You got to tell me, brave captain,
why are the wicked so strong,
how do the angels get to sleep,
when the devil leaves the porch light on?
   —Tom Waits, “Mr. Siegal”

A FAN turned lazily overhead in the briefing room. The room was stifling, the air stale. Matt began his case review by passing out copies of the file. He reviewed the current progress and existing leads. He was glad to see that Russ White was present, despite his recent retirement. Yet by a half hour into the briefing, most of the sheriff’s deputies had sunk into a half-asleep lethargy. There were no questions.

As usual at a briefing, Undersheriff Ward Louden was in charge, in the absence of the sheriff. Matt saw that Louden was alert, but he was unexpectedly keeping his mouth shut. Louden seemed to be waiting for something, he hadn’t opened his briefcase.

By three o’clock, Matt had covered his time-of-death conversations with the Spokane coroner’s office, and his analysis of the scene on Tubbs Hill. After Matt was through, he turned it over to Russ for an hour. Russ walked through the witness interviews he’d done on the case. So far, Matt and Russ had concluded that there were no real leads, and no clear explanation for Arlen’s daughter’s arrival back at home, or her silence.

At four thirty, Russ closed his copy of the case file. “And then I retired, gents, so I didn’t have to care about this case. But I still hope to hell you catch the perp.”

Louden clapped his hands, punctuating the end of Russ’s review. “Okay— thanks for showing up for this case review, Russell.” He glanced around the table. “Looks like we could use some coffee. Dusty, you got latrine duty, dontcha?”

Hartman sneered at Louden. Then he roused himself and went to the back of the room. He began to collect the industrial-sized vacuum bottles that stood on the sideboard.

“Here,” said Matt. “I’ll give you a hand with that.” Matt walked away from the table and showed Hartman how to pop the top of the vacuum bottles open, to get coffee streaming out of the spouts. Behind him, he could hear the other men stirring and talking.

“So, the case file says there was a composite portrait done,” said Louden.

“Sure,” said Russ. “I helped collect the witnesses. Guy at that pharmacy where our perp bought the duct tape, one or two of the resort staff who saw the guy in the hotel, and someone who saw him driving Arlen’s car. It all fits together, it’s good info.”

Matt pulled mugs off the shelf.

“So what’s been done with the composite?” said Louden to Russell. “I see it in the file, but I don’t see any tips from distribution—you didn’t get any leads off of it?”

“Actually, that would be a question for Matty,” said Russell. “I know it was posted as an internal memo to all officers. But somehow, after I retired from the department last week, it wasn’t distributed, never got posted to the public. Matt was in charge.”

Matt turned and looked at Louden. “I have a problem with that statement,” he began. “I was in charge of it, but there’s a history here, and—”

“Y’know, I don’t know if that history is relevant,” said Louden, glancing at Matt. “We could play the blame game all day. Or we could just get something accomplished.”

Wearily, Matt sat down on the edge of the briefing table. He gulped his coffee.

Louden looked up at him. “If you can still get the composite portrait up, do so. Someone knows what he looks like. Do whatever it takes to get it out there, alright?”

For a moment, Matt thought he might protest again. He would have posted it last week, if he’d known it was ready. Then he shrugged, resigned. “All right. Sure. Let’s do it now, then.”

“Any other questions?” said Russell.

Louden raised his hand. “Isn’t there someone who saw him at the station? Arlen was abducted from the middle of a crowded bus station! Why didn’t anyone see him?”

Matt nodded. “Bowman left the station with someone, but that’s all I can confirm. No one’s come forward to identify our perp. As far as I can tell, Arlen went out of there like a lamb. And the place was a madhouse. Hell, I can’t even confirm who was in there.”

“There must be someone who saw him.”

“There is one person,” said Matt. “The little girl—Bowman’s daughter.” Louden looked sharply at Matt. “Is she talking?”

“No—didn’t say a word. I talked to the psychologist about her. Had some advice.”

“Nancy Ferreday, the shrink?”

“Yeah. Nancy thinks the girl might have some sort of block—a temporary autism thing. Nancy says she might be waiting for her father to show up. Very young victims sometimes even get triggered by the perpetrator coming back into their lives. Then they can talk. Now they call it temporary, but she might not ever talk again. Nancy will go and check on her regularly over the next few months. Might help.”

