Since she was already in a state of disbelief, it was difficult to think of something she would accept. She wouldn’t buy the truth, and I didn’t want to give it to her anyway. I wanted to say, “I’m the Doctor and this is my companion,” but I doubted Sophie was a fan of the long-running BBC series. Forget the TARDIS and the sonic screwdriver, the Doctor’s best gadget was the psychic paper. I can’t tell you how many times I wished I had some. In absence of that, one of my favorite strategies to deflect attention from the fact that I’m a lying bastard is to accuse someone else of being a bigger one.

“Sophie, you may have noticed by now that Mr. Benally is full of shit,” I said.

In a voice as dry as the mesa, she said, “Yeah, I noticed that.” Frank’s shoulders jiggled up and down as he laughed silently.

“Well, he never should have introduced me as a geologist. I’m more of a project troubleshooter.”

“No kidding?” That earned me a wry twist to her mouth. “I’d say the project is in some pretty deep trouble at this point.”

“Hence the reason Mr. Benally has left everything up to me. Since your part of the project cannot continue until we get the area stabilized, I suggest you enjoy a day or two off. That is, if you can help me get this straightened out tonight, Frank?”

Frank looked up from his omelet, surprised. “Who, me?”

“First, we need to get a buttload of nails.”

“A buttload? How much is that?”

“Uh …”

Granuaile rescued me with her superior knowledge of indefinite units of measurement. “I believe that’s slightly more than a shitload but much less than a f**kton.”

“Precisely, thank you.”

“What?” Frank put down his fork, lost.

“Then I’ll need you to take me to a drugstore to pick up the poison.”

“What are you gonna use, rat poison or something?”

“No, nothing like that. I can combine several pharmaceuticals to make what we need. We don’t have time to go out and gather the proper plants to do it from scratch.”

“I wouldn’t think so. But ain’t you gonna need a prescription?”

“Nah, I just need a getaway car. Can you lay hold of a ride for us?”

Frank smiled and rediscovered his appetite. “Sure, I got a nephew in town. He’s sittin’ over there on his ass,” he pointed with his fork across the dining room to a table full of middle-aged men, “because the coal mine’s shut down.”

“Oh. Has he seen you sitting here?”

“Yeah, he’s seen me.”

“Why hasn’t he come over to say hi?”

“He’s bein’ polite. Sees his uncle talkin’ to a stranger, probably thinks we’re doin’ business.”

“And so we are. Don’t let him get away, though.”

“I won’t,” Frank assured me. Filled with a new sense of purpose, I downed half my coffee at one draught. It was good, strong stuff, the kind that Louis L’Amour used to say could float a horseshoe. Nobody ever drank weak coffee in his books. It was probably why they were so anxious to shoot people at high noon. Which reminded me …

“Think you can get hold of a gun, Frank? Might come in handy.”

He studied me and took his time chewing. “Yeah, I have an old six-shooter tucked away somewhere.”

“Attaboy.”

“I think it’ll give you all the chances of a mouse against a sidewinder,” he said, “but you’re welcome to it. I think some antipersonnel mines would work better.”

“Or horny toads with frickin’ lasers strapped to their backs,” Sophie suggested, and I smiled. No wonder Oberon liked her.

Frank called over his nephew after we finished eating and introduced him to us as Albert. He had his hair cropped short in a crew cut and wore a blue-and-gray flannel shirt tucked into his jeans.

“Say, their car is in the shop,” Frank said, pointing a finger at us and admirably skipping the details. “Wouldja mind drivin’ us around a bit?”

Albert shrugged a shoulder. “Sure, I don’t have nothin’ else to do.” He flashed a grin past Frank. “Hey, Sophie.”

“Hey, Albert.”

“You out of work too?”

“Yep. For the day, anyway,” she said.

