Odd Thomas Read Online Free PDF Page A

speak with Horton Barks. He’ll minimize your involvement when he writes it up.”
    Horton Barks was the publisher of the
Maravilla County Times.
Twenty years ago in the Oregon woods, while hiking, he’d had dinner with Big Foot—if you can call some trail mix and canned sausages
dinner
.
    In truth, I don’t know for a fact that Horton had dinner with Big Foot, but that’s what he claims. Given my daily experiences, I’m in no position to doubt Horton or anyone else who has a story to tell about an encounter with anything from aliens to leprechauns.
    “You all right?” Chief Porter asked.
    “Pretty much. But I sure hate being late for work. This is the busiest time at the Grille.”
    “You called in?”
    “Yeah.” I held up my little cell phone, which had been clipped to my belt when I went into the pool. “Still works.”
    “I’ll probably stop in later, have a pile of home fries and a mess of eggs.”
    “Breakfast all day,” I said, which has been a solemn promise of the Pico Mundo Grille since 1946.
    Chief Porter shifted from one butt cheek to the other, causing Barney to groan. “Son, you figure to be a short-order cook forever?”
    “No, sir. I’ve been thinking about a career change to tires.”
    “Tires?”
    “Maybe sales first, then installation. They’ve always got job openings out at Tire World.”
    “Why tires?”
    I shrugged. “People need them. And it’s something I don’t know, something new to learn. I’d like to see what that life’s like, the tire life.”
    We sat there half a minute or so, neither of us saying anything. Then he asked, “And that’s the only thing you see on the horizon? Tires, I mean.”
    “Swimming-pool maintenance looks intriguing. With all these new communities going in around us, there’s a new pool about every day.”
    Chief Porter nodded thoughtfully.
    “And it must be nice working in a bowling alley,” I said. “All the new people coming and going, the excitement of competition.”
    “What would you do in a bowling alley?”
    “For one thing, take care of the rental shoes. They need to be irradiated or something between uses. And polished. You have to check the laces regularly.”
    The chief nodded, and the purple Barney chair squeaked more like a mouse than like a dinosaur.
    My clothes had nearly dried, but they were badly wrinkled. I checked my watch. “I better get moving. I’m going to have to change before I can go to the Grille.”
    We both rose to our feet.
    The Barney chair collapsed.
    Looking at the purple ruins, Chief Porter said, “That could have happened when you were fighting Harlo.”
    “Could have,” I said.
    “Insurance will cover it with the rest.”
    “There’s always insurance,” I agreed.
    We went downstairs, where Stevie was sitting on a stool in the kitchen, happily eating a lemon cupcake.
    “I’m sorry, but I broke your bedroom chair,” Chief Porter told him, for the chief is not a liar.
    “That’s just a stupid old Barney chair, anyway,” the boy said. “I outgrew that stupid old Barney stuff
weeks
ago.”
    With a broom and a dustpan, Stevie’s mom was sweeping up the broken glass.
    Chief Porter told her about the chair, and she was inclined to dismiss it as unimportant, but he secured from her a promise that she would look up the original cost and let him know the figure.
    He offered me a ride home, but I said, “Quickest for me is just to go back the way I came.”
    I left the house through the hole where the glass door had been, walked around the pool instead of splashing through it, climbed the slumpstone wall, crossed the narrow alleyway, climbed the wrought-iron fence, walked the lawn around another house, crossed Marigold Lane, and returned to my apartment above the garage.

CHAPTER 4
    I SEE DEAD PEOPLE. BUT THEN, BY GOD, I
DO
something about it.
    This proactive strategy is rewarding but dangerous. Some days it results in an unusual amount of laundry.
    After I changed into clean jeans and a fresh