This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Otherwise, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2024 by Joseph Hillstrom King

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Amazon Original Stories, Seattle

www.apub.com

Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Amazon Original Stories are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

ISBN-13: 9781662527944 (digital)

Cover design by Brian Lemus

Cover image: © kasha_malasha, © MedRocky / Shutterstock

First Interview

This is Special Agent John Oates,” Duvall said to the kid. “And I’m Special Agent—”

“Let me guess, Special Agent Daryl Hall,” the kid cut in. “Do you take requests? I’ve always had a wicked soft spot for ‘You Make My Dreams Come True.’”

Duvall shook his head. “That’s funny. I’ve never heard that one before.”

“Really?”

“No. That was my trademark deadpan sarcasm,” Duvall told him. “I’m Special Agent Anthony Duvall. Martin, I—”

“Duvall and Oates!” the kid cried and drummed his palms on the edge of the table. “C’mon, that’s funny. It’s so close.”

“It was funnier when we first got paired up together,” Duvall said.

“Oh yeah? When was that?”

“Around the time you discovered crayons aren’t as tasty as they look. Martin, I want to tell you how much we appreciate you sitting down to talk with us. We’ll try not to take up too much of your time. I know you’re on your lunch break.”

“Oh, never mind that. They make yummy little pizzas here. I’ll scarf one on my way out the door.”

They were in a café in one corner of a spacious chain bookstore. The kid, Martin Lorensen, had brought a cup of honeyed-lemon mint tea to the table, as if he were planning to do some singing later and wanted to keep his vocal cords warmed up.

Duvall and Oates had made a few people sing in some of these interviews over the years. When someone engineered the deaths of a few dozen people, it was Duvall’s experience that they often wanted to tell. Some were ill with grief and horror, and they needed to confess, the way someone with a stomach bug might need to vomit. It was the only way to expel the sickness that had built up inside them. Others were proud of themselves. They wanted to brag on the clever thing they had done to pulverize twenty or thirty human bodies into small blackened bits.

He didn’t expect the kid to cop to a slaughter this afternoon—well before arranging to meet him, Duvall had mostly decided Martin Lorensen had nothing to do with the derailment of Mohawk 118. But mostly was not entirely, and Duvall had been surprised before. And, after all, there was also the matter of Kennedy High, six years ago. Martin Lorensen was either an extraordinarily lucky young man or extraordinarily unlucky, depending on how you wanted to look at it. Or—just possibly—luck didn’t figure into it at all.

“Do you have to read me some legal stuff before you start recording?” Martin asked.

“I wasn’t going to record our conversation. We’re just three guys talking.”

Martin nodded. “Just three guys talking. Two of them heavily armed and carrying badges.”

“‘Heavily armed’ seems a bit strong. It’s a standard-issue Glock.”

“If you help us out,” Oates told him, “maybe he’ll let you look at it after the interview is over.”

“Wow!” Martin said. “That’d be so cool.”

“You really think so?” Oates asked.

“No. I was trying for deadpan sarcasm myself. How’d I do?”

“Need to work on the deadpan part,” Duvall said, tucking his damp tie back into his damp jacket. It was raining, and he still had beads of water on his sports coat. Rain tapped on the glass outside the bookstore café.

Martin Lorensen had short, straw-colored hair, pleasant features improved by an old and roguish scar stitched through his left eyebrow, and ears that stuck out from the sides of his head and lent a slightly clownish quality to his good looks. He was twenty-three, not long out of Boston College, and a counselor at a secure residential facility for disturbed teenagers. He was also—and this was the most interesting thing about him, in Anthony Duvall’s view—not dead.

Martin had got to the bookstore ahead of them and picked out a few paperbacks. Duvall tilted his head to one side to read the spines.

“Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman,” Duvall said. “What lasts four thousand weeks?”

“A human life,” Martin said. “If you’re lucky.”

“Bunch of people on Mohawk 118,” Oates said, “didn’t get four thousand weeks.”

The kid stopped smiling then. He nodded solemnly, pressed his hands together, and squeezed them between his knees. “Yes sir.”

Duvall glanced over the other titles in Martin’s stack. “Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl. I’ve read that one.”

“What’d you think?”

“I think sometimes, once in a while, nearly dying brings a new clarity to a person’s life,” Duvall said. He avoided eye contact with Martin, wanted to go slow, keep it casual.

“These are some pretty heavy reads,” Oates said. Twenty years of doing this, Oates still didn’t know how to keep it casual. “Guess you must be in a reflective mood. After what happened.”

Duvall let this comment pass, read the last title under the kid’s palm. “Nowhere to Run. Is that another one about the brevity of life and the nature of human suffering?”

