official explanation could be useful.
“That’s pretty much it,” I said.
“Well, what’s happened here doesn’t have anything to do with that, does it?” A siren grew louder.
I hesitated before I answered. “I don’t know.”
He sighed and drew a small revolver from his pocket. “If you won’t talk to me honestly, son, I’m going to have to do things neither one of us likes.” He took a pair of handcuffs from his back pocket. “I’m going to make a citizen’s arrest. I’m not going to have trouble with you, am I?” The siren was close.
“Me? I’m Mr. Cooperation. You don’t have to cuff me.”
“I’m afraid I do. I have to look around now. I’ll be back in a few to let you loose, but I can’t rightly take any chances. Not with what’s been going on today. Hold your wrist next to the handle there.”
He pointed at the oven door. It was an old-fashioned black iron handle and attached pretty solidly. I put my wrist beside it so he could cuff me easily.
If Cardinal was nervous about me, he didn’t show it. I didn’t let my nervousness show, either. I doubted he’d be convicted if he “accidentally” shot me. Hell, he probably wouldn’t even be arrested. I was an ex-con from L.A. Who cared about me?
And he hadn’t said a word about the things I did in Hammer Bay.
The siren fell silent. Cardinal went outside and waved to someone, then returned to the house and walked through the other rooms.
The first paramedic was a black woman about my age with unruly hair pulled into a ponytail. She was squat like a fireplug and had broad, strong hands. The man who followed her through the door was a six-foot-four white guy with a wool-lined hunter’s cap and a bushy gray beard. They carried a gurney.
“Holy …” The woman let her voice trail off.
“That’s Isabelle, all right,” Bushy Beard said. “What a fucking day.”
Ponytail stepped up to the body. I could hear her shoe splash in the blood. “Damn.”
Bushy Beard had a clipboard in his hands, but he wasn’t writing anything down. Instead, he was looking at me. “I knew her.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said. That made his eye twitch. “I’m the one who found her.”
“Yeah, right,” Ponytail said. “That’s why you’re in cuffs. This woman went to grade school with my mother. She drove our whole family to my grandfather’s funeral.”
They were angry and trying to talk themselves into letting it go. It wasn’t a sudden anger, though. They seemed more tired than shocked. I wondered what else had happened that day. Had they been to the Wilbur estate? Had someone been hurt at the burning barn?
“You shouldn’t have done this,” Bushy Beard said.
“Shouldn’t have done what? Find a body?” I was getting annoyed. Everyone was so sure I was guilty just because they didn’t recognize my face.
“Yeah,” Ponytail said. “Right.”
“What did you want?” Bushy asked. “Money?”
I took a deep calming breath and tried to shrug it off. These people had just lost a friend, I told myself. There was nothing to be gained by losing my temper.
But he wasn’t done. “How did it feel? Did you get off on it?”
That was my limit. “Go fuck yourself,” I said. “You think I’d come to fucking
That was what he wanted. He moved toward me. “It must have been something else, then.”
“Kick his ass, Bill,” Ponytail said.
I had the ghost knife in my pocket but no way to use it without both of them seeing. I was glad that I’d offered my left to Cardinal. If I was going to fight one-handed, I wanted to use my right.
He lumbered toward me. I threw a right jab at his chin. He was expecting it and caught my arm. Grappling, we fell against the stovetop, his massive weight bearing down on me. I wriggled my right arm, trying to get it in a position to gouge at his face, but he was too heavy and too close. His breath smelled of cheap teriyaki and expensive mints.
He hit the side of my face with a huge, heavy left. It hurt, but I’d been hit harder in the previous twenty-four hours.
The punch loosened things up between us. Before Bushy Bill could close in again, I drove my knee into his crotch. He hissed, doubled over, and staggered back a couple of steps. I threw a right elbow toward his face, but he felt it coming and leaned away from it. He threw a wide, swinging right at me. I couldn’t block it with my left, so I ducked and caught it on the crown of my head. It hurt, but I knew it hurt him more.
“For goodness sakes!” a thin voice yelled. “What’s going on here?”
Cardinal stood in the kitchen doorway with a swaddled baby in his arms. He had a diaper bag over his shoulder and an unhappy look on his face.
Bill shuffled to the opposite counter and stared at the floor, looking as if he would back all the way through the wall and out of town if he could.
Cardinal marched up to him and laid the baby in his arms. I caught a glimpse of its tiny, perfect little face. Cardinal folded the blanket over its eyes to block the light. “Don’t wake that baby, Bill. Take him out to the ambulance and check him over, you hear me? Check him over good. Now.”
