Page 98

What hehimselfhas done.

“No,” Leland says instead.

And then repeats it, over and over, as they lead him from the room.

“No, no, no.”

It is October 4, 2017.

Hobbes clicks the top onto the fountain pen, sensing the ribbon of its history as he does so. Nearly a century ago, a little boy called Jack Lock is already scribbling incessantly with it, attempting to translate the strange tongue he is hearing.

And here it is now.

Hobbes places it in the cabinet, alongside all the other surviving remnants of Jack Lock’s life that he has spent the last few decades collecting.

Then he stands up and leaves the room forever.

In the bathroom, he looks at himself in the mirror. What appears close to a skull stares back at him, its eyes hollow and blank. There is so little of him left in the present, and it is nearly time for the pages of his own life to come to an end.

He has done his best.

With his hands trembling, he pours himself a tumbler of water.

And then he begins swallowing pill after pill.

Thirty-eight

“Is my wife in trouble?” Sam Gardener said.

Laurence pursed his lips and considered the question.

It was the next morning. Gardener was sitting in his front room, with a little girl beside him on the couch, wrapped in an odd piece of fabric. The child was young, but perhaps old enough to understand the conversation, and so Laurence had suggested he and Gardener talk somewhere more private. The man had said no. He claimed his daughter was feeling clingy due to Katie Shaw’s absence. Laurence had actually seen very little evidence that this was the case—the girl seemed almost entirely oblivious, lost in the picture book she was reading—and he suspected Gardener was keeping her close right now more for his own reassurance than hers.

Laurence couldn’t really blame him.

Is my wife in trouble?

Yes, Laurence thought.No. Maybe. On one level, he didn’t really know. His gut instinct edged very strongly toward the first response, but he still couldn’t put the pieces of what was happening here together well enough to form a satisfactory picture.

On a different level, of course, the answer was obvious.

“Yes,” he said. “Your wife is wanted for questioning on suspicion of assault.”

Gardener blinked.

“Assault?”

“Yes.” Laurence nodded. “And breaking and entering too, although that would be of lesser importance right now.”

“But—”

“Yesterday evening,” Laurence said, holding up a hand, “we believe she assaulted a man named Michael Hyde. The attack took place inside his home. It was very serious.”

Gardener just stared back at him for a moment, and from the expression on his face, Laurence imagined he was putting together some pieces of his own. The suggestion his wife had assaulted someone might have been unbelievable at first, but the identity of the victim had clearly caused him to reconsider that idea.

“Katie has more or less admitted it,” Laurence said. “I spoke to her briefly on the phone last night. Unfortunately, she ended the conversation and we’ve been unable to reach her since. It appears she has turned off her cell phone. I must ask whether you have heard from her.”

Gardener shook his head and looked away.