iv
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“Hello … ?” Morino’s sleepy voice came from the other end of my cell phone. Her tone indicated she found it completely incomprehensible that anyone would call this early in the morning.
It was starting to get bright outside the window. I had slept only three hours, but I was able to regulate my sleeping patterns at will, so I hadn’t had much difficulty rising early.
I told Morino that I’d found the kidnapper.
“Oh,” she said, hanging up. I didn’t have time to tell her that the kidnappers had been the girl and the golden retriever we’d passed on the street. Apparently, sleep was far more important to Morino than the identity of the pet kidnapper.
My phone rang. It was Morino. I answered, and she got right to the point.
“You took pictures?”
I explained that I’d brought my digital camera the night before but had been unable to get anything usable. There wasn’t enough light under the bridge. The pictures were too dark to see anything.
“Oh,” she said, and she hung up again.
I changed clothes and left my room. My parents and sister were still asleep, and the house was quiet. At the entrance, I put on my shoes, and then I went outside. The sky was red to the east, turning the lampposts into silhouettes.
“Tomorrow morning,” I had heard the girl whisper last night under the bridge. Just after the ritual of death, that tiny little girl had whispered those words into the golden retriever’s ears.
From where I’d been hiding, I couldn’t work out the rest of the sentence. Was something going to happen that next morning, Saturday morning?
Would they do the same thing? I headed for her house, armed with my camera. I knew where she lived. I had seen her go in the gate with her dog the other day. That must be her home. My plan was to quietly follow them and then watch them as they worked.
Shortly after I left the house, I realized I’d forgotten something. I had my wallet and the camera. I checked my pockets, and then I looked up at the second-story window, my room. I’d left the knife in my room.
Was it worth going back for a knife I wouldn’t even use? Or should I head straight for the girl’s house? I didn’t want to waste any time. It would be easier not to go back.
But even as I thought this, I found myself climbing the stairs again. I took a knife from the set behind my bookcase. There was a white sheen on the blade’s surface, and I had to fight off the urge to cut the tip of my finger. When the urge passed, I slid the knife into the leather sheath.
I left the house, my fingers on the sheathed knife in my pocket. It was thirsty, I thought. The blade of the knife was as parched as the desert sand.
I looked to the east, and the sky had turned the color of blood.
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