“It’s the most logical tactic.”

  “Murder is the most logical tactic?”

  “You want them to kick Homer loose, there’s only two ways: find out who killed that Nazi—find out and put together a case so strong that the cops would grab it and convince the DA to go along—or kill another one. Homer, he’d have the best alibi that could ever be.”

  “Just like that.”

  “It’s not exactly blowing up a day-care center.”

  “Dell … Most of them—the young ones, I mean—they’re just … trying to find themselves … or find a place where they could fit in, maybe. This town, it’s ultra-tolerant of gays, Mexicans, almost anyone you can think of. Except what they call ‘trailer trash.’ White kids who don’t have working parents. And aren’t that smart, or good at sports, or … I don’t know. But you know what a young man does if nobody wants him. Better than most. Why hate them so?”

  “It wasn’t just Jews they sent to the ovens, Dolly. A gitan would always be first on that line. You ever hear a Sabra talk about his ‘homeland’? That’s Israel. The place where the ‘wandering Jews’ could settle down. Gypsies are never going to have a homeland, never going to stop ‘wandering.’ They can’t. When you say ‘Rom,’ people think of Hungary, right? Okay, remember what we saw on the BBC last week, about this swine Orbán, their Prime Minister. I plugged his name in, took about five seconds to find this. I even printed it out:

  Zsolt Bayer, a prominent right-wing commentator with close ties to the ruling Fidesz government and its controversial Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, recently had this to say about the country’s Gypsy minority:

  “A significant part of the Roma are unfit for coexistence. They are not fit to live among people. These Roma are animals, and they behave like animals. When they meet with resistance, they commit murder. They are incapable of human communication. Inarticulate sounds pour out of their bestial skulls. At the same time, these Gypsies understand how to exploit the ‘achievements’ of the idiotic Western world. But one must retaliate rather than tolerate. These animals shouldn’t be allowed to exist. In no way. That needs to be solved—immediately and regardless of the method.”

  “Der Spiegel ran this editorial saying how ‘shocked’ they were. And if anyone would know an undercover Nazi agenda, who better? When this filth says ‘not fit to live among people,’ you think he’s not saying unfit to live, period?”

  “Dell, you don’t even know if you’re a—” Dolly cut herself off before she cut even more deeply.

  “You put me back there,” I told the only person I loved.

  “Dell, I’m sorry. I wouldn’t ever—”

  “Sssshh, precious,” I whispered, holding her against my chest. “I’ll get it done.”

  “I don’t care about it! Not anymore, Dell. I swear.”

  “Okay. I’ll give Mack what I found out, and let him take it from there.”

  “Promise?” my sweetheart said, very softly.

  “Yes,” I lied.

  It wouldn’t be the first time I’d hopped a freight.

  And I hadn’t learned about the existence of the FTRA from Mack. I’d let him think that, because it was the only way to make sure Dolly thought that, too.

  It wasn’t so long ago that I had needed a way to get in and out of Denver without leaving tracks. Not that “paper trail” nonsense TV is always bleating about—if you stayed off airplanes, didn’t use credit cards when you needed gas, and didn’t pose for convenience-store cameras, that part would be easy enough. What I’d needed was a way to float through, moving like the mountain breezes they take for granted that high up.

  I had to go to Denver to keep my promise to MaryLou McCoy. I had promised to take a life in return for her promise to fight for her own. Up to that moment, she’d been a block of stone. Whatever was coming, let it come. She wasn’t going to move toward it … and she wasn’t going to step aside.

  “What do you think is going to happen if you won’t let us help you?” the lawyer we’d hired for her had asked.

  MaryLou’s pale eyes were as empty as her response: “It’s already happened.”

  That’s when I saw it clearly, instantly translating her whole attitude into the obedience the Legion had drummed into us: La mission est sacrée. MaryLou had been supposed to leave town the next day for summer softball camp, a showcase that would let her pick from the bouquet of scholarship offers they’d be handing her. But she’d had a higher mission—protecting her baby sister, Danielle, from a fate she was sure awaited the child if MaryLou left her.

