An Ice cold Grave

Eleven

SOMETIME during the night, or rather toward the early morning, the electricity came back on. I'm sure it happened after dawn, because it didn't wake us up. I was lying there wondering why the lamp across the room was on, when I realized the miracle of electricity was once again visiting us. I had mixed feelings about electricity, for obvious reasons, but on this day I was glad to see it. I stuck a toe out from under the mound of blankets, and it didn't freeze immediately. I smiled. This was really good. And my arm was much better.

I hauled myself out of bed and went into the bathroom. I brushed and sponged, and changed my clothes, managing to do everything but deal with the bra. That I just left off. It wasn't that noticeable anyway since I was wearing both a tank top and a sweatshirt, so who was going to know?

The police, that's who. Just as I was trying to figure out how to put on clean socks, there was a knock at the door. I realized I'd heard the feet coming up, I'd just been thinking so hard about dressing myself I hadn't paid attention.

I was glad I was awake to answer the door, especially since I'd introduced Tolliver as my brother to the police chief, and she was here right now, and only one bed was in use. It was credible that I could have gotten up first and made my bed, and I just didn't want to have to explain or endure the horrified stare I'd get otherwise.

Sandra Rockwell had bigger fish to fry than worrying about our sleeping arrangements, as it turned out. Tolliver sat up and looked as she pushed past me into the cabin, looking around her as she did so. "Sheriff," I said, "what's up?"

Sandra looked under the beds, in the bathroom, and then she opened the trapdoor and went down in the storage shed underneath. When she came up, she looked more relaxed, if not any happier.

"Okay, I'm not happy with you doing this," I said, and Tolliver barely bothered turning his back while he pulled off his sleep pants and pulled on his jeans. She gave him a good enough look that I knew she could replay the moment later, and I felt like whaling her one.

"Have you seen Chuck Almand?" she asked.

I was very surprised, which was a massive understatement.

"Not since yesterday. We saw him then. Why would we have seen him? What's happened to him?"

"Can you tell me exactly what happened?"

"Ah. Okay. I wanted to be sure I hadn't overlooked anything in the barn. It just seemed like one of those loose ends, you know? So I went back. I knew it was a stupid thing to do, but I hoped I could just slip in and out without anyone knowing. Chuck came in while I was in there. He got mad at me, and hit me."

"Hit you?" But she wasn't surprised, not at all. She'd heard all this from Chuck's father, no doubt.

"Yeah, he slugged me in the stomach."

"I imagine you were pretty angry about that."

"I wasn't happy."

"I'll bet your brother wasn't happy, either."

"I'm right here," Tolliver said. "No, I definitely wasn't happy. But his dad came in, and the boy just seemed so disturbed, we left."

"And you didn't call us to report the whole thing?"

"No, we didn't. We figured you-all had more important things to be doing." She knew we hadn't called. She was just underscoring all the mistakes we'd made. I felt worse and worse. Going back to the barn had been my fault, my bad decision, and if the boy was gone, maybe that was my fault, too.

"So no one knows where he is?" Tolliver asked. "Since when?"

"One of the other counselors from the health center came by, maybe an hour after the incident in the barn, as close as I can make out. This is a close friend of Tom's, and he wanted to talk to Chuck to see if he could help." The sheriff made a face. She didn't believe counseling would make any difference in Chuck's case, it was clear. "So Tom starts looking for the boy to get him to talk to the counselor, but Chuck wasn't there. So the counselor insisted Tom call the police. He did, and then he began calling Chuck's friends. No one had seen the boy."

"You haven't had any luck finding someone who saw him around town?"

"No luck. But we thought he might have tried to find you, to finish what he'd started. Or to apologize. With a kid that messed up, who knows what he was going to do."

Deputy Rob Tidmarsh came in, stomping his feet just like the sheriff had done. "Didn't see nothing, Sheriff," he said.

So she'd been distracting us while her minion checked out the property. Well, there was nothing to find, and there was no point getting angry about it. She'd done what she had to do.

"We might need to call our lawyer," I said.

"I've got him on speed dial," Tolliver said.

