Once he hit the main road, he switched on his headlights, trying to cut into the gloom that blanketed the ground. The car’s dashboard clock read seven thirty-two. The sun was up by now, but it was difficult to tell through the cloud cover. He would be early, but that was okay. He needed some time alone, and maybe a cup of coffee.

By the time he hit the outskirts of the town forty minutes later, the sky had begun to spit snow, hard little granules that bounced off the windshield and hood of the car, and the wind had picked up even more. The roads were clear of traffic, and he drove down the long hill, taking the left towards downtown, without seeing anyone. It was eerie, almost as if there wasn’t a soul left in St. Boudin. The clock on the dash read ten past eight.

As he pulled into the parking lot of the Railway Cafe (parking in very nearly the same spot where his wife had parked several days before), he noticed that the windows glowed cheerily, and was relieved that the place was open for business this early. A good, warm cup of coffee, he thought. And maybe a donut or two.

And after settling down in one of the corner booths (he and a large waitress with gray hair were the only people there), he ordered just that. Soon enough, both Flint and then Amanda Seigel would arrive, and they would have plenty to talk about. He hoped he could help her find who she was looking for, or at least point her onto the right track.

As it turned out, her track and his were one and the same.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

David Pierce sat in the Railway Cafe for a good long time, not moving much. The corner booth was enough for him, along with the occasional refills of coffee that the waitress brought (Angela was her name, as he saw by her name tag). He was doing some heavy thinking about the sudden move, his wife’s happy face during that snowball fight just a few short days ago, Jessie as she explored the magic of the castle in Quebec City, and his own feeling of relief when he began work again. These things mixed with thoughts of the first meeting with Flint and Thompson, and Jessie’s nightmares, and that tumor that slid about under the cat’s skin like a kneecap.

He felt an unexplained anxiety well up within him, and with it came a flood of nostalgia for the house in New York. The house on the dead-end street, with the little green park at one end, overlooking the highway. They had only lived there a few months, but it was there that he wanted to be right now; back there with the unemployment and the blessed ignorance of all this crap he had found himself buried in, back to the old life. He felt out of place here and in over his head.