The Best American Mystery Stories 2004

Аngеla Zeman Green Heat

From A Hot and Sultry Night for Crime

Tyree Garcia arrived late in the afternoon. For the last twenty miles he’d ridden State Highway 6 all alone and so felt free to indulge in a leisurely survey of Rushing River Hollow by riding the brakes of his black Cherokee van down the final hill. At a Mobil station, by all appearances the official western border of the town, he pulled over and rolled to a stop next to a gas pump. According to tattered and faded ads pasted across the office’s windows, the Mobil supplied repair services, gas, tires, beer, sodas, cigarettes, and tobacco in chewable form. Tyree guessed the strips of paper served to shade the Mobil’s glass-walled office from the merciless sun as much as to list the services offered.

The narrow asphalt highway flattened out and disappeared into the town’s main street, which was as neatly obscured beneath a layer of dirt as if deliberately coated. While he sat massaging sleep-deprived eyes, he noticed the occasional pedestrian scuff down the middle of the street, raising dust that obscured his or her feet in little dun-colored clouds.

He wondered if avoiding the sidewalks was a local habit. His was the only vehicle in sight. For all he knew, the tourist trade infused the Hollow with bustling life in spring and fall, and maybe even winter, but the intense summer heat drove them away — if this was a normal summer. Was this brain-sizzling heat unusual for the Hollow? Like a drought? He didn’t know that either. Country, especially genuine country like Rushing River Hollow, baffled him, was beyond his experience. Heat waves shimmered up from the concrete slab sidewalks bordering each side of the road. Maybe the thick layer of dirt was kinder to tender feet than roasted cement.

He just didn’t know.

To a Chicago kid born and raised in and devoted to its crowded neighborhoods. West Virginia looked like a foreign kingdom of crystalline creeks and river rapids and green, softly rounded mountains. An occasional ramshackle cabin propped up on a webbing of raw, unpainted four-by-fours dotted the sleep slopes. A paradise — unspoiled, vast, and rich — which accounted for the sprawling luxury resort hotel he knew from his AAA map occupied the other end of this dirt-crusted road. Pinebrook Resort offered — if one paid outrageous fees — hunting, golf, tennis, skeet and trap shooting, river rafting, nature hikes, even lessons in falconry. He’d picked up a travel agency brochure before driving all the way down here. He wondered if the privileged lives of the guests — outsiders — invited jealousy and comparison to the obviously scratch-scrabble lives of the residents.

Tyree finally swung his long, stiffened legs to the ground and began a series of stretches. He was a tall man, heavily muscled, and moved without haste.

As he reached for the fuel pump handle, he noticed a small sign propped against the second of the Mobil station’s two pumps (one for diesel fuel, but he’d happened to park beside the one dispensing gas: a sign he interpreted as a favorable omen; in his profession, he constantly looked for favorable omens). The sign, weatherbeaten almost to illegibility, said Rushin River Hollow, Population: the 421 was crossed out, 303 crossed out, 112 crossed out, then 427. A graph of the town’s fortunes. Had the millennium brought about a baby boom here?

Suddenly, a short, thick man with roughened skin so red his neck and face resembled a turkey’s wattle rushed up and grabbed the pump handle from Tyree’s grasp and inserted the nozzle into the Cherokee. “High test, I’d say, right?” He moved fast but talked slow.

Tyree nodded. The man punched a square plastic button on the pump, then turned on the juice. He apologized that he’d been “out back,” his slight flinch telling Tyree that “out back” meant the men’s rest room, then introduced himself as Emil Powers.

“Tyree Garcia,” Tyree said politely, nodding down at the top of the little man’s head. He saw no reason to lie about his name; nobody would’ve heard of him in this wilderness.

For no reason other than to open a conversation, Tyree asked what had happened to the gin Rushing on the population sign. The gap from its loss was obvious.

“Aw,” said Emil, sounding deeply distressed, “if’n you don’t mind a long story?”

Tyree shook his head, eyebrows lifted.

“Ya see, it ain’t in truth Rush-ing River. It’s Rooshion River. Like the Rooshions that come from Moscow. And somehow, ’cause we do a lot of business river rafting, y’know from the hotel, it got mangled over the years inta Rush-ing River. By the tourists, I guess.” He shrugged his narrow shoulders, jiggling the gas pump handle. “We need them tourists. So we jes’ didn’t know, should we change it legally or what, or did it even matter? So when the sun bleached the g off n the sign, we left it. I got maps in the office, legal ones from the gov’ment, they even call us Rushing River Hollow now. How they got aholt of the wrong name, nobody knows, or gives a hoot. Well, except for the Rooshions what established the town. They’s pissed. But,” he waved his free hand, dismissing them, “just Joey and Eban left, and they’s ninety something. Be gone by the time we decide anything. So we’re kind of relaxed about it. Now the sign itself, though—”

To Tyree’s amazement, he took a deep breath. Then, with a stiff dignity obviously meant to disguise personal embarrassment, confessed that he’d promised the Chamber of Commerce last spring he’d make a new sign, but jes’ hadn’t got to it. But he will. He will! He promised Tyree as fervently as if Tyree were an important Chamber member to be placated, a color-blind attitude that amazed Tyree. He’d anticipated some anxiety or even obstruction because of the color of his skin. After all, West Virginia was not known for high standards of education, an aspect that usually coincided with prejudice. Suddenly Tyree thought of the extreme heat and the deserted street. Possibly the color blindness meant only that in a roasting August barren of tourists, his color was green: income on the hoof.