"Or maybe," Rockwell said, overriding our voices, "you found Chuck and decided to punch him back." She was looking at Tolliver as she said this, as if I were accustomed to sending Tolliver to do my punching.

"We were here all night," Tolliver said. "We got a phone call at—what time did Manfred call us, Harper?"

"Oh, about three," I said.

"What evidence is a phone call on a cell phone?" Rockwell asked. "And did Manfred talk to you?" She was looking at Tolliver with no friendly face.

"He talked to me, but Tolliver was here."

"He won't say he talked to Tolliver, then."

"Well, he may have heard him in the background. But he didn't talk to him directly, no." Calling our lawyer in Atlanta was beginning to seem like a possibility we should bear in mind. Art Barfield had made a mint off us lately, and I was sure he wouldn't mind making a little more.

"I'm not in the habit of abducting boys," Tolliver said. "But of course there's someone here in town who is. Why are you looking at me instead of trying to find out who took all the other boys? Isn't it far more likely that that's who's got Chuck Almand? And if that's so, isn't the boy running out of time?"

I figured Sheriff Rockwell was grinding her teeth together in frustration, from the tensed look of her face.

"Do you think we're not looking?" she said, almost biting the words out. "Now that he doesn't have the use of his usual killing ground, where would he have taken the boy? We're searching every shed and barn in the county, but we have to check out all other possibilities. You were one of them, and a pretty likely one at that."

I didn't think we were so damn likely, but then, we'd had the run-in with Chuck and his dad. There was something more I could tell the law.

"He told me he was sorry," I said to the sheriff.

"What?"

"The boy said he was sorry. For hitting me. He told me to find him later."

"Why? Why do you think that was? What sense does that make?" The tall deputy was looking over Rockwell's shoulder at me as though I'd started barking.

"At the time I just thought—I have to say, I thought it was just some kind of mental illness talking. He looked so strange when he said it."

"And what do you think now?"

"I think…I don't know what I think."

"That's not a hell of a lot of help."

"I'm not a psychologist, or a profiler, or any kind of law enforcement person," I said. "I just find dead people." I just find dead people. Chuck knew that. And he'd said, "Come find me."

"Then we should get you out searching, too," Sandra Rockwell was saying.

I was sitting there in the grip of a horrible idea, wondering how I could have possibly thought only a day ago that the world might be better if someone took Chuck Almand out right now. That was before I'd seen his secret face, the face he wore when he told me he had to hit me.

Tolliver started to say something, stopped. I looked at him. It wasn't the time to remind them that I got paid for this work. His instinct to hold in his words had been a good one. No, I wasn't reading his mind. We just know each other very well.

"Where do you want me to look?" I asked, and my voice was coming from far away.

That stumped her for a moment. "You'd know if the body was new, right?" she said.

"Yeah."

"Then we'll just take you everywhere we can think of," she said.

I thought of Manfred sitting at the hospital, or in his hotel room, hoping we'd show up. I thought of the road out of town, out of this situation. But weighing that against the life of a boy, what could I say? Which Rockwell knew, of course.

"You're ready to go, right? We'll swing back later and pick up Mr. Lang here," the sheriff said.

"No, I think not," I said right back. "I'm not going anywhere without him." Though it would be better if Tolliver went to help Manfred, if we had to be separated. But then…no. It was better if we stayed together. I was going to be selfish about this.

Tolliver vanished into the little bathroom while I made the sheriff useful by asking her to help me with my shoes. Tidmarsh tried not to snort, but he didn't quite succeed. Sheriff Rockwell was game, and my hiking boots were laced up and tied in a neat bow in no time. I took my pills for the day and picked up the cabin a bit while we waited. I tried to bank the fire so it could be revived. The electricity might be back on, but there was certainly a chance it would go off again. The fireplace was still essential. I had a gloomy feeling we'd be spending another night here.

Manfred would be better than I at solving this problem. Maybe if he went to the house, or to the barn where we'd last seen Chuck, he could trace the boy somehow. On the other hand, it would be inhumane to ask Manfred to work just now. And he might not be up to it. He'd told me several times his psychic sense was weaker than his grandmother's. I thought he was wrong, but that was what he believed.

