Chapter 22

1

“Holy shit, Pug. Are you serious?”

            “Got the call late. I mean, real late. My parents let me stay up past eleven just to pick her up. Found her out behind the Mr Sub.” He didn’t dare say more. Pug only touched his pocket where the newspaper clipping sat folded, the telephone number written on Clayton Miller’s forehead.

            The boys were out in the field by the baseball diamond. The coaches had already been out painting the lines on the shale and prepping the infield for tryouts after school. There were posters plastered all over the school about Fall Ball and Varsity Football. Pug understood that small towns like Reedy Creek expressed a lot of enthusiasm in its sports, because those games garnered a ton of appreciation among local businesses and consumers, drawing hundreds of people for Friday night games. It was something of a tradition around here. The outfield fence was festooned with billboards claiming the likes of BB’s Rentals and The Revue, of the Burger King on Main and Mr Sub across the street where cokeheads went to dine and lost dogs went to be found.

            “How was she?” Croak asked. “I mean, was she scared?”

            “She was happy to see me.”

            “Shit, I bet. Man, I was so worried last night. The moment I got home, I was just…” Croak closed his eyes and Danny patted his shoulder. “We really looked man. We did.”

            “I know.” Pug smiled. But you didn’t check the farmhouse. Where Chels went to die. He trembled. It wasn’t something his friends would see. No, but it was something that had followed him since climbing into the car on Main last night, watching that man named Bernard disappear into the alley. And to a doorway back to the Situation Room. Because there are a lot of doors in Reedy Creek. Magic doors. “You guys made it easier for me. When I thought she was gone for good.”

            Adam smiled. “I’m just glad it worked out, bud. None of us slept.”

            “He’s right,” Danny smiled. “Chels is one of us. She’s the fifth. Even if Adam wouldn’t piss on her if she was on fire.”

            “Shut up, Jew.”

            Danny only laughed. “Just joshin’. Geez, pull your undies out of your ass. You did good last night.”

            “My mom’s going to pick me up before lunch. Even gave me a note if I’m late for Social Studies. We’re taking Chels to the vet. Just to make sure everything’s okay.”

            “Probably a good idea, Pug,” Croak said. “She hasn’t been herself. Chipper, ya know.”

            Pug smiled. He could only think of waking up in the morning and looking out at that utility shed at the end of the cul-de-sac, its exterior fashioned like a miniature Tudor to keep up the architectural theme on Deermont, its interior only plywood and an electrical sub-station. In most cases, he figured. Other times its interior was a stairway. The door was closed when he looked, just as he assumed it would be. Padlocked. But in his dreams it opened and the man named Bernard stood at its threshold, carrying a tight coil of piano wire furled around his fists until his knuckles bled; and swinging lightly, from side to side like a metronome, was Chelsey, her mouth stuffed with Meatball Supremes and her eyes wide and glazed like marbles, looking back at him with silent surrender, the wire leaving her tan fur scarlet and ragged, blood dripping from her tail to the grass in a reflective pool. And the man named Bernard smiled. His teeth were cigarette butts and his throat the lit ember end of a Winston. But Chels was there, at the foot of his bed, looking up at him. Not with her usual excitement but an almost morose acceptance. He sat on his mattress and only looked at her and she back. And he knew something was wrong. He just knew.

            “Mom, we’re still going to take Chels today, right? You promised.”

            Pug’s mom had only quietly nodded her head. As if she too knew something was wrong. Saw the same confirmation in Chelsey’s eyes. “I’ll call this morning.”

            “I don’t get how we didn’t see her. Man, we rode back and forth on Main before checking with Buddy and running down to BB’s.”

            Pug looked at Danny and bit his tongue: She was lying among the bodies, among the maggots, because you wrote a break-up note on my back. “I bet she was hiding in the…in the shadows. Cause she was turned around. That’s all. You guys did awesome. You did.”

            “Thanks,” Danny said. “I mean, it’s bad ass she’s home, it is, I just wish she would have trusted us enough when we were hollering her name.”

            That’s when the boys heard the sirens. And saw the police cruisers racing up Main Street.

2

The front lobby at the Secondary faced out onto Main, and a set of stairs led to the sidewalk that arced around the field to the left, out toward Woodvine and Fenway further south, and up the Commercial district to the right where one would come across Mr Sub and the Salon, and further still, toward a small tributary into a grander parking lot, something of a mini mall and the movie theater The Revue, whose limited screens meant a far more discriminatory gesture on Kyle Carmichael’s behalf when choosing from distributors which reels to buy for his box office. Over the summer, Who Framed Roger Rabbit was playing most days. And Coming to America for the adults. The place stayed consistently busy, but with the school year starting, weekdays would slow down substantially and Kyle could reduce his hours to evenings or showings by appointment only. Which was a practice he used to abide by before the Corners ever came to town, but now he found it hard to trust some of the big city types, who might put their dirty shoes up on the seats in front of them or throw gummies at the screen just to watch them stick on Bob Hoskins’ cranky mug. The school’s lobby itself was a literal paean to the Creek’s new industry upstart; there was a planter to the right of the entrance doors, plated in slate tile and already mucked up by discarded gum, husks of corn jutting from the dirt in a celebratory gesture, and a banner strung above that read: WELCOME BACK HORNETS.

            The Secondary was near enough to the General to be receptive to the rumors making their way down Main. Because small town cultures were infused with emblematic hearsay.

            “Did you hear? Somebody shot Dr Halliburton and that cute young girl Sarah Darling. Right inside the pharmacy. Who would do that?” That’s how it started. A Mrs Rhinestaff, out for her leisurely walk, to keep active, because Jane Fonda recruited the efforts of American women the country over to get off their asses and move move move. And so she would. It wasn’t just the police cars, the sirens. No, her interests in the macabre wouldn’t lend her the opportunity to bustle, ironically, toward the very place where those flashing lights collected like one big pinball machine outside the General. But those cruisers were in the way of her route, so she would have to drop on by. And when she did, it would be rude not to speak to any of the attending officers; she knew plenty of them, she did. Had known most of the force since they were pups, watched them grow up. Because she was a Creeker, a lifer, and no matter how many people this new corn magic brought into town, she would always have the right blood around here to make her royalty. “Allen Webster,” she’d say, “how is your mother doing? I heard she was ill.” And Allen would nod politely, understanding he was already ensnared and the only thing he could do for the moment, just to get rid of her, was to entertain her speculation. Because she would stand there and watch. She would see the blood in the back. Probably the bodies. Because these old birds, they were perceptive. Boredom often made the elderly incredible detectives. “So what’s happening in the General? I have a prescription to pick up. Might be the same stuff your poor mother’s on.”

           “Sorry ma’am.”

           “Oh, can the ma’am nonsense, Allen, I’ve seen you in diapers. The formalities make fools of us both.”

          “General’s a crime scene.”

           “I see that, or do you take me for blind?”

           “There was an accident. Please, Mrs Rhinestaff, we’re not yet sure what’s happened.”

           “Of course you do, because it’s no accident. An accident wouldn’t have unloaded the station and hauled in ol’ Sheriff Napolitano from his coffee and liberal shitrag the New York Times.” And she would see Andy inside, talking to his deputies, most likely looking back to spot her as well, just as he’d seen her when he cuffed that poor little scarred boy outside the school, he without any drive or direction, but at the mercy of first impressions. “Allen Webster, Reedy Creek is not the Corners’ toilet. You hear me?”

            Allen could only nod.

           “We didn’t open our doors up to murderers. Some…some big city drug addict breaking into the pharmacy for a, what on earth are they calling it? A score, right. And then pulling a big city gun on a townie as if we’re all disposable. It’s Dr Halliburton, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”

            And so the story would form. And it would make its way down Main, like a wheel slowly collecting mud, its treads filling with the gossip of looky loos. Until it would reach the Secondary. Just as Pug was standing in that lobby at the payphones, staring down at that photo of Clayton Miller from the Post, that man’s muted glare studying the boy’s face from newsprint, as if in pleading: “Please go to my funeral. I want just one person there.” He wasn’t going to make the call from his house. Not with his mom around. Not with Chels staring up at him with accusatory eyes. You should have let me die. I love you, Pug, but you should have let me go.

            “You hear? Somebody shot Dr Halliburton and that hot chick Sarah Darling. Right in the General. Must have been last night. Max, guy who works the counter, he got in and saw it all. Said there was writing on ‘em both. Words, in blood. He’s being questioned right now.”

            “Holy shit! You mean, like, shot shot? A gun?”

            “Yeah, right from the movies, apparently.”

              Pug watched the group walk by, most oblivious to him. A cute girl only flashed him a smile, but it was only a kind gesture if it was anything. Pug understood that.

              “I betcha the two were banging. If they were there past closing, together, betcha that ol’ horn dog was givin’ ‘er to Sarah. Hey, if I was old and fat, I would.” This guy was older, probably a freshman, and he was talking to two other guys, all three of them in jean jackets with long hair. Pug looked at the clock over the front office, where he noticed the women in the secretary pool were chatting, fanning the flames and making calls, spreading the news faster than the Post ever could. The bell would ring in a moment. And maybe Pug could use this news, whatever might have happened at the General, to his advantage. Because people wouldn’t notice him. When news of the adult world hit, the kids were invisible. He watched the lady at the front desk, large reading glasses framing her face, pick up the phone and lose herself in a deep conversation of what ifs. The bell would ring in a minute or two for homeroom. He looked back down at the picture of Miller, and the number penned on his glabrous forehead. He pulled a quarter out of his pocket and thought deep and hard about what he might say. What he could say.

             Thank you no thank you.

            He plucked in the coin and dialled. Swallowing to clear his throat.

