Being a mouse had its advantages. You were short-lived, yes, and fearfully vulnerable. On the other hand, your tiny brain didn’t grasp how big and strange and dangerous the world was, so you never gave much thought to all the ways you could die and all the things that could be taken from you. For a mouse, the smallest pleasures were sources of great happiness: a peanut, a fluffy kernel of cheese popcorn, a bit of nougat, a warm pocket.
Having a mother might be like having nougat and a warm pocket. But once you lost her, finding her and getting her to come home again was a far bigger task than anything a mouse had to undertake.
Daddy rose from the bench with the Book of Ed and the key to everything. He frowned at the sky, at the sea, and then at Amity.
“Are you sure you really want to do this?” he said, meaning did she want to pay a visit to the house on Bastoncherry Lane.
“You promised we would.”
“That’s not what I asked, sweetheart.”
She didn’t dare look away from him. It was never a brilliant idea to break eye contact with her father when they were discussing something important. Even if there might be a thousand reasons she looked away, he unfailingly identified the right one. And then she couldn’t hide anything from him. Sometimes this seemed really and truly supernatural, but because he never displayed other fantastic talents—like being able to fly or walk through walls—his ability to read her so clearly was evidently just an excellent parenting skill. With his Bakelite radios and Deco posters and love of the past and boyish enthusiasm, he was Jeffy to everyone, but when it mattered the most, he was always a Jeffrey.
“I want to do it,” she said. “We have to do it. Maybe she’s alone here. Maybe she’s sad or in hideously dire circumstances.”
“Hideously dire circumstances, huh?” He was reminding her not to be a drama queen.
“Sure. Why not? I mean, people often are in dire circumstances, not just in movies and books, but like for real. Maybe she needs help. Anyway, you and me—we don’t walk out on people.”
Instead of Amity breaking eye contact, her father broke it. He lowered his gaze to the right-hand pocket of her jeans, in which she had secreted the three teeth fixed in the fragment of jawbone, as though he could see through denim and knew what horror she had found in the grass.
She almost showed him the teeth, almost blurted out that this world was weirder and darker even than it seemed, that they had to rescue Michelle from a town where people were shot to pieces in a public park. But then she realized that she had unconsciously thrust her right hand into that pocket. The teeth were clenched tightly in her fist. This was what Daddy had noticed—her arm rigid, the fist bulging in her pocket. And—Merde!—her fist was twitching, bulging and twitching, her own stupid fist betraying her.
Letting go of the teeth, she withdrew her hand from the pocket. She was careful not to scrub her palm against her jeans because he’d know instantly that she’d been clutching some filthy object that disgusted her.
To have something to do with the traitorous hand, she pointed at the key to everything. “You sort of know how to use it now. If we get in any kind of trouble, you can flash us home.”
He turned to gaze at Pacific Coast Highway, at the shops beyond, at the houses rising on the tiered hills.
Fortunately, no enormous armored trucks, flat black with darkly tinted windows, were passing at the moment.
Nevertheless, he said, “I don’t like this place.”
“I don’t, either. Which is why we can’t leave her here, Daddy. Not if maybe . . . if maybe she needs us.”
He met her eyes again.
Neither of them looked away from the other.
“All right,” he said, pocketing the key to everything and plucking the book off the bench, “but let’s be quick about it.”
18
Pacific Coast Highway descended from the north, led across the flat center of town, past the park and the public beach, and rose to the south. Block after block was lined with motels and hotels, shops and restaurants and art galleries, because this had long been one of Southern California’s primary vacation destinations. On this day and in this world, however, the dearth of tourists—sidewalks all but deserted—couldn’t be entirely explained by the threat of the storm, and the number of enterprises that had gone out of business meant the economy must be in decline, perhaps in a crisis.
Jeffy and Amity were nearing the end of the second block south of the park when, ahead and uphill on the far side of the highway, they saw a police car and an unmarked black van in front of Gifford Gallery.
“I hope nobody robbed Erasmus,” Amity worried.
“Not likely,” Jeffy said. “Nobody sticks up a gallery.”
Suavidad Beach was home to many artists, with a thriving creative community of which Erasmus Gifford had long been a driving force. On the ground floor of his gallery, he sold paintings by contemporary artists, including locals whose work he’d nurtured and brought to national attention. On the second floor, he offered originals from classic California painters long deceased, as well as a small and carefully curated collection of original posters primarily from the Nouveau and Deco periods, fine and rare examples of which could sell for eight thousand, ten thousand, and even more.
From time to time, Jeffy found a poster of such quality that he needed Gifford Gallery’s client base to get the right price for it, and they shared in the profit. Erasmus was honest, industrious, and passionate about his work. He and Jeffy had quickly bonded.
Now concern for his friend halted Jeffy. As he was about to cross the street to see what was happening, Erasmus came out of the gallery in the custody of two police officers. His hands were cuffed behind his back. His mass of white hair was matted with blood, and his face was streaked with it, as though he had been clubbed.
Erasmus was built like Pablo Picasso—stocky, broad-shouldered, strong. At sixty he appeared more imposing than most men half his age. In this moment, however, his shoulders were slumped, his head hung low, and he looked defeated, as Jeffy could never have imagined him.