I called him, since we were waiting, anyway. Manfred sounded sad but collected. I explained the situation to him, and he said that he'd heard from his mother again, that she was making better time now that the roads were clearing up. "We'll see you later," I said. "You hang in there, Manfred."

"I don't trust anyone here," he said. "I don't trust the doctor, I don't trust the nurses, I don't think the hospital guy is on the level. Even the minister gives me the creeps. You think I'm being paranoid? You think there's really something wrong here?"

"That's hard to answer at this point," I said.

"Oh, right, the sheriff's there," Manfred said dismally. "I just can't throw the feeling off, Harper. Something's really wrong here."

"In Doraville? Or specifically at the hospital?"

"I'm just not sharp enough to say," he said after a long pause. "I don't have the gift like my grandmother did."

"I think you're wrong. I think all you need is some experience," I said. "I think you do have it in you."

"You don't know how much that means to me," he said. "Listen, I've got to go now. I've got an idea."

That didn't sound good. That sounded like he was about to do something on his own. Young men on their own in Doraville didn't fare well. I tried to call him back right away.

He did pick up, finally. "Where are you going?" I asked. Tolliver had come out of the bathroom, finally, clean and dressed. He stood frozen in place by the anxiety in my voice, his dirty clothes in his hands.

"I'm going to look for the boy," Manfred said.

"No, don't go without someone with you," I said. "Tell us where you're going."

"You might get in trouble again."

"Hey, we've got the sheriff, remember? Where you going?"

"I'm going to that barn again. That's where I have to go."

"No, wait for us, okay? Manfred?"

"I'll meet you there."

But it would take us a lot longer to get there, since we were starting from the lake.

I told the sheriff what the situation was, and she went ballistic. "We've searched the barn," she said. "We've gone over and over it. That dirt floor is empty, the stalls are empty, there's no loft. It's an empty wooden building with walls so thin there couldn't be a hidden space in there. There aren't even any more dead animals, I'm almost a hundred percent sure, and you told us yourself there aren't any bodies there."

"No dead ones," I said. Then I said, "No dead ones…at least there weren't any…oh, shit. We got to get there." The feeling of dread that had blossomed in my head now bloomed in full. I didn't speak to anyone again.

We got into the patrol car and onto the road within five minutes. There wasn't much traffic and the roads were a hell of a lot clearer, but it was still a good twenty-minute drive into Doraville, then another ten minutes through the town to the street where the Almands lived.

Instead of creeping up to the barn from the rear of the property as we'd done yesterday, we pulled into the driveway by the aging frame house, and I got out as quickly as I could. My muscles were sorer today than they'd been the previous day, and I was skipping the pain medicine, so I was feeling everything I did.

Tolliver put his arm around my waist to help me along, and we stumbled down the remains of the drive that led beyond the house to the barn. I could catch a glimpse of Manfred's car on the track that ran behind the property.

And I felt the vibration, the stirring in my head. A very fresh body. "Oh, no," I said, "oh no no no." I began to run, and Tolliver had to grip me under my shoulder to keep me up. The sheriff caught fire when she saw my distress and she and the deputy pulled ahead of us easily. She drew her gun, and I don't even know if she realized she was doing it.

We all screeched to halt when we entered the dilapidated barn.

Tom Almand was standing in front of the stalls at the rear of the barn. He had a shovel in his hands. About three yards in front of him, Manfred was keeping to his feet with great effort. He was bleeding from the head. Manfred had his own weapon, a short-handled spade. It was so shiny and new I suspected Manfred had bought it that very morning, maybe on the way to the barn. He hadn't gotten in a lick yet.

"Tom, put the shovel down," the sheriff said.

"Tell him first," Tom Almand said. "He came in here to attack me."

"Not true," Manfred said.

"I mean, look at him, he's a freak," Tom said. There was a snarl on his narrow face. "I live here."

"Tom, put down the shovel. Now."

