51

Zachariah walked slowly now, carefully picking his way through the woods, taking trails that were barely trails at all, just footpaths worn into the dirt forest floor. I kept a good distance from him, and at least twice believed he’d spotted me, but each time he looked away and continued moving. Perhaps his eyes were bad?

Or maybe he had spotted me. Maybe he was leading me somewhere I didn’t want to go.

It didn’t matter. I’d never believed in shying away from a trap. Hell, I actually enjoyed the sensation of being led into danger. It was just the way I was built. People probably thought that was brave, but I knew better. I would have traded the ability to not be frightened by the bad guys for the ability to face everyday life alone in a heartbeat.

All told, I followed him through the woods for nearly an hour before the trees began to clear and I saw a tiny, weather-beaten shack situated at the edge of a meadow. A dirt road ran off through the woods in another direction, and a few pickup trucks had taken it to get here. They were parked off in the grass a few yards from the shack’s shady yard. Two women sat in chairs under the shade tree, drinking from Dixie cups. They smiled at Zachariah like they knew him. One of them was wearing earbuds, and she pulled one out to listen to what he said.

I watched from the edge of the trees, taking the women in. I was pretty sure they were prostitutes. Had I followed the old man all the way out here just to watch him get his rocks off?

He spoke to the women for a few moments before one of them pointed off to the left of the trailer. I followed her finger and saw a woman I’d failed to notice earlier. Like the women in the chairs, she was seated, but her seat had wheels. She was about my age, maybe a little older. She had long blonde hair and wore no makeup. Her face was lean and pretty and slightly birdlike. She saw Zachariah and waved at him. Zachariah hurried over to her and leaned over so they could embrace.

I stepped out of the woods and headed toward the woman in the wheelchair. One of the women at the table—she was a blonde, about thirty, with bad teeth but surprisingly good skin—got up and stepped in front of me.

“Hey. You looking for an hour? Maybe two?”

“No thanks.” I tried to step past her.

“She doesn’t work here.”

“I’m not here for sex,” I said, and continued to walk toward Zachariah, who saw me coming and said something to the woman in the wheelchair. She nodded and reached for something underneath the chair. When she straightened up, she was holding a sawed-off shotgun. She aimed it right at my face.

“Who are you?”

“That’s him,” Zachariah said. “Must have followed me here. I’m sorry.”

“I’m Earl Marcus,” I said. “I make no secret of my identity. I’m looking for a woman named Harriet Duncan.”

Zachariah shook his head. “I told you I ain’t never heard of no Harriet Duncan.”

“What about you?” I said to the woman in the wheelchair. “Have you heard of her?”

She lowered the gun slightly. “What do you want her for?”

“So you have heard of her?”

Zachariah stepped forward. “Hey, leave her alone. She just wants to live her life and not be bothered, okay?”

“You’re Harriet?” I could see it now. The photo of the smiling and sad girl came back to me, and I saw that girl hidden inside the aging face of the woman sitting before me.

She said nothing, but she didn’t have to. She lowered the gun completely, laying it across her lap.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I need to talk to you about your time at the Harden School.”

She frowned. “That’s not happening.”

“It’s urgent.”

She looked around, lifting her hands to the sky. The heat had settled into this place, giving it a languid, almost sleepy feel. The women were sitting at the tables again, drinking and smoking. Zachariah stood off to my right, a single bead of sweat tunneling into one of the deep creases on his face.

“I don’t see any urgency,” she said at last.

“Sometimes appearances can be deceiving. Why all the secrecy, anyway? The Wolf Brothers are looking for you, aren’t they?”

“You know the Wolf Brothers?”

“I know of them.”

She rolled his eyes. “Everyone knows of them. You can’t live in this godforsaken county if you don’t know of them. I’m talking about actually knowing them.”

“Do you know them?”

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave, Mr. Marcus. I’m not sure what you’re trying to dig up, but I’m very happy here. The girls take care of me. Say what you want about the whore-with-a-heart-of-gold myth, I believe it. The girls that have worked in that trailer over the years come and go, but there’s always one or two willing to take care of me.” She glared at me, the sadness I’d seen in the Polaroid now charged with anger. “It ain’t every twenty-year-old who’s willing to help a stranger to the outhouse. Those women are some of the finest people I’ve ever known.”

It was time to pull out my ace card.

“Did you know Rufus Gribble?” I said.

Harriet was still, her eyes focused on something far away, off in the trees behind me, and I thought maybe hearing the name had peeled back the curtains of her past.

“He’s my friend too,” I said. “And now he’s missing. I was wondering if you might be able to help me find him.”

One of the girls was coming over. A brunette this time. A pretty girl, and I wondered how she’d ended up here, helping to take care of a woman in a wheelchair and servicing other men for money. How did any of us end up anywhere? It was easy to think that all was random in the universe, but whenever I thought that, I felt like giving up, buckling under to the dense mass of cosmic nothingness, and giving up had never been something I’d been able to do for very long.

No, we were all here because this was where we’d put ourselves. There were forces, sure. They worked on a person like gravity and the burden of age, but if you fought back, you could move the needle at least a little bit. And that was why I was here. I’d been looking for the needle of justice, and it had led me to this hollow in the woods with these people, broken and dismayed. Now, maybe if we all put our backs into it …

“Rufus is still alive?” she said.

“Yeah. Well, as far as I know. The last time I saw him was at your sister’s house.”

“My sister? Which one?”

“Lyda. The older one.”

“What did she look like?”

I shrugged. “Dark hair. Some wrinkles. Probably in her sixties.”

“Good. Savanna is blonde. Unless she dyed her hair to fool you.”

I shrugged. It hadn’t looked dyed.

“I’ll talk to you,” she said.

Zachariah stepped away from me, shaking his head. “You sure about this, Harriet?”

“I’m sure. It’s past time. Besides, I know who took Rufus.”