“That one?” Martin Lorensen said, and his sly grin rematerialized. “That one’s a Joe Pickett novel. You can only read so much about how to live a meaningful life before you want some shoot-outs.”

“Maybe he will want to look at your gun after we’re finished,” Oates said.

“We’re not going to record, but my partner is going to take some notes, if that’s all right,” Duvall said.

“Got it. So you’re like his secretary,” Martin said as Oates picked up his pen.

Oates put the pen down again, lifted his gray eyes, and said, “Not even a little.”

“Okay,” Martin said. “Not even a little. My bad.”

Duvall said, “So, I want to begin with a few biographical details. You’re twenty-three—”

“Yep.”

“And you graduated from Boston College with a degree in cognitive science.”

“And a minor in Fortnite.”

“Your mother and father are William and Vanessa Lorensen, fifty-seven and fifty-three, respectively. And they live in Brunswick, Maine. You have one brother, older.”

“Way older, and frankly my father ought to be ashamed for knocking up a sweet, naive high school girl who knew nothing of the world. But I guess that’s between my mom and dad.”

“You and your brother are close?”

“Eric is the best, most sincere guy I know.”

“How much older?” Duvall asked. He already knew the answer. He hadn’t asked a thing yet he didn’t know the answer to.

“He’s thirty-three.”

“And he lives in Albany, New York.”

“Mm-hmm,” Martin said, which wasn’t much of an answer, Duvall thought. They were coming to it now, and the kid knew it.

“You had a ticket to see your brother in Albany on March 11, on Mohawk 118, a passenger train leaving from South Station in Boston, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Why were you going to see Eric?”

“For his bachelor party,” Martin said.

“What did he have planned?”

“We were going to see a cage match. I’ve never been to an MMA fight. I’ve never been to a strip club, either, and personally I would’ve preferred that, but my brother is against ’em on ethical grounds. I said he was the most sincere person I know, I didn’t say he was the coolest. This is a guy who unironically bought tickets to see Ed Sheeran.”

“You weren’t on the train, though,” Duvall said.

Martin sobered. “No sir. I wasn’t.”

“You had a reserved first-class ticket. Your brother paid for it?”

Martin nodded.

“Did you go to the train station?” Duvall asked. He knew Martin had.

“Yeah.”

“When did you get there?”

“Ah, about seven in the morning?”

“You were early.”

Martin’s head bobbed up and down.

“Did you get on the train?”

“No sir,” Martin said.

“Why not?”

“I had a panic attack.”

“What do you mean?”

“I got a constriction in my chest, like it was getting hard to breathe, and my insides knotted up. I sat down on a bench and waited to get my wind back. I’ve had anxiety for a while, I take meds for it. I suddenly felt like I couldn’t be trapped inside a little compartment on a train for eight hours. Seriously, Mr. Duvall, you should’ve seen me. I was covered in sweat colder than that rain out there. I had a couple Wake-Up Wraps at Dunkin’ in the morning. I thought I was going to hurl ’em into a public trash can. I was still sitting there when the train pulled out.”

“What kind of meds do you take?” Oates asked. He didn’t look up from his notepad.

“Lexapro, twenty milligrams.”

Duvall considered whether it was time to go right at him, decided against it. He said, “That’s tough. My daughter has anxiety issues too. She sees a guy weekly, he’s helped a lot with her fears around social situations. Have you tried that? Seeing a therapist?”

“I am a therapist,” the kid said and grinned. “Well, hoping to be, anyway. Just a counselor so far.”

“How long have you struggled with anxiety?” Duvall asked him.

“Uh, since—since high school,” Martin Lorensen said, and for the first time he looked uncertain of himself.

Duvall almost said, Since you were a senior at Kennedy High? Want to talk about Kennedy High, Martin? But it was still too soon.

“Your parents operate a hospice,” Duvall said instead. “And you lived there?”

“Well, not in the hospice,” Martin said. “On the estate. Why do you ask?”

“I suppose I was wondering if your anxiety goes back even further. Must’ve been a lot for a little boy, seeing people die all the time. You never get used to it,” Duvall said, and thought, No, but sometimes people get a taste for it. Did you ever get a taste for it, Martin?

The kid brightened and rocked forward, as if Duvall had broached a favorite topic: the Celtics postseason prospects or Joe Pickett westerns. “Oh, no, that didn’t freak me out at all. I loved the oldies. I spent half my childhood playing underfoot, getting in the way of their wheelchairs. I’d watch TV with people who were a thousand years old. I remember watching a lot of Andy Griffith, who I guess is still sort of my role model. Sometimes I’d read to the oldies. It never seemed like dying was anything so terrible. Most of them just kind of quietly . . . went. Like someone blowing on a dandelion clock, gentle as that. You do get used to it. You find out it’s the most normal thing in the world, like sex, or having a baby, or nursing a baby. It’s one of these fundamental human things, reminds you you’re part of nature. We forget that, you know. Or try not to think about it. Which is stupid. It’s better to just be a mammal. You know, take long naked naps in the sun. Never miss a chance to splash in the tide.”