"There's a human body here," I said. "There's a body here now." I just wanted to be clear they understood. I just wanted them to get that asshole Tom Almand out of the way.

Manfred took two more steps back from Tom, and put his spade on the floor.

And Tom ran at Manfred with his shovel raised to strike.

The deputy shot him first, and missed. Sheriff Rockwell managed to get him in the arm, and he screamed and crumpled.

Tolliver and I stood against the wall while the deputy rushed forward to cover the bleeding counselor, and Manfred fell to his knees, his hands clasped to his head; not to indicate surrender, but because his head was injured.

We started forward to help our friend, but the sheriff said sharply, "Stay back! Stay out of the scene!" and we did. She was calling for ambulances on her radio, and when the shovel was beyond Tom Almand's reach, she handcuffed him despite his bleeding arm, and searched him very thoroughly. No weapons. She told Tom Almand about his rights, but he didn't respond. His face was as blank as it had been at the church the other night. The small man had gone somewhere else, mentally.

"Do you still feel a body?" she asked when that was done. It took me a second to realize she was talking to me, I was so wrapped up in the tension of what had just happened, the fear that Tom Almand would charge someone again, the possibility of Manfred being critically injured. I didn't worry about Tom's arm wound at all. He might bleed out before the ambulance arrived, and that would be fine with me.

"Yes," I said. "There's a very fresh body. Can I show you where?"

"How close do you have to come to this man?"

"I have to go to the first stall."

"Okay, go."

I very carefully worked my way around the tableau of bleeding men and law enforcement to get to the opening to the stall. I stepped inside on the old straw and began kicking it aside. It kept falling back into its original position, so I began picking up handfuls and tossing them over the side of the stall. "Tolliver," I said. He was at my side immediately, helping. The shovel or the spade would have come in handy, but I knew better than to suggest it. "Isn't this a latch?" I asked.

Tolliver said, "I wish we had a flashlight," and one landed on the floor beside us. Sheriff Rockwell had had one on her belt. Tolliver turned it on and aimed it at the boards at our feet.

"Trapdoor here," Tolliver said, and the deputy cursed. I guessed he'd been one of the ones who'd searched the barn.

Tom laughed, and I looked out at the tense group of people in the barn. For about a dime, the deputy would have kicked him in the head. His body language spoke loud and clear. I could hear emergency vehicles approaching, and I wanted to open the trapdoor before they got here and there was even more confusion.

Tolliver found the latch quickly. It was very strong, I guess to hold out against battering from below.

We did need a shovel to open it, and without asking Tolliver went across the barn to take Manfred's. We stuck the spade in the little opening and pried. After Tolliver got it up a little, I held the spade with my good hand while Tolliver grasped the edge and swung back the trapdoor. It was very heavy, and we found out why—there was insulation liberally tacked on the underside, which would muffle any sounds from below.

I looked down into a kind of pit, maybe six by six. Probably eight feet deep, it was reachable by a steep wooden ladder. The dead body of Chuck Almand lay at the foot of the ladder. He was staring up at us. The boy had shot himself in the head. What drew the eye first was the terrible damage to Chuck's head.

Behind the corpse there was a naked boy chained to the wall. His mouth was duct-taped shut. He was whimpering behind it, and he was looking over his shoulder and up at us with an expression I never want to see again. He was spattered with Chuck's blood and I suppose some of his own. There were cuts on his body, and the blood there was crusted and black. The cuts were swollen and red with infection. He had no blanket, no jacket, nothing, and he'd been in the pit with the corpse all night.

I ran out of the barn and vomited. One of the ambulance drivers rushing in stopped to check on me, and I just waved my arm to indicate the interior of the barn.

After a few minutes, Tolliver came out. I was leaning against the peeling wood, wishing I were anywhere but here.

"He killed himself so you'd find him," Tolliver said. "So you'd find out what his father was doing."

"So I'd have a corpse to find," I said. "Oh, Jesus, he took such a chance. What if I hadn't come back?"

"What if Manfred hadn't decided he had to check the barn again?"

"Do you think Tom Almand's known where Chuck was all this time, since he reported him missing?"

