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  Pike assumed he’d given her the same line at whatever water park it was where they met, a bit different of course than the skate rink where he met Heather but hopefully not that different--meaning, did he at least tell her he was a freshman at Fresno State--as opposed obviously to a high school kid?

  Jack and Andrea were occupied across the table discussing something and Pike said to Heidi, “So. Quite a day so far, eh?”

  “It has been. I was really worried when we couldn’t find you.”

  Jeez. Where did this come from? He figured he’d known her for not even 2 days . . . if, let’s see, he met her (the Heather version) the day after Christmas, the night of the 26th when they started at the dance place and advanced to the winter carnival deal . . .

  So, the middle of the night Eva has the emergency issue, and half way through that day, early afternoon, he takes off for Idaho . . . then you factor in the days in road time versus hours in real time, make that adjustment, and yeah, a little hard to process--but you’ve known her less than one day total.

  So where did the not even 2 days come from, it was half that long at the most. This wasn’t the first time Pike got confused when he returned from somewhere--it was a royal pain to keep it all clear . . . especially when one or more of the principle players were different . . . and so far, one line out of her mouth, Pike was down with Heidi replacing Heather.

  Pike said, “Sorry about that, but thanks for your concern.”

  “You’re welcome,” Heidi said, Pike maybe imagining it but it felt like she was sliding a little closer in the booth. Holy Smokes.

  He said, “Your deal again though? With school?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean tell me again.”

  “You don’t remember?” she said.

  Ooh boy. “I do . . . but I like to hear you talk about it.” He touched her hand, as sort of a joke, but maybe a test too, and she was okay with it.

  “Welp,” she said, “like I told you, we go back on the 16th. Same as you. That shouldn’t be all that interesting.” She said it playfully.

  Pike was wondering same as me where, but the probably-good part, high schools went back earlier, didn’t they, after Christmas break, so he probably is in college . . . according to her.

  But why beat around the bush, so Pike said, “And you go . . . to ASU, right? And let’s see if you remember where I go . . . so tell me again.”

  Heidi rolled her eyes but inched just a little closer and smiled and said, “I go to U of A, silly, not ASU. And you mister, you go to San Mateo State, you said.”

  Oh. The U of A part--which he assumed was the University of Arizona in Tuscon, a few hundred miles from here, so not in town like ASU was, but not radically different . . . but dang it, the San Mateo State part, where did that come from? If she pursued that further, like googled it in about 5 seconds, that wouldn’t hold up. Pike was pretty sure there was a junior college in San Mateo, but a 4-year state college where you lived there and the whole shebang? No way. Why would he have blurted that out at the water park?

  But you might as well keep going, get it straight. “So I’m, like . . . what year am in up there anyway?” The up part not making much sense, other than San Mateo was up in the Bay Area, north of Beacon.

  Heidi shook her head this time and studied Pike for a moment. “You’re goofy. But I’ll fill you in anyway. You are a freshman . . . But I’ll be honest, this is getting strange. I mean you told me all those stories about your roommate, and when his brothers came to visit . . . They were entertaining, you had me going there.”

  Pike didn’t know what going meant, whether she’s saying he faked her out somehow, or had her laughing, or whatever else, but if you were going to ask any more questions out of left field they better be real important.

  So Pike left it at that, absorbing what she told him, so he could keep his own story straight if things came up again. He didn’t press the issue, what year she was in, but she volunteered something a few minutes later, that she started off in pre-nursing but switched this year to sociology.

  So there you had it, she was at least in her second year, didn’t seem to fit being a junior yet, so Pike chalked it up as fact--meaning he was a high school senior dating (not there yet but who knows) a college sophomore.

  This was always good, the direction you wanted to go, and he thought of Jack that time, getting along with someone who went to the local JC. That didn’t end great of course, but Pike had to admire the guy for pulling it off, even though you didn’t admit that to Jack.

