Silence the Dead

SEVENTY-FOUR

The Fourth of July

The rubble of the Bird’s Nest still smoldered at eight o’clock in the morning, despite the rain that had come down steadily since before dawn. The wood and the dirt and the air still stank of the gasoline, though the fire had fed from it for almost an hour before they could extinguish the flames.

Ever-folksy Clamp Reems, puffing his fool’s corncob pipe, faced the reporters gathered under a hastily erected square canvas shelter. Besides Jen, there were only six, including the television pair that had scrambled from Rockford when the news came over their scanner. A small diesel backhoe idled behind Clamp, waiting to resume its careful probing. Clamp had just allowed as to how no one knew anything yet, and he had time for only two or three questions.

Though the day was dark with rain, Jen wore enormous black sunglasses beneath her broad brimmed hat. She touched at her cheek. It was dry, for now.

She glanced again at Roy Powell, holding an umbrella that ludicrously matched the khaki plaid lining of his double-breasted Burberry raincoat. He’d called her at two in the morning to give her the news. She’d made him promise to not let the Peering County Sheriff’s Department head the investigation. True to his word, he got two state troopers dispatched to the scene immediately and stood with them now, waiting for the state’s crime scene team to arrive. He was a decent man. He knew about her sister, Laurel.

She’d gotten to the Bird’s Nest at two-forty, when the flames were still high. At four-eighteen, she’d watched the body being taken away, and remained to watch the others watch – Clamp and the cops and the firemen and Roy Powell – as the backhoe continued to pluck gingerly at the debris for signs of more corpses. Only four hours later, when Clamp moved to stand beneath the makeshift shelter and profess amazement to the press, did she get out of her car.

‘What are your feelings about the death of Mayor Bassett?’ the grizzled veteran from the Des Moines Register asked. She’d seen him before, over the years. He was tenacious.

‘I prefer to believe Mayor Bassett is alive and doing just fine.’ Reems took a fast puff from his pipe, trying for his usual confident Colonel Cornpone, but his voice was higher than normal. Oddly, he kept glancing south, to the overpass, where there was nothing going on at all.

‘Please don’t fence with me, Deputy,’ the reporter said. ‘There was a body in the rubble. Bassett’s truck was the only vehicle in the parking lot. It’s Bassett.’

‘Let’s be patient and hope for the best.’ There was no doubt: Reems’s voice had a squeaky element of nervousness that she’d never heard before.

‘Mayor Bassett was quite vocal about the way the Betty Jo Dean case was botched,’ another reporter said. ‘He inferred you were involved in the desecration of her corpse.’

Reems sent another puff of smoke up to the brim of his hat, where it hung for an instant, the only cloud in an otherwise guileless face. ‘We get along fine. In fact, Mac is going to introduce me at today’s festivities.’

Again, he spoke as though Mac were alive. The corncob, the present tense; it was the innocence of a clever man.

‘If not Bassett, who was pulled dead from here this morning?’

Clamp lowered his pipe conspiratorially. ‘Some might argue it was a hired man, an arsonist, but don’t print that.’

‘Insurance?’ the television reporter asked.

‘This is off the record,’ he said, glancing at the overpass before looking directly at the television camera, ‘but there are rumors poor Mac is having financial difficulties. Best we wait for the investigators to do their jobs.’ He put the pipe to his mouth and sent up more smoke. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me-’

Three decades of bile rose up fast in Jen’s throat. ‘Were you aware Bassett was going to announce big news at the courthouse today?’ she asked. It was a stretch, but that didn’t matter now.

‘What?’ The word came out dry, a rasp. Clamp tugged the pipe from his mouth.

‘Bassett inferred that instead of introducing you, he was going to conduct his last press briefing.’

‘About what?’

‘Come on, Deputy. It could only have been about Betty Jo Dean.’

‘That was a long time ago, Miss Jessup.’

‘You had so many leads.’

‘All of them were lousy. We ended up chasing our tails.’

‘Yes, but now there’s the news that the head is not hers.’

‘If you’ll excuse me-’

‘A question on another topic?’ she shouted.

‘One more. That’s all.’

‘It’s about my sister, Laurel.’

Reems put a confused, tentative smile on his face for the tele-vision camera. ‘I don’t believe I’ve met your sister.’

‘Supposedly, you investigated her death the same week as the others back in 1982. She was run off the road. Then again, you might not remember. So many people were being murdered around here.’

‘Now wait a-’

‘No, you wait. Laurel was looking into the killings-’

Reems gave a jerky wave to the backhoe operator. The diesel fired up. The press briefing was over.

Reems hurried through the rain to his car. Spinning his wheels out of the lot, she expected him to head north, to the sanctuary of the sheriff’s department or to his horse farm, farther still. But Reems swung his black Crown Victoria south, toward the overpass.

She ran to her own car and followed, staying well back when he turned east onto Poor Farm Road and disappeared around the bend. He was headed to the river. It was no surprise; Mac had seen him there, checking erosion, just yesterday. The tears started again. She wiped them away with the back of her hand. Not now. Now, she needed to see.

She slowed to a crawl, rounding the bend. He’d left his car across from the woods by the last cabin.

She parked and moved through the trees. The roaring river and the steadily beating rain covered the sound of her footfalls.

He was kneeling, checking the erosion at the partially uprooted base of a tree. The tree was dead, its leaves brown and curled, and had canted a few degrees toward the water, beginning a slow, perhaps months-long fall into the water. It seemed an odd thing to worry about when a man had just been killed in a fire.

She went back to her car to wait. Reems appeared ten minutes later. His hands and forearms were muddy. He’d been digging in the dirt.

She gunned her engine and sped forward.

He looked up slowly as she skidded to a stop on the wet gravel. His face was blank, confused. She powered down her window.

‘The river,’ he said slowly, almost as though he were in shock.

She stared at him for a moment, until she was sure he was barely aware she was there. And then she sped back toward the ruin of the Bird’s Nest.