A companionable silence set in between the two men as the gas slowly filled the Cherokee’s immense tank. Tyree nearly grinned as he watched Emil struggle not to peer too obviously into the darkened side and back windows, curious about what might be in there.

He would see nothing, Tyree knew, of his altered shotgun, his semiautomatic 9mm and .357 Magnum with extra clips, a red-dot laser scope on the .357, and the Archangel holster Tyree favored for its fast-draw design. His laptop, connected wireless phone, and portable printer were packed neatly in shockproof canvas carriers. His monocular night-vision headgear, an air taser (stun gun), and a Dazer he used for protection against guard dogs; mace in various sizes and canister shapes; and a digital camera with special lenses were all nested, like the laptop, in specially designed carriers. As was his Game Finder scope for detecting body heat behind walls. Tyree’s Cherokee was also designed with special features, one of which kept his equipment from prying eyes. And just as well. No need to panic the populace. Yet.

Emil sighed and gave up his covert peeking without resorting to the rudeness of trying to pry info from Tyree. Tyree liked him for that sigh; it revealed an easygoing nature. Tyree liked laid-back attitudes. They worked so much better for him when he was on a job.

Soot-blackened buildings dotted both sides of the street, reminders of the town’s coal-mining history. Edna’s Gift Shop leaned, bricks crumbling, against the timbered stones of Willem’s Pizza, which looked sturdy. The tall-pillared, red brick U.S. Post Office, which despite its height was about as wide as a cubicle, shared a wall with Mick’s rakish wood-paneled Railroader’s Pub. Across the road, Janna’s Coal Miner’s Daughter Clothing Boutique had been a similar wooden shack before being amateurishly slathered with a coating of infelicitous yellow stucco now flaking into a blotchy mess. A cracked cement sidewalk fronted these places of business, tilting along with the fortunes of those who’d hung on through both good and bad years.

“Where ya from?” asked Emil.

“Chicago,” murmured Tyree absently, studying the town. “Tourist trade the big industry here?” he asked his new friend Emil.

“Only industry, now the coal’s played out.” Emil tossed a hand to direct Tyree’s gaze down the length of the street. “They do what they can to brighten up the storefronts.” Emil shook his head sadly. “Order stuff from Sears catalogues or haul fancy goods in from Richmond or from Charleston, our capital, and then tell people it’s local handicraft. That’s big here, handicrafts. Not to criticize.”

Tyree nodded.

Elaborate Victorian wood lace and railings festooned porches that hadn’t worn such finery since their birth at the turn of the century. Log cabin-style benches had been sprinkled about, nestled near cedar tubs that Tyree guessed normally overflowed with pansies or geraniums or whatever grew here in cooler weather. He was no gardener, either. Flowers, in his experience, were just bright things hung in great lush balls from light poles lining Lake Shore Drive or the Miracle Mile. The tubs here were barren, filled only with tangles of sun-roasted brown moss. The stables near some derelict railroad tracks had been transformed into a hardware store, but the owner had scattered old horse tack and hay bales around to contribute to the desirable “charm.”

Suddenly Emil volunteered, “Talk’s going around about making a public park on the east end, just afore you get to the hotel grounds. Everybody hopes Miz Doree Zendall will donate her family’s Civil War iron cannons and cannonballs, now she’s widowed and no kids. Three generations of her husband’s family owned ’em. What good’re they to Doree? They’d make a center of interest for the park. Half rust, but still, it’s history. Lotta history here. And that’s genuine!”

Tyree nodded, tiring of his new friend. He checked the revolving numbers on the pump. He breathed deeply for patience and prepared to ask if there was a place to stay here other than the hotel, but Emil jumped in again.

“That woman! City council tried to bribe her with a white-painted gazebo, her name on it on a brass plaque. Only Doree’s cannons and the street lamps on Main Street here are for real; ever’thing else is like I said, from a Sears catalogue or hauled in. But Doree thinks her cannons ought to fetch her more ’n’ a plaque.”

Tyree jumped in as Emil took a breath. “You know a place I could stay? That hotel of yours is too rich for my wallet.”

Emil shrugged a bony shoulder. “We gots a couple В and Bs, if you don’t mind sharing bathrooms.”

Tyree frowned. He did mind. “No.”

“Oh, wait now. Doree’s place is huge. One of the rooms she rents gots its own bath. I’m sure it’s empty. Hell, whole damn town’s empty lately. Except she talks a lot, if you can stand it. Whal’d you say you here for?”

Tyree understood and didn’t hold it against the little man. Curiosity was a tough urge to control. “Vacation. No hunting yet, right?”

“Out of season right now.”

“Good. I don’t care for shooting.” It was true. He didn’t. “I’ll need directions.”

Tyree got the directions, climbed back into his Cherokee, and devoutly wished for a soft bed. If Rushing River aimed for historical accuracy, then the bed should sport a feather mattress. Of course, the blacks all slept out back in those historical days, too. He hoped Ms. Doree Zendall would be greedy enough to see his color as green, as Emil had.

