CHAPTER 23

      STORMY AND I SAT AT A TABLE IN THE BAR alcove, but we didn’t order drinks. I was already half drunk with fear.

      I wanted to get her out of the bowling alley. She didn’t want to leave.

      “We’ve got to deal with this situation,” she insisted.

      The only way that I could deal with it was to phone Chief Wyatt Porter and tell him, with little explanation, that when Bob Robertson had his coming-out party to celebrate his status as a full-fledged murderous psychopath, the site of his debutante ball was likely to be Green Moon Lanes.

      For a man tired from a day of hard work, bloated with barbecue and beer, and ready for bed, the chief responded with admirable quickness and clarity of mind. “How late are they open?”

      Phone to my right ear, finger in my left ear to block the alley noise, I said, “I think until midnight, sir.”

      “A little more than two hours. I’ll dispatch an officer right now, have him stand security, be on the lookout for Robertson. But, son, you said this might go down August fifteenth—tomorrow, not today.”

      “That’s the date on the calendar page in his file. I’m not sure what it means. I won’t be certain it couldn’t happen today until today is over and he hasn’t shot anyone.”

      “Any of these things you call bodachs there?”

      “No, sir. But they could show up when he does.”

      “He hasn’t returned home to Camp’s End yet,” the chief said, “so he’s out and about. How were the churros?”

      “Delicious,” I told him.

      “After the barbecue, we had a difficult choice between mud pie and homemade peach pie. I thought it through carefully and had some of both.”

      “If ever I had a glimpse of Heaven, sir, it was a slice of Mrs. Porter’s peach pie.”

      “I’d have married her for the peach pie alone, but fortunately she was smart and beautiful, too.”

      We said good-bye. I clipped the cell phone to my belt and told Stormy we needed to get out of there.

      She shook her head. “Wait. If the blond bartender isn’t here, the shooting won’t happen.” She kept her voice low, leaning close to be heard over the clash and clatter of bowlers bowling. “So somehow we get her to leave.”

      “No. A premonition in a dream isn’t in every detail a picture of exactly what will happen. She could be home safe, and the shooter could show up here anyway.”

      “But at least she will have been saved. One less victim.”

      “Except that somebody else who wouldn’t have died might be shot in her place. Like the bartender who replaces her. Or me. Or you.”

      “Might be.”

      “Yes, might be, but how can I save one if there’s a likelihood that it means condemning another?”

      Three or four bowling balls slammed into pin setups in quick succession. The racket sounded a little like automatic gunfire, and though I knew it wasn’t gunfire, I twitched anyway.

      I said, “I’ve got no right to decide that someone else should die in her place.”

      Prophetic dreams—and the complex moral choices they present—come to me only rarely. I’m grateful for that.

      “Besides,” I said, “what’s her reaction going to be if I walk over to the bar and tell her she’s going to be shot to death if she doesn’t get out of here.”

      “She’ll think you’re eccentric or dangerous, but she might go.”

      “She won’t. She’ll stay there. She won’t want to jeopardize her job. She won’t want to appear fearful, because that makes her look weak, and these days women don’t want to seem weak any more than men do. Later she might ask someone to walk with her to her car, but that’s all.”

      Stormy stared at the blonde behind the bar while I surveyed the room for any bodachs that might precede the executioner. Nobody here but us humans.

      “She’s so pretty, so full of life,” Stormy said, meaning the bartender. “So much personality, such an infectious laugh.”

      “She seems more alive to you because you know she might be fated to die young.”

      “It just seems wrong to walk out and leave her there,” Stormy said, “without warning her, without giving her a chance.”

      “The best way to give her a chance, to give all the potential victims a chance, is to stop Robertson before he does anything.”

      “What’s the likelihood you’ll stop him?”

      “Better than if he’d never come into the Grille this morning and I’d never gotten a look at him with his bodach entourage.”

      “But you can’t be sure you’ll stop him.”

      “Nothing’s for sure in this world.”

      Searching my eyes, she thought about what I’d said, and then reminded me: “Except us.”

      “Except us.” I pushed my chair away from the table. “Let’s go.”

      Still staring at the blonde, Stormy said, “This is so hard.”

      “I know.”

      “So unfair.”

      “What death isn’t?”

      She rose from her chair. “You won’t let her die, will you, Oddie?”

      “I’ll do what I can.”

      We went outside, hoping to be gone before the promised police officer arrived and became curious about my involvement.

      No cops on the Pico Mundo force understand my relationship with Chief Porter. They sense that something’s different about me, but they don’t realize what I see, what I know. The chief covers well for me.

      Some think that I hang around Wyatt Porter because I’m a cop wannabe. They assume that I yearn for the glamour of the police life, but that I don’t have quite the smarts or the guts to do the job.

      Most of them believe that I regard the chief as a father figure