3

“I hear Doc Halliburton’s face was gone. Like blasted away. Scene outta Scanners.”

            “Gross,” Stephanie said near the front of the class, brushing aside her red hair and squinting her eyes as if to convey how inappropriate the very image sat with her.

            “Who do you think did it?” Croak asked. The entire class was chirping about the police race up Main, and somehow word had prevailed that the pharmacist and his assistant were found murdered. Adam wasn’t even sure how that revelation was possible, but in the spirit of interest and curiosity, anything was possible. Especially in a town like Reedy Creek where their lives were on display. He looked up and found the camera in the room, just above the chalkboard and over the placards taped to the header showing cursive letters, and he only turned away. He knew where that feed led.

            “If it was his hot assistant, that Darling girl, I bet it was the wife,” Danny said. “It’s always the jilted wife.”

            “That’s sexist,” Stephanie said, looking at Danny and giving him the stink eye; it must have been something every girl could conjure no matter her age. Just stocking it in the ol’ arsenal for motherhood.

            “I’m just saying. Pretty girl works for a fat doctor and you have a recipe for jealousy.”

            “So you’re saying his wife would seriously kill him for having a pretty employee?”

            “I’m saying maybe she wasn’t just an employee.”

            “You’re gross, Danny.”

            He only laughed, and the boys around did the same. Because that’s what boys did: they found the line of decency and hopped over it with nary a regret. But Adam was looking at the empty chair next to him.

            “Where’s Pug?”

            “Maybe his mom picked him up early to check Chels,” Croak attempted through laughter, but it was mostly broken. He was still looking at Stephanie, who was only shaking her head, her arms folded, her brow scrunched in disapproval.

            “Nah, that was at lunch.” The bell rang and Mrs Napolitano scurried into the class, dropping off a sheaf of papers on her desk and pulling back her usually tidy hair. “Shit, he’ll miss roll call.”

            “He’s probably scoping the cafeteria and asking for samplers,” Danny said under his breath.

            “Okay everybody, please, settle down. You’ve all no doubt heard some of the rumors that have made their way down the halls. That’s to be expected. Yes, I saw the police cruisers as well. But I’d ask a level of civility from you. What you’ve heard are just rumors, and so if I catch even one of you discussing what you heard happened I will escort you to Mr Perez’s office by the ear. Do you understand?”

            Everybody in the class murmured yes. Everybody but Pug.

4

“Hello Horace.”

            His voice gave him chills as he held the receiver, standing in the quiet lobby as the admin pool disappeared in waves of gossip. Pug only stared at that picture of Clayton Miller, and for a moment he thought the man winked at him, that his right eye, frozen in that last act of serving some sort of pictorial memorial for the man, closed and opened in just a fraction of a second, distorting the numbers sketched on his forehead. Pug only crumpled the paper and clenched it in his fist, listening to the rapid tattoo of his heart.

            “It was very rude what you did, wouldn’t you agree? When we first met, I’d asked for and still expect a level of etiquette from you, and yet you thought it wise to write a note of rejection on your body for public display. Would you agree that is proper?”

            “Nuh—no sir,” Pug stammered. He felt his body temperature rising, felt the hot thud of his heart and the spears of sweat on his face; he thought he might feel a growing stream down his legs, but for the moment could somehow contain the reasonable reaction to fear that was pissing himself.

            “Then why do it? Was it your friends?”

            Pug looked up near the administration office. He wasn’t sure how Grimwood knew he’d call at this exact moment, but considered he wasn’t as alone as he initially thought; there were two cameras that he could see, at least in the lobby: one above and pointing mainly toward the entrance across from the corn husks and maize yellow and black banners, and one above the glass door into the secretary pool where the women were still on the phones, some bantering with each other, nobody looking out at him, nobody seeing the boy late for homeroom.

            “I was afraid.”

            He heard Grimwood breathe on the other end. It was a throaty, raspy sound. “Oh Horace, afraid? Afraid of me?”

            “I…I guess so.” But he wasn’t guessing. He was terrified, and that was the bonafide truth. He knew Grimwood understood that as well.

            “Listen Horace, you’re a boy and boys do silly things. We can pass off your act as the frivolous party favor of one testing his limits. We are all guilty of some form of rebellion. I am a tad let down by your answer. I really am. You’re a good boy. A church boy. Mormon, are you not? A Latter Day Saint. Elder Nelson, should you one day choose to subscribe to the doctrinaire missionary work expected of young men. You will one day go door to door with your own promise of salvation and to those who close their doors in your face you will regrettably remember what you did to me and understand their rudeness was once your own, and that awakening will act as a substitution for what could have been.” Grimwood laughed and Pug could only imagine his leering mouth, his toothsome grin. “You’ve only but scratched the surface of what Reedy Creek has to offer, my boy. You’ve come through the gate into Disneyland and only just sat on a bench on Main Street and figured the place was a museum of early 20th century American small towns, all while pirates dueled and ghosts haunted merely steps from you. Yes, you haven’t quite seen the magic yet.”

            “Magic?”

            “Oh yes, Horace. I only wish I could have shown you more.”

            Pug closed his eyes. “Thank you…Mr Grimwood. For Chelsey, I mean.”

            “She’s such a good dog, Horace. Such a shame when an animal comes to the clearing. Always such a shame.”

            “What…what was she doing when you found her?” He was clenching that crumpled paper so tightly in his fist he could feel his nails biting into his palm. Soon he might draw blood. Did he really need to know? Did he?

            “A little rascal, that one. Just resting. That’s all you need to know.”

            “Is she sick?”

            “I’m not a doctor.”

            “But you think she is?”

            “You are not well if you choose to find the clearing. Do you understand, Horace?”

            He swallowed. He quickly wiped his eye. He was crying. Silently, but the tears were there. Because he did understand, and he hated hearing it. He looked into Chels’s doe eyes and barely recognized them; they lacked the flicker of life now, that expression of contentment that was the very definition of her demeanor.

            “You would agree I did you a solid, wouldn’t you? It wasn’t right that I just leave her alone, away from those who love her. That is no way to leave.”

            “You did, Mr Grimwood. You really did. My mom and I, we’re taking her to the vet today. To cure her.”

            “And I hope that works, Horace. I really do. You must believe me. Though I disagree with what you’ve done to me, I do not hold a grudge nor do I begrudge those to whom despair has mired them in its claws. I do respect that you haven’t given up. Because I fear Chelsey will return. I fear I will find her in the yard with the others, day after day, and when does it become my responsibility to just let her go? To let her find peace?”

            Pug wiped his eyes again, looking at the women in the office, none looking back, all of them bleared by his tears. He couldn’t imagine his life without Chels. Not now, not ever. So he would do whatever it took to save her. He would. He knew that now. Something about the calmness in Grimwood’s voice helped him come to that conclusion.

            “You agreed I’ve done something very nice for you. I have given you another chance with your best friend.”

            “Yes…thank you. Again and a million times, Mr Grimwood.”

            “Good, Horace. That makes me happy. And so you are in my debt.”

            “Pardon?”

            “My debt, Horace. One favor begets an equal opportunity for reprisal. A tit for a tat.”

            “You want a favor…from me?”

            “Yes, Horace. Just a simple favor. And we’re square, so they say.”

5

“I want to talk to Napolitano.”

            “You know I can’t authorize that,” Allen said. They’d already cordoned off the General from the sidewalk and Main and ushered the looky loos, as Andy called them, toward the curb and across the street, where quite a few spectators had already formed like some morbid peanut gallery.

            “That’s a fucking stark assumption.”

            “The evidence was on the scene, Cole. And he hasn’t been around for a couple of days.”

            Cole Moore stood outside the store, holding his Nikon and pacing from foot to foot as the officers inside snapped their own photos of the scene. The small town deputies would give way to the staties to take over for the forensics because these cops were in over their heads. He knew that. Even Webster understood it. Because double homicide was the sort of big city encroachment into Reedy Creek politics that left the Barney Fifes understandably peckish. “This is pretty clear cut, Allen. If Halliburton was cheating on his wife, and if he was caught, don’t you think she might have been driven to do this herself or even hire somebody?”

            “Hire somebody? Shit, Cole, this is Reedy Creek. You’re new here, and your Post ain’t USA Today or the New York Times, and this isn’t some soap opera. Okay. Elizabeth Halliburton has two kids. Two. Neidermayer and Watson have already gone to her place to break the news. She isn’t a person of interest. I know her. She’s broken up over this. She didn’t have a clue about what her husband might have been doing in private. Still doesn’t, I’d gather.”

            “That’s why they’ll turn this over to the state. Because I heard the accusations were written all over the bodies.”

            “Fuck you, Moore,” Allen said bluntly. “This is a courtesy. Andy would rather I didn’t give you the time of day. And maybe he’s right.”

            “I’m going to tell this story, and I’d rather I didn’t leave it to emotional suspicion. So Elizabeth, the victim’s wife, is a Creeker, so she wouldn’t feel betrayed by her husband? Is that your fool proof analysis? Because you’re damn right I’m going to let my readers know the two vics were nearly undressed when they were killed. Caught in the act. And their murderer tagged ‘em for it.”

            “Then you’d be telling a story worthy of Ludlum. You don’t know shit. And you haven’t seen the bodies. We found Ned’s service pistol on the scene. He didn’t clock in yesterday. We already had two people come forward today. Two. Oscar Chavez, bartender at Up the Creek, and Dr Norris Serkis. Sirens and flashing lights bring out the eavesdroppers, Cole, you know that. Everybody’s in the press when the fucking sirens ring. Both put Ned on the scene Saturday night in Up the Creek, and both verified that he and Sarah Darling, vic two inside, were cozy enough to put one and one together. Maybe he made his advances and she said no. Maybe he followed her around, pissed, and found her with Halliburton. Ned kept to himself. Wasn’t much to drink with if there was drinking to be had. And loners sometimes snap.”