SEVENTY-FIVE

Clutching everything so she wouldn’t have to risk another trip to her car in the rain, April eased inside Maggie’s front door. Maggie quickly shut it behind her.

‘I’ve been afraid to move the curtains,’ Maggie said. ‘Any reporters out there?’

‘Not so far, and none at my place, either,’ April said, ‘but two were at Mac’s house.’

‘They say anything about those?’

April dropped the shoes on the carpet and draped the blue suit and white shirt across the back of an upholstered chair. ‘Considering the condition of the body, they must have thought I was crazy, fetching casket clothes.’

‘Did you go by the Bird’s Nest again?’

‘It’s the same as when they first called me, a pile of black lumber, no more than six feet high, except it’s freakier in the daylight. It’s still smoking, even with the rain. A backhoe is picking through it, real slow.’

‘You’re sure the body’s gone?’

‘They scooped up what they could before they called me, Maggie.’

‘Found him fast enough, they did.’

‘Our cockroach of a fire chief knew what to look for.’

‘When will they say for certain?’

‘They said the body was bad. They’ve only got his frickin’ teeth, if they weren’t destroyed. You can bet those state people will take their time after the mess they made of Betty Jo’s case.’

‘Who else was down there?’

‘Hard to tell, under all the umbrellas. Roy Powell is still there, with a couple of state troopers. Maybe state arson investigators and probably an insurance investigator hoping to find anything that proves Mac set the fire himself. There are a few news people, including one van with a little broadcast dish that was packing up. I think Clamp had a briefing earlier, but he’s gone now.’

‘Jen Jessup?’

April shook her head. ‘Not to be seen.’

‘Who from the sheriff’s?’

‘Just one deputy, looking bored.’

‘Any strange car get towed into the sheriff’s garage?’

‘I didn’t bother to go to the courthouse because I didn’t know how to ask about a strange car. I heard the program this afternoon will be part memorial for Mac – our lost Mayor, and all that crap.’

‘Clamp – he’ll still be there?’ Maggie asked.

‘He’s the honoree. The live one, at least.’

‘And Luther Wiley?’

‘He’s a trustee,’ April said. ‘He’ll be up on the stage, too, dabbing at imaginary tears like the rest of them, no doubt.’

‘No matter that he’s spent the last few days getting ready to seize the Bird’s Nest, and the last few decades lying about Betty Jo Dean’s murder. Him and that Randy White are the only two left who know anything, other than Doc Farmont.’

‘Besides Clamp.’

‘Clamp, most of all.’

‘Luther’s got to be nervous as hell, thinking about Horace,’ April said.

‘Worrying whether he’s next.’

‘Mercy that,’ April said.

‘Mercy that,’ Maggie agreed.

They looked across the cramped little room.

‘Mercy that,’ Mac agreed, raising his coffee cup with bandaged hands to toast them both.

SEVENTY-SIX

‘I apologize for interrupting you on this most chaotic of days, but I assure you, it couldn’t wait,’ Jen said. Strangely, she felt calm.

Luther Wiley, rouged as always but seeming even more red today, got up from his desk. His hands shook as he pressed his fingertips to the desktop.

She forced a grateful smile and sat down. ‘It is a horrible day, is it not?’

‘Indeed,’ he managed, sitting down.

She noticed, then, the fine beads of sweat on his forehead. Perhaps Luther Wiley was delicate, incapable of a big sweat. She’d know, soon.

‘They brought the body here, from the Bird’s Nest?’ she asked.

‘We have the county contract.’

‘Was Mac Bassett murdered?’

He looked away. ‘The medical examiner will make that determination.’

She leaned forward. ‘It’s Mac, right? I mean, his truck is still there and no one’s seen him since.’

‘The medical examiner will have to say.’

She pressed on. ‘I’ve been trying to find Randall White – slick, oily creature, prone to running off at the mouth? You and he go way back, from when he used to assist Doc Farmont.’

‘I barely know him.’

‘Not according to him. He’s been telling everybody he was here, assisting the doctor and you and your drunken Uncle Bud with Betty Jo. Chopping away, were you, Luther?’ They were wild charges, meant to break loose the truth.

Luther’s rouge froze around a tentative smile. ‘I was never near the body.’

‘Dougie Peterson said otherwise. He said you invited him in for a peek.’

‘Dougie was lying.’

‘Dougie was drowned. That’s why I’m so concerned about Randy White. I can’t find him. Maybe he’s dead, too, because of what he knows.’

‘Disgusting rabbit of a man, really.’ Luther took out a white silk handkerchief and dabbed at his mouth. The white silk came away pink.

‘Think Randy White is bobbing like Dougie Peterson?’

‘My God, Miss Jessup.’ He reached for his handkerchief again.

He might have been sweating tiny beads, but they were coming fast. Encouraged, she went on: ‘Things keep happening to people who know about Betty Jo Dean. As I was driving back to town, bummed about Mac Bassett, bummed about never getting a statement from Randy, I recalled something from long ago. Do you remember my sister, Laurel?’

‘I’ve never had the pleasure.’

‘Really? She was killed, run off the road right after they found Betty Jo. Laurel was a darling, quite beautiful. I was always so envious. I was in sixth grade when she went, just like that.’ She snapped her fingers. ‘Anyway, you know how younger sisters are? They’re the nosiest creatures on earth. Always snooping. And… well, I’d blush if I wasn’t so insane with a new thought…’ She stared straight into his eyes.

He was looking past her. Ideally he was thinking about bolting for the door.

‘Little sisters are always listening,’ she whispered. ‘Like little mice in the walls, mice with big ears?’

He managed a nod, but he was looking at the door.

‘Now, we only had the one phone,’ she prattled on, ‘and it was in the kitchen, so it wasn’t like I could pick up an extension to listen. But there was a spot in the dining room where, if I pressed my ear just right, I could hear through the wall.