  Meanwhile in the taqueria Jack and Andrea ended their little discussion and were back in the mix, and Jack said, “What now guys? Seeing as how this is our last night down here.”

  “Now how’s that,” Pike said, wondering, was this all haywire, and did he even drive Jack down here this time? He’d have to check with Mitch, make sure for one thing that his pickup was still sitting up in the visitor parking lot at Mitch’s place in Anthem. Taking it a step further, how did Jack and Andrea get down here tonight?

  Pike told himself to relax and and try to go with the flow, that what you think might be different on these returns is not that big a deal . . . and Jack said he and Andrea were flying back to California in the morning, that Mitch had generously forked over some frequent flier miles and it wasn’t costing them anything.

  “The other thing being then, Bud,” Jack said, “you don’t mind driving back solo do you? My truck?”

  “Huh?” Pike said.

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “They called me from work. Christmas vacation, they got people out. It’s all overtime juice so I want to take advantage. Flying’ll give me an extra couple days. You know how it is, we can all use the extra cash.”

  No, Pike didn’t know how it was. Jack had barely worked a day in his life, that Pike could remember--not that he had either. Jeez. This version of the guy was enterprising, you had to give him that.

  But the truck part now? What was that? Again Pike reminded himself to let it play out, don’t have a heart attack here . . . and they decided to go go-karting, there was a place near ASU, the cars and the track all cutting-edge, and Pike had to admit it was good to finish off the week--if that’s how you characterized it--with some old fashioned fun.

  Chapter 14

  The confusing part extended to Mitch as well, what he might or might not know--and back at Mitch’s apartment that night Pike learned pretty quick that Mitch didn’t know much, and when Pike had a minute alone with the guy he informed him simply that he’d addressed a problem, and we should be good now.

  “Addressed it . . .?” Mitch said.

  “You know,” Pike said.

  Mitch didn’t move for a minute. “Please tell me about it,” he said, in what was becoming a replay of a few other times, Mitch putting on the dramatic, slightly raspy voice and wanting to hear every last micro-detail.

  And of course the obvious irony, Mitch helped him organize what he just did . . . but that’s how it worked.

  “It’s not important,” Pike said. “If I gave you all the melodrama, I’d be wasting an hour and you might ask what else?”

  “You’re implying I might not be impressed. How could you think that, son?”

  “There was one thing you might get a kick out of,” Pike said. “Nothing to do with my mission back there.” Pike wasn’t crazy about that word but fine, it was accurate enough. “On my way home--not quite technically, but finishing-up there--I got into a situation. I ended up smashing one of those gymnasium backboards.”

  Mitch’s eyes got bigger. “A . . . see-through one, are you saying?”

  “Yeah. That was it for the thing unfortunately. Not sure how the game was going to continue--if it needed to--but it really didn’t by that point.”

  “Wow . . . unreal . . . we’re talking . . . like Daryl Dawkins that time? The 76ers?”

  Pike had no idea. He did know the Philadelphia 76ers were a pro basketball team, that was about it. Maybe at some point you look
up Daryl Dawkins. Not important at the moment.

  “At any rate,” Pike said, “I can check something off. That I didn’t plan to be on a list. But you move on.”

  “Which reminds me,” Mitch said. “Two reports came through the last couple weeks. The website. One, a man in Little Rock, young guy--not as young as you but in the ballpark--there was a rockslide and he stopped a boulder . . . At least that’s what was reported.”

  Pike hated hearing about any new case that could potentially be linked to him. Dani, and the few other probables that he’d run into or heard about were more than enough. The last thing he wanted, was this to turn into some sort of wack-o support group.

  Ooh. The support group part, that got him flashing on Dani unfortunately and her connection to the New York officer’s sister--if he had it straight. You prayed there were no updates there, but now that it was on your radar, you kind of needed to make sure.

  “The second,” Mitch was saying, “is an 87-year-old woman in Alaska, if you can believe it.”

  Pike said, “You can’t be serious. But go ahead, the suspense is killing me.”

