“You can’t, but he can.” She turned her attention to Ralph, and although her eyes were still wet with tears, they were cold. Assessing. “This outsider, I want you to find him. Don’t let him get away just because you don’t believe in him. Can you do that?”
“I don’t know,” Ralph said, “but I’ll try.”
Marcy said no more, only took Yune Sablo’s offered arm and let him lead her to her car.
Half a block down, parked in front of the long-abandoned Woolworth’s, Jack sat in his truck, sipping from a flask and watching the group on the sidewalk. The only one he couldn’t identify was a slender woman in the kind of suit a businesswoman might wear on a trip. Her hair was short, the graying bangs a little ragged, as if she had cut them herself. The case slung over her shoulder looked big enough to hold a shortwave radio. This woman watched as Sablo, the taco-bender state cop, squired Mrs. Maitland away. The stranger then walked to her car, which was too nondescript to be anything but an airport rental. Hoskins thought briefly of following her, but decided to stick with the Andersons. It had been Ralph who brought him here, after all, and wasn’t there some saying about going home with the girl you took to the dance?
Besides, Anderson bore watching. Hoskins had never liked him, and since that snotty two-word evaluation a year ago (No opinion, he’d written . . . as if his shit didn’t stink), Jack had detested him. He had been delighted when Anderson tripped over his dick with the Maitland arrest, and it didn’t surprise him to discover the self-righteous sonofabitch was now meddling in things better left alone. A closed case, for instance.
Jack touched the back of his neck, winced, then started his truck. He supposed he could go home after he saw the Andersons inside, but he thought maybe he’d just park up the street and keep an eye on their house. See what happened. He had a Gatorade bottle he could piss in, and he might even be able to sleep a little, if the steady hot throb from the back of his neck would allow that. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d slept in this truck; he’d done it on several occasions since the day the old ball and chain had walked out.
Jack wasn’t sure what came next, but he had a clear fix on the basic task: to stop the meddling. The meddling in exactly what he didn’t know, only that it had something to do with the Peterson boy. And the barn in Canning Township. That was enough for now, and—sunburn aside, possible skin cancer aside—he was getting interested.
He felt that when the time came for the next step, he would be told.
With the help of her navigation app, Holly made a quick and easy drive to the Flint City Walmart. She loved Walmarts, the size of them, the anonymity of them. Shoppers didn’t seem to look at other shoppers as they did in other stores; it was as if they were all in their own private capsules, buying clothes or video games or toilet paper in bulk. It wasn’t even necessary to speak to a cashier, if you used the self-checkout. Which Holly always did. Her shopping was quick, because she knew exactly what she wanted. She went first to OFFICE SUPPLIES, then to MENS AND BOYS WEAR, finally to AUTOMOTIVE. She took her basket to the self-checkout and tucked the receipt into her wallet. These were business expenses, for which she expected to be reimbursed. If she lived, that was. She had an idea (one of Holly’s famous intuitions, she heard Bill Hodges saying) that was more likely to happen if Ralph Anderson—so like Bill in some ways, so very different from him in others—could get past the divide in his mind.
She returned to her car and drove to the Anderson house. But before leaving the parking lot, she said a brief prayer. For all of them.
Ralph’s cell phone rang just as he and Jeannie were entering the kitchen. It was Yune. He had gotten the Marysville number of Lovie Bolton from John Zellman, the owner of Gentlemen, Please, and had reached Claude with no trouble.
“What did you tell him?” Ralph asked.
“Pretty much what we decided on in Howie’s office. That we wanted to interview him, because we’re having doubts about Terry Maitland’s guilt. Emphasized that we didn’t think Bolton himself was guilty of anything, and that the people who’d be coming to see him were acting strictly as private citizens. He asked if you’d be one of them. I said you would. Hope that’s okay with you. It seemed to be with him.”
“That’s fine.” Jeannie had gone directly upstairs, and now he heard the start-up chime of the desktop computer they shared. “What else?”
“I said that if Maitland was framed, then Bolton might be at risk for the same treatment, especially since he was a man with a record.”
“How did he react to that?”
“Okay. He didn’t get defensive or anything. But then he said something interesting. Asked me if I was sure it really had been Terry Maitland he saw in the club the night the Peterson boy was murdered.”
“He said that? Why?”
“Because Maitland acted like he’d never seen him before, and when Bolton asked how the baseball team was doing, Maitland passed it off with some kind of generality. No details, even though the team was in the playoffs. He also told me Maitland was wearing fancy sneakers. ‘Like the ones the kids save up for so they can look like gangbangers,’ he said. According to Bolton, he never saw Maitland in anything like that.”
“Those were the sneakers we found in that barn.”
“No way to prove it, but I’m sure you’re right.”
Upstairs, Ralph now heard the moaning, grinding sound of their old Hewlett-Packard printer coming to life, and wondered what the hell Jeannie was up to.
Yune said, “Remember the Gibney woman telling us about the hair they found in Maitland’s father’s room at the assisted living place? From one of the murdered girls?”
“Sure.”
“What do you want to bet that if we go through Maitland’s credit purchases, we’ll find a record of him buying those sneakers? And a slip with a signature on it that matches Maitland’s exactly?”
“I guess this hypothetical outsider could do that,” Ralph said, “but only if he snitched one of Terry’s credit cards.”
“He wouldn’t even need to do that. Remember, the Maitlands have lived in Flint City like forever. They’ve probably got charge accounts at half a dozen downtown stores. All this guy would have to do is walk into the sporting goods department, pick out those fancy kicks, and sign his name. Who’d question him? Everyone in town knows him. It’s the same thing as the hair and the girls’ underthings, don’t you see? He takes their faces and does his dirt, but that isn’t enough for him. He also weaves the rope that hangs them. Because he eats sadness. He eats sadness!”