  She never knew the truth until the fourteen-year-old viper she’d thrown away her own life to protect took the witness stand … as a witness for the prosecution.

  “I’m not like them,” Danielle told the jury, distancing herself from all those girls who had told how they had been gang-raped before being dumped outside the ER like bags of garbage. The girls who’d lacked Danielle’s beauty and physical endowments. Making it clear that nobody had raped her. No, she’d been “initiated” into a special society, run by a special man, a man who loved her with all his heart. A man named Cameron Taft. “All the girls were after him,” she crowed.

  “So your sister was jealous of you?” MaryLou’s lawyer asked, keeping his voice empty of inflection.

  “Look at her.” Danielle pointed. “And look at me. What do you think?”

  By then, I knew that the founder of Tiger Ko Khai was a man named Ryan Teller, a “combat vet” who’d been kicked out of the military years before. I was already sure he’d never return. Three of his acolytes had stopped by their hangout, but only two of them left alive. I was confident they’d deliver that message to their Supreme Leader.

  But I’d had to make MaryLou trust me. And get her to understand that, no matter the outcome of the trial, she hadn’t sacrificed for nothing. Ryan Teller was a human virus, and other places wouldn’t have been vaccinated against him. The only way to stop him from spreading was to make him dead.

  Hopping a freight wasn’t hard. I sure wasn’t the only one riding that way, and I looked right for the part. Everything I wore was “used,” and my face fit my clothes.

  Anyone who looked in my duffel would have known I wasn’t a hobo—if the equipment hadn’t tipped them, the cash would have.

  But nobody was going to take that look. A couple of men caught the same car I was riding. A working team—I could tell from the way they ran through their routine: check the car for occupants, then evaluate potential targets. I was the only one in that car. Sprawled in the corner, the duffel’s strap looped over my left arm as if I was asleep and wanted to protect whatever was in there against a sneak thief.

  They came up on me quiet. Not like experienced soldiers would, just without talking.

  I had the pistol out while they were still closing on me. When they got near enough for whatever they wanted, they saw what they didn’t.

  “Not me,” I said, keeping my voice polite, so they could back off without losing face.

  They put their hands up together, as if they were marionettes.

  “I’m not law,” I said. “I don’t want you. I don’t know you. I never saw you. And you didn’t see me.”

  They nodded. Message received. Whether I was an escaped convict or a traveling psychotic didn’t matter—what mattered was getting out of that car as soon as they could.

  When the train slowed down for a sweeping curve, they bailed out as smoothly as a pair of acrobats.

  The FTRA guys were a different breed.

  They made no secret of their brotherhood as they gathered in the farthest corner of the car, speaking too low for me to hear.

  They were smarter, too. We never exchanged words, but they could tell the only thing I’d be willing to “share” with them was some bullets.

  Now I thought about all that.

  Easy to miss what you’re not looking for. And all I was looking for on those freights to Denver was to be left alone.

  So I replayed the memory tapes. I hadn’t seen anyone flying Nazi flags on those trains. Some had a little ink, but it wasn’t anything they showed off. The Master Race on the rails was the FTRA, and all the other nonpaying passengers seemed to know it.

  So I scratched my first idea. Not only couldn’t I be sure of finding the right men on a freight, I was even less sure of finding one alone.

  I had the equipment—a spiked tool mountain climbers call a rock hammer—and I had the plan: kill another heavy-inked Nazi somewhere down the line, let the law think some maniac was riding around, taking them out one by one, always the same way. Once the locals had their “profile,” Homer would be off the hook—a serial killer had passed through their town and moved on, nothing to discourage tourists from visiting. Might even bring some new ones, “researching” the porno printed in paperback as “true crime” so supermarkets could rack it without getting complaints.