“You should’ve gone into philosophy,” Oates said. “Be a mammal. I’m going to remember that.”

Duvall laced his fingers together in front of him. He supposed the interview was going to have to begin eventually—begin in earnest—so it might as well be now. “Martin, did you speak to anyone before you got on the train?”

“You’re wondering about Mrs. Giovanni. Look, I know what she said on Instagram, but it’s not true.”

“You didn’t warn her and her daughter not to get on the train?”

“No.”

“Why would she tell an NBC news affiliate that you did?”

“I didn’t say anything to Mrs. Giovanni,” Martin said. “Not one word! I had a brief conversation with her daughter. Like, thirty seconds. She asked if I was all right, and I said, ‘I can’t get on the train.’”

“Mrs. Giovanni says you told her and her daughter not to get on the train. She said, and I’m quoting her here”—Duvall plucked up a sheet of paper next to Oates’s notepad—“‘The boy said please don’t get on the train. If you get on that train, you and your daughter are going to die.’”

“No. Uh-uh. She made that up,” Martin said. “I told her daughter, I said, ‘I can’t get on the train. I feel like if I get on that train, something bad is going to happen.’ Mrs. Giovanni wasn’t even standing with us. She was in line for bagels, ten feet from us. How could she tell anyone exactly what I said?”

“It’s a funny thing to lie about.”

“Is it, though? Makes a great Instagram story, doesn’t it? A creepy random encounter and a narrow brush with death? It was such a great story it got her on TV, like you said. Social media brings out the worst in people. They’ll say anything for the likes.”

“Speaking of likes. Did you like her daughter?” Audrey Giovanni was seventeen, too young for a twenty-three-year-old workingman, but not so young he wouldn’t notice her.

“She was a real nice kid. And, by the way, I’d like to note that Audrey hasn’t commented on any of this. Her mom has been telling this story about me, but the daughter hasn’t gone on TV or Facebook or Instagram or anything to back her up. She knows what I said. Have you asked her what I said?”

“She’s a minor, and her mother has not made her available for an interview. The fact is, they got on the train after talking to you, but Audrey was so distressed she forced her mother to get off at the next stop. Which is the only reason that, like you, they survived the crash.”

Martin lifted one hand, palm out: Stop right there. “Oh, hey, hang on. You can’t say I survived a train crash if I was never on the train to begin with. Might as well say you survived the train crash.”

“Okay. Good point. But let’s face it. You said something that freaked that kid out. She dragged her mother off the train, and twenty minutes later it derailed and overturned and twenty-eight people died. Another hundred and sixty were badly injured.”

“Mr. Duvall,” Martin said. “Do you think I had something to do with the derailment? I thought the engineer fell asleep. That’s what they said on CNN.”

“I know what they said on CNN. And I know what they didn’t say. They didn’t say he’s an oxycodone addict. For the moment we’ve been able to keep that part of the story quiet. Martin, do they have oxycodone in the pharmacy at the Peabody Teen Mental Health Center?”

Martin exhaled a slow, whistling breath, leaned back against his chair. “I wouldn’t have any idea. I don’t have access to the drugs locker.” He paused . . . then, improbably, the smile returned. “Ah, come on, guys. You think I’m supplementing my income peddling oxy to people operating ninety-ton trains? Why would the guy come all the way to Peabody to score off of me? He couldn’t find anywhere to buy drugs in Boston? Look, the pharmacy at the center is under twenty-four-hour guard and surveillance. I think they keep video files going back at least a year. Ask to see ’em.”

“Do they have oxycodone at your parents’ hospice?” Oates wanted to know.

Martin rotated his paper cup in his hands. “Sure. They have a lot of pain-mitigation tools there. Wow, this conversation has taken a turn. Are you going to search my place?”

“If we do,” Duvall asked, “will we find drugs?”

“I literally sleep with a Bible next to my bed. It’s not illegal to get high on Jesus, is it?”

“Do you do drugs?”

“Not since college.”

“What kinds of drugs did you do in college?”

“I smoked a few blunts now and then. Got into a little chronic.”

“You were hard-core, huh?”

“No, not really. I just think that sounds cool. I vaped THC most of my freshman year, and my grades were so bad I almost got thrown out. It was how I controlled my panic attacks before I got on Lexapro.”

“The panic attacks that started in high school?”

Martin Lorensen rocked back in his chair. “I guess we’re going to talk about that now.”