            “That’s a hell of a leap.” Cole looked around the crowd; he couldn’t see Serkis, couldn’t see the gangly man cavorting with the onlookers, and he couldn’t see Oscar. He would have recognized the man, having spent a few nights in the bar nursing a cold one. Whatever might have happened to Ned after their tet a tet in the greenbelt watching the Saudi, he understood the guy must have gotten sloppy. Especially if the man Ned had been following stepped forward as a character witness pinning Ned to the victim. But this was outside the council’s protocol; their modus operandi involved faking accidents for sick people, the duplicitous act of making one high on drugs the culprit for his or her own demise, beating nature to the punch. This was clear cut murder. The gun was on the scene. From what he could see through the front windows, a few of the shelving units had been pulled over near the back, and he could see the serrated blood on the rear wall, its gristle thick and viscous. You had your suspicions about Ned. You can read people. That’s why you could sell yourself as a journalist in this little experiment when you followed Holdren here. That’s why you could convince Officer Stevenson for a few measly bucks to betray his boss and tail key council members. Because you knew what he was thinking, what he was hiding, what others most likely could not see. He had his own inner demons. The way he looked at you, as if there was always a question on the tip of his tongue he couldn’t find the voice for.

            “The proof’s in the pudding. What is that shit, Occam’s Razor? Even a small town dipstick like me knows simple sells.”

            “Motive,” Cole simply said. “What about motive?” He knew Ned didn’t give a shit about Sarah Darling, because he knew that particular attraction wasn’t there on his part. He was confident about that. If Norris was at the bar and witnessed Ned with Sarah, even if their conversation was brief, he knew why Ned had gone in the first place. Because he’d set Ned as a tail on Norris ever since the Post was published with Clayton Miller’s obit.

            “Look, we’re done here. I’ve been more than accommodating.”

            “Then I’ll ask somebody else,” Cole sneered, pushing past Webster and ducking under the police tape.

            “Fuck, Moore, get back here.” Webster brought his radio to his mouth: “We’ve got a rogue. Repeat, Press is loose.”

            Cole ignored him and pushed his way into the General, its interior gloomy, almost desolate, the aisles empty of people and fully stocked. Nobody had broken in to steal anything only to realize two witnesses were in the back screwing; there wasn’t anything in the place worth committing murder for. Not the cash in the register, not the stock of pills in the back. He quickly took a couple of photos of what he could: the pharmacy, the blood spattered on the back wall and the markers on the floor where the cops figured the shooter stood, where they found the casings. He only briefly saw Sarah’s body; her lab coat was unbuttoned and she wore nothing else beneath it. His first assumption was correct. She had fallen with her legs demurely pulled together, not splayed and indecent, one arm having reached out when the gun went off and the other thrown back, draped in an arc over her head as she slumped against the wall, her chin rested on her shoulder and blood coursing in freshets over her breasts. But there was a word bleared across her collarbone. Written in blood. WHORE. Halliburton died with his belt open and his pants sagging around his doughy thighs; he’d pissed himself as a last rejoinder to the world. There was a word scrawled on him too, letters looped in blood across his once heaving belly: ADULTERER.

            He’d seen something like this before. Tags like this—

            He was pulled back, his arms wrenched behind him with an abrasive tug. He nearly dropped his camera. He thought he would be cuffed, but Andy stood there at the entrance instead. Andy with his precise mustache and aviators clipped to his front pocket.

            “If you launch into your freedom of the press bullshit I’ll add a third body to the mix.”

            “Is that a threat, sheriff?”

            Andy only smiled. “You have no respect. You fucking reporters insist your tailgating is for your readers, but I’m convinced you’re all a bunch of goddamn sadists. You’re probably harder down there than a fence post.” He gestured down and only pinched his stache between his forefinger and thumb.

            “If you’re going to indict Deputy Stevenson, you might as well indicate any sort of motive. Any. Or my readers will make up their own minds. And you know it.”

            “No comment. Get this piece of shit out of here and make sure his exit’s a rough one.”

            Webster was holding onto him. And he was rough. Cole thought, for a moment, the officer would break his wrist, but he was only sent tumbling to his knees when Allen pushed him toward the police tape. “You’re an asshole, Moore.”

            That was fine and dandy. He’d gotten what he needed.

6

“Everything okay?”

            Pug only nodded. They were sitting on the school’s front steps on Main. Pug was waiting for his mom. Adam ate his bagged bologna sandwich and chewed slowly. The day was hot. Like one of those sweltering summer days you knew would bring a thunderstorm. At least Pug hoped so. The action was up north right now, and Pug wanted his mom to drive by the scene. They’d heard enough about what might have happened all morning: that somebody had murdered Dr Halliburton and Sarah Darling. Most assumed it was the doctor’s wife, because most assumed the man and Sarah weren’t quite behaving. It all felt like a movie, and the strangeness somehow transmuted itself in the air. Things were changing. Pug understood that. He did. Because for the first time, beyond hiding his CTR ring, he was carrying a pretty heavy secret from his friends. He knew that was against their vow. Friendship couldn’t survive on a shaky base. He had to do Grimwood a favor. For Chels. Because Grimwood could have left his poor girl in the clearing, could have left her to lie one among many. And then maybe he would have never found her. And each passing day would have been harder understanding she was alone in a cruel world. He bit his lip. Tonight he would learn of the favor. Tonight.

            “Just worried.”

            “Everything will be cool, Pug. I know it.”

            Pug liked Adam’s optimism, but he knew where it was coming from. It was the decent thing to say, he figured. Adam wouldn’t very well show his true colors now and grant him the honesty that he didn’t give a shit about what happened to Chels, he was far too worried about ball tryouts and upcoming tests on Poe and Shakespeare and Hawthorne that were the result of seventh grade and the maturity expected of students that would quell the further proliferation of rumors about a murder committed not even a mile north of the school.

            “My mom said she found Chels in the backyard, digging at the gate. Like she was trying to get out.”

            “So. She’s a dog.”

            “I know.” I know, but she was trying to get out to go to the same place. The clearing. Rotting-Row. “She’s just never…never done it before. She’s a good girl, Adam. I know you’re not much of a dog guy, I get it, but she really is a good girl.”

            “I know she is, bud. I’m sorry she and I weren’t on the up and up, but I felt like shit that she was missing. I mean that.”

            Pug only nodded. There were other kids outside, some having ventured far enough up the walk to try and see the flashing lights. They weren’t allowed off the premises during school hours. There was a Secondary Truancy Officer. Adam would joke that if it came down to a footrace, they’d have to wait a day to get caught because the fat ass would have to double over so many times to catch his breath. And the guys would laugh, because Adam Kramer was funny as shit and cool to boot.

            “This about yesterday? What you were talking about?”

            “Nostalgia?” Pug answered.

            “Yeah, I guess that’s the word.”

            “Maybe it is. I don’t even know. This summer was great. And then it’s over and all of a sudden the real world isn’t as kind. We’re kids, we’re supposed to be kids, and some guy under the Creek is watching us all, is showing us secrets, and I just…I don’t like it. Because my dog goes missing, because Croak’s brother gets the crap beaten out of him. The murder rumors going on at the General. It’s like, all of this stuff, it happened because summer’s time was up and we had to see how mean Reedy Creek can be. What we had was so imaginary.”

            “Shit, Pug, I don’t think it was imaginary. Not at all.” Adam patted Pug’s thigh and Pug waited for him to take a jab at his weight. But he didn’t. “Fenway, you, me, the Jew and Croak, even Chels, shit that was all real. The Fenway Four. It’s catchy. Like a rock group. But summer’s summer. That’s the magic. That’s what you look forward to. I did back in Mass. Every year. Look forward to Fenway franks, to ball games, to a day at the Boston Aquarium, to muckin’ around with the guys. Because those pretend worlds you make with your friends, they’re real for a couple months. Summer is for kids. It’s for us. If it wasn’t for the between, for school, for homework, what we do in summer wouldn’t matter, because it wouldn’t be an escape.”

            Pug smiled. “I like to think you’re a believer.”

            “No thanks, Pug,” Adam laughed, “my folks don’t have me wearing magic underwear and shunning caffeine. I don’t believe in shit. I just know what we have, what we’ve made together, it’s not imaginary. Can’t be. Because we made it real. You get it?”

            “I do. But only my parents wear the magic undies. I haven’t graduated into them yet.”

            Adam laughed just as Pug’s mom pulled up in the station wagon, Chels pawing at the window, her tongue wagging with as much excitement as she could muster. “So you graduate into them? And adults believe this horse shit?”

            “You won’t be laughing from hell, Kramer.” Pug patted his friend’s shoulder and went toward the car. His mom waved at Adam and he back; Adam could be cordial and respectful when he needed to be.

