He needed a joint of sinsemilla. Local authorities were tolerant of the discreet use of pot. He took the tin of hand-rolleds from his backpack, fished a joint from the supply, and put the tin away.

Deeper in the park, he found a more secluded bench.

He had a butane lighter. He struck the flame but didn’t light the joint.

If he smoked one, he would smoke a second, perhaps a third. He would wash away the pot taste with tequila. In the morning, he would wake up behind a screen of bushes, with dirt matted in his beard stubble and spiders in his hair.

The creeping disquiet inspired by the incident on the bluff was growing into a motivating apprehension.

He put away the lighter. Instead of returning the joint to the stash in the tin, he shredded it in his fingers and scattered it on the breeze.

This action so surprised him that for a moment he seined the air with his fingers, trying to recapture the debris that he’d cast away an instant earlier.

Already, the disquiet that thickened into apprehension was further thickening into dread.

While he’d been eating a late dinner on the first bench, he was given signs from which he deduced where he must go. He suspected that time was running out for him to do what he must do.

The thought of riding for three hours in a bus chilled him. If this weight of dread became too heavy, he would feel oppressed in a bus. Claustrophobia would overwhelm him.

Intuition told him to begin the journey on foot. He set out for the coastal highway.

Thirty-five

After watching Merlin drink from his large water bowl, Puzzle and Riddle attended Grady’s preparations with interest as he chose two bowls from a cabinet and filled each with cold water from the kitchen tap.

As she extracted the memory stick from Grady’s camera and tucked it in a side compartment of her medical bag to take home, Cammy said, “Neither of us seems to want to speculate.”

“About what?”

“About what do you think?”

“You said earlier—you do medicine, you don’t do theory.”

“Speculation isn’t theory,” she said. “It’s not even up to the level of hypothesis. It’s just blue-skying. It’s what-if, if-maybe, could-it-be stuff.”

“I don’t want to speculate about them.”

“That’s what I just said. Neither of us wants to speculate.”

“All right, then. Good. We’re agreed.”

“But why do you think that is?”

He said, “I don’t do self-analysis.”

She watched him put the two bowls of water on the floor.

Immediately, Puzzle and Riddle went to the bowls, lowered their heads to the water, smelled it, and drank.

Cammy said, “I think the reason we don’t want to speculate about them is because most of the what-ifs we come up with are likely to be scary, one way or another.”

“There’s nothing scary about Puzzle and Riddle.”

“I didn’t say there was. I just said speculating about their origins is going to lead to some scary what-ifs.”

“Right now I just want to experience them,” Grady said. “If I think too much about what they might be, that’s going to color how I interpret their behavior.”

Watching the animals drink, Merlin seemed to strike a proud pose, as if they were good students to whom he had successfully imparted the right technique for drinking from a bowl.

“Anyway,” Cammy said, “you can’t know for sure there’s nothing scary about them.”

“There’s nothing scary about them,” he insisted.

“Not now, they’re as cute as Muppets now, but maybe later when the lights are off and you’re asleep, that’s when they reveal their true grotesque form.”

“You don’t really believe that’s a possibility.”

“No. It’s a what-if, but it’s a ridiculous what-if.”

“Anyway, they’re a lot cuter than Muppets,” he said. “Some Muppets creep me out. Nothing about these two creeps me out.”

“Muppets creep you out? Freud would find that interesting.”

“Not all Muppets creep me out. Just a few.”

“Surely not Kermit.”

“Of course not Kermit. But Big Bird’s a freak.”

“He’s a freak?”

“A total freak.”

As predictably steady, reliable, and self-contained as Grady might be, his conversation could take unpredictable deadpan turns. Cammy liked that. He was smart and amusing, but he was safe.

“Big Bird,” she said. “Is that why you don’t have a TV?”

“It’s one of the reasons.”

Riddle and then Puzzle finished drinking. They sat up on their haunches like a couple of giant prairie dogs, folded their hands on their bellies, and regarded Grady with expectation.

“Maybe they’re hungry,” Cammy suggested.

“They already ate three chicken breasts. And as far as I know, they ate the pan, too.”

“You don’t know these guys are the chicken thieves. There might be another factor—whoever went in your workshop, the garage, whoever switched on the lights.”