  “There was a stick-up in a Walmart and don’t ask me how she got ahold of it, but she bent a gun, a revolver . . . You remember, like in the old comic books, the good guy with the super powers might do something like that?”

  This made Pike cringe. He remembered of course doing something similar himself once. “Superman or Superboy,” Pike said, “take your pick.”

  “Well, yes, there were those instances.”

  What could he mean by that? Pike was questioning if Mitch was becoming a wack-job, and starting to mix up fact and fiction. Maybe he’d been running that website a little too long and the obsession was creeping off the computer screen and distorting his reality.

  Pike said, “Forgetting the comic books. An 87-year-old citizen in Alaska is going to, first of all, get recent cavities filled? And secondly, connect with dental material from a lab in New Mexico?”

  “Certainly,” Mitch said deadpan, “on both fronts.”

  Pike thought about it and fine, his argument wasn’t the greatest. And they’d been down this road before. That just because the material specifically originated . . . allegedly . . . at the old silver mine in Hillsdale, New Mexico, this didn’t preclude it from theoretically finding its way to other parts of the country and being employed accordingly. Alaska seemed far-fetched, since it was a good 4000 miles from New Mexico to up there--not to mention there was another country in the way--but obviously with air travel and technology there weren’t many roadblocks left.

  Pike said, “You feed me these pieces of information . . . because?”

  “I’m not sure, kid.”

  And at least you had an honest answer out of the guy. Meanwhile Pike was starting to dwell on Dani’s deal--like it or not--that the New York officer who was gunned down had donated his organs (pretty sure the fellow’s name was Don) and Dani’s subsequent contact with his sister had begun to alarm her--and Mitch--and Pike himself, let’s face it.

  So the timing was awkward, him having just been in her backyard, but Pike excused himself from Mitch and took a walk out to the pool area and tried Dani.

  “Hey!” she said. “I kind of miss you!”

  “Me too,” Pike said, not much oomph to it.

  “I feel like we used to touch base more,” she said, and Pike knew what she meant, that when he put a couple of factual observations together when he was at the football recruit weekend in Logan and first found her, they sort of bonded like brother and sister for a while, since they shared this secret no one in their right mind would believe.

  “Yeah,” Pike said. “Listen, cutting right to it, are we cool these days on the, you know, transplant stuff? I feel like there hasn’t been an update in a while, that front.”

  “Oh.” Her tone was flatter. “I’m waiting to hear. Erline indicates we may not be. Cool.”

  “Okay. You need to stop with the jerking me around. Honestly? That’s not a great quality of yours . . . Let me ask you straight up, plain English--has any . . . transplant recipient . . . done anything wrong. Since last time we spoke.”

  “Yes they have,” she said. Pike had blocked a lot of it out, the prior details, since it was a nightmare he hoped would go away by itself, like a dangerous virus losing steam and fizzling out.

  He remembered bits and pieces, that one guy went crazy at a mall for example--and least that was his recollection--and didn’t kill anyone thank God, but went off the deep end with some scary threats.

  The fear, which you didn’t want to volunteer out loud, was could any of Don’s body parts have mutated when they were inserted into someone else . . . and wreaked unknown havoc?

  Hard to believe that a cornea transplant for instance, if one of those happened, could trigger a reaction in the recipient’s brain and make him go berserk--you had to admit, that was the stuff of real way out there science fiction . . . but the reason Pike couldn’t get past it--and likely the same for Dani and Mitch--was you needed to be convinced that something like that couldn’t happen.

  He said to Dani, “All right, you need to work with me here. Please. For our basic sanity.”

  “Of course, hon,” she said.

  Pike took a second, wondered do I really want to go there, open this can of worms. He said, “Then put me in touch with the sister person.”

  Pike was thinking, was she the sister? Or was it the officer’s wife who Dani had been conversing with? And was this another one of those details that shifted, and did it really matter . . .

  “Erline, you’re referring to,” Dani said.