He rolled slowly down the street, still taking in the sights, noticing a few side roads, unpaved paths, really, not visible from Emil’s station. He also noted a small, slightly built old man sweeping the sidewalk in front of a store. Suddenly the man looked straight at Tyree, shouted, “Ho! What’s up?” Tyree looked again, taken aback. The man hastily ducked inside the Little Bear Market’s screen door, banging his broom on the stone steps as he dragged it in behind him.

Later. First get a place to park his car and his aching body.

Ms. Doree Zendall’s tiny raisin eyes narrowed, taking a long, silent moment to catalog the price of his black tee belted neatly within his black silk-and-linen-blend slacks, and the subtly expensive sleek black sneakers. Tyree congratulated himself for leaving behind his gold chain, bracelet, ear stud, and rings; he didn’t like to fit into a cliché of a typical big city black. The word hood usually attached itself to the end of that description. Now he was gold-free, and his watch stainless steel, although it included a few features he doubted Ms. Zendall would understand. Finally, she nodded. She tucked a stray strand of coarse hair into the ratty gray ball that rested on the roll of fat behind her neck and led the way to his new home for the next few days. As she hauled herself up the stairs, she began a rambling stream-of-consciousness monologue that Tyree listened to carefully in case he could use any of the info.

She was short and very heavy, a fireplug of a woman. Huffs appeared between her words as she struggled to talk and climb stairs simultaneously. Emil had it right, Tyree thought. Her house was massive and empty. The winding stair seemed endless. Her face reddened until sweat coursed down her round cheeks to plop like rain on her heaving bosom. When they finally gained the top landing of the wide, curving stairs, painted white but carpeted thickly in plush deep maroon, she abruptly finished with, “Breakfast is extra, how do you like your eggs?” The sudden cessation of sound as she waited for his answer woke Tyree from the mesmerizing flow of words. He’d almost fallen asleep on the stairway behind her.

He blinked, then registered the question. “Four eggs, easy over medium. You got whole wheat toast?”

“Muffins are better.”

“Toast,” he said firmly. “Whole wheat. No butter. And fresh juice?”

“Well sure, fresh!” she bristled. “Seven sharp.”

Tyree nodded, then handed her the agreed in-advance fee in cash. One shrewd glance at the interior of his wallet, and she wheeled smartly to leave him standing before the open door of a room more appropriate for a debutante than Tyree Garcia. The bed was a double, with an overlarge white lace coverlet that drifted to the varnished wood floor all around, the corners puddled like piles of snowflakes. It felt scratchy to his skin. He bundled it onto an overstuffed boudoir chair and dropped onto the crisp sheets, careful to let his feet hang off the side, too tired to remove his sneakers. The two corner windows were open, but no breeze stirred the sheer white curtains to cool the stagnant air.

The next hour passed in a luxurious haze of drifting between sleep and a blissful physical consciousness of the soft mattress cradling his weary body. When his conscience demanded he pull himself erect to get to work, it was a wrench. He wasn’t here to laze away the day after driving eighteen straight hours, racing newspaper or TV reports that might complicate his errand.

An early dinner, he decided. Coffee with sugar for the jolt, although he rarely drank coffee. Then get to it.

With little trouble he found a diner, the only source of food within sight, which helped narrow his choice, slid into the red plastic-covered bench seat, and just avoided propping his elbows in a pool of syrup left by a former customer. A battered window AC unit manfully refrigerated the air, although it hampered conversation with its metallic death rattles. Tyree basked in the chill.

After an agonizing attempt to swallow the larded slab of meatloaf floating in a lake of ketchup, he gave it up and asked for the freshest pic in the place. The waitress, a moon-faced teen, studied him like a science specimen, then brought him a large plate of banana cream pic. It was fresh, fragrant, and tasted like heaven. He got a second piece, making a mental note to ask for her recommendations if his job lasted long enough to force him to eat here again, swilled down the burnt coffee, and left her a 50 percent tip.

He strolled back toward the main part of town, suddenly aware that he, like the others he’d watched, was walking down the middle of the dirt-covered asphalt. After a small laugh at himself, he focused on looking for more conversationalists like Emil and Ms. Zendall. A small group had gathered in front of Edna’s Gift Shop, so he shifted his direction to end up there, but he moved slowly.

Give them all a chance to look him over, take in the details, like Ms. Zendall. He hoped his color would again be judged green. Helped a hell of a lot.

Again a good omen: Emil was there, holding court, telling the saga of Tyree’s arrival. Tyree stepped up on the sidewalk and smiled warmly at Emil, nodded hello. Bristling with pride. Emil greeted Tyree like a cousin, made introductions. Told his name and that he had come from Chicago, and didn’t have any interest in hunting. Just liked the peace of the area, “That right, Tyree?” he asked. Tyree nodded.

The nervous sidewalk sweeper was there, head bobbing. Again he declared in a booming voice, “Ho, what’s up!” then shyly backed away, tangling his broom between his own legs, nearly falling. His head hung as if ashamed of himself.

Emil said, “That’s Frankie. Says that to everybody. Sweeps sidewalks for the town. Gotta do something. ’Sides, it’s awful dusty this time o’ year. Good thing to do.”

Tyree nodded. Close up, he could see that Frankie was much younger than his wizened features indicated. An impaired young man who looked sixty. “Good job, Frankie,” he said. He held out his hand to him. Frankie went totally still. Despite his lowered head, his eyes went up to Tyree’s, holding there for a second. Then he grasped Tyree’s hand and squeezed, grinning. “Hey!” he said.

