A man sitting at the corner of the bar struck me as strange as I sipped my beer. His blond hair was neatly combed and parted, and he wore a nice sport shirt and pressed slacks, but there was something mocking, something sinister, about his smile. He turned his colorless gaze my way and lifted a long, thin cigarette to his too-red lips.

A rover, I thought.

He got up quickly and left the bar, and I wondered if in the same way they recognize each other, the monsters are able to sniff out someone who’s killed their kind. Was there something in the blood of the woman and child from last night that clung to me and marked me as a hunter? Or was the man just another tourist and my imagination running wild?

I worry that part of my fate is to live life choked by that kind of fear and paranoia. I imagine it’s how Adam felt after eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge, when all the evil he’d been ignorant of was suddenly revealed. Did he, like me, mourn his loss of innocence? Did he, like me, question whether the knowledge was worth it?

TODAY’S PASSAGE: Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, o ye my friends; for the hand of God hath touched me.

—Job 19:21

July 1, 1976, Las Vegas

I felt better this morning after last night’s hysterics. Sleep had recharged my batteries, and I spent an hour with the Good Book to fortify my soul. I decided this Beaumont, this rover royalty, was someone I should look into, so when the sun went down I brought Sally in and asked where I could find him.

“He lives here in Vegas,” Sally said. “At least he did fifteen years ago, when I last saw him. I remember where his house is. We can drive out there right now.”

I didn’t have a better idea, so I walked him to the truck, locked him to the bolt in the cab, and we were on our way.

His directions took us out of the city and into the desert, to a neighborhood where the houses were widely spaced and set far off the road. We meandered for an hour, making U-turn after U-turn and driving the same streets again and again. When we came to our tenth dead-end, asphalt giving way to sand and tumbleweeds, I’d had enough.

“You don’t have any idea where you’re going, do you?” I said.

“We’re close, I feel it,” Sally said.

“And I feel like you’re wasting my gas and my time.”

“Whip around and go back to that last intersection.”