"No, but I guess he didn't have a chance to come out here to check. That other counselor asking to see Chuck made Tom report him missing." Tolliver shuddered. "I never want to see anything like that again."

"He sacrificed himself," I said. I couldn't get my thoughts together. "And it was almost—almost—for nothing."

"He wasn't thinking good," Tolliver said in a massive understatement. "And he was just thirteen."

The stretchers went by, Manfred's first, his face white as death and his eyes open and blank.

"Manfred!" I called, just wanting him to know that someone who knew him was near, knew what he had done. But his face didn't change.

Tom Almand came out next, his eyes closed, his lips in a strange smile. He was now handcuffed to the stretcher by his good arm, and there was a bandage on the arm that had been shot. I hoped he'd been shot good, and I wondered if Sheriff Rockwell had been truly trying to hit his arm. It had been an alarming moment, but then, that was what law enforcement people trained for, right?

Maybe the arm was best. Maybe the people he'd wounded the most, or the survivors he'd wounded most, could get something out of his trial and conviction. Surely he'd be tried and convicted, wouldn't he? We could follow it in the national news. The media loves a serial killer trial, whether the killer being tried is gay or straight, black or white or brown. There's no discrimination in that field.

I realized I was thinking crazy, and I also realized we had no place here. But the two SBI agents were running across the back lane like the barn was on fire with a baby inside, and they weren't about to let us go. Stuart and Klavin weren't out of breath, because they were fit agents, and they stood right in front of us. "You're here again," Agent Stuart said. He had on proper gloves and an L.L. Bean heavy outdoor-guy coat, and gleaming boots that went halfway up his calves. If he didn't look like the little mountaineer! Klavin was a bit more downscale, with a battered waterproof coat that had seen several years of use and a knit cap that had earflaps.

"He killed himself," I told them. They would want to know.

"Who?" I thought Stuart was going to shake me, he was so anxious to know everything.

"Chuck Almand. He killed himself with a gun."

Klavin said, "Who was in the ambulance?"

"Tom Almand and Manfred Bernardo," Tolliver said.

They looked at each other blankly. "The kid's dad and the psychic's grandson," Tolliver said.

"She died last night," Stuart said.

"Yes, she did. And her grandson almost died today," I said.

"The last victim is alive," I said, and they were in the barn so fast you couldn't see them for the smoke.

"Why haven't they brought him out?" Tolliver leaned and looked in, but then he gave up. He didn't want to go in that barn again, and neither did I.

"Maybe they can't get him unlocked," I said. Tolliver nodded. That seemed reasonable.

"Wonder who he is," Tolliver said after a long moment. The weather might be much better than it had been, but it was still cold standing out there, and we had nothing to do.

I turned to Tolliver and hugged him. His arms slid around me, and we stood there in the bright cold day, clinging to each other. "We'll find out," I said, my lips against his neck. "It'll be in the papers, or on the news." The tortured body, slumped against the wall, the bloodstains everywhere. The poor dead boy on the floor of that miserable pit. Jesus, God. This is not what you intended people for.

I hadn't thought in Christian terms for a long time, and I was surprised to find myself thinking in them now. And I hadn't rebelled, either, hadn't had the "Why, God?" thoughts. Those were bad, those were pointless. Of course, I'd never found such atrocities, so closely linked, in adjacent graves.

"Chuck saved that boy's life," I said numbly. "He provided a dead body for me to find."

"Do you think he really cut up those animals?"

"Maybe his dad made Chuck do it, hoping Chuck would follow in his own footsteps. Maybe Tom thought if Chuck was guilty of something he'd be less likely to report his dad."

"Xylda seemed pretty sure Chuck did it."

"I'd hate to think she was wrong in her last big reading."

"Me, too." Tolliver sounded grim. "You think her loathing of him was what drove Chuck to tie everything up this way? I mean, everyone at the same time looking at him with such disgust, such dislike? And his dad acting right along with them. When he knew better, and the boy knew that."

"Chuck was a hero. He survived living with a father that killed boys for fun."

"But he didn't tell anyone."