‘The night before she died, she was talking on the phone. She was speaking low, so I couldn’t hear all of it. She must have assumed I’d overheard something, though, because when she came through the dining room and saw me standing there, she said, “My, my, another red-faced creature,” making a joke of it, you see. “Everywhere I look, I see red-faced people.”’

She raised what she hoped was a knowing eyebrow. ‘Do you understand what I’m talking about, Luther?’

He shook his head, but that was to be expected.

‘Your red powders, Luther, though I did not understand what Laurel was talking about at the time, me being so young. But here’s something I have been sure of, all these years. That evening, in the dining room, Laurel was real excited, almost giddy, and she was carrying a little notebook, one of those narrow ones that reporters use. She hadn’t been talking to just some boy there in the kitchen. She’d been talking to a source about something that required her to take notes, or at least refer to them, possibly for confirmation – something that had to do with Betty Jo Dean, since that was what she was working on. I’m thinking now that source developed second thoughts about what he’d passed on to Laurel and reported his indiscretion to someone else, a killer.

‘A week after Laurel was buried, I snooped through her things, including her purse, crazy with grief. The only thing that was missing was that precious notebook. It was gone.’

Luther Wiley checked his watch. ‘I’m sorry about your sister, but I’ve got to get going. I’m up on the dais at the courthouse this afternoon.’

‘It’s raining like crazy,’ she said.

‘I’ve still got to be there-’

‘I’ve always wondered who that source was,’ she interrupted. ‘Randy White was young enough, back then, to be subject to the charms of a beautiful college girl. Jimmy Bales was a high-school kid, too young to know much about what was going on. But then I got to thinking about you, Luther. You were the right age and were in a position to have witnessed, even done, all sorts of hasty things that would have interested my sister.’ She made a chopping motion with the edge of her hand.

He popped to his feet like he was on springs, a red-faced jack-in-the-box man.

She reached in her purse and came out with her own narrow reporter’s notebook. ‘See? Just like Laurel’s,’ she said.

‘I must leave,’ he said.

She took out her tiny voice recorder. ‘To make sure I get things right.’

He started to move around the desk.

She took out a revolver. ‘Sit the hell down, Luther.’

SEVENTY-SEVEN

‘You should be putting on a hospital gown instead,’ April said, holding up the short-sleeved white shirt so Mac could slip an arm in.

The backs of his hands had been burned the worst, thrown up reflexively the instant he’d felt the first blast of the fireball. The aloe April slathered on them took away some of the pain, but the thick gauze bandages she’d then wound on made his skin hurt every time he moved his fingers.

‘I was healthy enough to have walked the mile here last night.’ He winced as he eased in his arm.

‘With burned-off pants,’ Maggie said, laughing.

‘And a cunning-enough brain to want people to think you’re dead,’ April said, holding up the other shirtsleeve.

‘It’s cowardice,’ he said. ‘I won’t be safe until I speak at the courthouse.’

‘Might be that nobody will come,’ April said. ‘The river’s so swollen you can’t get a boat under the bridge, and it’s still raining. Hell, they might even cancel it.’

‘Nonsense,’ Maggie said. ‘Hundreds will come to hear about their crazy mayor getting incinerated, even if they get soaked to the skin.’ She turned to Mac. ‘All you need is a few folks to spread the word. Sooner you say your piece, the sooner you’ll be safe, so talk real fast.’

‘I don’t care how frickin’ fast he talks,’ April said, ‘Clamp Reems will come at you again, no matter how big a crowd the happy news of your death summons.’

‘I don’t think Clamp was behind the fire,’ Mac said.

April gave the front of the shirt an unnecessary tug.

‘Damn it, April.’

‘If not Clamp, then who? How many other murderous enemies have you got?’ April asked, starting to button the shirt.

‘Clamp’s not stupid; he wouldn’t risk another fire,’ he said. ‘I see him scorching the siding to warn me off Betty Jo Dean. And I see him torching Horace Wiggins’s garage, to eliminate him and whatever pictures he might still have.’

‘But killing you is difficult to figure, because you’re so sweet?’ April reached under his chin to do the last button.

‘My dying in a fire, exactly like Horace, draws too much attention to Clamp because of the accusations I’ve been hinting at.’

‘Unless Clamp has gone plum crazy,’ Maggie said, ‘and thought he had nothing to lose by setting fire to you.’

‘Maybe someone wants it to look that way,’ he said. ‘April, you’re sure there was no car left on that wide patch down Big Pine Road, west of the Bird’s Nest?’

‘For the tenth time: no car was left on either side of the road down there.’ She reached for his necktie. ‘Your fire-starting friend had an accomplice, either someone who waited in the car then drove away when things went wrong with the explosion, or someone who knew to come later, to fetch the car when the arsonist didn’t return.’ April looped the tie around his neck and quickly tied an expert knot.

Maggie’s landline rang. She picked it up. ‘Slow down!’ she said, then asked, ‘Miss Jessup?’ She turned to look at Mac. ‘Should I tell her?’ she mouthed silently.

He shook his head.

Confusion took Maggie’s face. ‘You’re laughing too hard, Miss Jessup. I can’t understand-’ There was more silence, then: ‘What the hell do you mean? Didn’t you hear about the fire?’

Thunder boomed outside, and a sudden sheet of rain slapped against the curtained window.

Maggie listened another minute. Then, not bothering to cover up the mouthpiece, she held out the phone to Mac. ‘She’s hysterical, talking gibberish, but she knows,’ she said.

‘Ah, hell.’ Mac took the phone with both bandaged hands. ‘Jen?’

‘Mac? Oh, Mac. Here.’

‘Mac?’ A different voice, weaker, came on the line.

‘Tell him, damn it,’ Jen said in the background.

‘Mac?’ the weak voice said. ‘Luther Wiley here. I hired someone to set your fire. I…’ He paused.

‘Say it all now, Luther,’ Jen said.

‘He never came back to his car,’ Luther said.

‘You got that?’ Jen asked, coming on the line.