“Hey,” Tyree answered. Frankie’s hand was bony and fragile, with skin like leather. Then Emil introduced him to an older woman, nearly as fat as Ms. Zendall but taller. “This is Mrs. Barstow. Lisle. And her beautiful Wendy-girl. Wendy married Rudy Stern a whiles back. Rudy’s on late duty today. At the hotel,” he confided. “Desk clerk. Good future!”

Tyree nodded, smiling. “Congratulations,” he said. The girl could not possibly be older than seventeen or eighteen and looked many months pregnant, although Tyree was careful not to mention this in case he was wrong. The women he’d met so far in this town had a tendency to corpulence, and he couldn’t afford to offend quite yet.

He turned to the girl’s mother and tipped his head. “You couldn’t possibly be old enough to be this young lady’s mother!” An oldie but goodie, he sighed to himself. Women. But to his surprise, Mrs. Barstow didn’t do the normal simper and denial that usually followed the compliment. She just gazed at him with a puzzled look on her face.

She blurted. “You rent that car? Don’t look like no rental. Rentals don’t normally black out their windows like that. But it’s got a West Virginia plate on it.”

Tyree nodded. “Yeah, I thought that odd myself, the dark windows. But I’m fond of vans. Roomy. I’m a big guy, long legs.” He shrugged at the mysteries of rental car companies, put an earnest but puzzled expression on his face. But Mrs. Barstow’s eyes chilled as she took in his explanation, studied his face. Calculating. Shit, he thought. He habitually changed the plates every time he crossed slate lines to stay inconspicuous, but weariness had led him to reveal to the town crier, Emil, that he’d come from Chicago. Might as well’ve put a blue chicken on the roof for Mrs. Barstow to point out.

“You drive here from the airport?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Which one?”

“Well, hell, Lisle. Give the man a vacation, will ya?” Emil rescued Tyree, who silently blessed the man. “Obviously he drove in from the capital. Look at the dust on the thing.”

“He could’ve flown in to the Greenville airport,” she said defensively. “It’s closer. And lotsa straight flights come there from big cities, ’cause of the hotel.”

“C’mon, Lisle. Then he woulda driv in from the opposite direction. I saw him myself hit town back thataway,” Emil exclaimed in exasperation, pointing toward the Mobil station. “Obviously he came by way of Charleston!”

“Well his car’s so filthy looks like he drove here all the way from Chicago!” she demanded. “And where’s the rental car sticker?”

Tyree rapidly reassessed the intelligence of Rushing River’s population. No detail too small to notice. “They don’t mark rental cars anymore, since the tourist shootings in Florida,” he said, crossing mental fingers that West Virginia had subscribed to that policy, too. He groaned, wondering what else he’d screwed up. Better get in, do it, get out. This is what allowing himself too little sleep got him.

“There now, happy, Lisle?” started Emil, gathering wind to begin a good long rebuke.

“You know what made me think of coming here?” Tyree said to divert attention from his car. “I had a buddy. Moved to this area, around, oh, twenty years ago.”

“Colored like you?” asked Mrs. Barstow innocently.

He distrusted her innocence. “No. White like you,” he said, trying to restrain his annoyance.

“What’s his name? You been in touch, know where he lives exactly?”

“Not exactly.”

She tilted her head, looking up at him with opaque pale eyes, same color as a blued gun barrel, he thought. She continued, full of attitude: “But twenty years pass, you think, hell, he probably hasn’t moved in all those years. I’ll just look up my old buddy an see how the fish’er jumpin’, is that it? What’s his name? You didn’t say.”

“Jeeze, Lisle. What’s your britches in a hitch for?” asked Emil plaintively.

Yeah, Lisle, Tyree asked himself, his interest in her sharpening with each passing second. “My friend’s mother died. And he didn’t come to the funeral, her only child. Didn’t seem natural. Wonderful woman, awfully good to me over the years, and she mentioned he was still here shortly before she died. That’s what brought me. I’d been working hard, had some time off coming to me. Thought, well, I’d see what was up with him and get some R and R same time.” Don’t explain so much, he reminded himself. Too much detail could trap a man like a web of steel. He shrugged. “No big deal if he’s not here anymore.” He gazed around the green mountains surrounding the dusty town and said, “Beautiful,” his voice quiet with appreciation. Sunset had begun, streaks of brilliant coral and mauve tinting the rows of small shops and even his new friends’ faces a reddish gold. He figured the time to be about eight or eight-thirty. Darkness might not come until nine-thirty or after, this late in the summer. He sighed inwardly. He was tired, but no rest waited for him tonight.

“Whatcha do for a livin’, Mr. Tyree?” asked a new voice softly. “In Chicago?”

He looked down at the area near his right elbow. A pixie stood there in baggy overalls, yellow work boots, and a white sleeveless man’s ribbed undershirt.

“Hey, Tyree, this’s one o’ our Master Wilderness Guides. Miss Amy Bearclaw.” Emil’s voice lifted with pride.

The dusky-skinned pixie smiled, but like Mrs. Lisle Barstow, her greenish eyes had a metallic glint. With the experience of a lifetime of observation, he saw she was the product of some sort of mixed marriage. Bearclaw? Sounded Indian. Her dark hair was cut like a boy’s, and she obviously ignored makeup, but nothing could make this little woman look like a boy.

“Master Wilderness Guide?” he repeated.

