Lee Goldberg - Ring of Knives

"Got shifty eyes, don't he?"

Matt looked up. The driver's wraparounds had turned from the road, were focused on the page in his hand.

Matt wasn't sure if the driver was talking about JW, who did have a juvie squint, or Dr. Dindren, who looked nearsighted despite wearing Coke-bottle-thick goggles. He closed the folder. "I didn't notice."

"Didn't-?" The driver snorted. "Oh, you got to notice the eyes. Al ways take note a' the eyes."

"Huh. And why's that?"

"Well, hell, boy, everyone knows that the eyes "-he peeled off his sunglasses-" they're the windows to the soul ."

Matt flattened against the far door with a sharp, harsh intake of breath. His heart pounded wildly.

The driver had no eyes.

None.

Just sockets.

And they were seething with black masses of carrion beetles.

Matt bit back a yell of fear. A hard mass of panic formed at the base of his throat, and he forced himself to look away from the driver's face before he upchucked into his lap.

"Notice anything unusual about my peepers?"

Matt swallowed. "Ah… Such as…?"

"Well, dincha notice? One's blue and one's brown! Piebald, they call it. Like a husky dog!"

Trying to get a grip. "Or David Bowie."

"Who?"

"Never mind." Matt took a slow, deep breath. Then another. Forced his head to turn in the driver's direction. His sockets were still aswarm with twin spirals of thorax, mandible, and iridescent black wings.

Matt cleared his throat. Thought carefully back through the last few minutes' conversation. Made a connection. Ask him, he thought. Can't hurt to ask.

"So…" Matt's voice sounded thin and strained. "You said you were going to Tacoma tonight. What's in Tacoma?"

A strange smile played on the driver's lips, like he'd tasted something bitter-and liked it. "Oh, my ex is havin' a birthday party. She don't know I'm comin'. Thought I'd surprise her, meet the new beau."

Matt's nausea got a little worse. "Crash it, huh?"

"'S right. Got a gift for her that she's never gonna forget." More beetles pulsed through the twin holes in his skull. Some pattered into his lap.

Matt nearly lost his lunch. And not just because of the beetles. "What… kind of gift?"

"The kind that keeps on givin'." The driver turned his beetles towards Matt. Several of them took flight, spanning the distance between them. Matt swatted them away.

The driver grinned. "Sure you don't wanna come? Might see somethin' worth puttin' on YouTube."

Or Faces of Death XII, Matt thought. "Uh, no. But thanks. I see the sign up ahead for Carthage MHC. You can just drop me off right there. Like I said, I'll call a cab later, come by and pick up the Ford."

"Suit yourself. But you're missin' out. Gonna be a night to remember."

# # # # # #

As soon as he was out and the truck pulled away, Matt noted the license plate and pulled out his cell phone. With shaking hands he called the Tacoma police and left an anonymous tip. Nut-job tow-truck driver coming to wreak havoc on local divorcée. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Afterwards he felt better.

Maybe this is the reason I was given this gift, he thought. Not just to get caught up in carnage, but to prevent it. To head off bad things before they come to pass. To make a difference in people's lives for the better.

He liked the idea. It made him feel less like a delusional homeless man and more like a wandering knight. To save damsels in distress? He could get used to that gig.

And before he'd gone a hundred yards, he saw another chance to do just that.

# # # # # #

Halfway up the Carthage Mental Health Center's gravel driveway was a beat-up Toyota Corolla that must have rolled off the assembly line when Nancy Reagan's views on drug use were big news. Its hazards were blinking. As he got closer, he noticed that one wheel was flat.

Matt walked up to the car.

"Hey there," he said, raising a hand in greeting.

The driver turned, startled. She was a heavyset black woman with shiny gold highlights in her hair. And mouth.

"See you got a flat, ma'am?" He put his hand on the car roof, gave a reassuring smile. "I can help you with that, if you want."

"Get away from me, ya white-power, serial-killer ma'fuckah!"

Matt froze. "Hey, really, I just thought-"

"Thought you could rape my shit is what you thought, ma'fuckah." She reached in her purse and pulled out what looked to be a toy: a bright yellow plastic handgun. She jabbed it towards him. "But I'm 'a Tase your shit an' you come one step closer, so back the fuck off ."

He looked at it closely. Yep, it was indeed a Taser. Took a step back. A big one. "Fine. No problem. I'm gone." He turned away.

"Damn right you is."

He started to jog up the hill. But he could still hear her.

"… up in my goddamn bus iness…"

He sped up. But some voices carry better than others.

"… three hundred twenty-five dollars for this shit, ma'fuckah…"

Much better.

"… Tase your white ass…"

# # # # # #

Carthage Mental Health Center was a disappointment. Matt was half hoping for an ivy-covered, crumbling gothic ruin crowned with gargoyles and ravens. A set from a Tim Burton movie-that's how he'd imagined it. Instead, the Admin Building butting up against the circular driveway was pure sixties save-a-buck state construction: single-story cinder block with slit windows, pealing paint, and a weedy "serenity garden" out front that consisted mostly of crabgrass and poison ivy.

The inside wasn't much better. The floor looked like it hadn't been vacuumed in weeks. One of the fluorescent overheads flickered. A row of empty plastic chairs faced a central desk, behind which a clerk was staring slack-jawed at her phone.

"Hi there."

She kept staring at the phone, so he said it two more times.

Finally she looked up, irritated. "What?"

"My name is Matt. I called ahead?" No response. "I'm here for a visit with a resident by the name of Jesse Weston."

The clerk turned her attention back to her phone and yelled out a series of syllables. It was either a name he'd never heard before, or she was speaking in tongues.

"What's going on here?"

A pale, toad-faced wreck came out. She appeared to be wearing a gray tent. In one hand she had a clipboard, and in the other, amazingly, a cigarette.

"This guy wanna see Jesse," the clerk said, still not looking up from her phone.

Toad-Face's astonishingly wide mouth creased downward at the edges, and a mirror image of the long furrow formed on her forehead. "Oh yeah? Well, you can't. He's gone."

"Gone?" Matt wasn't sure he'd heard correctly.

"Gone. As in, Not Here Anymore. He transferred out." She turned away, started to leave.

Matt couldn't believe what he was hearing. "But I set up this meeting three weeks ago with the facility administrator. He promised me an opportunity to meet with Jesse Weston!"

"Sorry." She waved her cigarette over her shoulder at him.

"Well, where's he been transferred to?"

"Confidential."

Matt felt his face flush with anger. Behind him he heard the front door bang open. The manager whipped her pasty face around to see who it was. Matt stepped deliberately into her line of vision.

"Ma'am, I came all this way to see Jesse Weston. It's a matter of life and death. If he's gone, then I at least need to talk to whatever doctor was treating him: Dr… Ah…" He remembered the Coke-bottle goggles but not the name.

Toad-Face and the clerk shared a quick look. "Dr. Dindren," Toad-Face said-with far too much pleasure, Matt thought-"doesn't work here anymore. Sorry ." Before Matt could respond, she stepped around the desk, eyes narrowed, and crossed her arms confrontationally.