7

The place was worse for wear during daylight. Reedy Creek was what most big city Corners would call a suburban outlet. Had it not been for the ethanol plant the place would have died its slow death and the American dream would have migrated; the 34 passed right by the place leaving Main a stem from the interstates and thus an interstitial root severed from its plant. Most of the shops, locally owned and run, would have boarded up, but those fed subsidies to the corn growers meant government money would continue to trickle in, and once the plant was up and running, the outward trend of proliferating economies took route and the big city people felt obliged to test their mettle on the corn belt. Main shot up the Creek terminating at the plant and the suburbs branched off from east to west (but mostly west, where the Deermonts, Havenmonts, Deer Ridges and Deer Runs developed the once forested farmland to retain its sustainable aesthetic but pack a bunch of ticky tacky boxes on the plots). Up the Creek was just off Main to the east by a fledgling K-Mart that was the result of franchised expansion into a growing market. Its parking lot was mostly empty, and Up the Creek’s showed only one vehicle: Oscar’s ’85 Dodge Ram pick-up with the burgundy hood, mostly peeling and rusted now, its ivory side panels pocked with gravel and all manner of off-roading havoc, the result of his taking the beast out on drunken joyrides in the fields when he knew the Creek’s police were otherwise engaged. Meaning bored to death in the station just waiting for something exciting to happen. I’ll raise you one double homicide, chief.

            There was a camera on the light post in the lot, and another by the entrance into Up the Creek, the glass on the door almost soaped over to near opacity, and the sign above, usually flickering with the neon audacity of kitsch novelty, only showed chipped lettering and a smattering of dead flies who’d buzzed too close and were electrocuted. Cole tried the door but knew it would be locked. The place didn’t open until just before the dinner rush. Oscar opened the doors early on weekends and some game days, providing a special lunch menu for the occasion, but the guy mostly preferred the evening shift and so he controlled when that door opened for visitors. Cole only knocked. He knew Oscar would have peeked out by now and rolled his eyes. Reedy Creek had only one intrepid reporter, a Louis Lane, and the guy filling those shoes was an impostor. Once his business with Paul Holdren was up, he’d fly the coop.

            “I know who it is.” The voice came from the other side of the door. “Look, I’ve answered enough questions today.”

            “This isn’t on the record.”

            “Shit, Moore, do you even know who you’re talking to? Those things don’t mean anything here, in this town.”

            “Doesn’t matter. Our chat now, it’s not going in the paper.”

            “I wouldn’t care if it did. I’m just spent. The shit that happened, that’s enough for one day. Cops already drilled me.”

            “Well, for starters, how did you even find out? Your place is farther west, past the newer developments. You wouldn’t have heard the ruckus.”

            Cole heard the lock snap back into the frame and he watched the door pull inwards. Oscar was wearing a Dodgers cap, the seam at its bill stained with yellowing sweat, his black hair spilling out the sides and over his ears. “Place is closed. Doesn’t open till 5.”

            “Oscar. How did you hear about it? Rumors don’t fly that fast around here.”

            The man only exhaled. It was still pretty dark in his dive, so he flicked a switch and the main bar lights flickered on. The place was eerily quiet. Cole was used to the bad music coming from the juke, the sound of glasses clinking, of men belching, of the ball game on the tube. Without the ambiance, a bar was a pretty depressing place. “It’s a fucking shame, what happened. It is. She…Sarah, she was in here a lot. Had sort of a reputation. I dig that. But she was a nice girl. She didn’t deserve…well, she didn’t deserve what happened to her.”

            “No, she didn’t.”

            “Look, Officer Neidermayer called me this morning. Said he heard a lead from Dr Serkis that I served Sarah Saturday night, night of that barbecue. Fucking killed my business. How can I contend with free beer?”

            “Big deal, Oscar. You served her.”

            “I mean, I served her and Ned Stevenson. Cop wasn’t in uniform either. Off duty probably, but he was acting strange. Sort of casing the joint. Sarah’s pretty straight forward. A straight shooter. If I was younger, hell, I would have tried to date her, you bet, but I watch people. That’s why I do what I do. Because I like watching people. He came in and ordered one beer. Nursed it for sometime. Kept looking back at Dr Serkis.”

            “Dr Serkis was here too?”

            “Yeah. If I remember correctly, Ned came in after. Sat here.” He walked to the bar, toward a stool that sat empty. “He and Sarah were sharing a chat. Figured she was coming onto him. Even bought him another beer. Seemed amicable. I think that’s the right word.”

            “So why would he be a person of interest?”

            “They found his gun in the General, didn’t they? His service pistol.”

            “So?”

            Oscar only shrugged. “I don’t know. Ned never really came in here. When he did it was brief and we never spoke. Like I said, I watch. And I see. What I noticed is Ned had eyes for something other than Sarah Darling. Somebody. Kept looking at Serkis. Two oddballs who rarely ever come to my place. I don’t know any, nah, but figured a few would show up what with the Corners, the city folk. More open-minded, I guess.”

            “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

            “Queers. Ya know. Ned’s been here for a few years. Sharp looking guy, and what, I’ve never seen him bring a pretty little thing to my place for drinks and a dance. Sarah was flirting with him. You’re damn right. Because I know…I guess, knew when she was flirting. Shit, I’ll never see her again in here. Sad, isn’t it?”

            “Look, what are you getting at?”

            “The cops wanted me to place Ned and Sarah together here on Saturday night. Probable cause, maybe. They didn’t ask me for my fucking opinion.”

            “Well I am.”

            “I think Ned might have been a fag. I don’t know. But he had eyes for Serkis and the two of them left the joint together. It’s really not my place to judge. I don’t get it. You get a prime ass like Sarah staking claim and you want to mount a GP in khakis.” Oscar cleared his throat, sitting down on the stool that had been Ned’s perch. But Cole understood. Or he thought he did. They’re moving on from accidents. The council is actually getting into murder. And he knew Norris had his hands in it. He always had. From the moment Paul Holdren took the chairman role at Project Gaia. From a man Cole knew very well.

            “Do you think Ned did it?”

            “I’m not in the business of havin’ suspicions. But that ain’t evidence. What I do know, Cole, is that as much as I noticed Ned’s eyes on the doctor, I noticed the doctor’s eyes on him far more, like he wanted him there. Like he planned to go home with him from the get go. And I didn’t get the queer vibe from him. Not when he checked my prostate and not when he drank his scotch.”

8

“She’s been acting incredibly strange. Vomiting. That’s obvious, but it’s her personality. Her behavior.” She looked at Horace, who sat in the examination room with Chels on his lap. The waiting room here at the Animal Hospital, such a comical name to begin with, was just as dispiriting and depressing as she thought it would be. They sat for nearly twenty minutes waiting for their name to be called, and she understood it was just good planning on their part for having called in advance. There was a couple with a sick cat on their lap that Brenda figured wouldn’t live out the day; its eyes were glazed, nearly opaque, and its breathing was so intermittent a few times she figured the thing had finally gone to the Great Beyond. A little girl sat with her mom and a pup that had broken its leg. It only whimpered as it gauged its surroundings.

            Dr Langford, an older black man with wisps of grey in his hair, had pulled Brenda to the side after taking an aspiration test and blood samples from Chels, laying her on the patient table and proceeding with incredible gentleness as Horace silently cried, caressing her paw; he wore a white coat and a kind smile. His eyes even had that specific glint to them that was the hallmark of the jovial senior. Other than Bob Arnold and his wife down the street, Brenda didn’t know or see many other African-Americans in Reedy Creek. “How old is she?”

            “About three. It’s so strange. I found her in the backyard today when I let her out in the morning. She was digging under the fence. Trying to get out. She’s never done it before. Never. She hasn’t the energy of late to go out on walks, and here she is digging.” She slowly exhaled.

            “She’s young, maybe too young, but based on what you’ve said, based on looking at her, I have my assumptions. I pray I’m wrong only because her youth would discredit any such diagnoses, but I’ve been in this line of work for thirty years. Twenty of them here in the Creek and we do get a lot of farm dogs in here. Might have eaten something they shouldn’t have. Free reign is an opportunity for exposure to toxicity. I will run the tests, of course, but…Listen, this is just experience talking, and experience can be counterintuitive to the actual data. You have to remember that.”

            “Is it bad?” She looked at her boy, who only sat with Chels and stroked her head, looking at the posters of pets strewn about the walls, doling out that false sense of optimism and hope.

            “I’m going to prepare you for the worst. You can carry this with you, maybe don’t tell your son. I’ll leave that discretion up to you. But I’ve come across cases of what’s called lymphosarcoma in the past that seem similar to what you’re explaining and to what I’ve examined during staging here. If I feel it’s completely necessary, I will order a sonogram of the organs, but I expect the issue is in the gastrointestinal tract. I think the complete blood count will determine what we’re up against.”

            “Sarcoma? You mean cancer?”

            Dr Langford only quietly nodded his head.

            “My gosh,” she whispered. She felt her heart stop. Chels wasn’t exactly an impulse buy. Horace and the girls joined forces in Utah to attack her and Norm for a dog. As strong as she could be, that collective union of the three was enough to break down her defenses to the point where she fell back on the old cliché that the responsibility would fall on them and that she’d have nothing to do with the dog. But that had been an empty threat and she’d known it the moment the idea was even uttered from her mouth. Because she grew up with a black lab and loved him like he was her little brother. When Little Richie was hit by a car just off their driveway, she was there as her father covered him with a bed sheet and carried him into their car, and though he’d given her hope that Richie would be okay, she knew, deep down, that she’d never hear that bark again. That annoying bark. That bark the family had grown to curse, to scream at Richie to shut his yapper because they couldn’t hear The Brady Bunch. The bark she would miss for the rest of her life. And she knew she would be alone.

            “This is just preparation, Mrs Nelson.” He only smiled and took her arm in his hand, to comfort her. “There are treatments. Chemo. Most dogs find their cancer goes into remission.”

            “Meaning?”

            “Meaning we often find no evidence of disease after treatment. We cannot know for sure if radiation effectively cured the patient, because that would suggest the elimination of each and every cancer cell. But it’s certainly a good sign for a healthy life. Look, I think we’re just getting ahead of ourselves here. I will call when I know for sure.”

            “Thank you, Dr Langford.”