She nodded. “My pa and I have an exclusive contract with Pinebrook, because we’re the best. And the hotel believes in maintaining the highest standards.”

Obviously she had no objection to self-promotion, thought Tyree, amused. “Do you ever take on outsiders, people not guests at the resort? I wouldn’t mind a tour of a mountain or two. Maybe a river ride.”

Her eyelashes lowered to half-mast as she considered him. “Your city ways shine through you like a lamp, although you’d be good in a light, I’d bet.”

“It’s been said,” he agreed, wondering why she didn’t talk as much like a hick as the others in the group. “Fights happen in a city. In the country, too?”

She ignored this query, her expression labeling it stupid, as it was, he admitted to himself, and asked him if he’d had his dinner.

“At the diner,” said Mrs. Barstow. He looked at her. “I saw you in the window,” she said, shrugging.

“The pie was fantastic,” he said.

“That was the banana cream, right?” asked Emil with authority.

Tyree nodded, beginning to feel hemmed in.

The pixie said, “My mom made it. She bakes for the hotel, too. And grows vegetables so they can offer organic dishes. You couldn’ta liked anything else there, though. Somebody big as you needs to eat. Want to come home with me for dinner?”

Dazed, Tyree threw all plans to the wind and just nodded yes. The pixie wheeled to tromp down the middle of the street. Automatically, he hastened to follow. She would’ve made a natural military drill sergeant, was his first thought. It took a stunned second before he remembered his manners and turned to wave good-bye to Emil and the others. Frankie boomed out. “Ho, what’s up?” but also waved good-bye. Mrs. Barstow just turned and strode away, pulling her daughter along by her plump arm as if otherwise the girl might run off. To Tyree’s amusement, all moved to the middle of the deserted street before taking to their individual directions.

Dinner took on dimensions he hadn’t expected, but by now he’d learned not to let anything surprise him. This place was too far beyond his experience.

Mrs. Bearclaw was a beautiful woman, slender and graceful and tall, her hair silky and pale and twisted back out of her face. And she was blind. Probably not completely, he judged, Legally blind. Although he’d offered to help, at Amy’s command he instead sat quietly on a small painted wooden chair in the kitchen and watched as Mrs. Bearclaw kept track of several operations going on simultaneously on a modern commercial stove with three ovens that took up at least half the space in the kitchen. The smells seductively drove away all memory of the diner’s meatloaf. As if drawn home by the aromas, Mr. Bearclaw soon arrived, a small lanky man with ropy muscles, obviously Amy’s father and the source of her miniature dusky version of her mother’s beauty. They shook hands, and he was invited to call Amy’s father David, her mother Lydia. When the food finally reached the table, Amy nodded he could start eating.

He tried to restrain himself, knowing a belly too full of food would work against him that night, but Lydia Bearclaw’s talents overcame him. When he finally sat back with a sated sigh, Lydia spoke. In a cultured East Coast voice, she asked who he was after.

Tyree lowered his head and shook it. “Is every person in this Hollow psychic?”

Amy tilted back on the hind two legs of her wooden chair, thumbs hooked in her overalls pockets. She grinned. “You think we’re so danged dumb we ain’t never ran up against bounty hunters before?”

“Don’t say ain’t,” reproved her mother.

Amy ignored her. “Look around. Are we overflowing with cops, DEA? Feds? We got no sheriff, even. Half the world has tried to hide here: Colombian drug dealers, punks from Atlanta, kneecap men from New Orleans. I mean, we’re so nowheres, we’re ripe for disappearances — or so these types think before they get to know the locals. Besides, it’s pretty here. People like it.”

Tyree stared at her.

As if patiently explaining the obvious to a halfwit, Amy finished, “You saw our town’s population numbers if you was at the Mobil. You know how in each other’s pockets neighbors get in a place this size? Nothin’ else to do.” She held up her hands as if to say, Well duh!

She finished, “So who you after?”

He stared at her father, who just shrugged, then her mother. Lydia sat quietly, sipping her coffee.

Tyree squirmed, which is what he suspected Amy had intended him to do. “What’s with the jump in population, then? From 112 to 427 in the last year. Or did I read it wrong?”

David Bearclaw nodded, his mouth screwed tight as if suppressing anger. “You read right. The hotel. Sells plots now, fancy houses all squashed together like fleas, in sections tucked between the three golf courses they got. Word is they’re building another golf course just for the residents. Pools, all that.”

Tyree asked, “Vacation homes or permanent?”

David eyed him. “What’s the difference?”

“Permanent means schools,” said Tyree. “Post offices, restaurants, sewers, service roads. And eventually some type of industry to employ them. Lotta extras come with permanent residents. Money for the Hollow, though.” He lifted an eyebrow in question.

David shook his head. “Don’t need, don’t want that kind of prosperity.”

Tyree frowned. “You got no police at all?”

Amy grinned. “Didn’t say that. We got Kizzy.”

David said quietly, “My mother. One of the remaining full-blooded Cherokees from the Trail of Tears. Descended from those who hid so the soldiers missed them in the roundup.”

Tyree considered. “Didn’t I read that about a third of the Indians force-marched to the reservations out West died on the trail?”

David nodded, looked aside.

Amy grunted. “That’s why the name, Trail of Tears.”

Tyree folded his arms, said to David, “So your ma, Amy’s grandma, is the law here?”

Lydia smiled.

