I loiter outside the surveillance van waiting for God knows what. Ben Walker, killer of fifty-odd people one early morning in July. Maybe more. I don’t know how many died in Willamette last year. How many I killed. Why would I ever want to know that? There is a strange compulsion to find out, to see how blood soaked I’ve become. Have I hit the triple digits yet? Would I have to round up to a hundred or down?

  Yeah, okay, like Schwarzenegger says in that one movie, they were all bad, but I’m not that. That’s not me.

  Maybe it is, though.

  I mean, I feel I’m myself. Mostly. But am I? Am I really?

  Is that even something I can work out for myself? As confused and fucked up as I am right now, I shouldn’t be allowed to order a pizza, let alone psychoanalyze myself. The people who could tell me how much I’ve changed are not here. Nobody in this world has known me more than a year.

  When I close my eyes, all I see are faces falling away from me. Some angry. Some surprised. Confused. All of them gone.

  “Ben Walker?”

  There’s a police officer approaching. Young. Male. Freckled and blond. I bet he takes a lot of shit. I bet they call him Opie. His name tag reads ‘Flaherty.’

  “I was told you might need a ride home?”

  Cal’s not around anywhere, but I’m sure this is her doing. It’s nice of her, but I find it irritates me, like I don’t deserve her kindness.

  “I can just Uber.” My voice sounds thick. Like I’m underwater.

  “This time of morning?” Flaherty shakes his head. “Look, I’m supposed to take you. Do me a solid, eh? I’m Connor Flaherty.” He holds out his hand.

  I nod, shake, and follow him to a cruiser on the outer-ring of the parking lot. They’ve roped off a good bit of it by now, what with the helicopter, the SUVs, and blanket covered bodies. Yingling’s workers park their cars where they can, even in the grass alongside the road. It’s the early morning rush hour. Bleary-eyed folks in suits are stepping through the dewy green like they’re playing the Floor is Lava, careful not to spill their coffee.

  Maybe I should send them an email apologizing or something. That’s ridiculous, I know, but I’m not joking. I don’t know how to handle this, and there’s a lot to be sorry about, after all. Oh my God, what did I do?

  Flaherty has mentioned home, and all I want is my bed. I feel like my insides have all shifted to solid lead.

  Getting in the back of Flaherty’s cruiser, I expect to fall asleep before he gets it into gear, but I don’t. I fight a strange urge to rest my head against the glass of the window, but I know that every significant bump in the road will smack me in the noggin, if I do. I kind of want to anyway, but why? So, the universe can knock me around a little? Letting mommy spank seems a bit unhealthy. I’ll sit up even though my neck doesn’t seem interested in giving the support I’m used to, and the skillful permutations of young Officer Flaherty’s driving habits probably are enough to make me resemble a bobblehead doll with a bad spring more than is dignified. It’s not his fault. He’s not doing anything crazy. It’s just the day I’ve had.

  He doesn’t say a word.

  I love him for it.

  Maybe I should try to take my mind off it. Start a conversation. Pull out my phone, read the news, read more of that book, play a game, but it’s way far away in my pocket where I’m sitting on it. May as well be in China. Instead, I pretend to look at the scenery passing by the window. What I really see isn’t fit for human consumption.

  ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

  We’re about twenty minutes down the highway when one of the front tires blows out. It’s hard to say if I’m not surprised because I’m so tired or just getting used to all this. I realize I’m already Pushing as the police cruiser lurches to the right.

  Flaherty keeps controls and gets us onto the shoulder without too much fuss. He radios it in.

  I can’t stay in the car. Its confines somehow grow claustrophobic, and I can feel panic awakening in my guts, so I pull on the handle to escape. Nothing happens. Right. Cop car.

  Flaherty shrugs and moves his arm. Something in the door lets go, and I hear it unlock. I get out and lean against the rear panel. If this was an eighties movie, no doubt I’d be pulling out a pack of cigarettes, fishing out a deathstick with a contemplative, brooding expression on my face, and then lighting up. Since this is the twenty-twenties, I reach for my phone instead, but I hesitate. There’s nothing I want to find in there but distraction. Maybe that’s not a good idea just now.

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  Maybe I should let all this bother me as much as I can. Maybe I owe that to the people I killed this morning. Yeah, they were evil fucks, but they were people. They maybe could’ve changed. Redeemed themselves. Started recycling or something.

  Ouch. That’s bitterly cynical.

  Back when I was in high school, I fell down that rabbit hole. Everything was yuck. You can always find the ick, the dark, the negative. It’s always there because, even if it’s not, if you’re a truly gifted in the black art of cynicism, you put it there. We’re biologically programmed to pay attention to that kind of thing, right? I remember listening to this guy, or maybe I was reading a book or an article? I’m not sure. A biologist, I think. Social psychologist? Whatever. Anyway, picture early man, let’s call him Ug. Ug walks by a bush when it rustles. Now, anything could be in there. Could be a rabbit. Could be the wind. Ug is always wiser to suspect a tiger. Why? Because assuming there’s something in the bush that’ll kill him scares Ug enough to get his spear ready, so if the big hungry cat does leap out at him for lunch, Ug has a better chance to survive. He might feel silly if it’s a fluffy bunny, yeah, but he’s alive to feel that way. The point is, bad news sells more because evolution has taught us that’s wise.

