“Could’ve surprised a crackhead,” Silas said.
“Maybe.” French still studying the pictures. “But he still had his wallet on him. And see the burns here? On his shirt, skin. That indicates a close-range shot, inches, probably.”
He left Silas at the table and walked over to the television, an ancient mahogany cabinet model with an actual knob you turned. He looked behind the console.
“I believe our victim here’s the last resident in Mississippi without a remote control. Or cable.” He walked to the window and fingered the flat wire that ran from the back of the TV out the window, up to the antenna. “No answering machine. Ain’t got a computer, either.”
“So?”
“Unusual fellow. A frozen in the 1960s kind of character. For instance,” he said, “you ever go in his shop? It’s old-timey shit. Turns his rotors by hand. No power tools. Uses a hand jack. Go in Koen’s up the road yonder and he’s got air ratchets, uses compressors and computers and shit. Engine light comes on, power window stops working, fuel injectors clogged, replace the fucking computer. That’s all they do now. Just take one computer chip out and put another one in. It’s all computers now.”
“Larry Ott don’t need to upgrade if he ain’t got any business.”
They stood looking.
Silas said, “Maybe he can’t get cable out here.”
“He could get a fucking dish.”
“Guess he reads books instead.”
“Reads books.”
They stood looking over the room.
“Chief,” Silas said. “Maybe you right.” He crossed to a shelf and picked up something he hadn’t seen yet, a DIRECTV brochure that listed the advantages and channels.
French came over beside him and touched the spine of one of the books with his gloved knuckle. “Into horror and shit. It’s a lot more of these in that first bedroom. More in all the bedrooms but the parents’. More books I bet you than in the rest of the county combined. Including the library.”
French went down the hall but Silas remained for a moment. He remembered this book, could see it in Larry’s hands as Larry described the plot. For a moment the two boys were out in the woods, walking, carrying their rifles.
Silas found French in Larry’s parents’ bedroom, the CI opening drawers. He stopped at the one piled with a woman’s clothes. “Cept for that front room this place don’t look no different than it did when I was last here last week. My guess is he ain’t touched this particular room since his momma went to the home.”
“Ain’t nothing weird about that.”
“I didn’t say it was weird. My stepsister’s mother died and she won’t let nobody go in her room except for her. Sometimes she stays in there singing Boz Scaggs songs, so don’t get me started on weird.”
Back in the kitchen French opened the refrigerator.
“Here’s something,” he said.
Silas looked past him, a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer among the eggs and containers of fast food. One can missing.
“Larry’s been a nondrinker his whole life. His daddy died in a drunkdriving accident.”
“Maybe he started.”
“Maybe.”
French went to the table and examined the surface, then took a towel from the top of the kit and spread it out and began to poke around in the black leather satchel. It reminded Silas of an old-time country doctor’s bag, but bigger; he’d envied this kit, but when he requisitioned the town council for a less expensive set, they’d denied the request.
French was rewinding a tape on his recorder/video camera, his head in a cowl of smoke. “You remember how to mold?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s some packets in my case. Hardener, too. Go get ever print you don’t know. Front and back.”
Silas carried the aerosol can of dirt hardener, three wooden frames, and three of the prepackaged molding kits outside. The kits were plastic bags of water, about the size of a bag of powdered sugar, with a smaller pack of cement inside you could feel sloshing around. He put the stuff on the porch and, with his light, began to examine the tracks of his Jeep, French’s Bronco. The rain had pretty much obliterated any other vehicles’ tracks. There were several footprints, full and partial. He ignored his own and Angie’s, but found one near the front of the walkway. He set the frame around it and got one of the bags from the porch. He pushed on it until he found the cement pack inside and squeezed with his thumbs, began to knead the bag, mixing the cement and water. Then he sprayed the mud with the hardener and tore open one end of the bag and began to pour it carefully over the footprint and then arranged the first frame. In the rear he found another set of footprints and repeated the operation.
When he came back in French had bagged the gun and was lifting prints.
“Here,” he said. “Label these.”
They spent nearly an hour cataloging the prints, French saying he imagined they were all Larry’s. Then the chief used distilled water and cotton balls to get blood samples but found no blood other than the big patch on the living room floor. And that on the pistol. Finally they went down the hall and out the back door and stood looking at the barn as the night screamed with its birds and frogs and bugs.
“You look in there?” French said, aiming his cigarette at the barn.
“Yeah. Got bushwhacked by a flock of hens.”
French snorted.
In the barn the chickens were making their noises. French probed the dark, dusty corners with his Maglite, looking for freshly disturbed dirt, loose boards, blood, hair, or the thing you’d only know once you saw it.
“Looks the same,” he said. He went in the feed room and opened the chicken roost door and aimed his light.
They looked awhile longer then went back out and lifted the heavy concrete molds and set them in French’s Bronco. Then the chief X’d the door with yellow tape, and they stood in the shadow of the barn, the CI emitting bursts of smoke that hung in the still air like sheets on a line. Silas thought he heard an owl somewhere and remembered Larry telling him you called baby owls “owlets.”
“Tomorrow,” French said, “I’m gone head up to Oxford. Talk to the sheriff. Interview some of the Rutherford girl’s friends. Boyfriend. Maybe a professor or two.” He dropped his cigarette and crushed it out with his foot, picked it up. “In the morning, after your traffic, why don’t you run back out here. Get a better look around. It’s probably more tracks you can get molds of. Just do a general walk-around. I think Ott has like three hundred acres left.”
“You think this might be connected with the Rutherford girl?”
“I ain’t ruling it out,” French said. “But you been wanting some real police work? Here’s your chance.”
They taped the back doors of the barn and the house and went around the side. On the front porch, Silas reached in to turn off the lights. Then he waited as French taped the door and locked it and tossed him Larry’s keys and cell phone. “Get these back when you’re done. And let me know if you find anything.”
“Right.”
“When he wakes up, we’ll go talk to him.”
In the yard, French hoisted his bag into the back of his Bronco. “Keep them other two mold kits,” he said. “You might need em tomorrow.”
“Okay. You want me to call Shannon?”
“Naw. She’ll find out soon enough.” He stretched. “I’m going home.”
SILAS PUT LARRY’S stuff on the kitchen table of his trailer and laid his gun belt beside it, glad to be free of its weight. The handcuffs, flashlight, extra clips. He opened the refrigerator and drew a Budweiser from the nearly empty twelve-pack and got a glass from the drying rack by the sink. During his navy stint he’d drunk beer in several countries including England, where they drink it warm, or Belgium, where they have specialized glasses for each type, or Brazil, where the beer comes in giant bottles you split with your table mates, drinking from small glasses. He’d kept the latter habit here, but only in private. In the Bus, he drank from bottles because people would think a glass affected. He took the short water glass he liked and the bottle into the living room and set them on the coffee table. He sank back in the old sofa and pulled off his boots to let his socked feet breathe. He couldn’t afford a