Amy grinned. “She’s a Wise Woman. She sees and knows it all. Nobody can get away with a dang thing. She nails somebody, they’re nailed for good. Who needs a pushy cop shooting up innocent bystanders? She’s teaching me to take her place someday. She can’t die until I take over from her.”

Tyree slid his eyes sideways to examine the half-pint-size girl so smug, so big for such a pixie. Tried to keep the flummoxed look off his face. He finally sighed. “I believe you. You asked about my mark: Don’t know his name. I know what used to be his name. Edgar Fallon.”

Silence.

“What’d he do?” rumbled David Bearclaw at last. “In Chicago, was it?”

“Oh, Dad. Drugs and heatin’ up women, you can guess that much.”

Tyree lilted his hands. “Holy shit. You sure Captain Sabinski didn’t just mail you the guy’s jacket?”

Lydia Bearclaw smiled. “It’s hard to get used to, I know. Like jungle drums. Kizzy is a... a natural force, like a tornado. Amy, too. She’s just not as disciplined or schooled. Yet.”

“And where’d you come from?” Tyree asked. “The Upper East Side of Manhattan?”

“Very good,” she said, still smiling.

He thought a minute. “So you were running, too, when you got here. From what?” He studied her, brow furrowed in thought. “Were you blind before you got here? From birth? Or from—”

“Not nice, Mr. Tyree,” said Lydia Bearclaw. “Mind your manners. I know you have some. And I know you’re used to minding them, because you’ve restrained yourself amazingly ever since you arrived in Rushing River.”

Tyree nodded. “You read me right. Sorry, ma’am. Sir,” he said to her husband, who just faintly smiled and shrugged. Not a talker, thought Tyree.

“So now what?” he said, more to himself than to his hosts.

“Tell us the whole thing,” insisted Amy. “I don’t get the twenty years ago part.”

Tyree looked at her ruefully. “Twenty-four years ago, to be exact. This kid lied about his age — he was seventeen then — so he could marry a twenty-year-old dumb Polack girl in Chicago. He’d knocked — he’d gotten her pregnant. Too innocent, no family. A pretty blonde. So she works hard in a local diner while he’s supposedly driving a cab, and she thinks they’re socking away every penny so they can escape the projects with their baby, but he’s depositing it all into his veins. But she trusts him. The sweet little girl has her beautiful baby boy, goes right back to work. He switches to nights to watch the kid during the day. Next thing she knows, stuff starts missing from the apartment. See, his addiction’s growing beyond their joint income. So she reports the thefts to the precinct, but they’re all petty. I mean, what do they have to steal? The local beat cop, after one look at the husband, guesses the truth, tries to tell her, but she won’t listen. Until one day she catches hubby snitching her paycheck from her purse. Big fight, lots of screaming, and then silence. Some hours pass, but the silence bothers one neighbor who really cares about the poor girl, who finally decides to check on her. He pushes open the door, finds the girl in the kitchen, bloody and out cold on the floor next to her baby. Baby’s head is smashed flat on one side. The woman’s physically OK. The blood is all the baby’s.”

“Jesus wept,” murmured David Bearclaw.

“The cops went for the husband at his place of work, found out he’d been fired a few weeks before. His former dispatcher confirmed Eddie was supporting a monster habit and unable to hold a job. He had to be getting desperate for cash. Dealers don’t extend credit.” His mouth twisted wryly. “Cops figured, with nerves raggedy from too long off the juice, his wife catching him in his theft — screaming wife, screaming baby — he popped. Then either he slam-dunked the child to shut it up, an accidental murder, or he just flat murdered it. Luckily a chop to his wife’s head knocked her cold, or the cops figured she’d be dead, too. No Eddie. And when she woke up, she’d lost herself. Catatonic.”

Mrs. Bearclaw asked gently, “That makes it twenty-three years ago, then. So why are you here? And why now?”

“Because after twenty-three years of institutionalization, therapy, and whatever they do to help poor souls like that sweet girl — woman now — she regained her mind and memory. The doctors say she not only recovered, although still frail, but can be believed. And she told what happened. The cops had the story nailed pretty much correctly.”

“But you’re no cop,” said Amy. “Doesn’t sound like there’s a bounty on the guy. Why are you here?”

Tyree sighed. “’Cause I had the misfortune of going through elementary, then junior high, then high school with a good buddy who’s now Captain Lee Sabinski of Homicide in Chicago. And over the years, he’s kept track of our running balance of favors. I owe him big right now, and bounty hunters don’t suffer from a need for search warrants, extradition paperwork, and that stuff.” He looked Amy in the eye, man to man, so to speak. His sharp cheekbones bunched up into his own grin. “Plus, I’m good at my job. The cops had nothing then, and Sabinski’s men found the same nothing now. They aren’t even sure he ever left Illinois. But I work with a rather special computer information expert — a genius in his own way. Probably should meet your Grandma Kizzy. He decided to start with Eddie’s car. Even if he ditched it fast, in that first flight away from his own house, we figure he used his own car. In the projects, he was one of the few who had a car.

“So my man patiently traced from car to car to car, all but a few of them stolen, natch, but the ones that he didn’t steal: he changed his name just a little with each transaction. And two patterns emerged: a trail that never went beyond West Virginia, and a name that by now we figure might somewhat resemble Roy Barso.”

Amy settled her chair back down on all four of its feet and gazed levelly at her father. Her father shook his head, then stood to take the used dishes from the table to the sink.

