“Give me a second,” I say, bending over so Bobby doesn’t see the syringe in my hand. I pluck the cap off the syringe and stick it into the back of his left arm. Bobby yelps and tries to turn his head around toward me. “What the hell!”

“Ketamine,” I say, capping the now-empty syringe and replacing it in the cargo pocket of my pants. “Great pain management and excellent safety record.” I hesitate. “Unless you have a history of schizophrenia. You don’t, do you?”

“Get me out of this fucking thing!”

“It’ll take five or ten minutes and then your shoulder ought to feel better,” I say. “If you’re lucky, you’ll pass out and take a nap. Some people puke after they wake up from a dose, but you’re upright so you probably won’t choke to death.”

“You are not leaving me here!”

“Actually,” I say, scanning the catwalk to make sure I haven’t left anything behind, “I am. I’ll call the cops and let them know where you are once I’m gone. And Bobby? Don’t come looking for me.”

The string of curses he shouts after me as I take a set of stairs to the floor is inventive. I make a note of a couple of them, filing them away for future use.

OUTSIDE, IT’S EARLY Sunday morning and already hot, the sun a hard white star in a clear sky. By noon, the empty parking lot will be baking. Finding this shuttered Sam’s Club outside of San Antonio was an extra bonus. I could have just driven Bobby Bonaroo a couple of hours outside the city and interrogated him on some back road in the hill country, but there are always people driving by or wandering up, curious and eager to help. People are annoying that way. And you might think Texas is full of vast, empty tracts of land outside the big cities, but the state is peppered with towns and hamlets and tourists and truckers and farms, on and on and on. It’s too damn big and I feel too exposed here. I need to get back to the East Coast, where states are a more manageable size.