‘What’s going on?’ Mac said.

‘I’m interviewing Luther, of a fashion. I might be overstepping it. I have a gun.’

‘Jen!’

‘Luther overheard his uncle and Doc yelling at Clamp, telling him he couldn’t do that, or take that.’

‘Her head?’

‘That’s Luther’s guess,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that right, Luther?’ Someone, presumably a petrified Luther, murmured a response in the background. ‘Listen, Mac,’ Jen went on, ‘Clamp held a press briefing this morning, of sorts, down by your… land. He was entirely too vague about the burned corpse they found, so I think he’s guessed you’re still alive. But he’s acting crazy. After his little talk, Clamp tore down to those cabins by the river. I followed him. He was kneeling by a tree on the riverbank. I think he’s lost his mind. You need to stay away from the dais this afternoon.’

‘Where was he by the river, exactly?’

‘No place special, just at the base of some old dead tree.’

‘The one that’s tipping into the river?’

‘Maybe… yes.’

It was the tree Mac had started to approach when Clamp materi-alized out of the trees.

‘What was he doing exactly?’

‘Digging at its roots, I think. He was all muddy. The tree’s dead; it makes no sense.’

‘Powell? Is he honest?’

‘As the day is long,’ she answered. ‘He gets a bad rap.’

‘Call him, Jen. Tell him to get down to that tree. Tell him if he doesn’t hurry, it will all wash away.’

‘Mac, what are you talking-?’

There was no time. He hung up.

SEVENTY-EIGHT

They sped south in Maggie’s old Trans Am, Mac hunched down in the back, hoping to be unrecognizable under one of her tugged-down straw cowboy hats; April grim-faced, riding shotgun; Maggie driving, alternately shrieking and laughing at the craziness of it all. Only Maggie glanced at the state and insurance investigators and the one lone, indifferent Peering County deputy milling about as they sped past the ruin of the Bird’s Nest.

Jen, Powell and two state troopers had beaten them to the riverbank. Gray sky showed through a new gap along the water. The dead elm had toppled into the Royal but its base was still anchored to the bank by a last few large roots and a thick nest of smaller tendrils. The tree bucked wildly from the waters buffeting it. The fallen tree had created a dam, channeling water up onto the bank and washing away the dirt surrounding the uprooted base. The hole was growing. Soon the last of the roots and the nest of tendrils would rip free, sending the tree tumbling downriver.

‘There’s no time!’ Mac shouted above the rain. He dropped to his knees and began pawing into the hole the ripped out base had made.

‘What the hell, Mac?’ Jen asked, dropping to her knees beside him.

April, Maggie, Powell and the two state cops all came closer and bent down.

‘Clamp planted these trees! It’s why he’s so worried!’ Mac yelled, scooping mud backward like a dog gone berserk. His burned skin raged as his bandages clotted up with muck.

They all dropped down to claw the dirt from the hole, as the river raged up and swirled around their hands.

A fat root snapped, loud as a gunshot. The tree shuddered and swung out farther, bucking more wildly. Only two of the large roots now tethered the base of the elm to the bank.

They scooped and pulled at the sodden ground, all of them tight to each other. The base of the tree shuddered from the pounding water; the last of the roots were sure to snap soon.

The base of the tree lifted then, and the bigger of the last two roots rose up out of the water swirling around their hands. Maggie screamed and jerked back, pointing at something in the muddy water. It looked like the tiny top of a softball. And then the water surged, and it was gone.

Mac plunged both hands in after it. His bandages had loosened, entangling his fingers, numbing his feel. He clawed, desperate, to find the round top in the hole.

And then his fingers closed around something hard. He dug deeper, his fingers wide, straining for a better hold. It would not come free; it was entwined tight in the fibrous roots.

The last of the big roots snapped, and the great tree began sliding slowly into the river. The round, hard, slippery thing tore free from his hands, tugged away by the tendrils that still clung to the base of the tree. Mac stabbed after it, and found it again. Powell’s hands joined Mac’s. Together they clung to the small, round thing as the great tree slid away, dragging them onto their bellies and into the water as the tree finally freed itself from the bank. And then, incredibly, the thin fibrous roots tore away and gave it up. The tree pivoted, and with a huge last splash, bobbed downriver.

Both troopers had grabbed Mac and Powell by the ankles and tugged them back onto the bank. A trooper helped Mac to his feet. Powell, hugging the treasure to his chest, scrambled up on his own.

In that same instant, the rain stopped and the sun filtered down in ribbons from the tops of the trees.

‘Wait!’ Jen yelled, standing up. She grabbed her phone from her purse.

They all blinked up into the sudden brightness, and began laughing at the cheesy, B-movie symbolism of it. All but Maggie. She merely nodded, accepting. Jen snapped a cell phone picture, and another. It was a moment out of impossible fiction, a moment due a girl for more than thirty years.

Powell held the last of her tight to his ruined Burberry coat. She was caked with clay, her jaw hanging loose as though to scream. But she would not need to scream anymore. There could be no denying, not ever again.

‘You’ll be careful?’ Mac asked Powell.

‘Like I’m holding a bomb, which,’ he said, a grin splitting his muddy face, ‘I guess I am.’ He took off toward the road, flanked by a state trooper on each side.

Mac pulled off his flapping, sodden bandages and knelt to rinse his burned hands in the shallow pool where the elm had been. ‘What time is it?’ he called up to the women standing around him.

‘One forty-five,’ Maggie said.

April, who knew him best, laughed. ‘Your frickin’ suit trousers are ripped. Your white shirt is ruined, your tie is drenched. You’ve got mud everywhere. And your hair – your hair is burned off.’ She stopped, giggling too hard to say more.

Mac straightened up. Jen Jessup looked back and forth between him and April, not understanding. ‘Surely you’re not thinking…?’ she asked Mac.

But, of course, he was.

SEVENTY-NINE

‘I told you there’d be a crowd,’ Maggie said, slowing in the traffic clogging at the courthouse.