Duvall reached over and plucked up another sheet of paper. “In your senior year, you survived a school shooting that claimed—”

“Hang on,” Martin said, holding up a finger. “There it is again. I didn’t survive a school shooting. I have friends who survived a school shooting. I wasn’t there. I was home. I had, to be honest, a seriously offensive case of diarrhea. Ask my mom.”

“You stayed home from school, but a sophomore named Timothy Berk did not. He brought an AR-15 to Kennedy High and killed eighteen kids, including nine in your regular homeroom.”

“So before I sold oxy to the engineer of Mohawk 118, you think I sold a Bushmaster to Timothy Berk?”

“Did you know Timothy Berk?”

“That is an emphatic no. I’m sure I saw him in the hall from time to time, but if you stuck him in front of me and asked me to put a name to him, I couldn’t have done it, not before the shooting. Obviously, I know all about him now.”

“He followed you on Twitch, didn’t he?”

“I have eighteen thousand followers on Twitch, and a lot of ’em are from my hometown.”

Duvall leaned forward, rested his forearms on the edge of the table. “Martin, do you see what I’m struggling with here? You don’t get on the train and it crashes. You don’t go to school and half your homeroom gets riddled with bullets.”

“Mr. Duvall, you think there’s something suspicious about me because I wasn’t shot in a school shooting and I didn’t die in a train crash.” He craned his neck and peered around them in an exaggerated way. “Better take a look around. You’re surrounded by people who didn’t die in school shootings and weren’t killed in train crashes. If that makes someone a criminal, you better call for backup. You’re going to be arresting a lot of people tonight.”

Second Interview

Duvall was drinking a beer and picking at a greasy Cactus Blossom at the bar in a Texas Roadhouse when Martin Lorensen walked past, then walked back, bent slightly, and peered at him. A smile bloomed on his young, angular face.

“Special Agent Daryl Hall!” Martin said. “What are you doing all by your lonesome? Did John Oates go solo on you?”

“Martin,” Duvall said. He thought about trying on a social smile, but he was three beers into the evening and looking forward to a night of sleep at a Super 8, in a bed that shook every time he shifted his weight. He decided a smile was asking a bit much. “Sit down, why don’t you?”

Martin climbed onto the stool beside him. “I’m kidding. I noticed you a while back. I saw you and Mr. Oates talking to my boss over in one of the booths. Did he give you the security footage for the pharmacy locker?”

“On three hard drives,” Duvall said.

“Boy, that’s going to be some fun viewing. Just as good as the first season of Yellowstone.”

“For the record, your boss, Elliott North, says you’re a reliable, conscientious employee. He told me he’d do a handstand if we found video of you swiping drugs.”

“Mr. North said that? He’d do a handstand? He’s usually a lot more foulmouthed than that. This is a guy, his favorite adjective is the f-word.”

“Actually, he said if it turned out you were stealing oxy from the pharmacy, he’d get down under the table and blow the both of us.”

“Ah! That’s Mr. North.”

“John drove him home,” Duvall added. “I would’ve gone with him, but our waiter forgot to bring me this onion thing I don’t want anymore, so he’s coming back for me in a few.” He didn’t add that John was in the midst of breaking up with his girlfriend of five years and had wanted some alone time to draft a few aggressively ugly text messages.

“You’re not going to eat that? Can I have it? I love these things, but I gotta watch my pennies. You make surprisingly little money not selling oxycodone to people driving trains.”

Duvall nudged the plate toward him. When the bartender happened by, the kid ordered a Blue Moon.

“They bring it with a slice of orange,” Martin said in a low, confidential voice. “So classy. I’m not surprised you met him here. Mr. North. This is sort of the go-to hangout for staff after work. A whole bunch of us were over there, playing trivia on the machine; they’ve got a machine, sort of like your own table-side game console—”

“This isn’t my first Texas Roadhouse,” Duvall told him. “I know about the game.”

Martin forked pieces of fried onion into his mouth and washed them down with his beer, which had indeed arrived with a classy slice of orange balanced on the rim of the glass. “I’m not on the security footage. You know why? Because I’m not a thief and I’m not a drug dealer. What I am is an underpaid counselor who plays pickleball with mentally ill kids all scarred up from their previous suicide attempts.”

Duvall had a sip of his beer. “The driver of Mohawk 118 told us where he got his oxy. He’s a mess. He’s going to go to jail for the rest of his life, but that’s not the worst part. The worst part is knowing those people died because he was on the nod. I know it wasn’t you. I gotta fast-forward through a few thousand hours of security cam footage anyway. As for Timothy Berk, I can’t ask him if he knew you, because the police put seven bullets in him fourteen minutes after he entered the school and began killing. But he didn’t mention you in any of his online statements. Mostly he confined himself to raging about all the girls who were too stuck-up to talk to him. His stepmother says he didn’t know you. Also, you didn’t give him the gun—his father had it in the house. I’m only checking the boxes I’m expected to check.”