Louden nodded and looked away. Carefully, Matt filled his coffee cup again. He poured a cup for Russ, who laughed quickly and waved the cup away. “Well, thanks for letting me give my two cents at this briefing, gentlemen. I got something I gotta do over at some of the local churches—so you’ll excuse me, Ward, if I duck out early.”

“Campaigning,” said Louden. It wasn’t a question.

Russell gave a quick grin. “Heck, someone has to take Andy down a notch!” Matt looked up, trying to catch his eye. “I’d appreciate it if you’d stick around—”

But Russell White was already shaking hands, looking to leave as soon as he could make his way around the room.

After the door closed behind Russ, Louden spoke loudly, getting everyone’s attention once more. “There’s a new lead on this case. Frankly, I’m surprised Russell didn’t find it.” A malicious grin flashed briefly across his face.

He opened his briefcase. Carefully, Louden lifted a sheaf of photographs out of the case. Next was an evidence bag with a forged iron knife inside. “We had an assault over at the St. Joe yesterday. Some professor had her boat stolen— got banged up too.”

Matt gulped his coffee and spoke abruptly. “How does this relate to—”

“I’m getting there.” Louden glowered at him. “We brought the lady professor in off the St. Joe riverhead, got her checked out, see if the assault matched any of our usual MOs, and when she was waiting for a lady deputy to check her out, she up and ID’s our suspect from the resort—saw the composite on top of the current memos on the deputy’s desk. Which as far as I know is the first and only tip we’ve got off the composite—because it’s never gone outside the Sheriff’s Department doors, you know.”

“No shit,” said Jerry Kelberg. “She recognized him?”

“ID’d our suspect on the spot. So that’s the connection—answer your question?”

Matt nodded.

“And when we talk to her further, turns out the suspect dropped something when he left, after he beat her up. He dropped this knife.” Louden pointed at the bag with the blackened iron knife.

“It’s a handmade knife, banged out on a smithy, the old-fashioned way. In the briefing, you guys said that Jerry and Russell cleared a man named Karl Avery. You all know Karl—he’s a standard dirtbag with a nutty streak from his mining days. If he’s taken in for petty assault, he wants to be charged with manslaughter. A wannabe bad hombre. Well, turns out he’s also a wannabe blacksmith. Maybe a wannabe murderer too. So maybe Russell and Jerry shoulda done a better job in their interview with Karl.”

Kelberg opened his mouth, but Matt spoke first. “Now look,” he said. “That’s not fair. You and I both know that Jerry’s a rookie, and Russ was in a hurry to get out of here. Jerry reviewed the tape of the guy calling in. Russ told him Karl’s a nut job—which he is—and said it was okay to skip an interview. Jesus, guys, I happen to think Jerry does a pretty damn good job, sorting through all the shit we give him!”

Matt heard mutterings around the room. One or two penetrated clearly, the sarcasm cutting through. “Yeah, like hell.” And Hartman, close at hand, “If he wasn’t supervised by this pair of alkies, he would have done a better one.”

Matt ignored the sounds. Instead, he picked up the package with the knife and raised his voice to Louden. “I wish you’d shared some of this while Russ was here.”

“Well, he isn’t part of the team anymore, is he now?” Carefully, Louden spread the photographs out on the table. “See—here’s the lady professor. The guy banged her up pretty good—I think this dirtbag would be capable of taking a body apart limb from limb. Next question is, what’s his connection to our blacksmithing boy out in the Valley?”

Matt cracked his knuckles, he could not keep his irritation bottled up any longer. “C’mon, you can’t seriously think Karl did this—he’s a harmless moron who just knows how to pound an anvil!”

“Well, if he didn’t do it, it’s clear our dirtbag used a Karl knife. A connection.”

Matt squinted at the rough edge of the knife in the bag. “You mentioned his mining history, and I seem to recall that Karl was a tramp miner in the Valley at—”

“So what?” said Louden forcefully. “Personally, I think it was a mistake to put you on this case—and I’m sure you’ll be turning this serial killing over to the Feds, just as soon as you can find their number. They can take it. Isn’t that right, Matt?”

“No, we’re keeping the case. I can solve it.” With a heavy clanging sound, Matt dropped the bag with the knife on the table. “Thanks for this, Ward. Sure, the Feds could do it too—but they’ve got more important things to do, don’t you think?”

Louden glared at Matt. “We’ll talk about this later. I want continuing updates.”

