Forever Odd Read Free Page A

get skewered through the throat, the iron pike-or whatever-would probably be wielded by that anchorwoman.
        I reached the next open door, stepped into the light, crossed the threshold. No victim, no killer.
        The things we worry about the most are never the things that bite us. The sharpest teeth always take their nip of us when we are looking the other way.
        Unquestionably, this was Danny’s room. On the wall behind the disheveled bed hung a poster of John Merrick, the real-life Elephant Man.
        Danny had a sense of humor about the deformities-mostly of the limbs-with which his condition had left him. He looked nothing like Merrick, but the Elephant Man was his hero.
         They exhibited him as a freak , Danny once explained. Women fainted at the sight of him, children wept, tough men flinched. He was loathed and reviled. Yet a century later a movie was based on his life, and we know his name. Who knows the name of the bastard who owned him and put him on exhibit, or the names of those who fainted or wept, or flinched? They’re dust, and he’s immortal. Besides, when he went out in public, that hooded cloak he wore was way cool.
        On other walls were four posters of ageless sex goddess Demi Moore, who was currently more ravishing than ever in a series of Versace ads.
        Twenty-one years old, two inches short of the five feet that he claimed, twisted by the abnormal bone growth that sometimes had occurred during the healing of his frequent fractures, Danny lived small but dreamed big.
        No one stabbed me when I stepped into the hall once more. I wasn’t expecting anyone to stab me, but that’s when it’s likely to happen.
        If Mojave wind still whipped the night, I couldn’t hear it inside this thick-walled Georgian structure, which seemed tomblike in its stillness, in its conditioned chill, with a faint scent of blood on the cool air.
        I dared not any longer delay calling Chief Porter. Standing in the upstairs hall, I pressed 2 on my cell-phone keypad and speed-dialed his home.
        When he answered on the second ring, he sounded awake.
        Alert for the approach of a mad anchorwoman or worse, I spoke softly: “Sir, I’m sorry if I woke you.”
        “Wasn’t asleep. I’ve been sitting here with Louis L’Amour.”
        “The writer? I thought he was dead, sir.”
        “About as dead as Dickens. Tell me you’re just lonesome, son, and not in trouble again.”
        “I didn’t ask for trouble, sir. But you better come to Dr. Jessup’s house.”
        “I’m hoping it’s a simple burglary.”
        “Murder,” I said. “Wilbur Jessup on the floor of his bedroom. It’s a bad one.”
        “Where’s Danny?”
        “I’m thinking kidnapped.”
        “Simon,” he said.
        Simon Makepeace-Carol’s first husband, Danny’s father-had been released from prison four months ago, after serving sixteen years for manslaughter.
        “Better come with some force,” I said. “And quiet.”
        “Someone still there?”
        “I get the feeling.”
        “You hold back, Odd.”
        “You know I can’t.”
        “I don’t understand your compulsion.”
        “Neither do I, sir.”
        I pressed end and pocketed the cell phone.

----

    THREE
        
        ASSUMING THAT DANNY MUST BE STILL NEARBY AND under duress, and that he was most likely on the ground floor, I headed toward the front stairs. Before I began to descend, I found myself turning and retracing the route that I’d just followed.
        I expected that I would return to the two closed doors on the right side of the hall, between the master bedroom and Danny’s room, and that I would discover what lay behind them. As before, however, I wasn’t drawn to them.
        On the left side were three other closed doors. None of those had an attraction for me, either.
        In addition to the ability to see ghosts, a gift I’d happily trade for