“I knew one of the girls Timothy Berk killed,” Martin said. “Janet Vickers. We were in West Side Story together. She was this wiry, chirpy bundle of energy . . . like, explosively fun. She threw herself on her best friend to save her life. She did too. Berk shot Janet in the neck and back, but the girl under her lived.”

Martin drank a big swallow of beer and pushed the Cactus Blossom around the plate, seemed to have suddenly lost his appetite.

The sound system was playing Willie Nelson. A track ended, and there was an instant’s silence before the next song began. In it Duvall could hear the rain pounding on the roof of the Roadhouse.

“What about you, Mr. Duvall?” Martin asked. “Who’s explosively fun in your life?”

Duvall said, “Don’t be hurt by this, but I don’t discuss my personal life with the subjects of our investigations.”

“I get it, I get it,” Martin said. “We could keep it nonspecific. I’m just curious why you aren’t going home tonight.”

“My wife and I divorced ten years ago.”

“Did you stay friends?”

“Some divorcing couples say they’re going to stay friends, but I’ve never met a single pair that ever really did it.”

“And you said you got a daughter?”

“Yeah, a girl about your age.”

“You close? I bet you’re close.”

“We talk every night.” He paused, considering whether to say more, then thought, What the hell. “I touched base with her a couple hours ago, and she read me a paper she wrote for a class on personal memoir. She said she wanted to read it to me because she wanted to be sure she wasn’t sharing anything off-limits about our family. But really I think she was just proud of it.”

“Good paper?”

“Good but tough. About being a Black girl in the age of Breonna Taylor and Freddie Gray, when your dad carries a badge. And all the guilt and conflicted feelings that come with that.”

“I guess it must be kind of weird. You ever see something like what happened to George Floyd and think about not being a cop anymore?”

“I think,” Duvall said, “that people are always going to want law, and if the only lawmen are white, then it isn’t law anymore. It’s apartheid.”

“Is that what your daughter thinks?”

“My daughter thinks we got apartheid anyway. She might be right.” Duvall tipped back his bottle and took a cold, bitter swallow. “Anyway, I investigate crashes, and I been doing it twenty years. Too late to try my hand at painting.”

“Ah, well. It’s good you and your daughter are close. I’m close to my father. For a couple years after Kennedy High got shot up, I’d call him every night, and he’d have to talk me through my latest panic attack. It still amazes me that he put up with it. That I didn’t burn him out with all my worry and stress and paranoia. He would listen to it, call after call, and still tell me he loved me before he said good night.”

“That’s pretty much the job description, though. You listen and then you tell them you love them, no matter what they had to say. I’m glad you’re not a drug dealer, Martin. You picked a career path built around helping kids in distress. You have good taste in books. It would’ve been a bummer if I had to arrest you for a role in twenty-eight deaths.”

“Well, but I wasn’t completely honest about, you know, everything.”

Duvall turned his head slightly and waited.

“I did tell Audrey Giovanni not to get on the train,” Martin said.

Duvall waited for more, but Martin was watching highlights from a spring training game on the TV behind the bar, seemed to have decided nothing else need be said.

“Why’d you do that?” Duvall asked.

“Because if she did, she would’ve died in the train crash,” Martin said. “She and her mother both. Even still, I wouldn’t have said anything to her if she hadn’t come over to ask if I was all right. She seems like a real nice kid. Too nice to die before she’s even had a chance to live.”

Duvall said, “How did you know the train was going to crash?”

“I didn’t know it was going to crash. There could’ve been a bomb on board. Or a shooter, like Timothy Berk. I just knew if she got on, she’d die. Like the others.”

Duvall had a tiny sip of his beer and thought about what Martin was telling him. The kid still wasn’t looking at him, had his gaze fixed on the TV.

“It’s loud in here, huh?” Martin said.

“Yes.”

“And it’s just us talking.”

“Yes, just us.”

“No Oates. Your backup singer isn’t here.”

“Why is it important that it’s loud here and it’s just us, Martin?”

“Because I’m about to tell you some crazy shit. But I figure it’s too noisy for you to record me on your phone, and if you ever repeat any of it, I’ll say you were drunk or nuts, and people will believe me, because it really is some crazy shit.”

Duvall laced his fingers together. “How did you know they were going to die? The people getting on the train?”

“Because they had company when they got on board,” Martin Lorensen told him. “They weren’t alone. None of them. When you die, you aren’t alone. They’re always there, at the end, to collect you.”