  “Whatever. Give me her goddang contact. I ain’t getting off the phone until that happens.” Pike rarely used the word ain’t, but he did now partly for effect but partly because he felt better doing it.

  You heard Dani clicking around. “Shall I email it to you? Her information? Or read it off to you right now.”

  Pike said now was best, and he wrote down what she gave him, which was a roundabout contact through Facebook. Pike asked did she have something more direct, and she said she didn’t. So you had to trust the woman and go with that.

  Pike finished it off by asking how the weather was in Pocatello, and Dani said it had been unpredictable this Christmas, and hopefully global warming wasn’t kicking in. Pike didn’t want to try to comment on that, and he thanked her and said goodnight, and she said don’t be a stranger.

  Mitch was whipping up a late night snack for Jack, and Andrea and Lucy too, who was there hanging out with Mitch when they got home from the go-kart place. It appeared to Pike that the two of them, Mitch and Lucy, were pretty dang cozy, but it was none of his business.

  And yeah, Jack had driven today, into Phoenix, his own vehicle, so of course he’d driven them back to Mitch’s tonight--and Pike meanwhile confirmed as he suspected that he didn’t drive Jack down here in his pickup. That it was vice versa.

  The amazing part, Jack now owned a Ford F-250, pretty late model, 2015. Pike didn’t need to know the details but he assumed Jack didn’t buy the thing new--but it wasn’t that used either, had 78,000 miles on it and must have set back Jack (or whoever) some serious bucks.

  This was a far cry from the Jack he knew in one of the other incarnations--maybe the original one--where the guy picked up a beat up something or other on Craigslist and tried to restore it . . . and he was sort of successful except you could tell Jack didn’t trust the thing on the highway. Pike remembered it being real loud, which they did get a kick out of.

  So who knows, maybe the current Jack had been industrious enough to hold part-time jobs all the way through, and saved up the old-fashion way.

  Whatever. It was admittedly a lot more roomy and comfortable than Pike’s truck--for one thing the shocks were all in good shape--and Pike supposed it wouldn’t be that bad to drive it home.

  Although . . . he kind of went for it a couple hours ago, when he was saying goodbye to Heidi, and she was heading to her a
unt and uncle’s house in Chandler--as opposed to Heather heading to her mom and dad’s house in Glendale.

  What he went for was the popping of the question, out of left field but what the heck, did she have any interest in riding with him to California.

  She wasn’t floored by the proposition, didn’t say yes, but she said maybe.

  So, that’s where things were at, and Mitch was grabbing a couple potholders and pulling something baked and sweet out of the oven, and everyone was on board with it and putting out silverware and napkins, and Pike didn’t know the old guy had it in him.

  Chapter 15

  Wednesday morning Pike dropped Hannamaker and Andrea at the airport, brief goodbyes and drive carefullys all around--after which Pike pulled out the GPS and navigated his way to Heidi’s aunt and uncle’s place.

  What do you know, he thought.

  It wasn’t until a little while ago, loading up Jack’s truck and doing that last look around to make sure you didn’t forget anything at Mitch’s place, that Heidi texted him: sure

  Of course Pike tended to be, if not a worrier, at least an over-analyzer . . . and on the way to Chandler, fighting some long stoplights and a bit of morning traffic, he wondered if this was going to be a be careful what you wish for deal.

  Since let’s face it, Heidi may have known him for a day or so, but he’d known her for a couple hours. Nothing to hold against her based on the limited sample size--she was great, and part of him wondered why she’d be interested in him--but still you were holing up with someone in the front seat of a moving vehicle for two days, or one real long one, who you barely knew.

  But again . . . you roll with it. You could certainly be in worse predicaments . . . and now he totally was over-thinking. Why would a rational individual label it a predicament?

  Heidi was out in front with a small suitcase when Pike pulled up, and that part looked promising, a good start. Except then Heidi’s uncle came out of the garage and wanted to ask Pike a few questions.