A mumble of voices rose up from the gathered deputies. Louden looked at his watch and clapped his hands loudly. “C’mon, wrap it up, ladies. There’s a new update to the license plate tracking program—make sure to load it. Check the listed cars. Get your butts in gear for the night shift. Briefing is over.”

Kelberg leaned over, whispered to Matt. “Barrel of fun and games, huh?”

“Yeah,” muttered Matt. “It’s a real goat rodeo here in Bitterroot County.”

In Smelterville the next morning, the shadow of a minestack cut across the truck. Matt glanced up at the great bulk of the closed mine elevator on the hillside. He thought of the town ahead, of the people he’d see. They were the flotsam left behind after the Bunker Hill closed down and the rest of the mines scaled back in the 1980s. By now, it was beginning to sink in that the Bunker Hill mine might never reopen, and that the Sunshine and Hecla would never scale back up to where they’d been at the height of the boom.

When Matt lived in the Valley, working the mines was always his summer job. By the time he was twenty-two, his inner ear knew too well the shuddering descent of the steel elevator, the rush of an air blast knocking his helmet, the faint cracking sound of pebbles dropping thousands of feet down a chute. To the present day, he often looked around at the sound of a fan, thinking for a moment of himself under the weight of tons of earth again, breathing stale air through a vent pump, feeling the shiver of a biting drill in his hands.

Then he’d known he could breathe in the dust forever, carry home slag residue for the rest of his life. Now when he came to Smelterville, he saw what remained after the mines had closed.

It was early morning, but this apartment building wasn’t busy. The old Sheriff’s Department 4x4 blended with the crowd of broken-down cars in the parking lot. Few people were rushing off to the day shift at the Bunker Hill or the Sunshine.

On the stairways and in the corridors of the apartment building were big, dull-eyed men with stooped shoulders, overgrown biceps, and swelling beer bellies. As Matt walked past in the dim corridor, some came to the open doors, as if he could offer them something. He saw shadows flit behind the curtains, stringy-haired children who hung around the men like flies, asking, “Mommy, Mommy, where’s Mommy?”

“She’s at the 7-Eleven,” he heard a man growl. “She has a damn job.”

Next year, by this time, a lucky few would have gotten on with a mine in Montana or North Dakota. One or two might have shot themselves, or rolled the truck when they were drunk. The rest of them would still be sitting in the same chair, hating themselves, waiting for the wife to come home from her job, the one that didn’t quite make ends meet. Smelterville was where they drifted when they finally began to lose hope.

Matt located a door on the second level, at the end of the row. It was covered with grime. He opened the screen and looked closely at the door until he found the number underneath the dust.

The door seemed to open by itself. A large face, pulpy as dough, peered over a security chain. Her eyes were half covered by her hair, her look bleared and uncertain. He had not forgotten that Brewmer worked nights.

“Hang on,” the woman muttered, holding up one finger. She fumbled on the table by the door, thumbing her lighter until it caught. Then the cigarette flared.

“You someone I should know?” Her voice was hoarse and low.

“May Brewmer. You go by Mary too?”

She sucked heavily on the cigarette before she replied. “You my case officer?

Look, I been meanin’ to check in, I just didn’t get ’round to it.”

“No, I just have a question for you. You get paid well for working at the resort?”

She groaned. “You woke me up to ask me if I like my job?” The child he could hear somewhere in the apartment building coughed hoarsely, once, twice, and was quiet.

“One night. That’s all I’m asking about. Did you like your job on August 28?”

“I dunno. Just like any other night, I guess. Like it just fine, long as they pay me.” A figure came up in the darkness at May’s feet. A small head of hair nuzzled the back of May’s knee. Two hands pushed against her clothing and twisted around her leg. As she spoke, May’s hand dropped down to stroke the child’s sparse hair.

“When you did your job in the bathroom that night, what did you—”

“Ah damn, I knew someone would want that necklace.” She let out a breath full of smoke. “This what you’re looking for? I shouldn’t of taken it outa there, I guess. It was just lying on the floor though—someone forgot it, dontcha think?” May reached beneath her ratty blouse and lifted a blackened chain from around her neck. She held it out for him to take. Then she spread her hands, as if to prove they were empty.

“Look, that’s all. I did my job—not that they ever pay me enough for this shit.”

Matt held the chain up. It glinted in the morning light. Underneath, it was silver. Something red adhered to the middle, a plastic decoration. “What’s on here, on the chain?”