Tyree jumped to his feet, grabbed his dirty dishes. Lydia patted the air. “Never mind, Tyree. Amy, better lead Mr. Tyree back to his car.”

“If it’s still there,” Amy agreed. David nodded and started squirting dish soap in a large metal sink.

“Better run on,” David said, taking the dishes Tyree held.

“What?” said Tyree.

“C’mon,” said Amy. “Gotta chore to help you with, then you can bed down in comfort until tomorrow.”

“No, not tomorrow. Tonight. Sabinski and I both know the newspapers’re onto this. We have to nail him before he’s warned. He could run again and be smarter about it by now.”

Lydia shrugged, her back turned to him.

Tyree let out the breath he’d been holding, and a puzzled anger started to rise. Amy grabbed his large hand and tugged. “C’mon, we might be too late as it is.”

Tyree went.

When they reached the car, pulled into the deep shadow beneath a golden rain tree. Amy chided, “You parked under a rain tree? You’ve got crap all over your car from the tree droppings now. Worse than sitting under a caged polecat.”

She was right. Yellowish green bits covered his black car all over. “I bet your mom wouldn’t like you to say crap.”

“I know. I do my best around her.”

Tyree felt like saying worse than crap as he tried to brush the sticky yellow stuff off and it only rolled in the dust already coating his Cherokee.

“There.” She pointed at the back window of his car. Or actually, at the black hole where the window had been. He didn’t need his key to open the door. Swearing fluently but as quietly as possible under his breath to keep from corrupting his accomplice, he stuck his head inside the Cherokee to view — nothing.

He swung in fury to face Amy. “You knew!”

Amy shrugged, absolutely unintimidated. “Guessed. Might as well go on in and get a night’s sleep.”

He glared at the pixie, his eyes slits. Then he relaxed. “Good advice. See you in the morning.” He wheeled and strode his way up the broad white stairs to Ms. Doree’s back door. Finding it unlocked, he let himself in. As soon as he reached his room, he turned on the light, moved around here and there, sure Amy must still be down there watching, then extinguished the light. He rolled around on the bed for a few seconds, pulling back the covers, ruffling the sheets. For an instant, his body sank into fatigue like a warm bath, but he didn’t allow himself to stay there. He rolled sideways off the bed, crawled to the window, looked down. No sign of Amy. He couldn’t even see his car in the darkness, and he noticed the moon cast hardly any shadow. A good night for hunting. A frail sliver of moon slid from behind a cloud, confirming his assessment. He sat down and thought. Hunt with what? He held up his hands. Well-trained weapons. He preferred them to guns anyway. He hadn’t lost everything after all.

He let his back rest against the wall under the window. An hour’s rest. Sitting up. He didn’t trust the soft bed he longed for. One hour. Then go.

The hour passed, he lunged to his feet, did a few limbering stretches, then like a black cat crept down the stairs to let himself out the back door. It still wasn’t locked, at which he tsked, until he remembered he was in the land of Kizzy and Amy.

He took the side paths one by one, figuring that with many of the four hundred population tucked cozily up by the hotel, he could scan from house to house for a forty-year-old man without it taking all night. He had a detail he hadn’t shared with Amy. The man had a tattoo of a knife etched onto the back of his left hand. A jailhouse tattoo, which meant it was blue and homemade fuzzy, probably nearly invisible after so many years. The point of the knife aimed at the fugitive’s left middle finger, recording a knifing he’d done in Juvenile many years ago, his way of refusing a jailhouse romance. A matter of pride for a punk kid, to have killed an enemy and gotten away with it. For no proof had ever pointed to Edgar Fallon except that he’d never shown up in the clinic with a torn-up ass, and then the sudden appearance of the tattoo. Health and a tattoo were proof of nothing in court, although crystal-clear evidence inside. And Edgar was left-handed.

Keeping his head down and low, wishing fervently for his monocular night vision headgear and the Game Finder scope, he made do with his own eyes and crept through the Hollow. At both cabins and houses, going slow, he found that the Hollow residents had an uncommon love for dogs. One cabin even had pigs roaming free. He’d read that pigs were smarter and even more vicious than dogs, so he skirted this place nervously. Finally, the sky lightened and made his stealth ineffective. Not having gotten even close to one cabin, one bedroom window, or one man of the right age, he turned to creep home, then said, “Fuck it,” and straightening himself, scuffed like a native directly down the middle of the street.

In his room, he threw himself onto the soft bed and totally disgusted, fell into an intense, dreamless sleep. As the sun moved high enough to enter his window, he woke long enough to remember breakfast, then fell asleep again.

In the early evening he finally came to. His dusty sweat had dirtied the sheets, a detail he knew would anger the formidable Ms. Doree Zendall. He peeled himself off the hot bed and climbed naked into the curvy tub with legs and a shower nozzle like a sunflower. The shower curtain, a daisy-covered film of plastic, glued itself to his thighs as he stood in the hot downflow of water. Washing away his sins, he thought to himself with a snort. His stupidity in thinking all people were the same, all methods would work the same everywhere. He should’ve farmed out this chore to a fellow skip tracer from a nearby area, one used to country ways.

He put on clean clothes and descended the stairs. Ms. Zendall stood waiting, a stony expression on her flushed face as she watched him descend. He felt like he was approaching doom, not a landlady. He wondered if the glistening coat of sweat on her brow was from the heat or anger at him for missing breakfast.

