After breakfast, he walked downtown Santa Barbara and found a high-end culinary shop with a wide variety of merchandise. The clerk was pleased to show him a selection of the finest chef’s knives. He purchased two that were made of laminate cobalt steel with maroon Micarta handles. The first featured a 6.1-inch blade, with an overall length of eleven inches. The second, with a 7.8-inch blade, measured thirteen inches end to end. He also purchased an electric blade sharpener, though the clerk advised that it was best to send the cutlery to the manufacturer every five to seven years for a professional sharpening.

When he exited the store, the scattered clouds of dawn were gradually knitting together into thin gray shawls. Although the sun hadn’t yet reached its apex and although it ruled the sky, its light had a cold, unnatural quality, as if the city were a laboratory lighted by banks of fluorescent tubes, and all life within it an experiment.

In a department store, he bought a large handbag of supple calfskin, suggesting that it was a gift for his wife, a zippered leather tote bag, and a travel clock with a digital readout.

In a drugstore, he purchased cord-style shoelaces and dental floss.

In a craft store, he acquired leather shears and a hole punch.

In an electronics store, he bought items that a lead character in one of his novels had procured in order to construct a detonator.

In a public park near his motel, he sat on a bench and placed a call to Estella Rosewater to report that he was making progress on the matter about which he’d come to see her a few days earlier. He had a favor to ask of her. Estella’s curiosity was so keen that his promise eventually to share with her everything he had learned was all that she needed to grant his request.

Throughout the morning’s activities, David tried to imagine against whom, under what circumstances, he might have to defend himself. But the world had rotated into a parallel universe where laws were plastic and effect sometimes seemed to come before cause, so that nothing could be predicted with assurance.

| 71 |

For a few hours, David remained sequestered in his motel room, first using the electric grinder to whet the knife blades to razor edges. Sitting at the desk, using the leather shears, he cut sheath patterns from the handbag, created eyelets with the punch, folded the sheaths to create blade pockets, and stitched the edges with the cord laces.

Using items from the electronics store and the clock, he constructed the detonator, which featured a trigger that would activate a one-minute countdown timer or enable an instantaneous detonation. Book research had never served him so well.