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Meet Teddy Tucker
Remember my desert dream? Something told me this was the guy talking on the other end of the Skype call, just before the beheading. He wasn’t cast in shadow. His voice wasn’t distorted. It was more the words he used. And the way he used them when he spoke. Plus, the general shape of his head was the same. A big, square wedge of a head. He sat at a walnut boardroom table, scraping a knife and fork across a plate in a way that made me want to claw the skin off my face. Egg whites and grilled tomatoes, with tea and brown-toast triangles in a rack. A cloth napkin tucked into his shirt collar.
We stood in the doorway of the meeting room alongside Nathan, waiting for the man to finish chewing and acknowledge us.
Eventually, he did.
“Ah, welcome,” he said. “Take a seat,
