Read Online The Methuselah Gene by Jonathan Lowe - Free Book Online

post office this late, although there seemed to be more people on the street.   Two of them, I soon noticed with surprise, were Wally and the town Sheriff.   These two walked along the far side of Main, and the Sheriff—a pot bellied balding man—held a sheet of paper in front of him, which Wally pointed at while talking.   When they looked into the post office first, it occurred to me the sheet of paper was probably my rental agreement with Avis, once locked in the glove box of the Taurus.   Using my binoculars, I confirmed it.   As they started to cross the road, following several others who now entered the Slow Poke, I got up nervously, my heart suddenly beating faster and erratically.
    â€œGot a restroom?” I asked Edie, interrupting her as she greeted her new customers.   She seemed surprised, not by my request, but by the number of people now entering her establishment.   She hooked a thumb toward the swinging door behind her.   “Thanks,” I said, and pushed my way through as if I couldn’t wait any longer with my spastic bladder.
    I turned back just in time to glimpse a third new face entering the diner.   It was eclipsed by the door swinging back, although not before our eyes met.   The man I’d seen was fiftyish, resembling a younger Anthony Hopkins, but with hair the color and unruly consistency of corn silk.   I knew his slovenly appearance to be a disguise somehow, too.   Partly because his pale blue intelligent eyes had seemed to recognize me.
    Walter Mills?
    I never looked at Paul, although I knew he was watching me as I came through, heading straight toward the open bathroom door.   I had the impression, in peripheral vision, of a tall man busy at his pots, who paused to cock his head at an intruder.   The smell of meat and baked bread soon mingled with the faint odor of urine as I stood in the tiny restroom and contemplated the cracked window above me.   Should I go back and face the music, maybe reveal my hand to the man I’d come here to find?   What did my poker hand hold so far but a pair of deuces?
    No, I decided.   I’d lock myself in here, let Wally and the Sheriff interrogate me through the door.   I wouldn’t be exposed in front of Hannibal Lecter .
    But then I noticed that the door’s latch was broken.   It explained why the door was open.
    My pulse went up tempo, like a snare drum in a Rumba band.   Panicking, I jammed a thin sliver of soap from the sink into the door frame, to keep the thing shut so that Paul wouldn’t see me climb up onto the toilet and snake my way out through the window.

6
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    Darkness took its bloody time killing off the light that slowly faded from a high bank of crimson clouds to the west.   I sat in a clearing amid the corn behind Main Street, bathed in an eerie golden sky paint, and considered the stupidity of what I’d just done.   What the Sheriff had on me up to then was little more than lying to a service station cracker known for his practical jokes—a man who I intended on paying in cash anyway.   Now, thanks to my bizarre bolting from the Slow Poke Café, they could add to this a suspicious disappearance through a restroom window on a skipout from a ten dollar restaurant meal.   If George Carlin had been right about just what a “redneck hayseed” was capable of, I could also imagine a few paranoid townsfolk like Earl riding shotgun after me in a posse of Jeep Cherokees, hoping to bag the icepick killer who was on an elusive murder spree through five states.   Winning bagger would, no doubt, get his photo on the front page of the Creston Gazette .   Or was it the Clucksbury Chronicle ?   As for my binoculars and camera, my leaving those behind had only added to my mystery, and upped their ante on my poker face.   If I didn’t turn myself in before long, and make things right, even Edie might come after me with