Tugging the straw cowboy hat down another inch, Mac raised up just enough to see out the rear side window. Two hundred people already sat on lawn chairs, and more were streaming in across the sodden lawn.

‘What’s that old line?’ April asked. ‘“Give the people what they want, and they’ll come?”’

‘Toasted mayor,’ Maggie said.

‘Damned right, toasted mayor,’ April agreed.

‘Check out Clamp and Jimmy Bales over by the sheriff’s door,’ Maggie said. ‘Jimmy’s pissed, and he’s busting Clamp’s chops. The mouse is roaring.’

‘He thinks Clamp set the fire,’ Mac said.

‘You can read minds?’ April asked.

‘Mac’s like Abigail Beech,’ Maggie said. ‘He sees things the rest of us can’t.’

‘Clamp’s not paying attention,’ April said. ‘He’s looking up at the sky, worrying it’s going to rain again.’

‘Or praying if it does it will wash away that leaning tree, and her head with it.’ Jen said. She sat in the back, beside Mac.

‘Too late for praying on that,’ Maggie said.

‘Luther’s gone?’ Mac asked Jen.

‘If he’s smart. I told him I was going to come back and shoot him. He tried telling me he had no choice but to hire that arsonist to get Clamp blamed and arrested. He said Clamp was going to kill him like he killed Horace Wiggins, since they were the only two left who knew about Clamp and Betty Jo Dean.’

‘Actually, there are four left, counting Doc and Randy White.’

‘I don’t suppose Doc Farmont will ever come back and by the way Randy seems to have vanished, I’m guessing Luther no longer counts him among the living,’ Jen said.

‘So Luther rationalized torching Mac as justifiable if it saved his own skin?’ April asked.

‘That’s the way thoughts get thunk sometimes, in Grand Point,’ Jen said.

‘Thunk is right,’ Maggie said.

‘Even pointing a gun, you couldn’t get Luther to say anything about Laurel?’ Mac asked.

‘Not a peep,’ Jen said. ‘I think he loved her.’

‘All sorts of folks must have loved her,’ Mac said, thinking of Ridl.

Maggie stopped at the entrance to the sheriff’s parking lot. ‘I’m not liking this, Mac,’ Jen said, looking around and seeing no tele-vision vans. ‘I expected at least that TV crew from the Bird’s Nest to keep Clamp from acting out.’

‘We’re safe without them. There are hundreds of townspeople here,’ Mac said.

‘I didn’t like Clamp’s faraway look, down by the river,’ Jen said. ‘It’s like he wasn’t engaged with reality.’

Mac held out his hand. He’d washed them both as best he could in the river, but the burns were red and raw and they throbbed.

Jen handed him her recorder. ‘It’s set to the proper position. Your fingers will work enough to turn it on?’

‘This is frickin’ nuts,’ April said, getting out of the car. She pulled the seat forward so Jen could climb out the back.

‘Why are you getting out?’ Mac asked April.

‘In case your burned hands need help with that frickin’ switch,’ she said. She handed him four Advil tablets. ‘Remember what Maggie said: talk fast.’ She grinned and walked off with Jen.

He looked across the lawn as he chewed the tablets. Almost all the trustees were up on the dais, along with the city engineer. There was one empty chair, presumably for Luther Wiley. Understandably, there was none for Mac.

Clamp had climbed the stairs to the dais and now sat to the right of the lectern, stiff in a white shirt, subdued tie and dark suit – and perhaps stiff from worry that everything he’d kept hidden was about to burst forth into the sunshine.

Mac looked again at the empty chair on the dais. He’d heard that honoring Clamp had been Luther Wiley’s idea. The late newspaperman, Horace Wiggins, might have approved of the honor as well. Mac imagined that, given recent events, they’d both change their votes, if it were somehow possible.

Two minutes later, at precisely two o’clock, the high school’s football coach – the grand marshal of the parade that would have taken place had it not rained – stepped up to the lectern. He welcomed everyone to yet another magnificent Fourth of July celebration in the finest town on the planet. Only a few people set down their beers and sodas to applaud.

‘This is one of our saddest Independence Days,’ the coach said. ‘Our mayor, Mac Bassett, perished this morning in a fire at the Bird’s Nest.’

‘Oh, please,’ Maggie said, from the front seat.

There were few gasps. Most had already heard. April and Maggie had been right; they’d come to hear more.

‘The state fire marshal is investigating this tragic turn of events,’ the coach went on, ‘and will issue a report. The best thing we can do now is to keep Mac’s memory in our hearts and get on with celebrating our freedom and good fortune to live in such a marvelous town.’

‘Stupid bastard,’ Maggie said.

The coach went on to make announcements about the day’s festivities, most especially the fish fry over at the VFW and later, the fireworks after dusk, east of town along the river. He sat down to disappointed silence. People knew about the fried fish and the fireworks; they wanted to know how Mac Bassett had caught fire.

The county engineer spoke briefly about future road and sewer improvements before turning to bigger concerns over the new dam south on the Royal River. ‘I know many of you are worried about the rising water,’ he said. ‘The Army Corps has assured me it’s the result of the spring’s abnormally high snow melt. They’re watching it closely, and will open the south dam if needed to alleviate any risk of flooding.’

Mac looked below the dais. April stood next to Jen, in the middle of the line of reporters just below the lectern. Both were muddy from the river.

The city engineer cleared his throat, about to introduce the next speaker, who was supposed to have been Mac.

It was time. He clambered out of the back seat.

Maggie smiled up through the open car door. ‘Whip off that straw hat and give ’em a Will Rogers cowboy wave, so everybody can see what burned-off hair on a dirty dead man looks like.’

He grinned, took off the straw hat and started waving it as he crossed the lawn. A murmur of shocked voices built into shouts as he approached the dais. Most everyone was scrambling to stand up – many were snapping cell phone pictures. It wasn’t a welcome that had gotten them all to their feet; they wanted good views of Mac Bassett rising from the dead.

