“That’s affirmative.”
“Huh. In a way, that’s too bad.”
“Why’s that?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “It just sounded too weird to be true. I mean, how many animals eat people?”
“All of ‘em, you give ‘em the chance.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s true,” he said.
“You going to be on your merry way, then?”
He gave me a look like he wanted to hit me, but something in his eyes let me know that he knew it would be the most foolish thing he ever did.
He’d finally made me smile.
“I don’t know. Maybe. I got a room over on Lincoln already …” Lincoln was over on the east side, in the rough part of town.
“A regular Charles Kuralt,” I mumbled.
“Who?”
“Forget it,” I said. “Anyway, I got shit to do. Is that what you came for? To hear about the monsters out in the woods?”
“Well, yeah, actually.”
“Well, there you go,” I said. “Go back to Jersey.”
“You sound like a New Yorker when you say that,” he said. “You ever been there?”
“Nope,” I lied. “Ever been to Jersey?”
“Nope.” Another lie.
“It’s not that bad,” he said.
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“Well, tell me something about Evelyn. Something for the book. You must have a million funny stories.”
“You’re at my fucking job, man. I got work to do.”
“How often do you get asked to do an interview?”
Just then the phone rang. I was actually kind of peeved about that, because I had a good insult all lined up and ready for the kid.
Abe picked it up, said, “John’s,” listened, then handed it over to me.
“Yeah,” I said into the receiver. “Pearce.”
“Hold on,” I said as I put my cigarette out. “Arright, go ahead. What’s up?”
“I hate to say it, Marley, I really do.”
The hairs on me stood up. I sucked in a great, big breath and let it out fast.
“Have I told you how much your funny feelings scare the shit out of me?”
“Tell me,” I said.
“You were right. Gloria Shaw’s body was found up on the Crowley property early this morning.”
“Is it the same guy? The one from the papers?”
“Oh, God, yeah.”
I didn’t know what to say. He continued.
“We got a big crew over here working on this. I just want you to know that. They have it organized. This is beyond anything …”
“We need to talk,” I said.
“I know. Put your thinking cap on.”
He hung up. I lit another smoke and watched the flame on the match dance for me. Another kind of hell had come to Evelyn. There wasn’t room for two.
“What was that?” asked Anthony.
“That was our detective friend,” I said, blowing out the flame.
“Oh yeah? Any news?”
“Yeah. A murder.”
“Wow,” he let out with glee, and ran his fingers through his wet hair. “This place just gets better and better, doesn’t it?”
I gave him a look. He swallowed hard and walked out.
The Crowley property was up on the northern edge of Evelyn, about a mile past the circle of Old Sherman Road. The property consisted of a big old farmhouse the descendants of the once-opulent Crowley family lived in, a few dozen apple trees, and a vast stretch of tall-grassed land surrounded by a short white wooden fence. It was accessible only by a dirt and gravel path because there were no paved roads north of Old Sherman. Even though the town’s richest people lived there, I guess they liked feeling cut off from the plain folk that lived in town. Maybe it made them feel safe.
Maybe they wouldn’t feel safe anymore.
The man who ran the bank owned one of those houses up north, surrounded by acres and acres of blessed land. Some retired actor who went down in flames and had his livelihood ruined because of that rat bastard McCarthy lived in another house up there. He pretty much kept to himself. Only a few people in town knew what he actually looked like now, and most of those who did were the delivery boys from the local shops. The rest of the homes were held by the old families of Evelyn, handed down from generation to generation ever since the close of the Civil War. Familes like the Crowleys.
It all would’ve been perfect land to do a little bit of farming on—the dirt seemed rich and heavy, and the ground was flat—but there was something almost sinister about the land that Evelyn rested on that made seeds die.
And now blood had been shed on that land.
Gloria Shaw was thirty-eight, but she would be remembered as “twenty-two,” because she was the Rose Killer’s twenty-second victim. Her little boy, Luther, was nine years old. The father’s identity was a complete mystery. He could have been dead for all anyone knew. If he was, the boy could have very well been an orphan and no one would have known it.
The papers seemed to suggest that on the night she didn’t come home, Gloria Shaw went over to that little watering hole called the Cowboy’s Cabin—God, I missed that place sometimes—and had a few drinks by herself before getting into an argument with a big, burly guy that no one had ever seen around before. He had offered to buy her a drink, but I guess she had some set of standards because she didn’t want anything to do with him. He eventually walked out, and she left alone about an hour later with a noticeable drunken swagger, which placed the last time she was seen alive at about eleven in the evening.
The burly man was being called a “person of interest.” He was described as being between six-two and six- five, forty to fifty years old, white, and he had a broken nose.
Three days came and went before I heard from Danny Pearce again. They say the first forty-eight hours of an investigation are the most crucial, but I guess this investigation was just a little more special, hence the extra twenty-four hours before he was able to pull himself away.
It was night. I was sitting at the edge of my bed, looking at all the sad articles that I had taped up on the wall, all connected. A collage of sin. Through the curtains I could see the curved sliver of moon up in the sky, like a crooked grin. Like it knew something I didn’t know.
The phone rang, and I ran into the living room and picked it up.
“Pearce,” he said.
I heard him blowing smoke as he said it. I held my tongue about that. Having to see what he saw …
“Talk to me,” I said.
“I’ll be there in five minutes,” he said, and hung up.
I got nervous. The man had never set foot in my house before. I had never let
I ran through the house quickly, hiding anything that could look odd at all, like the articles on the bedroom