“What is this—a test? Look, he already come talk to me, tell me make sure I don’t let on about what I saw. Now you got what I took from there. Now go on back an’ tell him that May’ll cover your ass. I ain’t talking, so you just—” Suddenly, she closed her mouth.

She stared at him for a moment. Then she put her cigarette in a cup and snuffed it out. “You’re not with him, are you?”

Matt didn’t speak.

“Nothing has changed from before you got here.” Slowly, she shook out the pack. “I didn’t say anything you can hold me on.” She held an unlit cigarette a few inches from her lips, as if it had stopped on its way there, and she didn’t know where it was going.

“I don’t know who the other man was.” He took a laminated card out of his pocket. “But I can start reading the rights to you. Or you can tell me what’s going on.”

“You can’t take me in. I got two.” She stared at him again. “All they got is me.”

“All right, you think about that. I’ll come back later with your parole officer.”

Anger flushed her face. She flicked at the child with her hand, drumming her fingers on the drooping head. The hands on her leg loosened a little, slid lower. Her jaw clenched as she glared. “Goddammit, I had to have a lawyer to get them away from the son of a bitch after I come out of the joint. He’s addicted, forgets to feed ’em.”

“You can make arrangements,” said Matt again. “I’ll come back later.”

“He’d get ’em again, you put me in the joint. And I didn’t do anything.” She moved into the door a little, pushed by the weight of the tired child holding on to her legs. She lit her cigarette, took another drag. “Someone called me up, hear? I clean stuff up. He was dead already. Don’t even know what it was about. It don’t matter, in the end. You keep your eyes closed. Get along, go along. You live here too, you should know that by now.”

“If you didn’t put the body in that bathroom—then tell me who did.”

“Get off,” she muttered to the child wrapped around her legs. May stumbled forward a step, and left him asleep on the doorstep behind her. Then she spoke to Matt. “Why don’t you go ask him? Why dontcha ask that one damned guy from the sheriff’s?”

She gave him one last stare before the door slammed shut.

When Matt arrived home, it was evening, far past dinnertime. He finished the last bites of a hamburger. On his way into the house, he threw the bag in the direction of the garbage can. The half-empty paper cup of Pepsi exploded, a wet bomb against the side of the garage. The remains of the fries spread out through the air and scattered over the rear of the car like small pieces of shrapnel. The bag bounced off the can and landed on Doug’s old Barracuda, still rusting beside the garage.

Matt slammed the door as he came into the house. Sall was on the couch, watching something on the television. As he rushed in, she jumped and began to speak to him. He continued into the dining room, and through to the bedroom, where he threw his sheriff’s uniform on the floor.

He went into the kitchen, poured himself a glass of water, and gulped it down. After that, he went into the garage and got a file box. He glanced at the contents. Outdated receipts, expense envelopes, and old paycheck stubs. He dumped it all near the garbage. Half of it fell on the ground, a snow of white paper. He took the empty box into his study, where he put it in the center of the desk and began to throw duty rosters, case files, and incident reports haphazardly into it. Once it was full, he pushed the pages down until they were nearly flat and resumed shoving papers into the box. Soon he’d cleared his desk at home of everything connected to the sheriff’s department. He was done.

Matt could hear Dustin Hartman again, whispering to him, taking his vengeance for Matt’s kindness in his moment of weakness. He could see the leers on the faces of the men leaving the briefing, laughing at their own private joke. He leaned over the desk, staring out the window into the bitter dark.

When he looked down at the desk again, the thirst for it came over him again, as if he could taste it, wet on his tongue. He began to take books off the shelves, checking behind them carefully in the dust for the bottles he’d placed there. After the shelves, he shuffled through the desk, pulling papers out and pushing things aside in his haste. He yanked the drawers out, stacking them on the floor and reaching into the structure of the desk, in between the drawers, for the places where he used to keep it. There weren’t any bottles left in there either.

Matt stood beside the cabinet. He turned and pushed it. First there was a slow pirouette to the side, then a dull thud as it crashed to the floor.

He picked up papers and crumpled them up, throwing them in the trash. Then he went to the closet and yanked open the door. He took out his windbreaker and stumbled to the front door, feeling the rage still pound through him. Once he was outside, Matt leaned against the doorjamb, wondering if he was up for this.

The meeting was held in the old Moose Lodge near North Idaho Community College. Matt was late, someone was talking already. He sank into a seat near the back.

