Max switched on the floor lamp. Velvet shadows scored his face. The skull loomed prominent beneath his skin. “The Pitch are not invincible,” he said. He levered up from the chair and peeked through the curtains into the parking lot. Automatically, he went into his pocket for chalk, only to realize he’d crumbled his sticks. He extracted a cigarillo, snapping it lit with a golden lighter. Steel blue smoke hovered. “I may be the only man who knows how to defeat Whiteside.” He didn’t know if he believed that after looking into the stone. But he wanted to offer hope to these people. He needed their help.
“How do you stop a crazy man?” Adam asked.
“That depends on whether or not you think he’s crazy.” Max smiled around the cigarillo’s plastic tip. Old, he felt so old. He stared at the back of his hand, the wormlike veins and fallen flesh. I’ve become a reptile, he thought with disgust. Time to shed this dead skin. “I need a drink. But I don’t drink anymore, so I’m going to step outside and settle for a smoke. Can I have my revolver?”
Wyatt considered the request, and handed over the weapon. “If Whiteside really is coming, then we can wait for him. He shows up looking for the stone. We call the police. They’ll arrest him.”
Max shook his head. “Whiteside won’t come.”
“Why not?”
“He hasn’t shown himself yet. Has he?”
“You’ve seen him,” Adam answered.
“Four decades ago. And he didn’t get the stone. The police nearly caught him. Since our encounter he’s worked through his pawns. He’s fulfilling a prophecy that dictates he can’t personally take the stone. Whiteside must be given the stone by someone who doesn’t believe in its powers. The Pitch hire out work to criminals. Half their membership is former forensic patients. They recruit the criminally insane. Automatons—each programmed with a mission.”
“An army of brainwashed crazies? That’s just great,” Vera said.
“Whiteside worked with the U.S. Army. Details classified, of course. It involved mind control. Inductions. Out-of-body projection. When I read about the Pie Stop shooting in the papers, it drew me here. The killer was ex-Army. Wyatt’s statement about a second shooter nobody else saw . . . that’s one of the things Whiteside was trying to do. Use soldiers’ telepathic abilities to confuse their enemies. Make them see things that aren’t there.”
“Or not see things that are,” Wyatt said. He shook his head. “But why did I see the second shooter?”
“Nothing’s perfect. Did you doubt yourself? Yes. That’s good enough sometimes. Whiteside has occult talents. That’s why the Pitch are in American Rapids. Everything happening today comes from tales Whiteside read in the past. He’s convinced these stories foretell the future. That’s how we’ll trap him.”
“Where are these stories?” Opal asked.
“Out of print.”
“How do you know about them?”
“I wrote them.” Max shrugged into his parka. “I’ll be right outside.” He rapped his knuckles against the door. “Give me five minutes. Think about what I told you. If you want to listen to my suggestions, let me know. Otherwise, storm or no storm . . . I’ll pack my things, take my dog, and be gone.”
Before Max quit the motel room, Wyatt told him about the Egyptian eye drawn in dog’s blood on the wall at the Totem. The others listened.
“Wadjet,” Max said.
“What?”
“Not a what, a wadjet.” Max lifted his sweater and pulled out his thermal undershirt. He exposed his left hip. A raised scar, cen- tipedal and shimmery—the shape was the same as the one on the wall—a crude, yet recognizable, eye. There were more scars. Max quickly bundled back up. He threw the parka hood over his head. “The stone ... try not to touch it with your bare hands. Leave no one alone with it. Never sleep in the same room with the stone. Never. ”
They nodded.
Max stepped out.
The cloud of smoke he left behind whirled in pursuit then dissolved.