"Maybe he didn't know, until the animals were dug up. Maybe then he realized his dad was the one killing the boys, or maybe Tom told him then. Like, ‘Everyone thinks you're evil and sick now, so I'll show you something really evil and sick! Like it?'"

"Or maybe he knew all along," Tolliver said, more realistically. "Maybe he kept silent because he loved his dad, or was scared of his dad, or because he kind of liked torturing the animals and felt he and Tom were two of a kind. Maybe he even helped, with the boys. There must have been times it would have been handy to have an extra pair of hands. Some of the boys were big, and heavy. Football players. Adolescents who'd gotten their growth. Frankly, someone as little as Tom Almand, I don't know how he managed it."

"But Chuck put a stop to it." I buried my face in Tolliver's jacket. He ran his fingers through my hair, taking care to avoid the shaved spot on the left side of my head. He patted me. It was intensely comforting.

Finally they brought the last victim out. He was covered with blankets, there was an IV running already, and he was strapped to the gurney. His eyes were closed, and tears were leaking down his filthy face.

"What's your name, son?" Sheriff Rockwell was asking.

"Mel," the boy whispered. "Mel Chesney. From Queen's Table, up near Clearstream."

"Mel, how long have you been down there?" said Klavin, keeping pace on the other side.

"Two days," he said. "Two days. I think."

And then he said, "I can't talk about it."

I didn't blame him at all.

The boy had been there yesterday when we'd had our confrontation with Chuck. If Chuck had just told us then…but his father had come in, and maybe he simply couldn't. I wondered if Mel Chesney had been in the hole when the police were digging up the animals. Oh, God, that was too bitter to think about.

I was sure every law enforcement person on the scene was wondering the same thing. Mel Chesney had been down there for hours by himself and then with a corpse, thinking all the while he was going to be tortured to death. It was almost a miracle he hadn't died of hypothermia.

No one tried to stop us as we began going to the sheriff's car. But we couldn't go back to the cabin and get our stuff unless someone drove us. The sheriff said, "Rob, take them to the station." Rob Tidmarsh raised his forefinger to tell us he'd be one more minute.

Rockwell glared at us as if we were an annoying detail she had to clear off her slate before she turned her attention to more important things, and I think that was exactly the case. "We got to process this scene, and it's gonna take a while," she said. "You two go sit at the station, and when I can spare someone to run you out to the lake, I'll send 'em back to get you."

"Rob can't take us on out there?"

"Rob's going to pick up more film while he's at the station. The state forensic boys are going to be here as soon as they can get here, but we want our own pictures. Rob'll be coming right back here, and for now, this is the most important spot in Knott County. So you two are gonna have to cool your heels for a while."

We'd been doing plenty of that.

There was no help for it. No matter how irritated we might feel—and I for one felt plenty irritated—Rob was going to dump us at the station.

"Will they take the boy to the local hospital?" I asked the deputy.

"No, they'll take him on to the bigger hospital in Asheville," Rob said. "The SBI guys insisted. We got good doctors here." He sounded deeply resentful.

"I got good treatment here," I said. Admittedly, I wanted to be on Rob's good side in case we could get him to take us out to the cabin later. But it was the truth. I was willing to believe, a small town like this, the hospital wouldn't have the big diagnostic machines larger hospitals could acquire, but I seemed to be mending fine, and the nurses had been very kind, if very busy.

Rob relaxed a little.

There's always something strange about riding through town in a cop car when you're seated in the back with a wire mesh between you and the driver. It just makes you feel guilty of something, and you feel awfully conspicuous. When we pulled in back of the station and got out, the media swarmed around the back of the station wanting to know if we'd been arrested. Damn it. I wasn't in the mood to put up with this. I couldn't understand why the vicious swarm hadn't migrated to the old barn.

"We kept radio silence and used our cells," Rob said when I asked him. He seemed completely open now, and he made a point of walking by my side and holding open the back door to the station, making it clear to the watching reporters that I was in favor.

Inside, there was chaos. The news was spreading in the building and it was only a matter of time before it would flow outward.

