the sun. This was going to be a good job, he could tell.

He was learning to draw blood and so damn scared he was going to embarrass himself. He had dealt with all kinds of messes and trouble, wiped up shit, mopped away vomit, snot, drool, but he was bad with needles, always had been. “You know my secret?” Susan asked. She had cropped gray hair and wore blue crocs with little white cloud charms on them. Walking on air, she always said. Cloud nine only! “I pretend I’m a mosquito.” Theo thought she was kidding, and he laughed, but she swore she was serious. “Just don’t think of it as a needle, and it’s not a needle.” Then she bumped his shoulder. “You’re good at this, and not many people are. Don’t let anything stop you.”

He was on the track, running laps, squinting at the sun. Practice was over, but he kept running because when he stopped, he’d have to go home and his mother would be there, crying over his father, and Theo didn’t want to see his mother cry, because that would make him cry, and that would mean his dad was really dead. But if he kept running, he didn’t have to walk home. He ran until the sun sank low, until his legs gave out, trembling then shaking, his knees locking then collapsing, like an imitation of the Tin Man. He lay in the grass and wept.

He was sitting on a train, sweating through his denim jacket, heading home from the city. He’d kissed Ariela for the first time. He’d bought her an iced coffee, and they’d sat by the water in the park. When he’d worked up the courage to press his lips against hers, when she’d drawn his tongue into her mouth, she’d tasted like coffee and chocolate. Just the thought made him hard, and he shifted in his seat, moving his book bag over his lap.

He was home sick from school and watching cartoons, a bowl of cereal perched on his knees, the milk so sweet. His mother was at work, and he had the whole apartment to himself. He wanted the day to last forever.

He was staring up at his mother, and she was all he had, all he needed, and he knew he’d never want for anything. The world was safe and beautiful. The world was warm milk and roses. The world was nothing but stars and the beat of her heart, his heart, the tether between them. All is well, Alex thought and understood that she was crying.

He was with her. He was gone.

15

Dusk was falling when they finally left Kittscher’s house, the streets already crowded with parents picking their children up from school, the traffic on the highway sluggish with people trying to return home from work.

They’d locked the door behind them. Not Kittscher was now safely trapped in the Voynich Coffin. When one of Kittscher’s grandnieces called in a wellness check or someone from Rhode Island Care came calling, they would find an old man wasted away in a quiet bedroom, dead from natural causes. Theo Alonto would never be heard from again. Darlington wondered if there might be a way to contact his family, to offer them a story that would bring them some measure of peace. But there was no lie that could correctly fill that absence.

Alex looked radiant, and he kept his eyes on the road because if he let himself steal a glance, he would stare and he’d drive them all off the road. She was like a prism, light pouring through her, glinting when she shifted this way or that.

Somewhere around Norwich, Alex finally spoke. “You said something to Kittscher in Latin when you were talking about hell.”

Queaque ipsa miserrima vidi. “So many terrible things I saw. It’s Virgil. From the Aeneid.”

He had known Kittscher could finish the quote: And in so many of them I played a great part.

They drove the rest of the way in silence, and somehow Turner knew to honor that silence when they arrived back at Il Bastone. Darlington lit a fire in the parlor grate while Dawes heated a pot of lentil soup and Tripp set the table. Only when they were helping themselves to steaming bowls of soup and homemade sourdough did Turner say, “Well?”

Darlington had assumed he’d dive into what he had learned from Kittscher, but it was Alex who spoke first.

“Alban Reed knows I’m a Wheelwalker.”

Dawes gasped. Darlington set down his wineglass hard enough that he cracked the base.

“That seems bad,” said Tripp.

Turner shook his head. “Bad doesn’t cover it.”

“He was threatening to get my scholarship scrapped and my mom evicted one minute, then offering me protection the next.”

“How could he have found out?” Darlington asked.