He climbed the stairs. Everyone on the dais looked wide-eyed, save for Clamp Reems. He was looking south along Second Street, thinking for sure about one particularly unstable tree down by the rising river, and what it might lift up to reveal.

Mac took care to smile at the chief deputy. Clamp was trapped by the eyes of hundreds of people; he couldn’t leave.

Mac stepped up to the microphone and waved a raw, pink and blackened hand.

EIGHTY

‘Welcome, everyone!’ His amplified voice reverberated not quite simultaneously off the many brick fronts facing the square, as though several Mac Bassetts had returned to taunt those who’d felt relief at his death.

A few people thought to applaud. Most had simply gone silent, anxious to hear directly from the mud-caked, burned man who was supposed to be dead.

‘And an especially big welcome to you, Clamp Reems,’ Mac said, half turning to face the chief deputy. ‘I intend to make this the second most important day of your life.’

The killer stared into the crowd, impassive.

No matter. Mac would soon enliven him. He turned back to face the people on the lawn.

All stood frozen, waiting, except for one frail old man with a.35mm camera dangling on a cord around his neck. He was laboring forward through the crowd, stepping haltingly, apparently intent on getting to the front to take a picture. In spite of the heat, he wore a sweatshirt and a windbreaker two sizes too large. His sweat-stained canvas hat was pulled down tight to shield his face from the sun.

‘When I was elected just a few short months ago,’ Mac said, ‘I looked forward to this day as my first chance to address you as your mayor. I thought of the words I was going to say – words of thanks, words of optimism, words of hope about the future of this town.’

People were turning, distracted by the old man’s precarious progress. He’d paused for breath, teetering. The lower part of his face, clean-shaven, was sallow and unhealthy looking, as though it hadn’t felt the sun for years. His shoulder looked barely wide enough to support the strap of the small camera bag bouncing against his side.

‘I’ve decided…’ Mac said softly, ‘… to say none of that.’

Everyone looked back at the lectern. They’d heard something going bad in the way Mac lowered his voice.

‘Damn it, Bassett!’ someone yelled. ‘What the hell happened?’

‘You mean to these?’ he shouted, holding up his blistered hands. ‘Or to Betty Jo Dean’s head?’

A hundred people gasped. Mac smiled, faking a calm he didn’t feel, and pressed on. ‘Today we’re here to focus on Clamp Reems.’

A few people, confused, began to applaud that. They quickly stopped when no one else joined in. The others had heard the tension in Mac’s voice, and were straining to hear more.

Except for the old man. He’d started up again on his snail’s journey toward the dais.

‘Ah, but I can’t do Clamp justice,’ Mac said. ‘Let me yield to Luther Wiley.’ He held Jen’s voice recorder a foot from the microphone and switched it on.

‘Hell, yes, Clamp killed Betty Jo,’ Luther’s voice boomed from the speakers at the sides of the dais. ‘There isn’t a fool in this town doesn’t know that, or at least suspect it. I witnessed nothing firsthand, mind you, but my uncle, and Doc and Horace, and even that numb-nutted Randy White, were all there at the funeral home when they brought her in. Doc was taking too much time with the probe, trying not to disfigure her-’

The old man had tottered to the front row and was reaching into his camera bag when he stopped like he’d been struck by lightning. He was staring at Jen Jessup like she was a ghost.

‘-for viewing in an open casket,’ Luther’s voice went on. ‘That business about bloating and decomposition? There was none. He loved her, see? He’d kept her alive-’

Back on the dais, a chair scraped loudly and fell over; Clamp might have been lurching up. Mac didn’t turn; he was transfixed by the old man, now standing right below the dais. He’d pulled a revolver from his camera bag.

The beard was gone, but Mac knew the man. He stepped quickly from behind the lectern and threw up his arms. Someone yelled.

A gun fired once, and again.

He fell, wondering crazily if it had been him, shouting.

EIGHTY-ONE

They said four days passed.

Four days of blurred shapes and bright fluorescents and IV drips and deep drugged sleep interrupted by brusque doctors and nurses tugging him to consciousness to look at his back. And each time seeing April or Maggie or Jen Jessup, and not being able to tell whether it was night or day or whether that even mattered.

Other snatches, too, he remembered.

April smiling. ‘The bullets were lodged so very close to your spine. They got them, Mac. No impairment.’

Then: ‘I’ve had enough of your frickin’ bullshit.’

Men in dark suits, hovering at the foot of the bed. Powell was among them, dressed flawlessly in faint pinstripes, asking Mac why he’d stepped out from behind the lectern.

Maggie furious as a hornet, raising her spare five feet under Powell’s chin to tell him to get out.

Jim Rogenet sounding stronger that he’d been in months, saying, ‘Oh, they’ll pay,’ squeezing Mac’s shoulder and leaving.

Reed Dean shifting from one foot to the other, twisting a NASCAR cap into rope and mumbling, ‘Thank you,’ over and over.

Maggie talking to Jen Jessup like they were old friends, to which Mac said, ‘This must be meds,’ and both of them laughing hysterically.

Jen alone, crying at the side of his bed.

On the fifth day, he woke to pain and clarity.

April sat beside his bed, reading through a sheaf of papers.

‘Was it the first or second bullet that got me?’ It came out barely audible, a dry croak.

‘Water?’ She dropped the papers on the chair beside her.

‘Sure.’

She poured a little into a plastic cup, bent a straw and brought it close to him. ‘Don’t lean forward.’

He leaned forward and gasped at the pain.

She laughed as he slumped back, moaning. ‘Thank goodness your mulishness survived.’

‘First, or second?’ he asked again, when the pain had subsided.