“They?” Duvall asked, the skin on his forearms prickling with goose bumps. In the bookstore café, Martin had come across as a cheerful class clown but entirely sane. It always gave Duvall a chill when someone who was mentally disturbed dropped his mask and showed his real face. “Who are they?”

“I think of them as the ushers. Like at a play—the people who lead you through the dark to your seat when you come in late. I guess there are ushers at funerals too. But maybe you’d call them angels. They look like angels.”

“Do they have wings?”

Martin nodded and drank some Blue Moon. “Sure do. But not big beautiful white wings, like on the statues. More like pigeons. Gray, but also sort of iridescent. They’ve got eyes like pigeons too. You know how pigeons have eyes the color of new minted pennies? Like that. Metallic. They wear these cassocks, kinda like Jesuit priests, and there’s soot all over them. Soot on their clothes, soot on their wings. Like they came out of a coal mine.”

“And no one sees them but you?”

“No one ever sees them but me. It’s been that way since I saw one take Mrs. Keats.”

“Who was Mrs. Keats?”

“Dolores Keats. She died in front of me when I was five. In the hospice. The man with pigeon eyes and pigeon wings was sitting next to her the whole time, watching The Price Is Right while he waited. He knew I could see him. He nodded at me.”

Martin had described experiencing a nervous breakdown after the shooting at his high school, had called his father nightly to provide updates on his mental crack-up. What words had he used? Panic attacks and paranoia. Duvall knew you could go one of two ways after a nervous breakdown. You could mend or you could splinter even more. Duvall kept his features calm and composed but was thinking the kid belonged in a mental health facility all right, but as one of the patients, not as part of the staff.

“So what happened when she died? Did he fly away with her ghost?” Duvall asked.

Martin gave him a sidelong look, and his eyes were actually twinkling. “I knew you’d think I was full of shit.”

“Go on, tell me what happened when she died.”

“He waited until The Price Is Right went to a commercial; then he leaned toward her and took her hand. He whispered into her ear. I don’t know what he whispered. Something nice, I think, because she started to smile. And then a flashbulb went off inside her body—this snap of light in her eyes and in her open mouth, like a stroke of lightning pulsing inside a cloud—and when it faded, she was gone. And so was he.”

“Mrs. Keats vanished?”

The kid looked briefly nettled. “No, her body was still there. I mean, whatever is inside us that makes us who we are, that went away—disappeared with her usher.”

“In a flash of light.” Duvall turned his beer by the bottleneck, thinking it over. “What’s the soot? You said there’s soot on them.”

“Not sure. Sin maybe.”

“Sin?”

“Sure. Maybe we emit sin, the way factories emit pollution, and it gets on ’em, the way soot gets on pigeons. Or maybe they take some people to hell and it’s smoky there. I don’t know. You ever see a movie called Wings of Desire?” Martin asked him.

“Was that a straight-to-video Top Gun knockoff?”

“No, it’s German. It’s a German art film. Black and white. The guy who directed it, Wim Wenders? I’m pretty sure he’s seen them too. The ushers. He changed them a little for the film, but basically they look a lot like that.”

“I’ll check it out sometime.”

“Don’t bother. It’s not important.”

“So the ushers were there at the train station?”

“And at the high school. They were clustered around the entrance to Kennedy High, like a flock of pigeons waiting for someone to toss a fistful of breadcrumbs.”

“Martin,” Duvall said, “if you saw angels of death clustering around your school, why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you try to save Janet Vickers? Like you tried to save Audrey Giovanni?” He spoke gently, curious to see how deep the delusion went, and what happened when Martin’s fantasies were challenged.

Martin sighed and looked disheartened. “I had never seen so many gathered in one place, at one time. I was in my car, looking for a parking spot, when I saw them. It really did make me feel sick—I always get serious diarrhea whenever I’m freaking out. I squealed out of there, called my mom to say I was coming home. I couldn’t think what to do. Remember, I was seventeen. I had about decided to call in a bomb threat when the first police car blasted past me. Timothy Berk began shooting at seven fifty-two, before first bell had rung. So, that time, I couldn’t do anything. It all happened so fast. Later, though, I learned it’s better not to do anything.”

“Better to do nothing and let people die?”

“That’s a misunderstanding of how these guys operate. When they show up, someone is going to die. Every one of them is an usher, and they’re going to lead someone away into the dark, to take their seat at the big show. Because, Mr. Duvall, of course I’ve tried to save people. There was Julie Hammersmith, in college. I saw her usher trailing along two steps behind her. I kept an eye on her. Hung out with her all night—which was pretty easy, we were going to the same rager—and when she went in the bathroom and didn’t come out, I forced my way in and found her having a seizure. The usher was perched on the edge of the toilet, watching her foam at the mouth. Only Julie lived. I screamed for help and some dude ran in and gave her CPR and she’s alive today. I heard she’s an oral hygienist in Danvers now.”

