Odd Thomas Read Free

spirit.
    Because the car was idling in gear, rolling at just a few miles per hour, I didn’t hear anything until it turned the corner. When I recognized the vehicle, I knew a sadness equal to my fear.
    This 1968 Pontiac Firebird 400 had been restored with loving care. The two-door, midnight-blue convertible appeared to glide toward us with all tires a fraction of an inch off the pavement, shimmering like a mirage in the morning heat.
    Harlo Landerson and I had been in the same high-school class. During his junior and senior years, Harlo rebuilt this car from the axles up, until it looked as cherry as it had in the autumn of ’67, when it had first stood on a showroom floor.
    Self-effacing, somewhat shy, Harlo had not labored on the car with the hope either that it would be a babe magnet or that those who had thought of him as tepid would suddenly think he was cool enough to freeze the mercury in a thermometer. He’d had no social ambitions. He had suffered no illusions about his chances of ever rising above the lower ranks of the high-school caste system.
    With a 335-horsepower V-8 engine, the Firebird could sprint from zero to sixty miles per hour in under eight seconds. Yet Harlo wasn’t a street racer; he took no special pride in having wheels of fury.
    He devoted much time, labor, and money to the Firebird because the beauty of its design and function enchanted him. This was a labor of the heart, a passion almost spiritual in its purity and intensity.
    I sometimes thought the Pontiac figured so large in Harlo’s life because he had no one to whom he could give the love that he lavished on the car. His mom died when he was six. His dad was a mean drunk.
    A car can’t return the love you give it. But if you’re lonely enough, maybe the sparkle of the chrome, the luster of the paint, and the purr of the engine can be mistaken for affection.
    Harlo and I hadn’t been buddies, just friendly. I liked the guy. He was quiet, but quiet was better than the boast and bluster with which many kids jockeyed for social position in high school.
    With Penny Kallisto still at my side, I raised my left hand and waved at Harlo.
    Since high school, he’d worked hard. Nine to five, he unloaded trucks at Super Food and moved stock from storeroom to shelves.
    Before that, beginning at 4:00 A.M. , he dropped hundreds of newspapers at homes on the east side of Pico Mundo. Once each week, he also delivered to
every
house a plastic bag full of advertising flyers and discount-coupon books.
    This morning, he distributed only newspapers, tossing them with a snap of the wrist, as though they were boomerangs. Each folded and bagged copy of the Tuesday edition of the
Maravilla County Times
spun through the air and landed with a soft
thwop
on a driveway or a front walk, precisely where the subscriber preferred to have it.
    Harlo was working the far side of the street. When he reached the house opposite me, he braked the coasting Pontiac to a stop.
    Penny and I crossed to the car, and Harlo said, “Good mornin’, Odd. How’re you this fine day?”
    “Bleak,” I replied. “Sad. Confused.”
    He frowned with concern. “What’s wrong? Anything I can do?”
    “Something you’ve already done,” I said.
    Letting go of Penny’s hand, I leaned into the Firebird from the passenger’s side, switched off the engine, and plucked the key from the ignition.
    Startled, Harlo grabbed for the keys but missed. “Hey, Odd, no foolin’ around, okay? I have a tight schedule.”
    I never heard Penny’s voice, but in the rich yet silent language of the soul, she must have spoken to me.
    What I said to Harlo Landerson was the essence of what the girl revealed: “You have her blood in your pocket.”
    An innocent man would have been baffled by my statement. Harlo stared at me, his eyes suddenly owlish not with wisdom but with fear.
    “On that night,” I said, “you took with you three small squares of white felt.”
    One hand still on the wheel, Harlo