Blossom

She tapped long fingernails on the tabletop. 'I've been here six weeks. Summer's almost over. Then I'll have to go.'

I watched her. Laugh-lines around her wide mouth. Trace of crow's-feet next to her eyes. Harder lines. Her skin was as clean and clear and glowing as a young girl's, but she was older than I first thought. Even at ease, her back was straight, shoulders squared.

'I'm not a nurse. Never was. I'm a doctor. Just finished school. I start my internship in late September. Back home. In West Virginia. Pediatrics.'

I lit another smoke.

'You're not surprised or…'.

'Or I was raised in places where you don't show much on your face.'

'Yes. I saw that the first time you came in the diner.'

'And ex-cons don't put together real estate deals?'

'That's not how I know. How I knew. I wasn't sure why you were here until I saw you with that boy. Lloyd. That's his name, isn't it? The boy they thought did those killings?'

'They were wrong.'

'I know. His name was in the papers. People only remember killers, never who they killed.'

I dragged deep on my cigarette. Her face was contrasts: huge eyes, a tiny nose, that broad slash of a mouth. So different from the way she looked in the diner. I locked on her eyes, my voice gentle, like reading a menu I wasn't trying to sell. 'Merrilee Marshall, Tommy Deacon, Rose Joanne Lynch, George Borden.'

Two fingers stroked her cheek. 'Why?'

'There's a dead sheep in the meadow. All cut to pieces. Wolves make different marks than mountain lions. And humans, they make their own marks.'

'Sherwood told me. Told me you were looking for the sniper.'

'He questioned you? The people at the diner?'

'No. Rose is…was my sister. My baby sister. There's three of us. Mama said we were her garden. Violet, me, and Rose. She was seventeen years old. Came up here to spend the summer with some of our kin before she started college. Just to have some fun, see someplace new. When we heard she was killed, we thought they had the killer. But then…things changed. Couldn't be sure. So I came up here myself. To look around. The way my mother would have wanted.'

'Why the waitress job?'

'I just followed the pipeline. The migrant pipeline. My people have been coming out of the hills into the steel mills forever. I didn't want to work in an office, didn't have much time. The diner was the first job I saw open, close to the ground.'

I thought about how the diner was at the nerve center of everything that had happened, a checkpoint in the human traffic pattern. Wondered about accidents, coincidence. 'But Sherwood, he knows?' I asked her.

'He knows Rose was my sister. He knows how blood runs, that man. He said he'd keep me in the picture, tell me what's going on.'

'He think Lloyd did it?'

'No. I don't think he ever did. After the boy first got arrested, he told me it would be a tough case to make. But then he got scared.'

'Scared?'

'That I'd fix it myself. Make it right if the jury wouldn't.' Shrugging like that was ridiculous. 'Anyway, I think he told me about you to kind of settle me down. He said you were a private investigator.'

I nodded.

She smiled.

I imitated her shrug, watching close.

'But you're in it?' she asked, a trace of metal in her voice.

'I'm in it.'

'And you can find him?'

'I don't know. I don't know where to look. That's where my brother comes in. But I know who I'm looking for.'

She regarded me steadily, her eyes doing a diagnosis she never learned in medical school.

'I believe you do.'

71

WE TALKED AS soft darkness filled Blossom's kitchen, night filtering in slow, not dropping like a New York curtain.

'You want something to eat?'

I looked at my watch. 'Can't. I have to meet some people. Get to work.'

'It'll only take me a minute to get dressed.'

'These people…I can't bring a guest, you understand?'

She leaned forward, elbows on the kitchen table. Her robe billowed open. My eyes never left her face.

'I understand. Be sure you do. I told you some things, but there's a lot you don't know. About me. Ways I could help. Places I could go.'

'I'm not cutting you out. Whoever this guy is, he comes out at night. Before I go where he is, I have to do some day work.'

'I'll give Leon notice.'

'Why don't you just walk out? You don't need the money, right?'

'That's not the way I was raised. I'll give him notice. Then we'll go around together, you and me.'

72

I PULLED INTO Virgil's block, feeling the eyes. A safe neighborhood, if you were a neighbor.

The house was built in Indiana working-class style— the back door opened into the kitchen. Virginia came to the door when I knocked— I saw Rebecca fussing over the stove over her shoulder.

'Hello,' the child said gravely.

'Hello, Virginia. Is your mother at home?'

She looked at me the way women have been looking at me for years. Stepped aside to let me in.

'You want some supper, Burke?' Rebecca asked, not turning around.

'If it's not too much trouble.'

'Already cooked. You like chicken and dumplings?'

'Sure.'

'Coming up. Virginia, go tell Daddy his brother is here.'

Virginia ignored her, rummaging in the refrigerator.

'What did I tell you?' Rebecca asked, her voice sharp.

'Daddy will want a beer anyway.

'Is that right, Miss Know-It-All?'

'Oh, Mama. You know Daddy likes it when I bring him a beer.'

'Daddy'd like it just as much you brought him a nice glass of apple juice.'

The kid giggled, pulled a can of Pabst from the shelf, expertly poured it into a tall glass, creating a perfect head. Marched off to the living room.

Rebecca put a plate of steaming food in front of me. Glass of ginger ale. 'Virgil said you don't drink…'

'It's true. Thank you. Your daughter is beautiful.'

'That's her mother's blood,' Virgil said, coming into the kitchen, a beer in one hand. His son at his side. Looked like the boy grew another couple of inches since I saw him last. Sat down across from me.

'Where's Lloyd?' I asked him.

'Out in the garage. I set up a heavy bag for him. The boy's turning into King Kong.'

'He rescue any more waitresses lately?'