The smile on his face was the same one he’d worn thirty years ago when he’d guided me through the woods to an abandoned camper full of moth-eaten pillows and pulp fiction paperbacks. We’d hung out in that metal hulk until the weather turned too cold to make it fun. In the spring when we’d returned, the camper was gone.
“Have a seat over here, Jay,” he said, inviting me to join him at the table. Heaving myself up from the padded armchair, I obeyed.
“I hadn’t figured Jacob Waltz for a religious man,” he said, leaning forward, “but there are several scriptural passages marked in these pages, seemingly at random, with handwritten notes in the margins. Like everyone else, I read through them with great anticipation, but there are hundreds of them and no way to tell their significance.”
He
