Inside water dripped and rushed. Sunlight fell in narrow shafts from gaps in boarded-up clerestory windows. Lissa touched my shoulder but said nothing. After a minute, my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom. The air smelled sulfurous, as befitted a genuine hot spring.
“Phew,” I said, and waved my hand to dispel not just the stench, but a nervous reluctance to look any further.
A brick walkway led to three steaming pools, the biggest about twenty feet long, all filled with dark, rippling water. A nine-inch pipe thrusting from the far wall spilled a continuous stream of hot water into the largest pool. The smaller pools took the overflow, where the water cooled to a temperature more comfortable for the uninitiated.
I knelt beside the smallest pool. A thick film coated the surface, forming yellow islands in the middle and scummy coastlines around the sloshing gutters. I swirled the film with my rock and lifted it to examine and smell. Foul, not algae but bacteria, probably distantly related to the floc at the bottom of the sea, and dying upon exposure to the air in the bathhouse.
I held the rock up to show it to Lissa, but she was no longer behind me. I stood and squinted into the shadows. Someone moved on the other side of the blockhouse. A ticking rose above the rush from the pipe: machinery, and still in working order. I thought I heard someone say something, broken syllables over the noise.
“Lissa?”
No answer. I walked around the pools and saw a large black box and a complex of pipes. Several of the pipes dropped into the big pool. All were painted red. They looked newer than the bathhouse and were well maintained, dusted, polished.
Lissa came around the box and passed through a shaft of sun. Despite myself, I jumped.
“What?” she said.
I waved my hand feebly.
“It’s steel,” she said. “There’s something inside, but I don’t think you’ll be able to burgle this one.”
I walked around the box, about five feet square and seven feet high. The steel door resonated with strength. It was at least half an inch thick, like armor plate. A deep-set key lock was the only access.
“Department of Health station?” I speculated.
“Earthquake detection,” Lissa guessed. “You know, like in that movie, the water gets hotter if there’s going to be an eruption.”
I hadn’t seen that one, either.
We spent five minutes in the bathhouse until the smell drove us outside. I was no more enlightened than before we had entered. We retraced our path through the sad streets, and stood once more on Saxony Boulevard.
Footsteps tapped behind us. Lissa and I spun around toward what turned out to be an echo, and saw a Highway Patrol car parked in the shadows behind a storage shed. We swiveled our necks as one to the right. A tall man in tight khaki uniform and Sam Browne belt, holstered .45 on his hip, approached with one thumb hooked into a belt loop and his gun hand swinging free. He wore a rakish Tom of Finland biker’s cap.
I dropped the foul-smelling rock.
“Hello!” Lissa greeted him bravely. Good cover, I thought. Safe white couple out for a drive in the back country. Nothing wrong here, ossifer. “What a wonderful old town! Is anything still open?”
The uniformed man tipped his cap to her. His hand was ancient, with an odd little pucker between the tendons of each finger. Behind MacArthur sunglasses, his face resembled an apple dried in a hot oven. Feathery white hair poked from under his ridiculous cap.
I couldn’t tell how old he was. Too old to be a cop.
“Town’s off-limits,” he said, his voice like a scratchy 78. “Don’t drink the water.” He reached around behind his back and unhooked a holder for a big plastic bottle of Evian. “Days are hot. Bring my own. Truly, folks, you’re trespassing. People forget about private property. Found a door busted in. Nothing to steal.”
At the end of the street, I could have sworn a gray figure watched from the inky shadow of a storefront awning. But it might have been an afterimage of the glint off the old man’s silver badge.
“Nothing here, not even ghosts,” he said. “Most boring place on Earth. Nobody around but boring old farts. Even the dogs are old. Can I help you find your way back to the main road?”
Lissa shook as we drove down the asphalt washboard to the old highway. “He’s following us,” she said, glancing in the rearview mirror.
By then, I was shaking, too. “Christ, that car is vintage. And he is geriatric. Pretending to be a police officer.”
“He has a gun,” Lissa said.
A crazy old coot in a deserted town, driving behind us in a black-and-white straight out of the old Highway Patrol TV show my dad had watched in reruns when I was a toddler. Sunglasses. Clipped and polite.
“Bacteria,” I said. “Hot springs full of bacteria, and not just from dirty diapers, I’ll bet. A natural source, right out of the Earth. No wonder Rob was interested.”
She said um and pointed to the backseat. “Get my purse.” I reached back, stretching my shoulder muscles, and tugged up the soft brown-leather handbag. It hung heavy in my grasp.
She took the bag into her lap and pulled out an angular black pistol.
“My father gave me some lessons, but that was years ago.” She poked the grip at me, and I took it from her. “Do you know how to shoot?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
“You know how to pull a trigger, don’t you?”
“I suppose.” I felt the gun’s weight, its balance, like a piece of fine lab equipment, but simpler and more earnest. Death is easier than science. “Do you trust me?”
“If you have to ask,” she said, “when I’ve just accompanied you into Fruitcake Hell, we’re being followed by a weird old geezer, and you’re holding my gun . . .”
I twisted the pistol carefully. A Glock, just what Mrs. Callas had recommended. “It’s not loaded,” I guessed.
“Yes, it is. It’s a law-enforcement model. It has a fifteen-round clip, and three more clips in the purse.”
I checked.