            The ride back to school was quiet. Just as dispiriting as the waiting room. She looked over at Horace, still holding Chels on his lap. She would usually be looking out the window, likely barking, her tongue in a ferocious tug of war with gravity, but she was silent and breathing slowly. Brenda was battling her own wits, understanding preparation was sometimes the best gauge for any eventual bad news.

            “Is she going to be okay?”

            Horace was looking up at her. His eyes were still misty.

            “The vet was talking to you…what did he say?”

            She could only swallow. They’d driven by the General on the way to the vet and drove by again as they ventured south. The cops were still on the scene. From what she heard, there was a shooting. Two deaths. She’d wait for the actual news to make up her mind about what happened, but even then she’d be prepared for the worst. “You know how doctors are, Horace. They…well, they like to make sure your expectations are set for what could happen.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “You know when you have a cough. The doctor may say you could have pneumonia. Or bronchitis. Because he might not know for sure. But he needs to lay out the options just in case. Even if it’s just a cold.”

            “He said she had pneumonia?”

            Brenda only shook her head, clenching tight to the wheel and only briefly looking at the flashing lights in her rear view. “Based on what Chels has been doing—” Chelsey only looked up at Brenda from her perch on Horace’s lap, “—the vomiting, the exhaustion…just, well, her general behavior of late, Dr Langford said it sounds like it could be…could be something called lymphosarcoma.” She didn’t even like saying the word. Didn’t like thinking about it, because she thought about Little Richie, thought about that little grave her father had dug in their backyard, and she thought of how a similar plot would look in theirs now, how the family would gather around the flagstone they’d grab from the woods with Chelsey’s name written in black.

            “I don’t know what that is?”

            “It’s treatable. And a treatable worst-case scenario is manageable. That’s all that matters, Horace.”

            Horace looked down at Chels and burst out crying.

            She parked in front of the school and turned off the car’s engine. “She’ll be okay because we love her. She knows that. She knows she’s safe.” She bit her lip and ran her hand through Horace’s hair. “Are you okay to go inside, because we can go home? We can, and just sit with her.”

            Horace wiped his eyes and shook his head. “No.” More resolutely. “No, because it’s not real yet, right? This is just a chance.”

            “That’s right, honey. And I thought you were old enough, mature enough, to know.”

            He didn’t smile. He ran his hands down Chels’s back and then ruffled her ears. “Then I’ll come home right after tryouts. I think I need to…well, need to keep my mind off it.” He looked at Chels and only feigned a smile. As if everything was and would be all right.

            “I think that sounds like a smart idea. Horace.”

            “Yeah,” he said, turning around as he opened the car door.

            “Good luck with the tryouts. Remember what dad says: leave the outside fastballs.”

            Horace only gave her a brief nod. She knew he would carry this with him for a long time. It was a burden. A weight. And she hated that it was happening now. When she bought Chels, she figured they had a good twelve years before the pain would set in. Because loss was so undeniably cruel.

            She let the first tears come when he shut the door. She could only be strong for so long.

9

He drove by the clinic. Just to be sure. Norris was the type who owned a sports car, and Cole didn’t leave disappointed. The red Porsche 928 sat at a slant in the lot next to your typical trucks and wagons, standing out as a grand contrast of Corner to Creeker.

            He went to Norris’s house. Because he had his assumptions. And he knew Norris. He knew of what he was capable, and he knew the lines had been drawn. His place was impressive. Cole parked a few houses down and left his car running for a moment. Gauging his surroundings. He knew Ned suspected he was something other than a journalist, and for a small town cop his instincts were sound. But Cole Moore wasn’t CIA. Wasn’t a spook. No, he didn’t come to Reedy Creek with any attachments; he came under the suspicion that what Paul Holdren and Norris Serkis had done to Project Gaia, and nearly accomplished under the folds of their radical environmentalism, would finally find success here in this town where a new industry was blinding people to the genuine machinations beneath the surface. The history of Reedy Creek as an incorporated proper was the story of an agricultural juggernaut connected to the country by the Union Pacific Railroad, which saw the county’s population explode from 636 residents, not including the nearby warring Sioux tribes, to 4,032 in 1874; industry and networking had that migrant effect, and the 1980s explosion was no different, though it wasn’t the railroad but the federal money, that largess convincing the usual big city shaker or suburbanite to try his or her hand at innovative private and public partnerships that might one day release the yoke of OPEC’s stranglehold on the energy game, in spite of the locale. No, boredom could be subdued by growing prospective entertainment gambits; soon Cole figured a bigger multiplex theater would be added, a rollercade, those indisputable luxuries afforded areas with actual tax revenue streams. For now it was just the illegal drug game, which was bigger here in the Creek than most small towns. And surveillance. Yes. Ned had mentioned when he first showed up in Reedy Creek a few years ago, there were no cameras. Now there were likely thousands. An expensive endeavor. And he saw a few even from his car. One on the light post, exposed but hidden in plain sight, just another addition of the grand infrastructure this corn money was paying for. And maybe that’s why people could ignore the cams. Because they were attached to the fortune of being a part of something important enough to pique the fed’s interest. Who was watching? The government? Private security? Those were answers he did not know.

            He climbed out of the car and walked toward Norris’s house; the lawn was well manicured, with a row of nicely pruned hedges flanking the driveway, no brambles breaking the containment, and a scaped bank by the stoop where there were flowers, all flourishing and well taken care of, signs of one content by neatness. He’d come here because he had his assumptions. And he had to see for himself.

            He went to the door and looked into the front window. The drapes were pulled aside, and he looked into a nicely dressed front room, a reading room, something he expected in a man like Norris’s home, providing and sustaining the illusion of his immense knowledge, a veritable library of cultured literature that was just begging to be discussed. The hardwood floors were pristine and vacuumed, not a spot of dust was visible in motes of light; the furniture was placed with mathematical synchronicity, everything in its place, no signs of any apparent struggle. Is that what you expected? A body maybe?

            He didn’t know. To consider Ned was the person of interest in the General murders was to consider he was set up; he was convinced Ned carried some burdensome secrets, but none that might have suggested he was capable of what he saw at the pharmacy. And Norris pinned him, and had Oscar pin him as well, when the bartender saw for himself the doctor and cop leave the bar together. Didn’t see Ned leave with Sarah. He saw a guy pass on her advances, a guy he suspected might be a homosexual. He went around the side of the house. The gate was unlocked. There were no cameras in the yard. He knew there wouldn’t be. Norris was a headliner in the E10 council, and Cole’s own exploration and research had proven none of the members were being surveilled because they were likely doing the surveilling. The backyard was simple, spared the accoutrements one would expect to see as summer wound down, the barbecue and patio set, umbrellas propped by loungers where one might study his considerable reading list. The yard was bare, with a shed in the back corner. The shed door was padlocked. Cole only knocked on the door; there was no response. He knew there wouldn’t be. Because you’re acting paranoid? No, he didn’t believe he was. He knew what Norris Serkis had done in the past. He went to the basement window, set just below the grade and tucked behind a well, its base filled with gravel where he expected to find weeds sprouting but found nothing of the sort. Cole climbed into the well and looked into the basement; there were boxes stacked neatly on the concrete floor. He didn’t know what he expected to see. You expected to see Ned. His body. Because Norris is going to use him as a proxy. You wait and see.

            “Can I help you?”

            Cole turned around. His heart stopped.

            “I’m sorry. I swear to God I heard something in the basement. Turned out to be nothing.”

            “Who are you?”

            Cole only smiled. The man must have been a neighbor. He was old, his eyebrows bushy and white with coiled kinks that meant he was a widower because no woman on earth would have let him leave the house in such disarray. “Friend of Norris’s. Name’s Ned. Thought I’d come by to say hi.”

            “He’d be at the clinic this afternoon,” the man said. “Thought you might be a Corner hooligan. Find those teens looting without supervision. City folk.”

            “Corner hooligan?” Was it a new idiom, something the elders were saying over beers?

            “Yuh, that’s right. Nice street here. Doctor’s a Corner, as you must know, but he keeps to himself. Reedy Creek used to be quiet. Now we’re on the look out for hooligans. You hear what happened, I suspect? Out at the General? Coupla murders, is what they’re saying. Hasn’t been a murder in the Creek for as long as I can remember. Probably since we was shootin’ the indians.” The man only smiled and Cole returned the favor. “You bring some New Yorkers and Angelinos to the country and they start shooting each other. I betcha in the end we’ll all end up collateral damage in the Corners’ war. You mark that down.” He chuckled. “You stay well, Ned. I’ll let the doc know you were by, in case I actually see the guy. A busy man’s schedule keeps him from the home. No way to live, if you ask me.”

            We’ll all end up collateral damage in the Corners’ war.

