Louis Shalako: The Shape-Shifters, Chapter Twenty-One. Louis Shalako.

Paranoia with a grudge...

Chapter Twenty-One

Steve Isaacs was a perfect stranger…

Steve Isaacs was a perfect stranger, unknown and unrecognized in his hometown. For the first day or so, he was convinced that at any moment, someone would tap him on the shoulder and say, Hey. You’re Steve Isaacs, and then he would have to disengage from polite, stilted reminisces that often didn’t bear much relation to the original reality. Stories grow in the telling, and the story from different viewpoints diverges over time even more sharply, in Steve’s experience.

But it didn’t happen, and in some strange way it was disappointing. The man who operated the store where he used to buy candy after school, didn’t recognize him. The pharmacist didn’t recognize him. Had they totally forgotten about Steve Isaacs? Was his very existence wiped out? The truly God-like thing about it, was that he knew all of them.

He knew bits and pieces of the past, he knew their names, and who their kids were, and what schools they went to, and so forth.

Cash was totally anonymous.

As he went about his simple daily rounds, he saw who got out of what vehicle in front of what doctor’s office, and smiled his secret little smile. He saw who was working, and who was married, and who was a late-night drunken pedestrian. The adept Steve filed it all away in his head, building a picture of the routine around here. In the past, he had held the perspective of a man who lived right there, right in this very town, with his wife and kid. He had a new perspective now. He couldn’t take anything for granted. He must never feel safe. He must always assume eventual detection or even intervention. Steve slept at the motel, but went into town three or four times the first day, timing things by the van’s dash clock.

His trips took him past everything, the fire hall, schools, hospital, police station, shops, small strip malls, and even down a few residential streets. It was simple enough to drive around for a half-hour or so sipping coffee and just pretending that a short-cut through a subdivision now had you irrevocably lost.

No one gave Steve a second glance. Steve was looking for patterns, patterns in the traffic, patterns of response, patterns in behavior, as he scoped out the town from all angles. The plan was a simple one, but it relied on carefully controlled velocities. Steve figured on The Day, it would happen at a time the banks were full and busy, the police were engaged in a shift change, the fire department would be attending to a residential kitchen grease fire, there would be at least one traffic accident at a well-known local fender-bender hotspot, and perhaps other diversions might be arranged as well. Like a simple 911-hangup call, which the cops might be obliged to check out. But that one was scary, as it sent the cops to at least one definite location where you had just been. People in phone booths wearing rubber gloves are attention-getters at the best of times. The calls didn’t have to be particularly accurate. They just had to be plausible. But all the calls would go through one dispatcher, who might recognize a voice. Little details can trip up the best-laid plan.

It was important to know his ground. A general’s first study is the road atlas, he remembered from his youth. It was in some old book. In his early teenage years he had been fascinated by military history. Now all of that theoretical knowledge could be put to use. His plan was to kill a number of birds with one stone. And if Steve Isaacs could disappear, and cease to exist in the place of his birth, he could do it anywhere. Steve usually ended up at a park on the other side of town, where he could sit with the engine running and watch over a frozen pond. This meant that on the way back to the motel, he could drive his proposed route and check out anything that moved. But maybe his plan was too complicated. Like Yamamoto at Midway…

END