“So just to keep up with the drinking and the blow, I started taking a little cash from my sister’s accounts. She was dying, she didn’t know better. And so it was a nasty little racket. You all know where I was going. After she died, I headed down to the bottom like a rocket, like a hell-flamed rocket.”

There was a chorus of affirmation from the room.

The walls of the room were covered in dark wood paneling, the white folding chairs and the faces of people stood out, pale against the walls. Black oak timbers held up the ceiling, the voices of the people talking echoed up into the open rafters.

Then the voice of the man at the front cracked and broke, and brought Matt’s attention back down to the meeting. “I was drunk half the time, coked up the other half, hated myself anyway, wanted to die. Heck, I nearly wanted to be caught, just to have it all over with. Then somehow I got into a recovery center instead of a prison. Well, this was far short of what I deserved. I saw things there that I never want to see again.”

Matt glanced around the room. There were some older men he knew, a woman at the front he thought he recognized. His attention wandered back toward the front of the circle of chairs.

“And in recovery, I met some of them that had gone to prison first, for serious charges. Those were the ones you stayed awake nights worrying about. A guy named Cuz I met in there—real scary guy. And there was this other guy in there that I got to know, a guy like me, I’ll call him Jake. Big soft guy. If there’s a harmless drunk, Jake was it. Jake was unlucky enough to draw this Cuz person as a roommate. We’ll all pay for our sins, but Jake paid double. That he did.” Then the man stuttered and stopped talking. He looked down at the podium. After a moment, he looked up again.

It was Russ White, but Matt hadn’t seen him talk at a meeting in months. He wondered why Russ was talking. Matt had heard all this before—years ago. Why was Russ sharing it all publicly now? So much dirty laundry.

Russell’s voice stopped and started again. “So this lowlife, Cuz, he somehow convinces Jake that he was going to kill him. Some night, while everyone was sleeping, Cuz was going to cut Jake’s throat. Cuz told everyone there about it. He told the therapists about it, and I don’t know if they thought it was a joke between him and Jake, but all the old hands laughed at it. Short-timers like me and Jake didn’t know how to take it. If I was there today, I couldn’t take it again. I don’t want to do that again.” Russ paused, rubbing a hand across his face, as if he could not continue.

“No, you don’t,” said someone in the audience. “We’re here for you, Russ.”

Russ nodded gratefully. “Yeah, thank God, I’m back among friends. Thank God I’m back in church, and I’m still here today by the grace of God Almighty. And thank God I got you all to help me stay on the straight and narrow.”

Matt recoiled at the religious references. What kind of game was Russ playing? Everyone had a higher power, but he’d never heard Russ be so blatant about it. The problem was, the ones who talked about God all the time hardly ever believed it.

Vic, his old sponsor, used to talk about God until you choked on it. Matt couldn’t imagine him being honest enough to come to a meeting now. Come to think of it, Matt didn’t really know why he was here himself. Even though he’d been drinking this year, he hadn’t felt the need to come. Not in a long time.

“So every night it was like that, said Jake. Every night Cuz would tell him in detail exactly how he was going to kill him. Never a variation, never a change. This went on for three months, and finally Cuz announced a date, the day and time he was going to do it. Then he started counting down for Jake, telling him how many days he had before he slashed his throat. Jake was convinced it was going to happen, but Cuz had said if Jake did anything, he’d just be dead that much sooner. And when the day came, Jake woke up dead, just like Cuz said.” There was a mutter of surprise around the room.

Russ shook his head sadly. “But even so, Cuz never touched him. Cuz was found fast asleep—sleeping like a baby. That was the worst.” Russ looked down at the floor. “When I saw that all it took was someone convincing you that you were going to die, it made me sober right then and there.”

Russell gestured to a large man sitting at the side of the room. “On that very night, I called up Pastor Smitty here. And I was born again.”

Matt glanced over and saw a hefty, sweating man with thinning hair and a round face, his skin red in the low light. Smitty, his old friend, and now—according to Sall—the new chaplain with the Sheriff’s Department. Matt hadn’t seen him in years.

He’d last known Smitty when Smitty was a lush, drunk with Matt most of the time, and screwing anything that walked on two legs. He was as crazy as a man could be and still holding a life together. Now, apparently, he’d gone straight too. Matt couldn’t understand how people like Smitty could come back to the church. How could he do that? Wasn’t he afraid he’d bring the stink of shit into the church with him? Matt could understand a meeting, but how could the clean people in a church allow Smitty back?