  I would’ve watched Ug with great confidence when I was a teenager. If a tiger came out to do battle, I would’ve said, “See?” If a squirrel hopped out, flirted and chittered at him, I would’ve noted Ug’s embarrassment at his own paranoia, and said the same damn thing. Expect the negative and you get to feel wise and superior for doing so. Whatever the outcome, twist it so Ug can’t win.

  One day I woke up to the fact that I was unhappy and a lot of that was my fault. Not very practical to depress yourself. Life’s going to do that anyway, right? So, I try very hard not to think that way anymore. I’m a recovering cynic.

  When I killed those Sidorovs, all of them, everywhere, I stole any chance at becoming better people, of changing. I know they might not have ever done so, and I know that they would have done more harm if they had the occasion, and it’s easy to say that they made their choices, did what they did, and should have expected the world to fight back. But it was me. I took from them everything they had. If the universe wanted the Sidorovs to pay, I was its stupid instrument.

  I see the events of the morning over and over again, just like it says in the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder entry in the DSM, or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Nice to know there’s a manual for what ails you, right?

  That’s how it goes, so why not let it play?

  So I’m brooding, yep, guilty. Sick. Thinking black thoughts when I hear raised voices from down below. We’re on the shoulder the highway at around seven in the morning now, and the traffic’s picking up. Flaherty got his cruiser in the rough gravel above a row of fast-food joints near an exit I’m pretty sure doesn’t exist in my world, but don’t quote me. In the parking lot, there’s this guy yelling at a woman. He’s big, broad, muscular. The maroon polo shirt he’s wearing is a bit too tight. That might be a corporate logo on the upper right side of his breast. Maybe it’s one of those tiny alligators. I’m too far away to see. She’s in a floral print sundress, tasteful and light. He’s red-faced and shouty. She’s silent and fuming. They’re standing on either side of their car, his hand on the door handle.

  She asks him a quiet question.

  He lets go and starts around the car.

  Goddammit.

  “Don’t make me come down there!”

  He stops and then they both look until they see me above them on the hill.

  I’m just leaning against the police cruiser, waving.

  “You okay, ma’am?”

  They glance at each other.

  I hear Flaherty’s door open. “What’s going on?”

  “You a cop?” The big guy roars up at me.

  He’s advanced to the edge of the lot, maybe fifty yards away down the embankment and across a wet-looking drainage ditch.

  I shake my head.

  Flaherty hasn’t moved. “What’s going on, Mr. Walker?”

  I don’t take my eyes off Big Boy. “A little shouting match in a parking lot.”

  “Oh. Great.”

  Big Boy shouts, “Then what the fuck?”

  “You okay, ma’am? You need some help?”

  Big Boy takes two steps off the asphalt before he sinks almost up to his knees.

  I just shake my head. I was barely Pushing. Poor guy.

  He’s stuck fast, swearing hard, and his struggles sink him farther in, up near midthigh.

  I’m not too worried about him. I mean, that can’t be quicksand, right? In Northeast Ohio by the side of the highway? It’s thick, sucking mud.

  His girl flounces around to the driver’s door, opens it, climbs in, and drives off, leaving her boyfriend or whoever he is, behind. Didn’t even squeal the tires.

  Flaherty comes over to see and snorts. Then he sighs. “I suppose I’ll have to help him out.”

  “He hasn’t asked, yet. Besides, you go down there from here and you’re liable to get stuck right beside him.”

  “Yelling at his wife, you said?”

  “At the lady, yeah. He didn’t seem to like me butting in.”

  Flaherty nods. “We’re the butting in type, I think, when it comes to this shit.”

  I nod. “True.”

  “He sinking any deeper?”

  I shake my head.

  Flaherty looks down the slope. “I could trip down that. Hurt myself. Get stuck, like you said.”

  I nod.

  “Motor pool is sending a guy with a tire.”

  “Nice.”

  Flaherty takes a deep breath. “You okay down there, sir?”

  “Goddamn wife stole my car!”

  “You want to fill out a report?”

  “Yes!”

  “Well, I’m having a little car trouble right now, but I’ll be down directly for your statement.”

  “Fine!”

  “In the meantime, you stay put. I’ll get you out soon as I can.”

  “When?”

  “We were just discussing that. Chief’d be mad at me if I were to take a tumble getting down there from up here. We’ve got equipment for this. Just got to wait for the motor pool guys. They’ve got a winch on their truck. I’ll be down directly.”

  There were some other people in the lot now, approaching.

  “He’s okay,” says Flaherty. “Just stuck and upset. I’ll handle it when I can, folks. Thank you!”

  “How long until the motor pool guys get here?” I say.

  “In this traffic, this time of morning?” Flaherty shrugs. “Maybe an hour.”

  ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

  It’s almost eight thirty by the time we wind our way through downtown Akron to pull up behind my motorhome. Somebody’s moved it out of the intersection and parallel parked it. Traffic is flowing through and most of the crime scene tape is gone.

  I figure someone would’ve told me if I wasn’t allowed to go back inside for whatever reason. Personally, I can’t think of any. It’s a vehicle, yeah. Involved in a violent mess, yeah. But it’s still my home.

  I wave to Flaherty, open the door, turn on the power, stumble to my bed, and fall on it. I’m asleep before I stop bouncing.