“For real?” Duvall asked, thinking he would check it out in the morning.

Martin nodded sadly.

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“No, it isn’t,” Martin said. “Her usher stopped following her around and started following me around. He followed me for most of a week, giving me nasty looks. Then, one day, walking home, he peeled off and crossed the street and caught up with this kid, maybe ten, riding her bicycle along the sidewalk. He looked over his shoulder to make sure I was watching, and then he began to talk to her. I could see her tilt her head to listen to him. She was still listening—giving him her complete attention—when she glided out onto the street and into the path of an oncoming delivery truck. He didn’t get to take Julie—I stopped him from taking Julie—so he found someone else.”

And you were there when it happened, Duvall thought, the skin crawling at the nape of his neck. He wondered whether there had been any other witnesses in the incident of the child struck by the delivery truck. He wondered whether the person who distracted her, right before she was hit, had been Martin Lorensen himself.

“What about Audrey and her mother? Are the ushers going to take someone else in their place?”

“Yeah, they’ll find two people to take, I guess,” Martin said glumly.

“Are the ushers here now?”

“I’m trying not to notice if they are. I really shouldn’t have done anything. People die. I don’t want to be the reason some live and some don’t. It’s best to just . . . be a mammal. Eat as much fresh fruit as you can. Spend time with trees. Hug the people you love. Accept that death is as natural as the rest of life. Dogs understand that. Cats understand that. Only humans have a hard time with it. And when it’s over, at least there’s someone there. At least you aren’t alone.”

Duvall’s Apple Watch zapped him with a notification. He turned his wrist to look at the watch face, saw a couple of texts from Malia. Mom liked my essay too, she said, and Thanks for letting me read it to you, and a heart emoji. He tapped the watch face, sent a heart emoji back. When he glanced up, Martin was smiling at him, fondly, yet with a trace of sadness. Then Martin nodded toward the doorway.

“Look who just walked in. I think Mr. Oates is here to collect you for the reunion tour,” Martin said.

Duvall followed his gaze and spotted John Oates standing inside the double doors, raindrops glittering on his duck windbreaker. He looked pissed, his mouth a tight, bloodless line under his mustache, his comb-over a wet tangle.

“Let me get your drink, Martin,” Duvall said, feeling a charity for the kid he could not have explained, even to himself.

“No, no,” Martin said. “I couldn’t let you.” Then he showed that winsome grin of his and added, “Not after I bogarted your yummy Cactus Blossom.”

Duvall signaled to the girl running the bar and closed out his tab. Martin put a few wrinkled bills down to cover his Blue Moon. They made their way to the foyer together.

John cast a baleful look at Martin. “Surprised to see you out, Lorensen. I thought you liked to spend your evenings with that Bible you keep next to your bed.”

“Mr. Oates! Your head is steaming! I’ve never seen a head steam before.”

It was true—white curls of steam were rising from his pale-pink dome. John’s mouth worked beneath his mustache while he searched for something suitably cutting to say. He didn’t come up with anything and settled for a short “Huh!” and turned away. When he started for the door, Duvall fell into step beside him without a word. From his body language, Duvall took it there was no last-minute reconciliation with his girlfriend in the offing, let alone a final tender exchange of good memories and warm wishes.

Before the night was over, Duvall would have to fill John in on his unplanned second interview with Martin Lorensen. John would love it. After that smart-ass comment about his steaming head, John would be pleased to have a reason to charge Lorensen with something—anything, really, evidence highly optional.

They needed to talk to the girl who had overdosed and nearly died in Martin’s presence. What did he say her name was? Hammersmith. Dental hygienist, Danvers. Duvall wanted to know whether Martin had sold her the drugs that nearly killed her. And they would have to find out about the little girl who had been crushed by a truck right in front of him. Duvall did not see how Martin could’ve had a hand in Mohawk 118 or the Timothy Berk shooting. But he was an unstable young man in the grip of a disturbing religious fantasy, which possibly included vivid, grotesque hallucinations, and Duvall had an ever-so-slightly-heartsick feeling that the next time they spoke, he would have to read Martin his rights first.

The worst part of it was he liked him. Martin radiated a boyish, gleeful sense of mischief, and beneath that Duvall sensed, or wanted to sense, a basic decency, a concern for others. He couldn’t square that with this other idea: that Martin Lorensen was a badly deranged youth who might’ve played a role in a number of deaths.

When they stepped through the doors, it was cold and the rain was pouring from the eaves and bouncing off the blacktop. John had pulled the Lincoln right up to the curb and left it running, a massive black car that screamed cop. Duvall clocked Martin peering out into the dark as he buttoned his denim jacket to the throat.