Rob looked as if he didn't know what to do with us once we'd gotten to the sheriff's office, so he stuck us in one of the interview rooms, told us where the snack and drink machines were, and said there were some magazines in the waiting area if we wanted to go get them. He was obviously in a tearing hurry to collect the film and get back out to the latest crime scene, so we nodded and he took off.

There ensued several hours of boredom. We could have been on the road getting the hell out of Doraville. We could have been in bed together enjoying our new relationship, an idea that got Tolliver's vote. (I would have enjoyed some aspects of that, but truthfully, I was pretty sore in unexpected places, and my arm had been too busy for a cracked arm.) Or we could have been making money on another job. But instead, we sat in the drab room.

For a change of pace, we made a foray to the station waiting room out front. We commandeered all the magazines, bought junk food from the machines, and tried to stay out of the way.

After four hours, the sheriff came back. She, Klavin, and Stuart came into the room with a couple more chairs, and we went over everything all over again.

"And you really think this boy Chuck killed himself so you'd find the other boy?" Stuart asked for the fifth time.

I shrugged. "I don't know what was going through his mind."

"He could have written a note, he could have called us, he could have called you, for that matter, and said, ‘My dad has put a boy in a hidden room,' and that would have solved the problem."

"That wouldn't have solved the problem for him," Tolliver said.

"He was an adolescent boy," I said. "He was full of drama and horror and guilt and sorrow. I guess he was trying to atone for himself and his father."

"So what do you think, Ms. Connelly? Do you think he tortured the animals willingly?"

"If he did, that enjoyment horrified him." I didn't think there was a simple explanation of Chuck Almand's behavior. I thought at the end he'd tried to do the right thing, but his thinking processes hadn't foreseen the possibility that he could come out the other side of the horror of his situation, come out and heal and recover. He just hadn't lived long enough to believe that he had a future after his dad's arrest, and he wanted his dad to stop killing. At least, that was the way I interpreted Chuck's actions.

They talked at us for a long time, trying to pry things out of us that weren't there to be gotten. "And don't tell anyone anything you saw in the barn," Klavin said. "Not until we get the case completely locked."

That was easy to promise. We had no desire to talk about what we'd seen.

I had some doubts that the case was all wrapped up, but I kept them to myself. After all we'd done, they still weren't going to listen to my speculations. But doubt niggled at me, and I had that feeling of incompleteness.

Now we had to find Manfred and his mother, who must be wondering what she'd done in her previous life to merit the punishment she was taking.

I asked the sheriff where Manfred was, and she surprised me by telling me he'd been kept here at the Knott County Hospital. He'd asked to stay here, she said.

"I can understand that," I said to Tolliver as we climbed into Rob's patrol car again. He'd finally been detailed to take us back to the cabin. "Otherwise, it would complicate his mom's life so much, and if he can get the care he needs here, that's better than moving him up to Asheville."

"The doctor said he'd be okay here," Rob said from the driver's seat.

"Okay, that's good," I said. Then I remembered that Manfred had suspected someone had killed his grandmother during the night. Maybe it wasn't so good that Manfred was in this hospital after all. Shit. More to worry about.

So when we got back to the cabin, we packed everything—just in case—and put it in the car—just in case. We put out the fire. We hung the cabin key from the rearview mirror so we wouldn't forget to return it to Twyla—just in case. Then we drove back into Doraville. We'd taken the opportunity to freshen up, since we'd had so little time that morning, and we felt better now. My arm was aching because I'd been more active that day than I should, and I took a pain pill. I felt almost ashamed to pop one, there were so many other people who were suffering far worse than I; but the only pain I could ease was my own.

"Can I just keep driving?" Tolliver asked as we came to the major intersection in Doraville. Straight ahead would take us out of town. Turning left would take us to the hospital.

"I wish," I said. "But I think we have to make sure Manfred and his mom are okay. Don't we?"

Tolliver looked stubborn. "I bet Manfred's mom is tough. She'd have to be, with Xylda for a mother. I bet they're fine."

I gave him a sideways look.

"Yeah, okay," he said, and took the left turn.