BACK IN THE PORSCHE, after getting Eric’s nose to stop bleeding and then drinking one more beer to assure Becky that they were at peace with the bar, Kellen turned to him.

“Well, I’m sorry that happened, because that idiot is in no way representative of my experience in this town.”

“Shouldn’t have dragged you out to a place like that.”

“No, man, that’s what I’m saying-it wasn’t the place. I’ve been in there before. In fact, I’ve been in this town a lot, and that’s the first time I’ve ever had anything like that pulled. Which was, to be honest, against my expectation.”

“Yeah?”

Kellen nodded as he started the engine. “Some racist history to this state, really. First hotel down here was built by a guy named William Bowles, who was tried for treason because he was involved with something called the Knights of the Golden Circle, which was pro-Confederacy and a forerunner to the KKK. He was a real good guy-indicted for grave robbery, of all things. Wasn’t all him, though. Back when the area was really booming, blacks weren’t allowed to stay in these hotels. Joe Louis wasn’t allowed to stay in these hotels. All the local tourism stuff uses his name today, brags on him being a frequent visitor, but the reality is, he always stayed at the Waddy.”

They pulled out of the parking lot, Kellen driving with one wrist hooked over the wheel.

“So when I came down here, wanting to write the black history of the area, I maybe had a sour taste in my mouth from what I knew of the past. As long as I’ve been down here, though, people have been nothing but friendly-with the one exception being our buddy back there, Mr. Bradford. He would be the last of my Campbell’s line. I hope you’re right and you’re looking for a different guy. Because Josiah isn’t going to be a help to you.”

“I’d say not,” Eric agreed. “But you’ve got to figure my guy is related to him.”

“I know it. And that’s why I’ll be interested to see what Edgar Hastings has to say. He’s the only person I’ve found in town who has any clear memories of Campbell. But he’s also something of a foster father to Josiah, so best not to mention what happened tonight, I guess. You free tomorrow if I get something set up with him?”

“Sure.” Eric was touching his face with his fingertips, assessing damage. His lip would be a little swollen in the morning, but he’d kept a cool beer to it, so he wouldn’t look too much the worse for wear.

“I’ve never heard of another Campbell Bradford,” Kellen said. “It’s strange.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Eric said, thinking that the least strange thing in his day was confusion over the man’s identity. That didn’t come close to the black train or the leaves or that man in the bowler hat, no.

Kellen dropped him off with a handshake and a promise that he’d call Edgar Hastings the next day. Eric was almost nervous going back into the hotel alone and felt a childish desire to run back into the parking lot and flag Kellen down, ask him to have one more drink. Just stay with me for twenty minutes, buddy, enough so I can look around and make sure the place is an ordinary hotel again and not the friggin’ Overlook.

For some reason, thinking of Stephen King’s hotel horror story made him smile as he walked back into the atrium and looked around. Yeah, Kubrick would’ve salivated over shooting in this location. It had everything a filmmaker desired-beauty, grandeur, size, history, and, at least for Eric tonight, a King-size dose of creepy.

“Couldn’t ask for anything more,” he said under his breath. The hotel had quieted a bit, with just a handful of people left at the bar, the piano player gone, and the piano itself covered up. He didn’t see anything out of place, didn’t hear anything out of place. The hotel seemed sane again.

He headed upstairs to his room, where he put on every light and then immediately went around turning them back off when the brightness made his headache flare. It was past eleven now. The strangest day of his life was almost done. He felt a powerful need to call Claire, tell her every weird and frightening detail and hear her responses. No, the hell with calling Claire, he wanted to talk to her face-to-face, to see her in this bedroom. And the hell with talking to Claire, he wanted to take her right here on this large, luxurious bed. Wanted to be tugging her jeans off those long legs, wanted to feel them catch on the rise of her ass the way they always did.

Damn, but he missed her. Felt it the way old people feel arthritis in their bones, an unrelenting agony carried every day, every hour, every minute.

He’d met her at a deli in Evanston, where she was in her first year of law school at Northwestern and he was merely passing through after visiting a friend, this the summer before he’d moved to L.A. He had finished a sandwich and was sitting at the table with a newspaper, almost ready to go on his way, when she’d walked in with a friend and sat down across the room. He’d watched her cross the room-something about the way the girl moved that loosened his jaw, left him staring with his mouth half open-and she looked over and gave him the smallest of smiles, an awkward gesture more than anything, forced politeness in response to the unanticipated eye contact.

What he’d read in the newspaper over the next twenty minutes, he couldn’t say. He kept his eyes on it only to avoid staring, and he sneaked looks as often as he dared, watching her talk and laugh and eat a Caesar salad, gesturing with her fork every now and then, waving bits of lettuce around in the air. She was facing him, caught his eye a few more times, gave him another cursory smile. She was eating too quickly, though, and so was her friend, and both were nearly finished with their food and ready to move on into the day before he ever said a word to her. He wanted so badly to say a word to her. He was not insecure with women, had no trouble asking for dates, but approaching a strange woman at a deli at noon on Tuesday was a hell of a lot different than approaching one in a bar at midnight on Friday. And with her friend there, there was that extra barrier of potential eye rolls and laughter.

Then the friend stood up and left the table, walking to the bathroom. Fate, Eric decided, it had to be fate, because the friend was the last excuse he was giving himself, and now she’d just checked out. He set the paper down and walked over to this dark-haired girl with the wry smile and the amused eyes and said, “My name is Eric, and I would love to buy you a drink.”

What a breathtakingly original pickup line. She regarded him for a few seconds without speaking, then said, “It’s a deli. They don’t serve alcohol here.”

To which Eric had responded, “Well, then, how do you feel about lemonade?”

They’d had the lemonade, and later that night the real drink, and a day later the first kiss and fifteen months after that the wedding vows and the honeymoon.

“Shit,” he said now, lying on his back in a hotel room in Indiana, Claire a couple hundred miles away. He sat up and reached for the remote, seeking distraction. Don’t let this start. Don’t let these thoughts be the cap to the kind of day you already had.

He found the remote, then leaned back in bed again and kicked his shoes off and turned to look at TV. When he did, his eyes caught the bottle of Pluto Water on the desk. He frowned, stood up, and walked over to it. The damn thing was sweating. Covered in beads of moisture, a wet ring beneath it.

When he reached out and touched the bottle, he found it even colder than before. How was that possible? And while on that topic, how was it possible for the thing to be so wet, like a frosted mug of beer sitting in the sun? Could it be leaking? He ran his finger up the outside, collecting the moisture, then lifted his finger first to his nose and then to his lips and dabbed it against them. There was the same faint sweetness, almost like honey. Nothing close to the terrible foulness that had put him on his knees a few days earlier.