  But it was too complicated. Too risky. And too likely to flop. Even if I managed to get one of them alone and finish him the exact same way, who knew what would happen after that? For what I needed, even as few as two possible outcomes was one over the limit.

  “A lot of people you see around here in the daytime, they might act crazy—talk to themselves, even have arguments with themselves—or they might be carrying everything they own around with them … but that doesn’t mean they’re homeless.”

  “You mean the shelter?” Dolly asked Mack.

  “That’s been closed for a while. But there’s that flophouse they call a ‘residential rehab.’ It’s on the far side of 101, in a little … valley, I guess you’d call it. Nothing but rock there. Some idiot once thought it would be a perfect place to build a motel. The town bought it for pennies on the dollar when they hired me—I told them if they wanted to keep people off the street, especially at night, they had to give them a safe place to sleep.”

  “You said some of them—the homeless, I mean—they never go indoors,” my wife narrowed it down.

  “Oh, they all go indoors when they need to—sometimes to use … the facilities. Sometimes to steal, sometimes just to get out of the rain. The ones who never go inside no matter what the weather, they’re never more than a step away from hospitalization.

  “The ones with high coping skills, they know where to camp for the night. Every night. The … more disturbed ones, they have to … be shown, you know? Otherwise, they’d just keep staggering around. That leaves the kids. You met them,” he said, nodding in my direction, “the homeless-by-choice crowd, and the circuit riders.”

  “None of them killed that guy who was found on the beach,” I said.

  He gave me a long, measuring look. “You’re sure of that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Because …?”

  “All the cops have is a body. By now, they’ve gone through everything that package came wrapped in. They even know the approximate time it washed up. But that adds up to nothing but guesses. So the easiest road for them is to talk about tides and shifting currents … anything nobody can be sure about.”

  “So it didn’t necessarily happen around here at all?” Dolly said, an encouraging tone in her voice. “The man could have been murdered way offshore … like, miles, even.”

  “They’ve got something else,” Mack said, quietly.

  “What?”

  “They’ve got Homer.”

  “I want to make sure this is where you stand,” I told Mack once we were alone. “You don’t want Homer found not guilty of killing that Nazi; that wouldn’t change anything for him. You want him kicked loose, right? Put back on the street, like none of this ever happened?”

  We were parked in that excuse for a car of his, looking through the windshield at the ocean.

  “He has to be,” the young man said. His voice was absolutely flat-lined, all content, no tone. “Forget a verdict; he’d never be found fit to stand trial at all. Even if one of the half-ass clowns who make a living pretending to be lawyers tried to use an insanity defense—and what the hell else could they use?—no judge would let it get that far. You don’t need a psychiatrist to see Homer’s on another planet.”

  “But on the street he’s harmless?”

  “On the street, he’s a target. If anyone asked him for anything Homer had, he’d just give it to them. He wouldn’t even defend himself from any kind of assault. The best he can do is scream.”

  “What’s the point, then?”

  “What’s the point of what?” he asked, his tone saying he took what I’d said as some kind of personal attack.

  “I guess … Look, I don’t know anything about this stuff. You don’t want him locked up in a mental hospital because he wouldn’t be free. Okay, I get that. But if he has to be on all those drugs anyway …”

  “That’s today,” he said, his voice sliding from hot to medium. “Today isn’t always forever.”

  “You got some … people like Homer, you got them so they could live like regular people?”

  “Oh, hell, yes. That’s one of the good things about living around here—there’s always some kind of work that needs doing. Maybe being a ‘barista’ isn’t an option for all of them—the nasty way some customers talk might set them off—but there’s always some manual laboring jobs, all different kinds. And, sometimes, you move one of them off where they were stuck, you find out there’s things they’re really good at. You ever been to the Lead Sled Shed?”

  “That’s the custom-car place?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No,” I said, thinking that the last thing I’d ever want would be to ride around in a car people would remember.