Matt shook his head, and in that moment, Smitty turned his head and winked at him, as if he’d heard Matt’s thought. Matt laughed silently to himself, remembering that same wink over a shot glass, years ago.

Russell continued talking at the front of the room. “That was rock bottom for me. And right then, I knew that was the only way I could stay straight.” Russ rubbed a hand across his sweating face and looked up again, his expression transformed.

“I’ve never told that story before in public. But it’s been fifteen years now, and I’m still clean and sober. I’m telling you this now because I’m doing some thing big.”

Russell stood at the podium in silence for a moment, his face gleaming. “Tonight, I declare to you that I have decided to clean up this county too, just like I cleaned up my life. I’ve retired from the sheriff’s department, and so I can now legally run for Bitterroot County Sheriff—and I wanted my friends here to be the first to know. I know you’ll stand by me. And I thank you for listening to me here tonight.” Russ rubbed his eyes vigorously with the back of a hand and looked across the row of chairs.

Matt was applauding with the rest of the room, his hands beating together as fast as his suddenly racing heart. He wanted to believe in Russ. And he found now that something had caught in his throat, and he felt tears come to his eyes. Without warning, he thought of Doug, wishing that his son could see him standing up there. Then, as the applause died out, Matt’s hope died with it, a sour taste filled his mouth.

Finally, the tall man who coordinated the Moose Lodge meetings stood up. “Well, I don’t know if we’ve ever had an announcement quite like this at a meeting before. Hope they don’t charge us extra for politicking!” There was laughter all around the room.

“Okay, people, there’s cookies and lemonade at the back of the room, coffee too. Smoking outside please, for those of you who smoke.” They chuckled nervously. Every one of them in this room smoked.

Matt wandered outside with the rest of them. He bummed a cigarette off someone and stood in the shadow of the Moose Lodge, watching the people mill around, little groups of two and three. The taste of the cigarette went straight to his head. He hadn’t lit up in years, not since Sall quit cold turkey. He watched the stars, feeling the charge of the nicotine hit him like electricity. He stood there, watching the black trees against the dark sky. Smitty walked out of the building like an evangelist, the Bible in one hand, his other hand already out for the glad-handing. It was as if he had been looking for Matt.

“Quite a story in there,” said Matt. “I didn’t know you ‘saved’ Russell.”

“Well, I don’t know about that part of the story—Russ says his political consultant told him he has to have God to win in this county. I’m just an accessory.”

“Is that right? Hell, maybe Russ made the whole damn story up in there.” “No, I was in the same recovery center with him. Lord works in mysterious >ways, Matty.”

Matt didn’t speak. He took a drag on the cigarette, sucking in the acrid smoke.

“So,” said Smitty. “Did you know I’m working for your department now?”

“I heard,” Matt said dryly. He blew out a lungful of gray air.

“Look, I’m sorry we lost touch. How have you been, Matt? How are you?”

“Fine,” Matt said bitterly. “Just fine.”

“You ever find out the truth about that accident you were in at the last election? I remember we talked about that. I remember telling you to visit her in the hospital . . .”

Matt looked at him, a tight desperation in his eyes. “Yeah, that’s what you said to do. But I could never work up to it. Then she got a complication. She died, two weeks later. She wrote me, but I never read ’em. I got rid of the letters.”

“So you still don’t know her side of the story?”

“Don’t kid yourself, Smitty. I know. Not a day goes by I don’t know what happened.” Matt ground his cigarette out on a tree trunk. “It’s a shitty way to live.”

“God can help you, Matt. It made a difference for me.”

“Don’t do me any favors,” said Matt. “I’m immune to Bible-thumping—I got enough of that stuff from my pop already. Valerie Herrick and Russ White already saved me once, I don’t need it twice.”

“Valerie Herrick? I don’t understand. Just because you didn’t visit the woman in the hospital . . . What was her name?” Matt looked away, across the darkening lake. He could see cars on the other side of the lake, passing on the road, the reflections of their lights growing larger and then passing, fading away in silence.

“Irene,” said Matt. “That was her name. And Valerie and Russell’s lawyer made sure her family wouldn’t press charges. She’s dead, Smitty. What happens when you’re the ‘Cuz’ in the damn story? Go save someone who has a chance of getting out of hell.”

“But I believe in you, Matt.” Smitty reached out a hand and put it on Matt’s shoulder. “You can beat that kind of a rap. Even one you give yourself.”

