The Dirtbag fell asleep around one o’clock in the morning.

At two o’clock, Preston killed him. He smothered the boy with a pillow.

Only the Dirtbag’s legs were paralyzed, but he suffered from other conditions that resulted in somewhat diminished upper-body strength. He tried to resist, but not effectively.

Having recently recovered from a protracted bout with a severe bronchial infection, the Dirtbag’s lung capacity might not have been at its peak. He died much too quickly to please Preston.

Hoping to prolong the experience, Preston had relented a few times with the pillow, giving the Dirtbag an opportunity to draw a breath but not to cry out. Nevertheless, the end came too soon.

The bedclothes had been slightly disarranged by the boy’s feeble struggle. Preston smoothed them.

He brushed his dead cousin’s hair, making him more presentable.

Because the Dirtbag died on his back, as he always slept, there was no need to reposition the body. Preston adjusted the arms and the hands to convey the impression of a quiet passing.

The mouth hung open. Preston firmly closed it, held it, waited for it to lock in place.

The eyes were wide, staring in what might have been surprise. He drew the lids shut and weighted them with quarters.

After a couple hours, he removed the coins. The lids remained closed.

Preston switched off the lamp and returned to his bed, burying his face in the same pillow with which he had smothered his cousin.

He felt that he had done a fine thing.

During the remainder of the night, he was too excited to sleep soundly, although he dozed on and off.

He was awake but pretending to oversleep when at eight o’clock, the Dirtbag’s mother, Aunt Janice—also known as the Tits—rapped softly on the bedroom door. When her second knock wasn’t answered, she entered anyway, for she was bringing her son’s morning medicines.

Planning to fake a startled awakening the instant that the Tits screamed, Preston was denied his dramatic moment when she made only a strangled sound of grief and sagged against the Dirtbag’s bed, sobbing as softly as she had knocked.

At the funeral, Preston heard numerous relatives and family friends say that perhaps this was for the best, that Brandon had gone to a better place now, that his lifelong suffering had been relieved, that perhaps the parents’ heavy grief was more than balanced by the weight of responsibility that had been lifted from their shoulders.

This confirmed his perception that he had done a fine thing.

His endeavors with insects were finished.

His misguided adventures with small animals were at an end.

He had found his work, and it was his bliss, as well.

A brilliant boy and superb student, the top of his class, he naturally turned to education to seek a greater understanding of his special role in life. In school and books he found every answer that he wanted.

While he learned, he practiced. As a young man of great wealth and privilege, he was much admired for the unpaid work he performed in nursing homes, which he modestly called “just giving back a little to society in return for all my blessings.”

By the time that he went to university, Preston determined that philosophy would be his field, his chosen community.

Introduced to a forest of philosophers and philosophies, he was taught that every tree stood equal to the others, that each deserved respect, that no view of life and life’s purpose was superior to any other. This meant no absolutes existed, no certainties, no universal right or wrong, merely different points of view. Before him were millions of board feet of ideas, from which he’d been invited to construct any dwelling that pleased him.

Some philosophies placed a greater value on human life than did others. Those were not for him.

Soon he discovered that if philosophy was his community, then contemporary ethics was the street on which he most desired to live. Eventually, the relatively new field of bioethics became a cozy house in which he felt at home as never before in his life.

Thus he had arrived at his current eminence. And to this place, this time.

Soaring mountains, vast forests, eagles flying.

North, north to Nun’s Lake.

The Black Hole had resurrected herself. She settled in the copilot’s chair.

Preston conversed with her, charmed her, made her laugh, drove with his usual expertise, drove north to Nun’s Lake, but still he lived more richly within himself.

He reviewed in memory his most beautiful killings. He had many more to remember than the world realized. The assisted suicides known to the media were but a fraction of his career achievements.

Being one of the most controversial and one of the most highly regarded bioethicists of his day, Preston had a responsibility to his profession not to be immodest. Consequently he’d never brag of the true number of mercies that he’d granted to those in need of dying.

As they sped farther north, the sky steadily gathered clouds upon itself: thin gray shrouds and later thick thunderheads of a darker material.