“Aw, that sucks. Man,” Albert shook his head and held his hands half clenched in front of him, picturing someone he’d like to strangle, “if they catch the damn hippie who gunked up all the engines, I hope they haul his nuts backward and yank ’em out of his—” He stopped midsentence as he saw Granuaile clutch at my arm and heard her make a tiny noise. “Oh. Sorry, miss.” He took in my tattoos and his eyes lingered on the triskele on the back of my hand. Then he spied my necklace and noticed my hair, which admittedly can look a bit unkempt at times. “Are you a damn—I mean, are you guys hippies?” Granuaile’s fingernails dug painfully into my arm at his question.

“No,” I assured him. “But we are frequently mistaken for hippies. No worries, happens all the time.” Granuaile was now pounding at me with her fist. I glanced at her and beheld an expression of barely restrained mirth. Her face was blushing red because she neither dared take a breath nor release one, convinced she would laugh inappropriately and embarrass Albert. I rose from the table to make way for her to get by. “Will you excuse my sister? She really needs to go to the restroom.”

Granuaile nodded somewhat manically, her lips pressed tightly together and a tear welling up in her left eye as she stood.

“Oh, sure.” Albert scooted over to stand next to Frank, and Granuaile hurried away toward the rest-rooms, hand over her mouth and making wee whimpering noises. “Is she going to be okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, she’ll be fine,” I said, brushing away his concern with a wave. “These episodes just happen sometimes.”

The entire restaurant heard her when she closed the door—a long, sustained high note followed by a gasp and another long note.

Albert made a face. “Man, are you sure?”

Chapter 27

I’ve often been flabbergasted by modern pharmaceutical ads on television. The list of side effects for some maladies often sounds worse than the condition they’re supposed to treat. Once I even heard “heart failure” listed as a side effect, and I wondered how that happened. Heart failure sounds like a pretty major event to me, and if you’re willing to risk heart failure in order to avoid the mild discomfort of some other condition, then may the gods shield you from harm, since you’re obviously seeking it out.

I sought out a drugstore because most every medicine is actually a poison: The dosage is simply much lower. I prefer working directly from plants, of course, but scooping up a few bottles of pills will work when I’m in a hurry, and in this case I was in quite a hurry indeed.

“Sensei,” Granuaile whispered to me on the way out of the Blue Coffee Pot to Albert’s truck. “I heard you say you don’t have a prescription for all these drugs you need, right?”

“Right.”

“That means you’re going to steal them, aren’t you?”

“Yep.”

She sighed in exasperation. “Things like that don’t matter to you, do they?”

We paused to climb into the back of Albert’s truck. Frank rode shotgun and told him where to go. Once we were on our way, I picked up where we’d left off. “Not when people’s lives are at stake, no. I never steal for mere personal gain, if that makes a difference. Well, I take that back. There was that one time in Egypt. And a few years ago I stole some art and precious gems from a businessman in Hong Kong just so he would have a really bad day, and that gained me quite a bit of satisfaction. But I called the cops after a couple of days and told them where to find everything, along with a note telling him not to be such a vag badger. He got most of it back.”

“What? Why didn’t he get all of it?”

“The cops kept some and told him that was all they found.”

“No!”

“Yes. I had to steal the stuff again and give all the crooked cops wedgies. Look, if it makes you feel better, we can make a list of what I pull out of this place, look up the costs elsewhere, and then reimburse them with an anonymous envelope of cash later.”

“That would make me feel better.”

“Okay, that’s what we’ll do.”

“Thank you.” She gave me a couple of patronizing pats on the shoulder. “You’re a very considerate sensei.”

“I’ll say. I haven’t done half the things I’m supposed to yet. Usually there’s a ritualistic leeching after the second week, and here we are three months or so along.”

She squinted at me doubtfully. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Lucky for you there aren’t many leeches in this part of Arizona.”

She cringed a little. “Seriously?”

“But I suppose we can let that slide since I made you eat a steer sack.”

“Shut up!” I shook with laughter and she scowled at me, folding her arms across her chest. “Auggh! You can be so immature sometimes!”