“Don’t tell me you’re on foot.”

“I’m only a half mile that way,” Martin said, gesturing with his chin.

“Get in,” Duvall said. “We’ll drive you. Don’t walk in this.”

Martin smiled—and then his gaze shifted to the left, away from Duvall, and back. His smile faltered. He regarded Duvall with a mixture of kindness and apology.

“I don’t mind it. People should get some rain on their faces now and then. Get a good clean soak.”

“Be a mammal,” Duvall said, and the kid shot a finger gun at him. “Martin . . . I am going to have to discuss what you’ve told me with Mr. Oates. You understand that?”

Martin looked to Oates and back and smiled and said, “Do what you got to do, Mr. Duvall. It’ll be okay.” And stuck out his hand.

Duvall was surprised and charmed, in spite of what he knew about Martin now. They shook. The kid had a firm, polite grip, as sincere as the rest of him. Martin pivoted and shook John’s hand too—

“Take ’er easy, Mr. Oates.”

—and after he let go, John stood there on the curb, staring down at his palm, as if he was not sure what had just happened. Finally he said “Huh!” again and dropped his hand to his side.

Duvall slid into the passenger seat while his partner walked around the front of the car, through the downpour. John dumped himself behind the steering wheel, glaring out at the rain, a man who took weather personally. John’s phone was on the center console between them, and it lit up with a text as the big man put the Lincoln into drive.

“Ah, this fuckin’—” John muttered, grabbing it, glancing at the text, throwing it back down. “Don’t gimme this shit about we ate leftovers on our anniversary—what anniversary, bitch, we ain’t married—”

He wrenched the wheel and they leaped from the curb, tires throwing spray. Duvall cast one look back over his shoulder. Martin stood under the overhang in front of the entrance to the Texas Roadhouse, his denim collar turned up, thumbs in the pockets of his jeans. Now that Duvall was leaving him behind, the smile was gone, and he looked sad. Duvall supposed he’d have exactly the same look on his face if he had to walk home in this.

John accelerated out of the parking lot, slewing through a wide, deep puddle, throwing a fan of water. Duvall grabbed the strap over the door but didn’t say anything, knew what kind of mood John was in.

“The kid had some stuff to say,” Duvall said.

“That kid could say a whole lot less and it would be fine with me. Snide little shit.”

Duvall decided it wasn’t the time to tell John about the ushers. Maybe at the motel.

John sped up, irritably clicking his chunky fraternity ring against the side of the steering wheel, clack-clack-clack-clack, and they hit another wide black pool of water with a great crash, and Duvall thought he shouldn’t have let Martin walk home in this, and never mind his just-be-a-mammal shit, he was going to be a drowned mammal. No one ought to be out in this—no one would want to be—and then he played something back in his head, the way Martin had looked away from him for a moment, peering off to one side, and then when he looked back his eyes had been morose and apologetic. John sped up and sped up some more, muttering, “Cold leftovers, how many fuckin’ times did I choke down her mother’s vegan chili what always gave me the shits—”

Duvall recalled how happy it had made Martin, to see him sending Malia that heart emoji, letting his daughter know she was loved, and then Duvall remembered asking what would happen to the ushers who had come for Audrey Giovanni and her mother, and Martin had said they’d find two others to take, and by now John was doing sixty in a forty-five, and Duvall opened his mouth to tell him to calm the fuck down and slow the fuck down while he was at it, only when he glanced in the rearview mirror, he saw a pair of copper-bright eyes staring back at him, someone in the back seat, and the words caught in his throat.

John’s cell phone lit up again, and John cursed and grabbed for it to see what his ex was saying now, and the Lincoln slid gracefully, easily, across the double yellow line into the oncoming lane. The car filled with the blinding glare of approaching headlights. Anthony Duvall shoved himself back into his seat, bracing for the dreadful concussion of metal slamming into metal at high velocity, and that was when he realized someone had reached up from the back to gently squeeze John’s shoulder. Duvall wanted to cry out but couldn’t force any sound up his suddenly constricted throat, and that was when the second man in the back seat leaned forward to put his mouth close to Duvall’s ear, and in a calm, low, soothing voice, he said, Hold on, Tony, hold on, something wonderful is coming.

Joe Hill

Exeter, New Hampshire

May 2024

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Photo © 2021 Gillian King

Joe Hill is the #1 New York Times bestselling and Bram Stoker Award–winning author of The Fireman, Heart-Shaped Box, and Full Throttle. His work in comic books includes the epic fantasy Locke & Key, cocreated with artist Gabriel Rodriguez. Much of his work has been adapted for film and television, including The Black Phone, Horns, and AMC’s adaptation of NOS4A2. His next novel is King Sorrow (2025). He lives in New Hampshire.