‘Both, actually. Even with Ridl raising a gun, Clamp Reems had the presence of mind to keep his priorities straight.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Clamp shot you first… and second…’ She looked at the door, as though to make sure no one was close by. ‘There’s confusion over who is responsible for that. Some think Clamp was aiming at Ridl in self-defense and you stumbled into his line of fire, waving your damned arms. Some say – though this is too incredible for most folks to believe, except those who know you well – you were trying to protect Clamp and deliberately stepped in front of him, to face Ridl. Of course, there’s a third scenario that has Clamp aiming right at you, since he shot you twice, and in the back. Fortunately, that’s the one Roy Powell likes. Clamp’s been arrested. Powell’s been here a half-dozen times, antsy to get your statement.’

He remembered seeing Powell, and Maggie throwing him out.

‘Jonah Ridl?’

‘Powell’s real frustrated with Jen Jessup,’ April said, ignoring his question. ‘He thinks she took cell phone pictures of you on the dais. Jen says she didn’t, and no one else has come forward with other photos, so there’s no proof you’re dumb enough to step in front of a gun.’

‘Jonah Ridl is dead?’

‘Jimmy Bales got him, though it took four shots, the first three of which struck the dais and the lectern. It was justifiable; Ridl was waving a gun. He just couldn’t hold it steady enough to fire.’

Mac closed his eyes. ‘Ridl asked me if there’d be justice.’

‘He was full of cancer, Mac. He had a month, two at most.’

‘What’s Clamp saying?’

‘You stepped into his line of fire, obviously.’

‘I meant about the skull.’

‘Nothing yet, but it’s Betty Jo’s, top and jaw, and it’s screaming bloody hell. That professor from Champaign drove up the vertebrae. They fit the new skull perfectly.’

‘Was there a bullet?’

‘Incredibly, still wedged deep in her forehead. It’s been removed at long last.’

‘No wonder Clamp hacked at her head, just as Luther admitted in Jen’s recording.’

‘Unfortunately, Luther’s statements are not admissible, since he made them under threat of a gun. Besides, they’re hearsay; he’s claiming he only overheard things.’

‘Luther will slither out of everything?’

‘They’re saying they might never identify the arsonist, so badly was he burned.’

‘So Luther skates.’

‘Jen says no, but she’s holding something back about that, like some think she’s holding back about having cell phone pictures.’

‘I suppose Luther’s a small potato, anyway.’

‘A Tater Tot for sure, if you can overlook the fact that he hired an arsonist to kill you.’

‘What about linking Clamp to Betty Jo?’

‘Now that he’s got that bullet from Betty Jo, rumor is Powell is going to charge him. Another rumor has it that Powell is seeing a run at the governor’s mansion from this, and is going to prosecute the case himself.’ She held up his cup for another sip, then said, ‘Want a laugh? Once the shooting was done, Jimmy Bales led a team of deputies up to Clamp’s farm, saying he’d had a brilliant inspiration.’

Mac managed a smile. ‘To extract a few slugs from Clamp’s fence or barn, on the hunch they’ll match the one from Betty Jo Dean?’

‘Just like you told him.’ Then: ‘Powell is saying Clamp will do life for Betty Jo.’

‘And Pauly?’

‘No bullets from him still exist, so Clamp won’t be prosecuted for that.’

‘How about the other victims?’

‘You want Clamp punished for killing Horace Wiggins?’

‘I want him accountable for Delbert Milner and Laurel Jessup and Dougie Peterson.’

‘Roy Powell is a smart politician. He’ll only try cases he can win. Be happy for Betty Jo Dean.’

‘Rogenet was here?’ he asked, changing the subject to another blur.

She smiled broadly. ‘To drop off those,’ she said, pointing to the papers on the chair. ‘Peering County is offering me three hundred thousand dollars for my half interest in the pile of charred wood once known as the Bird’s Nest.’

‘They’re nervous because Luther’s a county trustee, even though he won’t be charged for the arson.’

‘They want us to forget about suing them.’

‘You’d still have a lot left over, after we pay off the note.’

She grinned. ‘That three hundred thousand is net, same amount for each of us. Luther’s bank will cancel the note if we also promise to not come after them. Everybody wants to make us rich, Mac.’

‘What’s Rogenet say?’ he asked.

‘He says we ought to take the deal on the arson, and you should sue Peering County in civil court for their chief deputy shooting you in the back while Powell tries him in criminal court for shooting Betty Jo Dean.’

‘What about Reed?’

‘Rogenet is representing him as well, and that’s where the huge money is going to rain down. Peering County is going to pay big-time for their chief deputy murdering Betty Jo Dean. Reed and his sister Bella are destined to become two of the wealthiest people west of Chicago.’

He asked for another sip of water.

‘There’s other good news, Mac,’ she said. ‘Pam Canton, your waitress friend from the Willow Tree, saw us on the national news and called Maggie. She’d gotten a threatening call, no doubt from Clamp though she didn’t recognize the voice, and decided she’d always wanted to work in California. She’s fine, and relieved to be gone. And a kid from Dixon turned himself in for running down Farris Hobbs. It was a hit and run, not at all connected to your investigation of the Dean case.’

‘Randy White?’

‘Likely enough, Clamp weighted him well. No one expects he’ll ever come out of the water.’

‘I suppose…’ He let his voice fade away and shut his eyes.

Suddenly, he didn’t want to hear anything more.

EIGHTY-TWO

Five weeks later, when it was not quite September, Mac had stepped out his front door to throw the last of his duffel bags into his truck, when Jen Jessup came up the front walk, carrying a folded newspaper and a brown paper bag.

‘April called me. She said you’re heading north.’

‘You’ve been avoiding me.’ She’d returned none of the half-dozen calls he’d made after he got out of the hospital. He held the door open for her and they went inside.

‘I figured I’d give you some time; I figured I’d give Laurel some time. And,’ she said, ‘I figured I’d give me some time.’

‘You know I submitted my resignation?’

She nodded.

‘The city manager is capable, though he’s going to have a long rebuilding process, now that all the city trustees have quit and hired their own lawyers.’

‘You were going to slink out of town without saying goodbye?’ she asked.

