Most of the folks in Flint City’s better class of citizenry thought Howard Gold had been born rich, or at least well-to-do. Although he wasn’t ashamed of his catch-as-catch-can upbringing, not a bit, he didn’t go out of his way to disabuse those folks. It so happened he was the son of an itinerant plowboy, sometime wrangler, and occasional rodeo rider who had traveled around the Southwest in an Airstream trailer with his wife and two sons, Howard and Edward. Howard had put himself through college, then helped to do the same for Eddie. He took care of his parents in their retirement (Andrew Gold had saved nary a nickel), and had plenty left over.
He was a member of Rotary and the Rolling Hills Country Club. He took important clients to dinner at Flint City’s best restaurants (there were two), and supported a dozen different charities, including the athletic fields at Estelle Barga Park. He could order fine wine with the best of them and sent his biggest clients elaborate Harry & David gift boxes each Christmas. Yet when he was in his office by himself, as he was this Friday noon, he preferred to eat as he had as a boy on the road between Hoot, Oklahoma, and Holler, Nevada, and then back again, listening to Clint Black on the radio and studying his lessons at his mother’s side when he wasn’t in school someplace. He supposed his gall bladder would put a stop to his solitary, grease-soaked meals eventually, but he had reached his early sixties without hearing a peep from it, so God bless heredity. When the phone rang, he was working his way through a fried egg sandwich, heavy on the mayo, and French fries done just the way he liked them, cooked to a blackened crisp and slathered with ketchup. Waiting at the edge of the desk was a slice of apple pie with ice cream melting on top.
“Howard Gold speaking.”
“It’s Marcy, Howie. Ralph Anderson was here this morning.”
Howie frowned. “He came to your house? He’s got no business doing that. He’s on administrative leave. Won’t be active police again for some time, assuming he decides to come back at all. Did you want me to call Chief Geller, and put a bug in his ear?”
“No. I slammed the door in his face.”
“Good for you!”
“It doesn’t feel good. He said something I can’t get out of my mind. Howard, tell me the truth. Do you think Terry killed that boy?”
“Jesus, no. I told you. There’s evidence for it, we both know that, but there’s too much against it. He would have walked. But never mind that, he just didn’t have such an act in him. Also, there was his dying declaration.”
“People will say that was because he didn’t want to admit it in front of me. They’re probably already saying it.”
Honey, he thought, I’m not sure he even knew you were there.
“I think he was telling the truth.”
“So do I, and if he was, whoever did it is still free, and if he killed one child, sooner or later he’ll kill another one.”
“So that’s what Anderson put in your mind,” Howie said. He pushed away what remained of his sandwich. He no longer wanted it. “I’m not surprised, the guilt-trip is an old police trick, but he was wrong to try it on you. Ralph needs to take some heat for it. A strong reprimand that goes in his jacket, at the very least. You just buried your husband, for God’s sake.”
“But what he said was true.”
Maybe it was, Howie thought, but that begs the question—why did he say it to you?
“And there’s something else,” she said. “If the real killer isn’t found, the girls and I will have to leave town. Maybe I could stand up to the whispers and the gossip if I was on my own, but it isn’t fair to ask the girls to do that. The only place I can think of to go is my sister’s in Michigan, and that wouldn’t be fair to Debra and Sam. They’ve got two kids of their own, and the house is small. It would mean starting all over again for me, and I feel too tired to do that. I feel . . . Howie, I feel broken.”
“I understand that. What is it you want me to do?”
“Call Anderson. Tell him I’ll meet with him here at the house tonight, and he can ask his questions. But I want you here, too. You and the investigator you use, if he’s free and willing to come. Will you do that?”
“Of course, if it’s what you want. And I’m sure Alec would come. But I want to . . . not warn you, exactly, but put you on your guard. I’m sure Ralph feels terrible about what happened, and I’m guessing he apologized—”
“He said he was begging me.”
That was sort of amazing, but maybe not entirely out of character.
“He’s not a bad man,” Howie said. “He’s a good man who made a bad mistake. But Marcy, he’s still got a vested interest in proving it was Terry who killed the Peterson boy. If he can do that, his career is back on track. If it’s never proved conclusively one way or the other, his career is still back on track. But if the real killer turns up, Ralph is finished as a member of the FC police. His next job will be working security in Cap City at half the salary. And that’s not even figuring in the suits he might be facing.”
“I understand that, but—”
“I’m not finished. Any questions he’s got for you have to be about Terry. Maybe he’s just flailing around, but it’s possible he thinks he’s got something that ties Terry to the murder in a different way. Now, do you still want me to set up a meeting?”
There was silence for a moment, and then Marcy said, “Jamie Mattingly is my best friend on Barnum Court. She took the girls in after Terry was arrested at the ballfield, but now she won’t answer her phone when I call, and she’s unfriended me on Facebook. My best friend has officially unfriended me.”