Before the day waned, Preston intended to locate and visit Leonard Teelroy, the man who claimed to have been healed by aliens. He hoped that the weather wouldn’t interfere with his plans.

He expected to find that Teelroy was a fraud. A dismayingly high percentage of claimed close encounters appeared to be obvious hoaxes.

Nevertheless, Preston ardently believed that extraterrestrials had been visiting Earth for millennia. In fact, be was pretty sure that he knew what they were doing here.

Suppose Leonard Teelroy had told the truth. Even suppose the alien activity at the Teelroy farm was ongoing. Preston still didn’t believe the ETs would heal the Hand and send her away dancing.

His “vision” of the Hand and the Gimp being healed had never occurred. He’d invented it to explain to the Black Hole why he wanted to ricochet around the country in search of a close encounter.

Now, still chatting with the Hole, he checked the mirror on the visor. The Hand sat at the dinette table. Reading.

What was it they called a condemned man in prison? Dead man walking. Yes, that was it.

See here: Dead girl reading.

His real reasons for tracking down ETs and making contact were personal. They had nothing to do with the Hand. He knew, however, that the Black Hole would not be inspired by his true motives.

Every activity must somehow revolve around the Hole. Otherwise, she would not cooperate in the pursuit of it.

He had figured that this healing-aliens story would be one that she would buy. Likewise, he had been confident that when at last he killed her children and claimed they had been beamed up to the stars, the Hole would accept their disappearance with wonder and delight—and would fail to recognize her own danger.

This had proved to be the case. If nature had given her a good mind, she had methodically destroyed it. She was a reliable dimwit.

The Hand was another matter. Too smart by half.

Preston could no longer risk waiting until her tenth birthday.

After he visited the Teelroy farm and assessed the situation there, if he saw no likelihood of making contact with ETs, he would drive east into Montana first thing in the morning. By three o’clock in the afternoon, he would take the girl to the remote and deeply shaded glen in which her brother waited for her.

He would open the grave and force her to look at what remained of the Gimp.

That would be cruel. He recognized the meanness of it.

As always, Preston forthrightly acknowledged his faults. He made no claim to perfection. No human could honestly make such a claim.

In addition to his passion for homicide, he had over the years gradually become aware of a taste for cruelty. Killing mercifully— quickly and in a manner that caused little pain—had at first been immensely satisfying, but less so over time.

He took no pride in this character defect, but neither did it shame him. Like every person on the planet, he was what he was—and had to make the best of it.

All that mattered, however, was that he remained useful in a true and profound sense, that what he contributed to this troubled society continued to outweigh the resources he consumed to sustain himself. In the finest spirit of utilitarian ethics, he had put his faults to good use for humanity and had behaved responsibly.

He reserved his cruelty strictly for those who needed to die anyway, and tormented them only immediately before killing them.

Otherwise, he quite admirably controlled every impulse to be vicious. He treated all people—those he had not marked for death— with kindness, respect, and generosity.

In truth, more like him were needed: men—and women!—who acted within a code of ethics to rid an overpopulated world of the takers, of the worthless ones who, if left alive, would drag down not merely civilization with all their endless needs, but nature as well.

There were so many of the worthless. Legions.

He wanted to subject the Hand to the exquisite cruelty of seeing her brother’s remains, because he was annoyed by her pious certainty that God had made her for a purpose, that her life had meaning she would one day discover.

Let her look for meaning in the biological sludge and bristling bones of her brother’s decomposed body. Let her search hopelessly for any sign of any god in that reeking grave.

North to Nun’s Lake under a darkening sky.

Soaring mountains, vast forests. Eagles gone to roost.

Dead girl reading.

Chapter 62

ACCORDING TO the inset chart of estimated driving times on the AAA map, Micky should have required eight hours and ten minutes to travel the 381 miles between Seattle and Nun’s Lake. Speed limits and rest stops were factored into this estimate, as were the conditions of the narrower state and county roads that she had to use after she exited Interstate 90 southeast of Coeur d’Alene.

After leaving Seattle promptly at 5:30 A.M., she reached her destination at 12:20 P.M., one hour and twenty minutes ahead of schedule. Light traffic, a disregard for speed limits, and a lack of interest in rest stops served her well.

