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.The big blade ricocheted off the edge of the counter and clattered to the floor, scattering the semi-vigilant dogs.I was so stunned by Sam’s revelation that I didn’t even feel a reflexive instinct to dance out of the way of the bouncing weapon.“What do you mean, he’s on the loose? They let him out?”“They didn’t release him.He escaped.Actually he just walked away.” He looked toward the floor.“You dropped your 52Stephen Whiteknife.Might want to take a second and count your toes.Five on each foot is the target.”I had ten questions, one for each toe I’d had before I’d dropped the knife.Since I couldn’t ask all ten questions at once I tried to prioritize.But I failed.The question that had the most energy rushed to the head of the line.“What the hell do you mean? He tried to kill my wife.He should never get out.”Sam shrugged, the way he does.“He tried to kill you, too.And me, for that matter.But you don’t see me throwing cutlery around the room.”McClelland’s violent intrusion into our lives—Lauren’s first, then mine, and later Sam’s—had taken place many years before.The last act had played out in Aspen, where McClelland’s appetite for retribution exploded.All of us were there that night.McClelland ended up in the custody of the Aspen police with a bullet in his chest.None of us—Sam, Lauren, me—had forgotten what McClelland had done to us.None of us thought for a moment that McClelland had forgotten what we had done to him.Sam was reminding me of that.I said, “How, Sam? How?”It was not an important question to have answered at that stage of the discussion, but my prioritizing skills were impaired and the dumb questions were the first ones to escape the pen.I gave Sam credit for not even bothering to try to cajole me into calming down.He was a model of restraint, keeping his voice low and his tone matter-of-fact—probably a wiser course than trying to force me to rein in my indignation.“He’s been part of some study at the state hospital.Some neuro-, psycho-, pharmo-ologist from the Health Sciences Center is—oh, hell—I don’t know what she’s doing.A ‘study.’Anyway, some of the hospital staff were taking a group of.their freaks—excuse my French—to a clinic in Pueblo for some ESZ!JDF53new brain scan to try to find out why crazy-shit-ass people do the crazy-shit-ass shit crazy-shit-ass people do, and somebody screwed up.They let him slip away.Somebody took off his metal restraints so he could get scanned.Somebody else was supposed to put on some plastic restraints, which apparently didn’t happen.At some point one of the guards counts his nutsos and he realizes that he’s short exactly one nutso.Michael McClelland was the missing one.”“Just like that?”He kept a wary eye on me while he lifted the bottle to his lips and downed another quarter of the beer.“Security camera has him going out the door of the clinic and down the sidewalk in front of the building like he’s heading to the corner to buy a Coke and some Twinkies at 7-Eleven.Then? Nothing.No sign of him.”“Where’s Lauren? Does she know about this?” Those should have been among my first questions.“The call was routed to me from Aspen.That’s where the Pueblo cops called first.We lost some time because of that confusion.I told Lauren myself this afternoon.She took it better than you, if you’re curious.”I glared at him.Sam went on.“A sheriff’s deputy is driving her home right now.Or, actually, following her home right now.Your wife refused to let him drive.Sheriff’s already decided she’s going to have security 24/7 until we find McClelland or at least until we know what the hell he’s up to.”“A deputy will be here round the clock? What about when she’s at work?”He made an equivocal face.“That’s where things get sticky.The sheriff decided that Lauren is probably at more risk than you, so the security will shadow her.It’ll be here when she’s here.At work when she’s there.”“The sheriff decided?”54Stephen White“He got elected, so he gets to decide shit like this.It’s one of the perks.”Sam liked to use the same argument when we disagreed—which we usually did—about whatever the president or the gov-ernor was up to.“What about Grace?” I asked.He raised his chin.“Yeah, Grace.You want the argument?”“Sure.” I thought I was showing admirable restraint.“Good.The argument is that McClelland doesn’t even know Grace, maybe doesn’t even know she exists, so she’s not a likely target.If she’s not a target, she doesn’t need protection.”“What kind of idiotic f—”“Who doesn’t know me, Daddy?” Grace was in her stockinged feet scooting down the hardwood hallway toward the kitchen from the direction of the bedrooms.Her fluid motion was more like a cross-country skier than an ice-skater.Next winter, I thought, we have to get her up on some cross-country skis.Sam, laconically, said, “Knife.”Shit! A second before my daughter arrived in the knife’s vicinity I reached down and retrieved the blade from the floor and put it on the counter.“Somebody your mom and dad knew before you were born, sweetheart, but that you’ve never met,” I said.“Oh,” she said.She reached up and grabbed a square of pizza off the counter and turned to scoot back out of the room.With an adorable wrinkled-up nose she asked, “Is this dinner?”“No.It’s an appetizer.A snack.”“Good.Is dinner soon?”“Soon.Take a napkin, Gracie.”She made a cute face.I thought I saw some defiance coming, but she reached for a napkin.Without a word she’d made it clear that she had no intent to use the napkin.But she was ESZ!JDF55carrying it.From a parenting point of view it was a victory.I waited until she was back out of earshot down the hall.“It’s Doctor McClelland, Sam.Not ‘Mister.’ ”He raised an eyebrow.“Your point? You better not be in-sinuating you want me to start calling you ‘Doctor.’ I think I’ve made it clear that I think Ph.D.s are way overrated.”“McClelland may be disturbed, but he’s not stupid.”“Disturbed? That’s what, your word of the day?” Sam finished his beer, stood up from the counter, and carried the empty over to the pantry.He knew from experience where we kept the Eco-Cycle bin.In the distance, I could hear the sounds of the Wiggles escaping from Grace’s room.“You made him sound a lot more than ‘disturbed’ when that judge sent him away to mental-health camp instead of to the state pen.”Sam hadn’t replied to my reminder about Michael McClelland’s intelligence, so I pushed on, determined to make him remember.“You know what he did for a living?”Sam said, “If I recall, he was a weatherman.”“He worked at NOAA.He has a Ph.D.in meteorology and his specialty was severe storms.Severe storms.And you know as well as I do that he didn’t just forecast them.He created them.”Sam put both hands on the island counter and leaned toward me.“I’m working on this.For me, for Boulder, it’s only a couple of hours old.I’ve been talking to my captain, I’ve been trying to open some lines of communication with the sheriff.Lauren’s been talking to the DA.I know the guy’s a bad actor.You know he’s a bad actor [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]