“She’ll come around.”
“She will if the real killer is caught. Then she’ll come to me on her hands and knees. Maybe I’ll forgive her for knuckling under to her husband—because that’s what happened, count on it—and maybe I won’t. But that’s a decision I can’t make until things change for the better. If they ever do. Which is my way of saying go ahead and set up the meeting. You’ll be there to protect me. Mr. Pelley, too. I want to know why Anderson got up enough guts to show his face at my door.”
At four o’clock that afternoon, an old Dodge pickup rattled along a ranch road fifteen miles south of Flint City, pulling up a rooster-tail of dust. It passed an abandoned windmill with broken vanes, a deserted ranchhouse with glaring holes where the windows had been, a long-abandoned cemetery locally known as the Cowboy Graveyard, a boulder with TRUMP MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN TRUMP painted on the side in fading letters. Galvanized milk cans rolled around in the truckbed and banged off the sides. Behind the wheel was a seventeen-year-old boy named Dougie Elfman. He kept checking his cell phone as he drove. By the time he got to Highway 79, he had two bars, and reckoned that would be enough. He stopped at the crossing, got out, and looked behind him. Nothing. Of course there was nothing. And still, he was relieved. He called his daddy. Clark Elfman answered on the second ring.
“Were those cans out there in that barn?”
“Yuh,” Dougie said. “I got two dozen, but they’ll have to be warshed out. Still smell like clabbered milk.”
“What about the hoss-tack?”
“All gone, Daddy.”
“Well, that ain’t the best news of the week, but no more than what I expected. What you callin for, son? And where are you? Sound like you’re on the dark side of the moon.”
“I’m out at 79. Listen, Daddy, somebody been stayin out there.”
“What? You mean like hobos or hippies?”
“It ain’t that. There’s no mess—beercans or wrappers or liquor bottles—and no sign anyone took a dump anywhere, unless they walked a quarter of a mile to the nearest bushes. No campfire sign, either.”
“Thank Christ for that,” Elfman said, “dry as it’s been. What did you find? Not that I guess it matters, nothing left to steal and them old buildings half fallen down and not worth pea-turkey.”
Dougie kept looking back. The road looked empty, all right, but he wished the dust would settle faster.
“I found a pair of bluejeans that look new, and Jockey underpants that look new, and some expensive sneakers, them with the gel insides, that also look new. Only they’re all stained with something, and so’s the hay they was lyin in.”
“Blood?”
“No, it ain’t blood. Turned the hay black, whatever it was.”
“Oil? Motor oil? Somethin like ’at?”
“No, the stuff wasn’t black, just the hay it got on. I don’t know what it was.”
But he knew what those stiff patches on the jeans and underpants looked like; he had been masturbating three and sometimes four times a day since he turned fourteen, using an old piece of towel to shoot his spunk into, and then using the backyard tap to rinse it out when his parents were gone. Sometimes he forgot, though, and that piece of toweling got pretty crusty.
Only there had been a lot of that stuff, a lot, and really, who would jizz off on a brand-new pair of Adipowers, high-class kicks that cost upward of a hundred and forty dollars, even at Wally World? Dougie might have thought about taking them for himself under other circumstances, but not with that crap on them, and not with the other thing he’d noticed.
“Well, let it go and just come on home,” Elfman said. “You got those cans, at least.”
“No, Daddy, you need to get the police out. There was a belt in them jeans, and it’s got a shiny silver buckle in the shape of a horse’s head.”
“That means nothing to me, son, but I guess it does to you.”
“On the news, they said that Terry Maitland was wearing a buckle like that when he was seen at the train station in Dubrow. After he killed that little boy.”
“They said that?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“Well, shit. You wait there at the crossing until I call you back, but I guess the cops will want to come. I’ll come, too.”
“Tell them I’ll meet them at Biddle’s store.”
“Biddle’s . . . Dougie, that’s five miles back toward Flint!”
“I know. But I don’t want to stay here.” The dust had settled now, and there was nothing to be seen, but Dougie still didn’t feel right. Not a single car had passed on the main road since he started talking to his father, and he wanted to be where there were people.
“What’s wrong, son?”
“When I was in that barn where I found the clothes—I’d already got the cans by then, and was lookin for that tack you said might be out there—I started to feel all wrong. Like someone was watchin me.”
“You just got the creeps. The man who killed that boy is dead as dirt.”
“I know, but tell the cops I’ll meet em at Biddle’s, and I’ll take em out there, but I’m not staying here by myself.” He ended the call before his father could argue with him.
The meeting with Marcy was set for eight o’clock that night at the Maitland home. Ralph got the green-light call from Howie Gold, who told him Alec Pelley would also be there. Ralph asked if he could bring Yune Sablo, if Yune was available.