Nun’s Lake proved to be true to its name. A large lake lay immediately south of it, and an imposing convent, built of native stone in the 1930s, stood on a high hill to the north. An order of Carmelite nuns occupied the convent, while fish of many denominations meditated in the deeps of the lake, bracketing the community between a monument to the power of the spirit and a flourishing recreational enterprise.

Evergreen forests embraced the town. Under a threatening sky, great pines sentineled the looming storm, orders upon orders of symbolic sisters in green wimples and guimpes and habits, needled garments so dark in this somber light that at a distance, they looked almost as black as the vestments of the real nuns in the convent.

Although the town had fewer than two thousand residents in the off season, a steady influx of fishermen, boaters, campers, hikers, and jet-ski enthusiasts doubled the population during the summer.

At a busy sportsman’s store that sold everything from earthworms by the pint to six-packs of beer, Micky learned that three facilities in the area provided campsites with power-and-water hookups to motor homes and travel trailers. Favoring tenters, the state park dedicated only twenty percent of its sites to campers requiring utilities. Two privately owned RV campgrounds were a better bet for those roughing it in style.

Within an hour, she visited all three places, inquiring whether the Jordan Banks family had checked in, certain that Maddoc would not be traveling under his real name. They were in residence at none of the campgrounds, nor did they have a reservation at one.

Because the stagnant economy had crimped some people’s vacation plans and because even in better times the area had a surplus of RV campsites, reservations weren’t always required, and space was likely to be available at all three facilities when Maddoc pulled into town.

She asked each of the registration clerks not to mention her inquiry to the Banks family when eventually they showed up. “I’m Jordan’s sister. He doesn’t know I’m here. I want to surprise him. It’s his birthday.”

If Maddoc had false ID supporting his Jordan Banks identity, he probably had identification in other names, as well. He might already be in one of these campgrounds, using a name that she didn’t know.

Leilani had described the motor home as a luxurious converted Prevost bus: “When people see it rolling along the highway, they get all excited ’cause they assume Godzilla is on vacation.” Furthermore, Micky had seen the midnight-blue Dodge Durango parked at the house trailer next door to Gen’s place, and she knew Maddoc towed it behind the Prevost. Consequently, if he was registered under a third name, she’d be able to find him anyway during a tour of the campgrounds.

The problem was that at each facility, she needed to know a registered guest in order to obtain a visitor’s pass. Until Maddoc either checked in under the Banks name or until she learned what other identity he might be using, she wasn’t able to undertake such a search.

She could have rented a site at each campground, which would have allowed her to come and go as she pleased. But she had no tent or other camping gear. While you could sleep in a van and pass as RV royalty, sleeping in a car branded you as hall a step up the social ladder from a homeless person, and you were not welcome.

Besides, her budget was so tight that if she plucked it, the resulting note would be heard only by dogs. If she connected with Maddoc here but was unable to find an opportunity to grab Leilani, she might have to follow them elsewhere. Because she didn’t know where this quest might lead, she needed to conserve every dollar.

Short of returning to all three campgrounds at one- or two-hour intervals, making a nuisance of herself, Micky could see only one course of action likely to lead her to Maddoc soon after he finally arrived in Nun’s Lake. He had come all this way to talk to a man who claimed to have experienced a close encounter with extraterrestrials. If she could run surveillance on that man’s home, she would spot her quarry when he paid a visit.

At the busy sportsman’s store where previously she had inquired about RV-friendly campgrounds, she’d also asked about the local UFO celebrity, eliciting a weary laugh from the clerk. The man’s name was Leonard Teelroy, and he lived on a farm three miles east of the town limits.

The directions proved easy to follow, and the narrow county road was well marked, but when she arrived at the Teelroy place, she found that it qualified as a farm only because of the work that had once been done there, not because it currently produced anything. Broken-down fences surrounded fields long ago gone to waist-high weeds.

The weathered barn had not been painted in decades. Wind and rain, rot and termites, and the power of neglect had stripped fully a third of the boards from the flanks of this building, as though it were a fallen behemoth from the ribs of which carrion eaters had torn away the meat. The swaybacked ridgeline of the roof suggested that it might collapse if so much as a blackbird came to rest upon it.