10

The sky to the northwest was dark with plump rain. He knew those clouds. Knew the calm that came before and the fury they brought with them. For now the field was still enough to hear the boys’ voices out on the diamond as they took their turns at bat. Lew sat up on the bleachers, as high as he could reasonably climb before his knees started bugging him. Because that’s what old age did; it made stairs a challenge. He was fortunate enough to have found an empty space six rows up. A group of girls sat at ground level, each having brought yellow and black pom poms to form some sort of makeshift cheerleading squad, and they each recited the names of those boys heading up to the plate to take batting practice, to show off swings to a coach in the dug out, a coach chucking from the mound, and a third hitting flies out in the field to guys hoping to snag a few like Kirby Puckett at the wall. He watched Pug suit up in the catcher’s gear; he always figured a coach would see some potential in the kid’s size and plug him behind the plate. Adam always said Pug could be a good ball player if he actually took a jog around the block a few times a week. He had a good eye, if he laid off the inside heat, and he really got great hip torque when he squished the bug in the batter’s box, swinging through that ball with intensity and actually following through without spinning out. Croak was a good fielder. Lew watched him snag a few pop flies. But Adam always said Croak would make a better voice from the press box; he had a killer Vin Scully, and his Harry Caray, especially when belting out a rendition of Take Me Out to the Ballgame, was top notch. And Danny the Jew was a good pitcher. Nothing like Koufax, or even Don Larson, but he mimicked the high leg kick of that 70’s ace Ron Guidry to perfection, and even got some great movement on the ball when he snapped that lanky arm of his. Lew watched all of this; he was perceptive while he still could be. The conversations around him in the stands weren’t even about ball: not about the Dodgers or the gem of a season Orel Hershiser was pitching, and whether or not LA even had a fighting chance against the Mets, who looked to make another example of ’86 and possibly knock off the Bosox again if they could take the division from Detroit and the pennant from the powerhouse Oakland Athletics. No, people were talking about what might have happened over at the General. Lew drove by just for interest’s sake; the cops were still there, lights still flashing, tape still cordoning off the place and killing its daily take. The group behind him—some guys probably watching their chums on the field—was talking about how somebody flat out murdered the pharmacist and his hot assistant. And then there were murmurings about how the Creek was at a loss because you didn’t see that kind of tail around everywhere. No, Lew didn’t come for gossip, for what could haves and what did happens, he came to watch his grandson do what the good Lord intended he do. Lewis understood Adam was special, and sometimes that was the trade off when your home life suffered. There always had to be some sort of an upside. And Lew believed it was baseball.

            And boy could Adam hit. He’d shut up a few conversations around him when it was his turn at the plate, tapping his cleats to knock out the shale, adjusting his helmet and tensing his quads; he watched the striations in his forearms deepen around those budding muscles so apparent in boyhood as he gripped the aluminum bat; and he watched the coach wheel back and throw a peach, a genuine cherry, and Adam just dug in and sat on that ball, sat on it like one with an eye for strikes; and when Lew heard the contact, heard that bat clip the baseball, he listened to the silence transmute conversations about the General to awe.

            “Jay-sus, boy, how old are you?” the pitcher hollered from the mound, taking off his cap and swiping his forehead, his graying hair laying in tangles over his ears.

            “Twelve, sir,” Adam only said, and the coach in the dugout laughed. Lew knew what that sound meant: if I don’t draft this little shit I might as well join those two lying dead over at the General. Har har. Adam took two balls yard during the tryouts. The fence at center was 320 feet. Down the left field line, where Adam said he smoked Danny’s pitch out of their makeshift Fenway off Woodvine, and where Adam certainly carried most of his power, the fence read 295. Adam put a ball over each wall. The youngest kid to do so while Lew watched.

            “Shit, he’s good.” The guy was sitting to Lew’s right. Not as old as him, but just as keen to watch. He hadn’t been pulled into any of the conspiracy mongering around about the General.

            “My grandson.” Lew smiled. He had a notepad on his lap. He was slowly writing something. Words weren’t really his forte. He was honest enough to admit that. The Thank You cards, the Christmas Well Wishes, those were all Betty’s doing. All of them. She sometimes even did Retrospectives for the New Year, figuring the people and family she mailed the letters to, detailing what the Forsmythes had been up to the previous year, would like nothing more than to read a five-page dissertation on the “been there done that” habits so neatly encapsulated by the rut that was long-term marriage.

            “He’s got a spot on the Hornets. Guaranteed. Haven’t seen a twelve-year-old hit like that. Not in any of the tryouts I’ve watched here.”

            “Thanks. What about you?”

            “Honestly, I just come to watch. I’m a lifer here. Creeker through and through. Funny, we never really had a name like that for ourselves, ya know. Not until this ethanol stuff happened and this place actually started meaning something. Corn brought your grandson, I’m assuming. Hits like a city kid. City clinics, right?”

            Lew nodded. “Little League. Just outside Boston.”

            “Yuh. Figured. Hits like he’ll see the big leagues. I’d say, talent like his might entice some scouts to check out the games. You don’t often see the college guys coming around here. Not if they don’t have to.” The man held out his hand. “Name’s Griffin.”

            “Lewis.”

            “Nice to meet ya. Thought you might actually be one to talk to. You’re actually watching the ball players, not speculating about the bad news on Main. I suspect it ain’t the last of it.”

            “Last of what?”

            “Bad news. You get big city talent on the field,” he gestured toward the diamond, where a stout boy was standing at the plate, having the misfortune of following Adam for BP. “And then you get the big city miscreants out there.” He waved out toward Main. Toward the General.

            “Not sure bad people are exclusive to cities.”

            “Not a murder I can remember. Not in a few decades at least, and that’s assuming my folks were protecting me from shitty news when I was a pup. A year after that plant opens. Bam.”

            “Sounds like you’re speculating about the bad news on Main.”

            Griffin only smiled; the man had stubble and deep lines under his eyes. He wore a Hornets ball cap, something he must have gotten along the way after having watched so many games from these stands. “Ya know, I just looked at you and saw somebody like me. Don’t want to say alone, but without company. I mean no offense. In your eyes, maybe, I saw you reaching out. No matter, I guess. I hope I’m not being rude. I see you’re writing something there. You a writer?”

            Lew only chuckled. It was all he could do. Griffin might have been what some would call a bumpkin, and that was a very real issue when it came to that binary people kept tossing around: Corner and Creeker. When you established ground rules from the get go about those who belonged and those who didn’t, it made characterizing them as different far easier; it was the language of war, a way to transform humanity to its tribal fundamentals. And he could feel the pot stirring in this place. He looked down at the notepad. He was not a writer. And he would never claim to be one:

            I write this as I watch you doing what you were made to do. Playing ball. And I know this will be the last—

            It was already far too depressing to finish that sentence. To finish that thought. The thunderheads gathered on the horizon where the smokestacks chugged to the north. He could smell the electricity in the air. Gathering in pockets against that slate grey curtain.

            “I’m a widower. And I’m writing something for my grandson. To read—” He looked back down at the paper. He knew what he wanted to write, but getting it out, actually finding his textual voice was something for which he either didn’t have the patience or the talent. It’s mean, what it is you’re writing, Lew, and I won’t have any part of it. He ignored Betty. Had ignored her since going to the diner. “To read when he’s older.”

            “That’s really nice of you, Lewis. I wish my pops would’ve done something like that for me. I played ball for the Hornets, ya know. Shortstop. Wasn’t ever any good. Not like your boy out there. But I tried. It’d be nice to have something written from the heart. What he was thinking. Something I could read every once and a while to remind me I meant something.” Griffin’s smile was just as lonely as Lew’s eyes.

            Isn’t this fate, pairing you next to Ponderin’ Griff here.

            He scribbled the next few words and set down the pen, staring at the period, at the finality implied by that fucking dot:

            And I know this will be the last time I watch you hit the ball.

            Next to Lew’s lap, in that minute space between him and Griffin, he saw something scratched into the bleacher’s wood. MONTANA 555-4334. And he knew the connection because in Reedy Creek that was how the world worked: bundled by the convenience of coincidences. It was slang. Tony Montana. From Brian De Palma’s Scarface. Students passing along the drug hotline to kids in the know.

            And he thought about sitting in the diner. Sitting with the boy named Henry, but who the kids called Scarface. Sitting with a cup of coffee and that same partial regret, partial eagerness in his eyes that meant he wouldn’t be welching on his deal.

            “No gun this time I see. That make us buds?”

            “The doctor called.” Lewis took a sip of his coffee. It tasted like warm piss. Allen had mentioned something about that, hadn’t he, that the true Creekers knew to drink the morning roast? He supposed it didn’t matter. “She’s clean. No cancer.”

            Henry smiled. His hair was combed over his face, leaving the clear side exposed and most wondering what he must have once looked like. And if he ever regretted what he did to himself, or what others had done to him? The truth about the scars was all hearsay, like the murders at the General. People talked and rumors became the truth because gossip permeated culture with the power of collective insight. “Boss man knows how to pull punches when he needs to.”

            “Do you know who he is?”

            “What are you on about?” Henry cocked his eye.

            “I mean who he really is?”

            “I suspect I might.” Lew thought he heard fear in the young man’s voice.

            “And that?” Lewis pointed at the scars.

            “And that is none of your fucking business. Are we good? I don’t like it when people stare, and the whole lot of them in this shittery haven’t anything better to do than ruin their appetites by gawking at curdled face.” Henry stood up. “I really doubt you know who he is, ol’ man. Not if you brought me here to give me the news. I don’t matter a fuckin’ scuff about what happens to you or your daughter. What he’s already done means he’s coming to take what he’s owed. That’s all.”

            Lew reached out and took Henry’s hand. He wasn’t sure why. Not yet. Maybe he was feeling retrospective, like those letters Betty would write, the ones that would explain what Barb had been doing in school, what Lew had been doing with the badge, all of it written under the stink of cigarette smoke as she chugged away and away with a butt in one hand and a pen in the other. “You’re a good man, Henry.”

            “Get your fucking hand off me.”

            “You are. I’ve seen monsters, and you aren’t one of them.”

            He touched his face: “This has made me one. They have made me one. People who stare, who expect the worst of me. My choices. Do you really think I’d be here if I’d done right?” He pulled away his hand. “Boss man only takes the fuck ups. Because they owe him for what he’s done. I owe him. So take your sermonizing to your daughter, ol’ man. While there’s still time. It’s wasted on me.”

            And Henry left. Lewis would never see him again. As he drove to the field to watch his grandson play ball with his friends, he understood something about Reedy Creek. Maybe this place was as simple as a binary, categorized by Corners and Creekers. Life and Death.