  “You stop in there anytime, you’ll always find a guy they call ‘Fineline’ working. That’s because he’s the best freehand pinstriper on the entire coast. Maybe in the whole state. Some of his work, it’s so delicate, you have to look at it a couple of times to even see it.”

  “And he was—?”

  “Not was,” he cut me off, “is. He’s always going to be schizophrenic, so he has to take his meds every day, or he’ll decompensate. But he’s got a full-time job, gets paid good, stays in a nice rooming house—walking distance from where he works. And people around there … well, they understand him, you know?”

  “No, I don’t know. Look, I’m not playing with you. If I say I don’t know something, it’s because I don’t. If I say I need to understand something, it’s because I do.”

  “And if you say you’re gonna hurt someone, you’ll—”

  “I’d never say anything like that”—cutting him off quick and sharp, so he wouldn’t mistake my meaning.

  He was quiet for a couple of moments.

  I didn’t break the silence.

  Finally, he said, “Schizophrenia is a permanent state of delusion; it may vary in intensity, but it’s always ready to come when it’s called. It’s embedded, but it—”

  “Embedded—that’s like you’re born with it?”

  “The brain doesn’t work that way. You can be born with some things, like the extra chromosome in Down syndrome. And there’s plenty who’ll tell you schizophrenia is congenital. There’s even a movement that’s claiming you can be born a psychopath. But the latest research—scientific research—is all going the other way: there’s a clear connection to early-childhood abuse.”

  “What’s the difference between ‘scientific’ research and any other kind? I thought all research was … research, you know?”

  “Three words,” Mack said. “Theoretical, cumulative, and nonethical.”

  “What?”

  He lit a cigarette and blew a stream of smoke out his window, away from me. “You start with a theory. Any theory, it doesn’t matter what. Then you test that theory. Usually, you publish the results. Then other people—people you don’t know—they test the same theory, to see if they get the same results themselves. Finally, enough evidence accumulates from different trial runs to make a judgment. That judgment becomes ‘factual’ … until some new body of research disproves it, or finds some flaw in the methodology.”

  “What’s unethical about that?”

  “Not unethical, nonethical. You have to start with a question, not the answer. No opinion one way or the other. No belief system driving the research. A blank slate, see?”

  “Yeah. I think so, anyway. You’re saying, when it comes to schizophrenia, kids who get beat up are more—?”

  “It’s not that simple. Not even close. Physical abuse, that’s probably not even a factor when it comes to causality. Neglect, that makes it most probable. And when early neglect coexists with emotional abuse, schizophrenia is most likely to show up. But you almost never see it before puberty.”

  “Why not before then?”

  “We don’t know. But it usually doesn’t get florid—to the point where everyone knows there’s something off—until at least adolescence. The hormone bomb could be the last straw, too much stress. But even then, it’s not always recognized. Kids don’t pick up on ‘symptoms’ when they know plenty of others who act the same way. When they say ‘party,’ they mean get drunk. Or high. Or both.

  “A lot of young people act crazy when they’re messed up. So they could have a schizophrenic as part of their crowd, and never see him for what he is. It’s not like they all live together, or see each other all the time. Understand? Even if every time they see … whoever, he’s acting all fucked up, they just figure it’s from the same things that fuck them up. Again.

  “What it really depends on isn’t the disease, it’s the type of it. The kind I’m talking about, that’s a disorganized schizophrenic. Talks to himself, thinks he’s the king of some country that doesn’t exist. Or even one that does, it’s just that other people don’t know it. Or won’t admit they know it.

  “They all hear voices inside their heads, but it’s not the same voice—frequency, volume, even the commands themselves, those vary. But that doesn’t necessarily make them dangerous to other people, even if you wouldn’t invite them over for dinner. The thing is, schizophrenia may not make them dangerous to you, but it always makes them a danger to themselves. If the voices keep telling them to do things they don’t want to do, they might do anything to make them stop. Stab a pencil into their ear to write something different, smoke crack, drink canned heat, bang their head against a wall …