Ralph paused, put a hand over his eyes, pressed his fingers to one temple and his thumb to the other.
“Ralph? Are you there?”
“Yes. But Yune . . . you’re making leaps I’m not ready to make.”
“I understand. I’m not a hundred per cent on board with this myself. But you need to at least keep the possibility in mind.”
But it’s not a possibility, Ralph thought. It’s an impossibility.
He asked Yune if he had told Bolton to be careful.
Yune laughed. “I did. He laughed. Said there were three guns in the house, two rifles and a pistol, and that his mother is a better shot than he is, even with emphysema. Man, I wish I was going down there with you.”
“Try to make it happen.”
“I will.”
As he ended the call, Jeannie came down with a thin sheaf of paper. “I’ve been researching Holly Gibney. Tell you what, for a soft-spoken lady with absolutely no clothes sense, she’s been up to a lot.”
As Ralph took the pages, headlights spilled up the driveway. Jeannie grabbed the pages back before he could do more than look at the newspaper headline on the first sheet: RETIRED COP, TWO OTHERS SAVE THOUSANDS AT MINGO AUDITORIUM CONCERT. He assumed Ms. Holly Gibney was one of the two others.
“Go help her in with her luggage,” Jeannie said. “You can read these in bed.”
Holly’s luggage consisted of the shoulder-bag that held her laptop, a hold-all small enough to fit in an airplane’s overhead compartment, and a plastic Walmart bag. She let Ralph take the hold-all, but insisted on keeping custody of the shoulder-bag and whatever she’d purchased at Wally World.
“You’re very good to have me,” she said to Jeannie.
“It’s our pleasure. Can I call you Holly?”
“Yes, please. That would be good.”
“Our spare room is at the end of the upstairs hall. The sheets are fresh, and it has its own bathroom. Just don’t stumble over my sewing machine table if you have to use the facility in the middle of the night.”
An unmistakable expression of relief crossed Holly’s face at this, and she smiled. “I’ll try not to.”
“Would you like cocoa? I could make some. Or maybe something stronger?”
“Just bed, I think. I don’t mean to be impolite, but I’ve had a very long day.”
“Of course you have. I’ll show you the way.”
But Holly lingered for a moment, looking through the archway and into the Andersons’ living room. “Your intruder was sitting just there when you came downstairs?”
“Yes. In one of our kitchen chairs.” She pointed, then crossed her arms and cupped her elbows. “At first I could only see him from the knees down. Then the word on his fingers. MUST. Then he leaned forward and I could see his face.”
“Bolton’s face.”
“Yes.”
Holly considered this, then broke into a radiant smile that surprised both Ralph and his wife. It made her look years younger. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m off to dreamland.”
Jeannie led her upstairs, chatting away. Setting her at ease in a way I never could, Ralph thought. It’s a talent, and it will probably work even on this extremely peculiar woman.
Peculiar she might be, but she was strangely likeable, in spite of her mad ideas about Terry Maitland and Heath Holmes.
Mad ideas that just happen to fit the facts.
But it was impossible.
That fit them like a glove.
“Still impossible,” he murmured.
Upstairs, the two women laughed. Hearing that made Ralph smile. He waited where he was until he heard Jeannie’s steps heading back to their room, then he went up himself. The door to the guest room at the end of the hall was firmly closed. The sheaf of papers—the fruits of Jeannie’s hurried research—was lying on his pillow. He undressed, lay down, and began to read about Ms. Holly Gibney, co-owner of a skip-tracing firm called Finders Keepers.
Outside and down the block, Jack watched as the woman in the suit turned into Anderson’s driveway. Anderson came out and helped her with her things. She didn’t have much, traveling light. One of her bags was from Walmart. So that was where she’d gone. Maybe to get a nightie and a toothbrush. Judging from the look of her, the nightie would be ugly and the bristles of the toothbrush would be hard enough to draw blood from her gums.
He took a nip from his flask, and as he was screwing on the cap and thinking about going home (why not, since all the good little children were in for the night), he realized he was no longer alone in the truck. Someone was sitting on the passenger side. He had just appeared in the corner of Hoskins’s eye. That was impossible, of course, but he couldn’t have been there all along. Could he?
Hoskins looked straight ahead. The sunburn on his neck, which had been relatively quiet, began to throb again, and very painfully.
A hand came into his peripheral vision, floating. It seemed he could almost see the seat through it. Written on the fingers in faded blue ink was the word MUST. Hoskins closed his eyes, praying that his visitor would not touch him.
“You need to take a drive,” the visitor said. “Unless you want to die the way your mother died, that is. Do you remember how she screamed?”
Yes, Jack remembered. Until she couldn’t scream anymore.
“Until she couldn’t scream anymore,” said the passenger. The hand touched his thigh, very lightly, and Jack knew the skin there would soon begin to burn, just like the back of his neck. The pants he was wearing would be no protection; the poison would seep right through. “Yes, you remember. How could you forget?”
“Where do you want me to go?”
The passenger told him, and then the touch of that awful hand disappeared. Jack opened his eyes and looked around. The other side of the bench seat was empty. The lights in the Anderson house were out. He looked at his watch and saw it was fifteen minutes to eleven. He had fallen asleep. He could almost believe he’d just had a dream. A very bad one. Except for one thing.
He started the truck and put it in gear. He would stop to gas up at the Hi station on Route 17 outside of town. That was the right place, because the guy who worked the night shift—Cody, his name was—always had a good supply of little white pills. Cody sold them to the truckers either highballing north to Chicago or down south to Texas. For Jack Hoskins of the Flint City PD, there would be no charge.
The truck’s dashboard was dusty. At the first stop sign, he leaned over to his right and wiped it clean, getting rid of the word his passenger’s finger had left there.
MUST.