11

Henry walked north after the diner. To get away from the mob mentality bringing the gawkers to Main to scope out the macabre, because no matter how messed up the world got, there were always people on the sidelines mesmerized. It never ceased to amaze him.

            The car pulled up beside him when he neared Burger King; he could smell the charbroiled burgers, could remember how they tasted. It was funny. He wasn’t even hungry anymore. Oh what you’d do to taste a fuckin’ Whopper. Double Whopper.

            “Henry.”

            He knew who it would be. Just listening to the engine. “Man, I’ve got places to be, people to see.”

            “Just get in the car.” Andy had rolled down the passenger side window and only ducked his head to speak, those goddamn aviators perched on the tip of his nose as his dark eyes peered over the glossy lenses, judging him. Everybody judged him. He could only relent. There were rules. He was at their mercy. The old man may not have seen a monster when he looked at Henry, or at least he tried to convince himself there wasn’t, but he knew what he had to be when he came to Reedy Creek; he understood the stipulations and he knew the lengths he could go to fit his role. He opened the back door of the Sheriff’s towncar and sat down. He wasn’t cuffed this time. Maybe that was because the rubberneckers had other shit to fawn over. Andy looked at him in the rear view mirror. “Color me impressed.”

            “What are you on about?”

            “Look, you have expectations when you send somebody out into the world. I thought we’d be witnessing a fucking bloodbath, but you found a perp and alibis, didn’t you? Bravo, Henry. You even gave the two little nicknames. Was that before or after shooting out the camera?”

            “Am I getting a medal?”

            “A warning, you smug prick. You have immunity to a point. You hear me? Shit is about to get crazy here. I guarantee it. And I expected a double homicide in the pharmacy of all places would have pinned the usual suspect. The guy with black market access.”

            “Me.”

            “Right on. But that’s what you’re built for. Ain’t that right?”

            “Get on with it.”

            “You don’t have free reign on cops. I could just as easily slap these cuffs on you and tell my boys you framed one of their own. They’re likely to believe anything right now cause this is all new. All of this. They didn’t sign up to investigate a killer. Nah, they’re on duty to sit with their feet up and catch speeders off the 34 and throw underage drinkers in the tank. We just threw a wrench in their machine, and what’s regular for them, what’s routine just got turned upside down. The town is on high alert. I’m going to ask you, just so I know. For my curiosity. Where did you get Ned Stevenson’s gun?”

            Henry closed his eyes. He thought about last night. What happened. He thought about Boss man’s voice on the radio at 4 pm, speaking over a Duran Duran tune playing in the boutique clothes store on Main, telling him the plan was the plan and the rules were the rules. He wondered if the cute girls inside were even paying enough attention to hear the voice but didn’t think it mattered. People only heard what they wanted to hear. It was like the cameras, he figured. You saw what you wanted to. “You want to keep your hands clean while I dirty mine, then the less you know the better.”

            “That right?”

            “I’m telling you to stay the fuck out of the mud.”

            Andy turned around. He was smiling. “Looks good on you. The confidence. You’re doing something you’re good at. There’s a market for everything. Maybe one day the requirements will be grander, but you’ve got to sell policy like this before putting the bill before Congress. Is Ned alive?”

            Henry didn’t know. He just knew what he promised. Because guilt was eternal. Rules or no rules, immunity or not. “He is if this is what I think it is. Because you’ll need a scapegoat.” He picked up a file sitting on the seat. Same as the last time but less damning. He knew he was holding somebody’s death sentence, but he wouldn’t have to be the executioner.

            “Guy’s been doing shit he shouldn’t be. Not sure if you care about the details. Maybe the less you know, the easier. But understand he’s gotten access to roofies from that bitch you killed in the General. The two weren’t working in tandem, but he was apparently manipulative enough to convince her a fuck or two in the pharmacy was worth risking her job over. Especially considering what she had on the side with Halliburton. This kid is a college student. Folks live here. Was accepted to the University of Nebraska. Hasn’t left yet for classes. But he was busy, especially during the barbecue on Saturday. He drugs girls and rapes them. You tell me, is that behavior punishable?”

            “I’m not in the jury.”

            “But if you had a choice to make. If it was him or her.” Andy pointed at a couple of girls walking across the street, lost in conversation. Young and pretty. Both likely on their way to check out the crime scene.

            Henry looked at the photos in the folder; he knew the guy, recognized his face. Sold him dope a few times. Never any roofies. “This is a pretty fucked up game you’re playing, Sheriff.”

            “You’re not here to judge what I’m doing.”

            “No? Then what am I doing?”

            “You’re helping to prove a point. There’s unnecessary and necessary evil. You go with the lesser evil.”

            “The guy who doesn’t ask questions. He just does.”

            “Now you’re getting it, Henry! You memorize that face?”

            Henry did, but it wouldn’t matter. None of this was his job anymore. No. Even though Boss man told him he was at their mercy, that he was a pawn in the game they were playing in this little town, the rules had changed. And maybe guilt worked in his favor. Plus, he had other things to attend to now. The council could play their game. Grimwood would play his.

            “Good, good. It needs to be done tonight. So it rolls into the crime scene at the General. You space these acts too far apart, they’re two talking points. You’ve gotta control how the shit hits the fan. Plus, if word gets out somebody smeared accusations on the bodies in their own blood, then you have other antics to fight. You’re a sicko, Henry. Genuine.”

            Henry set down the file. And he thought about what happened last night; he thought about Elizabeth Halliburton’s hairbrush and the almost categorical organization of her vanity, and he thought about the sound of those kids playing downstairs, hollering and laughing, and he thought about what was being taken from them. For good.

12

He took some of her hair from the brush. Her lipsticks and eyeliners, her application brushes and nail polish were all organized with such efficiency, lined along the counter by the basin, which had been scrubbed clean, the porcelain sparkling beneath the sconce. You weren’t like this before you pulled the trigger. No, the reminder isn’t even on your face of what you’ve become. Those scars are just the punishment. The reminder is what they have you doing. That’s it. And the guilt is your purgatory.

            That’s what Henry was. Walking brimstone.

            He wasn’t sure if the cops could get fingerprints off the hair. He wasn’t wearing gloves. He wasn’t even sure if he had fingerprints. Regular ones. Like he used to. So much had changed now he wasn’t sure what old rules, normal rules, even applied to him anymore. He could hear Elizabeth with the kids. They were laughing. Watching something on television. He walked in the front door because the family room was around back by the kitchen, its spacious layout running parallel to the backyard where lampposts kept the gardens well lit, the cedar fence running along the greenbelt where beyond the asphalt path he knew the ground disappeared to an oblique bank into the woods. Henry could use any door he wanted. Boss man had access to what he wanted. What he needed. He knew what he wanted was in the kitchen, and he knew the quickest route to Main was the secret way. If Boss man had access, he had secrets.

            Henry walked down the stairs, his feet quiet on the plush carpet, almost weightless. He could hear the kids running, could hear their socked feet on the tile; he’d pocketed Beth’s hair (could he call her that? Is that what the press will call her when they find her hair on the scene? Will the press make her a monster too?) and walked toward the dining room, its interior gloomy, the lights off. The back of the house was laid out in an intersected line, with a wall parting the dining room from the kitchen, and the kitchen broken from the family room by a line of carpet butting up against the tile. Elizabeth was on the couch. He could see the back of her head, the almost Scottish print on the upholstery rather provincial, the chestnut table by the armrest ornate and housing a large lamp, its base painted with scarlet accents. She was watching Who’s the Boss, Tony Danza prancing on the screen bellowing “A-oh, oh-a” in his forced New Yawk accent. The kids were ducking in and out of the room, the older brother chasing his sister with a Fisher Price hammer. Henry could see a knife on the counter. Beth had chopped some lettuce with it. It was sharp. Had her prints.

            Because you’ve chosen to make her what they’ve made you. Will you make those kids orphans? You already know you are not immune from guilt. No matter what they tell you. He stood in the kitchen, the oak cabinets all wiped, all clean, the grime one would expect from playing children nowhere to be found. Beth kept a tight ship. He could tell.

            “A-oh, Angela. You make sure to stick this bitch’s husband with a butcher knife. You put it right in his pecker.” It was Danza’s voice. But it wasn’t. Maybe it was in his head, but when he checked the TV, when he looked past Beth on the couch, sitting with a tall drink of something, probably something strong to take off the edge, Tony was staring at him, coaxing him.

            He picked up the knife and the housekeeper on TV smiled, still staring right at him, right at the camera. “That’s right, Glassman, you junkie fuck. Your demons ain’t Vietnam, ain’t the smell of napalm, nah, your demons are what you’re making these kids because you were told it wouldn’t affect your judgment. When you’re hanging back in the meat locker, waiting, you remember that.” Henry was crazy. Had to be.

            If those kids see you, they’ll go mad. You’re their Freddy Kruger. They will have enough trauma. Enough heartache. Leave. Get out.

            He opened the basement door to a stairway. An old stairway, carved from rock, its surface wet, the air muggy. When he closed the door he could not hear the kids anymore. Could not hear Tony Danza telling him to murder the Pharmacist with a knife. No, it was only Henry and that butcher’s knife, its blade still wet from the lettuce. And the long corridor. Boss man’s secret corridor.

            Will you kill them? The Pharmacist and his Whore?

            In the end he wouldn’t have to. No.

            Because the man outside the General put a gun to his head. After Henry watched Dr Halliburton walk inside from the shadows.

            “We haven’t been formally introduced. My name is Norris.” They stood around the side of the General by the backlane, away from the camera on the light post out front, and away from the windows looking in. They were the only two people in the world.