At a quarter to nine we pulled up next to a drugstore to make sure we were out of range of any surveillance cameras, and I got out and walked around to the back. As I left them there, I heard Albert say, “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

Once out of sight of Frank and Albert, I cast camouflage on myself and concentrated on the door. Locks aren’t that difficult when you can bind the metal inside to the unlocked position. Security systems are another matter; I’m not sophisticated enough with electronics to tackle those, and much of it is dead plastic anyway. I would doubtless trip something as soon as I walked in, so it would have to be a dash to get everything I needed before the cops arrived.

The first thing I did was grab a plastic bag, and then I went hunting among the shelves. I wasn’t familiar with brand names, so I had to scan active ingredients to find what I needed. I was trying to find the various chemical components of Atropa belladonna, the plant known commonly as deadly nightshade. Chew one leaf as an adult and you’re toast; the collected tropane alkaloids mess with your nervous system so that it can’t regulate involuntary activities like sweating, breathing, and heart rate. But isolate and regulate the dosage of those alkaloids, and you can turn an extremely deadly plant into a medicinal one. I found atropine, scopolamine, and hyoscyamine all sitting on the shelves under various brand names. According to the dosages, it looked like we’d have to hit another store to make enough poison for a decent spread of caltrops. I picked up a package of surgical gloves on my way out; I didn’t want to get any on my skin once I began combining these.

I returned to the truck bed and didn’t dissolve my camouflage until I was in it. Granuaile had heard the rustle of the plastic bag and knew I was there, but Albert and Frank jumped a bit when I tapped on the back of the cab window.

“Let’s go,” I hollered, and Albert peeled out of there with admirable haste. We passed a police car with flashing lights heading toward the store as we drove deeper into town. Frank directed us to a hardware store, and once we got out of the back and could talk, I explained we needed to visit one more drugstore.

“Sure, don’t see why not,” Frank said. “First one went without a hitch.”

Feeling saucy, we walked into the hardware store—which smelled like pressboard and paint—and asked for a buttload of nails.

“We actually have those on sale,” the sales associate said without blinking at our denomination.

Granuaile leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Ask if he sells them by the f**kton.”

Nails and a good stash of drugs in hand, we were (or I was) perhaps too confident when we hit the second drugstore. It wasn’t time for them to open yet, but I surprised a pharmacist who had arrived early to do some paperwork. The alarm to the building was already turned off, but she raised plenty of alarm when the back door seemed to open and close all by itself and my camouflaged form cast a shadow on the floor. She was fast. She made it to the phone and dialed 911 before I could render her unconscious with some deft kung fu. I can’t quite do a Vulcan nerve pinch, but my Druid Doomhold is fairly quick and leaves victims with nothing more than a dire need for aspirin. I looked at her name tag, which read Gina Wachtel.

“Sorry, Gina,” I said. “I do not envy you the headache you will have when you wake up, but until then, rest well, and dream of …” I trailed off. What do pharmacists dream of? Caribbean vacations paid for by GlaxoSmithKline? Sample packs of Percocet?

Her emergency phone call was still a problem. Even though I hung up, dispatch would send somebody out regardless, so close on the heels of the previous visit to the other drugstore. The cops would come running, assuming that the same perpetrator was going Full Stupid with another hit, and they’d be right. I didn’t have much time.

I knew what to look for, thanks to my experience at the first store, and I filled up my bag much faster. Though I got out of there in record time, I still heard sirens approaching as I hoofed it for the truck parked next door. Frank and Albert looked distinctly nervous sitting in the cab; they were in front of a convenience store, in full view of security cameras.

Tossing the bag of camouflaged drugs into the back of the truck, I said, “Granuaile, hop out and go into the store to buy a couple of fountain drinks. I’ll join you in a moment.”

“Got it, sensei.” As she clambered out of the bed, I made sure to camouflage the other bag of drugs too. Since they wouldn’t move now, they’d be completely invisible to anyone looking into the bed. I dissolved my own camouflage and startled Frank when I rapped on his window.