to gather its folds. He felt welcomed by it and full of air. The last thing he did was pull at the fingers of his gloves, removing the left one, the right, and erect a stick the shape of a
four
BAD,” ANGIE’S VOICE said of Larry Ott’s condition. They’d arrived, she reported, on scene to find him lying on his back in a puddle of blood. Single gunshot wound to the chest, pistol in his hand.
He could hear the siren. “He gone make it?”
“Don’t know yet.” Breathless.
“Was anybody else there? Sign of a fight?”
“We ain’t see nobody and the place ain’t look like no struggle. We left his gun on the floor.”
Silas switched ears with his cell phone. In his headlights the slick blacktop two-lane ribboned up and down the razed hills like film unspooling, the Jeep riding the land.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“Not that we noticed. We was kinda busy, though.”
“I know you was, sweetie. Thanks for going.”
“You coming to the hospital?” she asked, and he knew she’d hang around if she could, maybe get a coffee with him in the cafeteria.
“Naw, I’m going on over to Lar-to Ott’s, get a look around.”
“See you tonight at the Bus?”
“Might be hard.”
“Damn, I hope so.”
He laughed. “It ain’t no telling how late I’ll be out there.”
Next he called French, in his office in Fulsom. The chief was chewing.
“You shitting me,” he said.
“Naw I ain’t. Shot in the chest.”
“Rains it pours, don’t it.” French sounded annoyed. “How’d they know to go out yonder?”
Silas slowed for a log truck in front of him on the road, its longest tree with limbs that still bore a few shivering needles. “I sent em.”
A long beat. “You sent em.”
“Yeah.”
French waited. “Well?”
He hesitated, aware of the word he was about to use. “On a hunch.”
“A
Silas fed him the chain of events.
“Shit, 32,” French said. “Track a cloud of buzzards to a floater in the morning and follow a ‘hunch’ to attempted murder in the afternoon. You after my job?”
Silas signaled and passed the log truck, waving an absent hand out the window. “Just a pay raise. But Ott might be more than attempted murder.”
“Right.” Chewing. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and he won’t make it.”
“That a oyster po’boy, Chief?”
“Shrimp, smart-ass.” He belched.
“Damn, I can smell that shit through the phone.”
“I’ll go to the hospital,” French said, “get a look at the victim. You boogie on over to your friend’s and I’ll get there when I can. And don’t touch nothing.”
He rogered and hung up, relieved not to have to go see Larry.
By now it was darker and he turned on his lights, passed a run-down house with an old black man under his porch light in a rocking chair smoking a cigarette. Silas beeped his horn and the man waved back.
Though Larry’s shop was on the outskirts of Fulsom, he lived near the community of Amos, just within Silas’s jurisdiction. People from larger towns always thought Chabot was small, but it was a metropolis compared to Amos, Mississippi, which used to have a store but even that was closed now. A few paved roads and a lot of dirt ones, a land of sewer ditches and gullies stripped of their timber and houses and single-wides speckled back in the clear-cut like moles revealed by a haircut. The train from Meridian used to stop there, but now it just rattled and clanged on past. Amos’s population had fallen in the last dozen years, and most people remaining were black folks who lived along Dump Road. Silas’s mother had lived there, too, for a while, in the trailer the bank had repossessed. These days the population had declined to eighty-six.
He thought of M &M. Eighty-five.
He slowed at a little bridge, saw the sign. WELCOME TO AMOS. A little farther he turned left onto Larry Ott Road-since 9/11, for response to possible terrorism, every road, even dirt ones, had to be named or numbered. In this case, the sign was always gone because teenagers kept stealing them.
Silas braked, signaled, and turned, his lights sweeping Larry’s beat-up mailbox into sight and back out as he tunneled through the darkness with his high beams, a road he hadn’t seen for over two decades. A quarter mile farther he passed the old Walker place, where Cindy Walker, the girl who’d disappeared, had lived, the house nothing but a slanting shanty in weeds, roof sinking, windows boarded up, porch fallen in. Somebody had stolen the concrete block steps.
His tires slid on the dirt and he slowed, fishtailing, righting, looking for other tire tracks and seeing the ambulance’s and a truck’s, probably Larry’s, intersecting and coming apart like something untwining. Dirt roads were a blessing when it came to investigating a crime scene. Silas had worked a few cases with French, couple burglaries and assaults and one murder about a year ago, watched French use his black magnetic powder to lift prints, his distilled water and cotton balls to collect blood samples. It was nothing like movies or television where they dug moths out of the victim’s mouth with tweezers. Mostly it was just being careful and looking, a hair in the sink, a fingernail snagged in a rug.
He stopped at Larry’s house under a clearing sky. No stars yet but half a bright yellow moon lodged in the trees across the field. He pulled on a pair of latex gloves and got out and aimed his flashlight. A lot of mud, lot of footprints.
Larry’s truck was parked by the driveway, its door closed. He wished it was light so he could see better. It was too easy to muck up a crime scene in the dark, never knew what you’d step on. Not a bad case for waiting till morning. Of course the fresher the evidence was the better, especially fingerprints. But he didn’t have a kit for that kind of detective work, and it wasn’t his job anyway. That’s why they paid French the big bucks, fourteen an hour.
He checked out the truck first. Driver window down. He laid the back of his hand on the hood. Cold. Rain had gotten in the cab but he didn’t close the window, knew it was better to leave things the way they were.
He turned, glad the rain had stopped, but before he went to the house he clicked off his light and stood breathing the night air, listening to the far cry of a whip-poor-will and the pulse of crickets all around.
The house, small, wood, painted white, had a raised foundation and railed front porch, screened windows across the facade. He scraped mud from his boots on the bottom step of the sidewalk that led to the porch and walked up the steps. He paused a moment. There was a rocking chair with a cushion and he imagined Larry here each evening, the other half of the porch empty.
He pulled the screen door open and held it with his hip, turned the front doorknob with two fingers, this among the best places for prints. It was unlocked and he creaked it into the room with the heel of his hand and ran his light over the floor and saw it reflected in the puddle of blood. Pistol off to the side, bloodied grip.
He stepped in, located the switch and turned on the light and the room resumed itself, clean in its corners and dusted. An ancient television, a recliner with a TV tray folded against the wall. Kitchen to the left. He knelt by the pistol, not touching it. Twenty-two, looked like.
Breathing deeply, he stood. Smelled disinfectant and mildew. Only here once and he still remembered it. He closed the door, careful not to step in the blood, and crossed the room to where the dark hall stretched out of sight.