“I’ll pay for—” he started, but she chopped off his words with a jab of a fat hand.

“Ms. Bearclaw is waiting to talk to you. Her and Amy.” She wheeled and marched away, her errand fulfilled.

Eyebrows high, Tyree whistled away the ghosts of last night’s failure as he strode easily down the middle of the road again, aimed for the path to the Bearclaw home.

Again seated in the kitchen, Tyree waited. Amy clearly had some things to say. Eyeing him with amusement, Amy asked, “Any luck last night?”

“You know the answer to that.”

She tapped her foot on the linoleum floor. “Ready to meet Kizzy now?”

He thought about it. “Whyn’t you offer this meeting last night?”

“’Cause you weren’t in any mind to listen to anybody. You knew what you wanted, and what you wanted was no interference. Now. Ready to meet Kizzy?”

He sighed. “Sure.”

In minutes he found himself climbing a hill along a path he doubled he’d have found without Amy’s guidance. A small, square cabin sat up high, tucked among the treetops and wedged into the hillside. With no knock, Amy opened the screen door and waved him through. The front door was in direct line with a back screen door, and as a result, a slight breeze cooled the small house, and the air felt pleasant to his baked skin. Amy pointed to a scoop-shaped bench of a sofa, padded with patterned Indian blankets, so he sat. The blankets smelled of sweet chamomile.

An old woman of an age he couldn’t guess, using a stick to lean on, was ushered into the room by Amy and helped to lower herself into a rocking chair padded so thickly it looked like a catcher’s mitt. Her balding head was outlined against the sun coming through the back door, and her hair looked like wiry fuzz in shadow. He stood to be polite, but she patted the air, motioning him to sit down.

“I’m Kizzy, hon. Amy’s told me about you and said she told you about me, so that starts us both off square.”

Tyree blinked. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Amy told you to rest yourself last night; you shoulda taken her advice. But you didn’t.”

“Ah, no ma’am.”

“Wasted yourself, din’tcha, son.”

Tyree settled back into the sofa with a sigh.

“I understand your feelings,” Kizzy said. “Now fill me in about this boy you’re after.”

Tyree told her all he knew. And this time included the tattoo and the left-handedness.

Amy frowned. “You held back on me.”

Tyree shrugged. “Sorry.”

Kizzy tapped her stick on the floor twice, turned to Amy, said. “Fetch ’im, hon. Hurry up afore he takes off.”

Amy said, “I kept watch on Elroy all night. He’s still here, but not much longer.”

Kizzy nodded and waved Amy away. “So run, then.” Amy darted for the door and was soon out of sight.

“You tellin’ me this little girl is going to fetch my perpetrator to me while I sit here?”

“Rather be bit by a pig?”

Tyree shut his mouth, shifted his broad shoulders within his T-shirt.

Kizzy smiled.

Despite slamming the flimsy screen door of Barstow’s Dry Goods store in her haste, then her boots tromping loudly on the wood slat floor. Amy composed her face in a pleasant, hopefully sociable smile. “How ya doin’, Mrs. Barstow?”

Mrs. Barstow nervously fingered a bolt of flowered cotton material still draped across her counter from some earlier customer. “Just fine, Amy. ’N’ you?”

“Oh, good, good.” Amy lounged against the counter to show her worry-free state.

Mrs. Barstow tugged the material from beneath Amy’s forearm. “You’re dusty, hon,” she said apologetically.

“Your hubby round back like usual?” asked Amy.

Mrs. Barstow firmly eyed the material as she wound it back onto the bolt. “I ’spect. Always doin’ the books; don’t know why it takes him so long. Why?”

“Got a question for him, ma’am. You mind?”

Mrs. Barstow looked at Amy for a long moment. Then she looked again at the bolt of material and took a deep breath. She shook her head and turned her back on Amy.

Amy pulled reluctantly away from the counter. “Gonna be okay?” she asked.

Mrs. Barstow glanced over her shoulder at Amy, eyes glistening. “Was fine before. Got Wendy now. ’N’ the grandbaby’s coinin’ soon. I’ll be fine again.” Amy squeezed the woman’s round arm quickly, then rushed for the back door. Mr. Barstow wasn’t there, but the outside door stood ajar, so she pulled it open. Mr. Barstow was in his old brown Buick, slowly edging it backward, spinning the big steering wheel to back and turn the huge car down the alley toward the road.

Amy just walked over and stood in front of the old car’s front bumper. He turned his head to put the gear into forward, then saw her. Mr. Barstow slammed on brakes. They looked at each other. Amy could see his left hand, high on the steering wheel, illumined in a glare of sun through the windshield. A big scar disfigured the hand. A scar that ended in a point over his middle finger. Amy’d known about the scar for years, never thought a thing about it before. Lots of people have scars. Of all kinds.

Amy pointed. Mr. Barstow, without a word or nod, rolled the car back into its parking place. The back seat was piled with boxes and clothes wadded into bundles. Not a good packer, Amy thought. A black, rectangular nylon case poked up through some shirts. Tyree’s goods might’ve pawned into enough to stake a man to a modest new start in life.

When he opened the Buick’s door, it creaked. Dust and old age had worn down the hinges. He slowly emerged from behind die wheel. Amy took his right hand in hers. “Kizzy wants to see you.”

He nodded.