‘That gets back to you not returning my calls. Anyway, I’m keeping my house. Grand Point is going to be a mud pit of lawsuits, countersuits and criminal complaints for years. I’ll be back for depositions.’

‘For your own suit against the county as well, though I hear you still can’t remember those last few seconds on the dais?’ She fingered a ragged bit of jewelry hanging on a slim chain around her neck.

‘Peering County is talking a two million dollar settlement.’

‘It will be fascinating to see what your sense of morality does with two million dollars.’ She handed him a copy of the DeKalb Examiner. ‘Every fact is there, plus as much as the editor let me infer.’

Her story took over the entire front page. ‘About Laurel?’

‘Roy Powell tells me it’s justice for Laurel if Clamp gets life without parole for Betty Jo Dean. Roy says going after anything more is greed,’ she said.

‘Anything more is more justice,’ he said. ‘I heard Clamp is talking.’

‘He wants to visit Betty Jo’s grave, can you believe?’

‘He loved her, according to what Luther Wiley said on your recording.’

‘He said he promised he’d take her to California and marry her, even try to have another baby.’

‘She was pregnant?’

‘Only until Doc Farmont fixed it.’ She shook her head. ‘Clamp said he begged her for two days in that cabin, trying to convince her things could be fine, but she kept looking at the walls, at the floor – everywhere but at him. Roy says that even now, Clamp sounds more regretful than horrified, as though he and Betty Jo had had a spat, is all, and that it could have been mended, if only that damned Sheriff Milner hadn’t started sending searchers down to the cabins and given him no choice other than to kill Betty Jo.’

‘He cut off her head, for the bullet.’

‘He said he had no choice about that either, but he couldn’t bear to part with it afterward, and kept it so he could visit her regularly down by the river.’

‘My God.’

She opened the brown paper bag and took out a pint of Scotch and two clear plastic cups. Her hand shook as she filled one and handed it to Mac. Then she filled another cup for herself and raised it in a toast. ‘To Betty Jo Dean. She spat in his eye.’

For a moment they said nothing, then Mac asked, ‘What’s Powell doing about Luther?’

‘Since they’ll likely never identify the arsonist, prosecuting Luther for burning your place is on the back burner, if you’ll forgive the metaphor. Luther thinks he’s scot-free.’

‘Damn that Luther,’ he said.

‘Page two,’ she said.

He opened the paper. Her byline ran above a smaller story, about abuses at Maryton Cemetery.

‘I was there when they exhumed Betty Jo Dean, remember?’ she said. ‘The digger exposed the side of an adjacent casket – a rotting casket. It was buried not two years ago, without a vault. Luther’s going to do long, hard time for cutting corners at Maryton.

‘April said she’s leaving in a month for a teaching job downstate?’ Jen’s voice quivered slightly. Something more was on her mind.

‘It’s poor and rural, but she’ll live like royalty with her half of what we got from the Bird’s Nest.’

‘Plus whatever you pass along from your two-million-dollar settlement?’

‘She’s more than earned it.’

‘Maggie is already down in New Orleans?’

He grinned. ‘Abigail Beech told her the spirits are friendly there, if she’s interested.’

‘And she’s interested?’

‘Apparently she saw things here – apparitions.’

‘Betty Jo Dean’s ghost?’

‘I didn’t ask.’

She nodded, her smile gone. ‘I keep seeing the way Jonah Ridl stared at me when he paused with his gun. He was seeing a ghost, and that gave Jimmy Bales enough time to kill him.’

‘He was seeing Laurel, and he wouldn’t have wished for a finer last sight.’

‘I saw your ghost, too, Mac.’

He groaned.

‘Not you,’ she said, ‘but the ghost that haunts you.’ She poured another inch into her cup and raised the bottle.

He shook his head. ‘I’m driving.’

‘And not commenting,’ she said.

‘I’ve got a cabin rented through Christmas.’

‘Autumn in the piney woods? Sounds marvelous.’ She looked away. No doubt something more was on her mind.

‘As I said, I’ll be back for depositions.’

She set her cup next to the bottle on the table. ‘Remember I said I was good at rooting out old information, and that I might need to understand why a man would ignore an indictment and a failing restaurant to concentrate on a decades-old murder of a girl he hadn’t even heard of until recently?’

He took the bottle and poured himself a shallow sip.

‘Holly Anderson,’ she said, ‘was born two weeks and two days before Betty Jo Dean. Holly was a pretty girl, an excellent student and, according to the meager press accounts at the time, beloved by her friends and family. In 1982, Holly Anderson was abducted outside the drug store where she worked. She’d been waiting for her stepbrother to pick her up.’

Mac knocked back the drink. ‘Her stepbrother was paying no attention to time that day. He was hanging out with a couple of pals three blocks down, being cool, being stupid.’

‘Holly was found murdered three days later, but the cops never developed a single workable lead. The story disappeared from the papers right away.’

‘Dead girl. Dead case.’

‘Is she with you all the time?’

‘Not all the time.’

‘Want to know about something else I’m wondering about?’

‘Sure. I mean, I guess.’

She lifted the small, odd-shaped piece of plastic hanging around her neck. ‘I’ve taken to wearing this to remind myself of nobility.’

He looked closer, still not understanding.

‘It’s part of the micro SD card from my cell phone,’ she said. ‘If intact, it would store pictures.’

‘Ah,’ he said, understanding.

‘I know only one person who would step in front of a son of a bitch to protect justice. That could only have been instinctual.’

When he said nothing, she nodded her head abruptly, as though making up her mind about something, got up and headed to the front door. He followed her out, puzzled.

She’d parked next to Mac’s truck. She opened her car trunk, took out a large suitcase and threw it in the back of Mac’s truck, alongside his duffel bags. And then she opened the passenger door and got in, to wait.

He locked the house and got in behind the wheel.

‘Autumn in the piney woods?’ he asked, starting the engine.

She smiled a smile that was going to brighten the darkest of any north wood’s night.

‘Instinctual,’ she said.