“Under no circumstances,” Howie replied. “Bring Lieutenant Sablo or anyone else, even your lovely wife, and the meeting’s off.”
Ralph agreed. There was nothing else he could do. He puttered around in the cellar for awhile, mostly just shifting boxes from one side to the other and back again. Then he picked at his supper. With two hours still stretching before him, he pushed away from the table. “I’m going to the hospital to visit Fred Peterson.”
“Why?”
“I just feel like I should.”
“I’ll come with you, if you want.”
Ralph shook his head. “I’ll go directly to Barnum Court from there.”
“You’re wearing yourself out. Running your guts to water, my grandmother would have said.”
“I’m okay.”
She gave him a smile that said she knew better, then stood on her toes to kiss him. “Call me. Whatever happens, call me.”
He smiled. “Nuts to that. I’ll come back and tell you in person.”
As he was entering the hospital’s lobby, Ralph met the department’s missing detective on his way out. Jack Hoskins was a slight man, prematurely gray, with bags under his eyes and a red-veined nose. He was still wearing his fishing outfit—khaki shirt and khaki pants, both with many pockets—but his badge was clipped to his belt.
“What are you doing here, Jack? I thought you were on vacation.”
“Called back three days early,” he said. “Drove into town not an hour ago. My net, gumrubbers, poles, and tackle box are still in my truck. Chief thought he might like to have at least one detective on active duty. Betsy Riggins is upstairs on five, having the baby. Her labor started late this afternoon. I talked to her husband, who says she’s got a long way to go. Like he’d have any idea. As for you . . .” He paused for effect. “You’re in a hell of a mess, Ralph.”
Jack Hoskins made no effort to hide his satisfaction. A year previous, Ralph and Betsy Riggins had been asked to fill out routine evaluation forms for Jack, when he became eligible for a pay bump. Betsy, the detective with the least seniority, had said all the right things. Ralph had turned his in to Chief Geller with only two words written in the space provided: No opinion. It hadn’t kept Hoskins from getting his bump, but it was an opinion, all the same. Hoskins wasn’t supposed to see the eval sheets, and maybe hadn’t, but word of what had been on Ralph’s had of course gotten back to him.
“Did you look in on Fred Peterson?”
“As a matter of fact, I did.” Jack pursed his lower lip and blew scant hair off his forehead. “Lot of monitors in his room, and low lines on all of them. I don’t think he’s coming back.”
“Well, welcome home.”
“Fuck that, Ralph, I had three more days, the bass were running, and I’m not even going to get a chance to change my shirt, which stinks of fish guts. Got calls from both Geller and Sheriff Doolin. Have to go all the way out to that useless dustbowl known as Canning Township. I understand your buddy Sablo is already there. I probably won’t actually make it home until ten or eleven.”
Ralph could have said, Don’t blame me, but who else was this mostly useless time-server going to blame? Betsy, for getting pregnant last November? “What’s in Canning?”
“Jeans, underpants, and sneakers. Kid found them in a shed or a barn while he was hunting out milk cans for his father. Also a belt with a horse’s head buckle. Of course the Mobile Crime Lab will already be there, I’ll be about as useful as tits on a bull, but the chief—”
“There’ll be fingerprints on the buckle,” Ralph interrupted. “And there may be tire tracks from the van, or the Subaru, or both.”
“Don’t try teaching your daddy how to suck eggs,” Jack said. “I was carrying a detective’s shield while you were still in uniform.” The subtext Ralph heard was And I’ll still be carrying it when you’re working as a mall guard at Southgate.
He left. Ralph was glad to see him go. He only wished he could go out there himself. Fresh evidence at this point could be precious. The silver lining was that Sablo had already gotten there, and would be supervising the Forensics Unit. They’d finish most of their work before Jack could arrive and maybe screw something up, as he had on at least two previous occasions that Ralph knew about.
He went up to the maternity waiting room first, but all the seats were empty, so maybe the delivery was going faster than Billy Riggins, a nervous novice at this, had expected. Ralph buttonholed a nurse and asked her to tell Betsy that he wished her all the best.
“I will when I get the chance,” the nurse said, “but right now she’s very busy. That little man is in a hurry to get out.”
Ralph had a brief image of Frank Peterson’s bloody, violated body and thought, If the little man knew what this world was like, he’d be fighting to stay in.
He took the elevator down two floors to ICU. The remaining member of the Peterson family was in room 304. His neck was heavily bandaged and in a cervical collar. A respirator wheezed, the little accordion gadget inside flopping up and down. The lines on the monitors surrounding the man’s bed were, as Jack Hoskins had said, mighty low. There were no flowers (Ralph had an idea they weren’t allowed in ICU rooms), but a couple of Mylar balloons had been tethered to the foot of the bed and floated near the ceiling. They were imprinted with cheerful exhortations Ralph didn’t like to look at. He listened to the wheeze of the machine that was breathing for Fred. He stared at those low lines and thought of Jack saying I don’t think he’s coming back.