            “What do you want?”

            “I know what you’ve been asked to do. You do not strike me as the type willing to use that.” He gestured to the kitchen knife, still clutched in Henry’s hand. “And I suspect you have that because you’re looking to frame the Adulterer’s wife. Do you think she deserves that? There are other options.”

            The man, Norris, was wearing black gloves. He was wearing a black hoodie. Like the fucking hoodie the man wore to cut Robert Wilson’s brakes. Because Henry “Lazarus” Glassman was a fall boy. Yes. And men like Norris, sadistic men under the grand illusion their occupation and upstanding servitude to society removed any doubt about their goodness, used people like Henry to be their mascots. To bear their crosses. Norris Serkis was insane. Boss man told him.

            “Why don’t we make a backdoor deal? You don’t tell Sheriff Andy, and we’ll get along just fine and dandy.”

            “I have to—”

            “Yes, I know. You have to make an example of two very naughty fornicators. I am well aware of your duty. I’m saying I will take it from you.”

            Henry had looked into the mirror often since the accident. And the face looking back at him, especially the eyes, didn’t seem his own. They were empty. Norris’s were the same. There but vacant. “Why?”

            “I have a plan. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for some time. It’s my secret. I like my secrets, but you seem trustworthy, Henry. Trusting eyes, maybe. If a man was hungry, would you deny him a meal?” Norris smiled.

            Henry didn’t answer. Because the man wasn’t looking for one.

“Is that okay, Henry? Or would you prefer to use that knife tonight? Would you rather Andy and his band of badges take in poor Elizabeth Halliburton for questioning, and make her poor children wards of the state?”

            Henry looked down at the knife. His hands were trembling. Is it fear or guilt? The conscience is like the soul. That’s what it really is, isn’t it? What makes us different from the animals.

            “Yes. That’s a good boy. Andy doesn’t have to know we had this chat. Because he will be by to see you soon. After he deals with the madness of what’s going to happen in there. He will be pleased with you. That’s my promise. And he will have a new name, a new target: the Rapist. Nod your head and accept the duty. But leave it to me. A man has his hobbies. It’s not often I’m allowed to play. Will you let me?”

            Henry would. Because what was left of his heart required it.

13

The rain started at around 7:30 that night. And it wouldn’t let up until morning, waning from those plump drops to scattered windfall. It was a storm that would make the news. Even in Davenport. Lightning spliced in all arcs of the sky, pitting Reedy Creek with those instant bursts of light like camera flashes, or the rapid removal of night’s veneer from daylight in intermittent pulses. And the guttural thunder rattled windowpanes, cracking like heavenly whips on stampeding steeds trampling those coils of black clouds into fleecing precipitous gusts of dust and dirt.

            Pug sat on his bed with Chels. Listening to the rain against the window, holding her tight to him as she struggled against the storm’s temperamental gag above them, shaking the house.

            “You’d tell me if you’re really sick, wouldn’t you girl?”

            Her dark eyes only calculated him from his lap.

            “You thought I went to the farmhouse, didn’t you? You went looking for me…”

            Another flash of light, another bellowing call from the thunderheads. Pug didn’t know what was true anymore; he had his hopes, he did. And maybe it was all a lie. Maybe everything he was told was just the fabricated line of adults to get him to do something. He could certainly consider the plausibility of that approach. Because Grimwood was a madman. Wasn’t he? And Pug had flat out said no to the man and he’d learned over time that that particular answer bore ill responses from adults when uttered from the mouths of babes. He thought about his mom talking to Dr Langford; he thought about how nice the man had been with Chels, how he spoke to her not as a dog but a patient, and how comfortable she seemed, even when he drew some of her blood. A part of him wanted to remain what he was, that part so nostalgic and unwilling to let go of childish innocence, but another appreciated that his mom trusted him enough to react with maturity when she told him what the vet had said. Lymphosarcoma. He wasn’t even sure what that word meant, but the more meaningless syllables uttered by a doctor, the worse the condition. At least that’s what he figured. He only thought about docs on TV. His parents sometimes watched St Elsewhere, and those doctors constantly spoke a line of gibberish they each seemed to understand, but the patient didn’t. A dictionary sat open on Pug’s bed. Oxford’s Dictionary, something he kept by his desk enclosed by the MLB wallpaper so he could find interesting words when he wrote. He figured that was a mainstay in any writer’s office, and reckoned Roald Dahl and Shel Silverstein did the same. A free consultant of the sorts. He’d leafed the page under the L sub-section: Lymphosarcoma: a malignant tumor in lymphatic tissue, which, Pug would later discover, was tissue such as the tonsils and spleen, and that malignancy was a death sentence. A malignant tumor was cancer, and he knew the Big C was bad news. And he understood Dr Langford was just giving a worse case scenario. That’s what his mom said. But what if the worst case was the only case here?

            “Please don’t have cancer, Chels. You can’t. You can’t leave me. We’re supposed to grow up together.” He wasn’t crying. He told himself he wouldn’t. The day had been difficult. Trying to play baseball when his mind was weighed down. By this…possibility, and by his conversation with Grimwood. He knew what he had to do, but he didn’t want to. Not anymore. He just wanted to stay with Chels and comfort her until the storm let on. Because you’re afraid if you do leave, she will end up at the farmhouse again. In the clearing. Her eye sockets filling with rain as she is lain to rest next to a decomposed bear. And this time you won’t be getting any good phone call.

            Another staccatoed roll of thunder bellowed like an oceanic tide and Chels whimpered; the storm cell was right above them. The clouds were black and roiling, like something inside a witch’s cauldron. Pug looked out the window at the low-lying haze, wisps of crackled smoke flicking in and out above Deermont as if in jest. The rain fell thicker, striking his window like smearing tacks.

            “It’s okay, girl,” he whispered. “You’re okay.” But did he believe that? He carried with him now the near certain conviction that his mom opened up to him not just because she thought he could take it, that he was old enough, but because it was the truth. Because Dr Langford had confided in her and she in turn to him. Adulthood was mean, was merciless, and he wanted nothing to do with it. Nothing.

            The clouds ripped like thick paper and his house shook. Right above them. And then there was an incredible, stark flare of white, like a bedsheet contouring his room, leaving the world instantaneously without definition, without line or depth. The thunder was louder. And the lights went out. He heard the house cycle down from his room, that fading hum as the electricity vanished, as modernity bade farewell and the world was powerless. He looked outside; that last fork of lightning struck something on his street. He was sure of it. He could smell something cooking, the hair on his arms on end. Chels buried her face under his legs, whimpering. The lights were off down the street. Lampposts barren, houses just shadows through a sheet of rain.

            “Power’s out,” he heard Ange call from her room. He wondered if that meant the cameras were down too. That Grimwood was without his eyes for a moment. Something about that thought made him happy.

            And then he heard a flicker of static from his bedside alarm radio; he usually had it tuned to Creek FM because he liked the morning DJ’s voice, a cutesy girly timbre that helped to enliven his spirits if he’d had an especially bad dream. Like the one about Bernard holding Chelsey’s body from a fishline? Like that one?

            He could see the digital time-stamp, 9:17. The static remained. The lights were still out on the street. He went to his switch and tried the toggle. Nothing. Chels only stared at the radio. She’d heard the static too. Could still hear it.

            And then:

            “You agreed I’ve done something very nice for you. I have given you another chance with your best friend.” It was a voice he knew.

            “Yes…thank you. Again and a million times, Mr Grimwood.”

            Oh my God. It was his voice. His voice. On the radio.

            “Good, Horace. That makes me happy. And so you are in my debt.”

            “Pardon?”

            “My debt, Horace. One favor begets an equal opportunity for reprisal. A tit for a tat.”

            “You want a favor…a favor from me?”

            “Yes, Horace. Just a simple favor. And we’re square, so they say.”

            Pug dove under his nightstand and pulled out the power cord. There was no more static. No more voices. Just the sound of his panting and the tattoo of his heart. He looked up at Chels, her eyes somehow more alive now, looking at him from the bed, making sure he was okay.

            “Shit, girl, I think I’m losing my mind.” He wanted to chuckle but it wasn’t funny. He thought about that picture of Clayton Miller winking at him from black and white dotted newsprint. He got up on his knees. A sudden inclination struck him. Like a fine idea for a story, a real whopper. Maybe one day he would write about this. He figured Stephen King got his best ideas, his craziest and most horrific, from the blindsided motivation of his imagination when something uncanny happened. Something like a radio belting out a recorded phone conversation when the power goes out down the street.

            Pug went to the window and looked outside. The rain still fell thick and loud, the street a dark chute of water as the gutters filled with pools; asphalt shingles glistened with beaded rivulets and houses looked like ghoulish faces, countenances peering from deepened wells.

            There was the shed in the cul-de-sac, the lawn around it charred and still burning with the ember glow of infused heat. That’s where the lightning struck. Right there. And its padlocked door was swinging open, in and out through the rain, revealing a dark socket into which he could feel a tremendous pull.

            Pug touched the scruff of Chels’s neck: “I’m doing this for you. And only you.” He kissed her deeply on the forehead.

            Pug walked outside through the sheet of rain; it was warm and cold, running down his neck. Somehow refreshing. He could smell the scorched earth, could smell the lingering electricity, could taste it, as if his tongue was a tuning fork. The rumbling thunder was behind him now as the storm moved on. He went to the shed, the raindrops like strands of pearls dangling from the lintel, the grass black and choked, cratered with the pit of Jove’s fury.

            And he went inside the darkness. Away from the rain and away from Deermont. To the stairway into Reedy Creek’s basement.