Dean Koontz: Odd Thomas

"Penny Kallisto."

"Yes, sir."

The chief sighed. He settled upon the only chair in the room: a child-size, purple upholstered number on which Barney the dinosaur's torso and head served as the back support. He appeared to be sitting in Barney's lap. "Son, you sure complicate my life."

" They complicate your life, sir, and mine much more than yours," I said, meaning the dead.

"True enough. If I were you, I'd have gone crazy years ago."

"I've considered it," I admitted.

"Now listen, Odd, I want to find a way to keep you out of the courtroom on this one, if it comes to that."

"I want to find a way, too."

Few people know any of my strange secrets. Only Stormy Llewellyn knows all of them.

I want anonymity, a simple and quiet life, or at least as simple as the spirits will allow.

The chief said, "I think he's going to give us a confession in the presence of his attorney. There may be no trial. But if there is, we'll say that he opened his wallet to pay some bet he'd made with you, maybe on a baseball game, and the Polaroids of Penny fell out."

"I can sell that," I assured him.

"I'll speak with Horton Barks. He'll minimize your involvement when he writes it up."

Horton Barks was the publisher of the Maravilla County Times . Twenty years ago in the Oregon woods, while hiking, he'd had dinner with Big Foot-if you can call some trail mix and canned sausages dinner .

In truth, I don't know for a fact that Horton had dinner with Big Foot, but that's what he claims. Given my daily experiences, I'm in no position to doubt Horton or anyone else who has a story to tell about an encounter with anything from aliens to leprechauns.

"You all right?'' Chief Porter asked.

"Pretty much. But I sure hate being late for work. This is the busiest time at the Grille."

"You called in?"

"Yeah." I held up my little cell phone, which had been clipped to my belt when I went into the pool. "Still works."

"I'll probably stop in later, have a pile of home fries and a mess of eggs."

"Breakfast all day," I said, which has been a solemn promise of the Pico Mundo Grille since 1946.

Chief Porter shifted from one butt cheek to the other, causing Barney to groan. "Son, you figure to be a short-order cook forever?"

"No, sir. I've been thinking about a career change to tires."

"Tires?"

"Maybe sales first, then installation. They've always got job openings out at Tire World."

"Why tires?"

I shrugged. "People need them. And it's something I don't know, something new to learn. I'd like to see what that life's like, the tire life."

We sat there half a minute or so, neither of us saying anything. Then he asked, 'And that's the only thing you see on the horizon? Tires, I mean."

"Swimming-pool maintenance looks intriguing. With all these new communities going in around us, there's a new pool about every day."

Chief Porter nodded thoughtfully.

'And it must be nice working in a bowling alley," I said. 'All the new people coming and going, the excitement of competition."

"What would you do in a bowling alley?''

"For one thing, take care of the rental shoes. They need to be irradiated or something between uses. And polished. You have to check the laces regularly."

The chief nodded, and the purple Barney chair squeaked more like a mouse than like a dinosaur.

My clothes had nearly dried, but they were badly wrinkled. I checked my watch. "I better get moving. I'm going to have to change before I can go to the Grille."

We both rose to our feet.

The Barney chair collapsed.

Looking at the purple ruins, Chief Porter said, "That could have happened when you were fighting Harlo."

"Could have," I said.

"Insurance will cover it with the rest."

"There's always insurance," I agreed.

We went downstairs, where Stevie was sitting on a stool in the kitchen, happily eating a lemon cupcake.

"I'm sorry, but I broke your bedroom chair," Chief Porter told him, for the chief is not a liar.

"That's just a stupid old Barney chair, anyway," the boy said. "I outgrew that stupid old Barney stuff weeks ago."

With a broom and a dustpan, Stevie's mom was sweeping up the broken glass.

Chief Porter told her about the chair, and she was inclined to dismiss it as unimportant, but he secured from her a promise that she would look up the original cost and let him know the figure.

He offered me a ride home, but I said, "Quickest for me is just to go back the way I came."

I left the house through the hole where the glass door had been, walked around the pool instead of splashing through it, climbed the slumpstone wall, crossed the narrow alleyway climbed the wrought-iron fence, walked the lawn around another house, crossed Marigold Lane, and returned to my apartment above the garage.

I SEE DEAD PEOPLE. BUT THEN, BY GOD, I DO SOMETHING about it.

This proactive strategy is rewarding but dangerous. Some days it results in an unusual amount of laundry.

After I changed into clean jeans and a fresh white T-shirt, I went around to Mrs. Sanchez's back porch to confirm for her that she was visible, which I did every morning. Through the screen door, I saw her sitting at the kitchen table.

I knocked, and she said, "Can you hear me?"

"Yes, ma'am," I said. "I hear you just fine."

"Who do you hear?"

"You. Rosalia Sanchez."

"Come in then, Odd Thomas," she said.

Her kitchen smelled like chiles and corn flour, fried eggs and jack cheese. I'm a terrific short-order cook, but Rosalia Sanchez is a natural-born chef.

Everything in her kitchen is old and well worn but scrupulously clean. Antiques are more valuable when time and wear have laid a warm patina on them. Mrs. Sanchez's kitchen is as beautiful as the finest antique, with the priceless patina of a life's work and of cooking done with pleasure and with love.

I sat across the table from her.

Her hands were clasped tightly around a coffee mug to keep them from shaking. "You're late this morning, Odd Thomas."

Invariably she uses both names. I sometimes suspect she thinks Odd is not a name but a royal title, like Prince or Duke , and that protocol absolutely requires that it be used by commoners when they address me.

Perhaps she thinks that I am the son of a deposed king, reduced to tattered circumstances but nonetheless deserving of respect.

I said, "Late, yes, I'm sorry. It's been a strange morning."

She doesn't know about my special relationship with the deceased. She's got enough problems without having to worry about dead people making pilgrimages to her garage.

"Can you see what I'm wearing?" she asked worriedly.

"Pale yellow slacks. A dark yellow and brown blouse."

She turned sly. "Do you like the butterfly barrette in my hair, Odd Thomas?"

"There's no barrette. You're holding your hair back with a yellow ribbon. It looks nice that way."

As a young woman, Rosalia Sanchez must have been remarkably beautiful. At sixty-three, having added a few pounds, having acquired the seams and crinkles of seasoning experience, she possessed the deeper beauty of the beatified: the sweet humility and the tenderness that time can teach, the appealing glow of care and character that, in their last years on this earth, no doubt marked the faces of those who were later canonized as saints.

"When you didn't come at the usual time," she said, "I thought you'd been here but couldn't see me. And I thought I couldn't see you anymore, either, that when I became invisible to you, you also became invisible to me."

"Just late," I assured her.

"It would be terrible to be invisible."

"Yeah, but I wouldn't have to shave as often."