As he sat down by the bed, a memory from his high school days came to him, back when what was now called environmental studies had been plain old Earth science. They had been studying pollution. Mr. Greer had produced a bottle of Poland Spring water and poured it into a glass. He invited one of the kids—Misty Trenton, it had been, she of the deliciously short skirts—up to the front of the room and asked her to take a sip. She had done so. Mr. Greer then produced an eyedropper and dipped it into a bottle of Carter’s Ink. He squeezed a drop into the glass. The students watched, fascinated, as that single drop sank, trailing an indigo tentacle behind it. Mr. Greer rocked the glass gently from side to side, and soon all the water in the glass was tinted a weak blue. Would you drink it now? Mr. Greer asked Misty. She shook her head so emphatically that one of her hair clips came loose, and everybody, Ralph included, had laughed. He wasn’t laughing now.
Less than two weeks ago, the Peterson family had been perfectly fine. Then had come the drop of polluting ink. You could say it was the chain on Frankie Peterson’s bike, that he would have made it home unharmed if it hadn’t broken, but he also would have made it home unharmed—only pushing his bike instead of riding it—if Terry Maitland hadn’t been waiting in that grocery store parking lot. Terry was the drop of ink, not the bike chain. It was Terry who had first polluted and then destroyed the entire Peterson family. Terry, or whoever had been wearing Terry’s face.
Strip away the metaphors, Jeannie had said, and you are left with the inexplicable. The supernatural.
Only that’s not possible. The supernatural may exist in books and movies, but not in the real world.
No, not in the real world, where drunk incompetents like Jack Hoskins got pay bumps. All Ralph had experienced in his nearly fifty years of life denied the idea. Denied there was even the possibility of such a thing. Yet as he sat here looking at Fred (or what remained of him), Ralph had to admit there was something devilish about the way the boy’s death had spread, taking not just one or two members of his nuclear family, but the whole shebang. Nor did the damage stop with the Petersons. No one could doubt that Marcy and her daughters would carry scars for the rest of their lives, perhaps even permanent disabilities.
Ralph could tell himself that similar collateral damage followed every atrocity—hadn’t he seen it time and again? Yes. He had. Yet this one seemed so personal, somehow. Almost as if these people had been targeted. And what about Ralph himself? Was he not part of the collateral damage? And Jeannie? Even Derek, who was going to come home from camp to discover that a good many things he’d taken for granted—his father’s job, for instance—were now at risk.
The respirator wheezed. Fred Peterson’s chest rose and fell. Every now and then he made a thick noise that sounded weirdly like a chuckle. As if it were all a cosmic joke, but you had to be in a coma to get it.
Ralph couldn’t stand it anymore. He left the room, and by the time he got to the elevator, he was nearly running.
Once outside, he sat on a bench in the shade and called the station. Sandy McGill picked up, and when Ralph asked if she’d heard anything from Canning Township, there was a pause. When she finally spoke, she sounded embarrassed. “I’m not supposed to talk about that with you, Ralph. Chief Geller left specific instructions. I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay,” Ralph said, getting up. His shadow stretched long, the shadow of a hanged man, and of course that made him think of Fred Peterson again. “Orders is orders.”
“Thanks for understanding. Jack Hoskins is back, and he’s going out there.”
“No problem.” He hung up and started for the short-term parking lot, telling himself it didn’t matter; Yune would keep him in the loop.
Probably.
He unlocked his car, got in, and cranked the air conditioning. Quarter past seven. Too late to go home, too early to go to the Maitlands’. Which left cruising aimlessly around town like a self-absorbed teenager. And thinking. About how Terry had called Willow Rainwater ma’am. About how Terry had asked directions to the nearest doc-in-the-box, even though he’d lived in FC all his life. About how Terry had shared a room with Billy Quade, and wasn’t that convenient. About how Terry had risen to his feet to ask Mr. Coben his question, which was even more convenient. Thinking about that drop of ink in the glass of water, turning it pale blue, of footprints that just ended, of maggots squirming inside a cantaloupe that had looked fine on the outside. Thinking that if a person did begin considering supernatural possibilities, that person would no longer be able to think of himself as a completely sane person, and thinking about one’s sanity was maybe not a good thing. It was like thinking about your heartbeat: if you had to go there, you might already be in trouble.
He turned on the car radio and hunted for loud music. Eventually he found the Animals belting out “Boom Boom.” He cruised, waiting for it to be time to go to the Maitland house on Barnum Court. Finally it was.