“You really think so, don’t you?” Matt looked down at the hand on his shoulder. He stepped back and Smitty let go of him. “You’re crazy, I’ve always said so. After all these years, to have that kind of damn faith in me. Jesus Christ.”

OCTOBER 1988

CAR HEADLIGHTS floated toward them, little glowing globes in the fog. They were like insects she’d seen the summer before, lightning bugs that couldn’t help flying to their death in a candle flame, one light drifting into another.

Pinpricks of mist touched her face as soon as she stepped out of the car. The dampness seeped through her stockings. The clouds that covered the ground blurred the grass into the trunks of the trees. All the way from the car to where the headstones started, she lifted her feet when she walked, kicking the drops off the black toes until her mother told her to stop.

Ahead of them, she could see a blur of white. The sun above had turned into a white, round disk, burning all the haze away. The ground steamed. All the white things floated in the gray air, like balloons. The larger smudge of white in the middle of the green lawn was big and bright, as if someone had made a big cake, as if it was a celebration.

But that wasn’t what it was. She saw that when she came closer. The white things were flowers. There was a dirty hole in the ground, big enough for her whole family to stand up in. Above the hole there was a thing like a tent, and underneath it was a white box. All around, as if to cover up the dirt and the ugliness of the square hole, were the white ribbons and flowers.

She wriggled away from her grandmother and went to the flowers. She smelled them all, one by one, but there was nothing. None of them had a smell at all.

After a time, they saw people coming across the lawn, many people, coming to fill the chairs. She looked at them. Most of these people she had never seen before in her life. The fog had melted away, and she was embarrassed for all these people to see her. She squeezed her eyes shut. She reached out and held on to her grandmother’s hand. Someone was talking, a deep, loud voice. And then the singing began. It started slow, a moaning sound, and then sped up. “Up from the grave, he a—a-a-rose . . .”

When her mother stood, the girl grew suddenly nervous. The skin on her chest seemed to tighten. For a long time, she could see only her mother’s back. “Come back,” she whispered. “Mamma, come back to me here.”

Her grandmother reached out and held her. She put her hand over the girl’s mouth. Her grandmother’s fingers gripped her jaw tightly, they smelled like vanilla skin lotion. She opened her mouth, drawing a breath between the gaps in the fingers, and she bit down quickly on the finger in front of her teeth.

Her grandmother kept her away from her mother after the bite. The tear tracks dried after a time. But even an hour later, when she frowned or smiled, she could still feel them there, cracking across her skin.

From far away, the girl watched her mother dab at her cheeks with a tissue. She supposed that her mother wanted people to think she’d been crying, but the only time she’d seen her mother cry about her father was when her father said he wasn’t going to leave.

She did not take her eyes off her mother, even though she was only a faint and blurry shadow from this distance. The man came up to her mother, she could see his hair glimmer in the sun like silver as he took off his hat. There had been so many times today that she’d thought she’d seen him, but then someone would turn, the light would change. He would disappear, the same way her pretending would fade away. Maybe this was another one. Maybe she should stop pretending he was here today. She squinted into the sunlight, wondering if the light would change on his face before she looked away.

Someone came up to her grandmother, held out a hand and spoke quietly. Her grandmother’s grip loosened. The man leaned close, holding both her mother’s hands, as if he were sharing his secret with her too. Maybe she already knew. The light had not changed on his face. Pretending to have him here was not enough this time.

The girl glanced up at her grandmother’s face. There was only one way to be sure.

She twisted her wrist back and forth like a broken twig. Then she was moving through the crowd. At first, it was like running alongside the creek. She dashed around each standing clump of black-suited people and pushed her way between moving ladies and uniformed officers. Just like getting through the trees behind their house.

Then her foot struck the white plastic sheet on the ground, wrinkling it, revealing an edge of the dark hole and, beneath it, the white box. She stopped running, it caught at her. When she moved again, it was as if she were underwater, she could barely breathe.

Her grandmother had told her that her father was in the white box in the ground, and so now she wondered how her mother had managed to put her father in the white box. She knew it hadn’t happened during their last fight. Maybe her mother had asked the dirty man to do it. And he knew, the man across the lawn. Maybe he knew how it had happened. He was holding her mother close now. Her mother leaned in, as if she would not let him go either. He was close enough that she should know now, but still she couldn’t tell.

Cautiously, the girl approached them. Her mother’s face crinkled as she said some words. “Thank you. Thank you so much for being here . . . I need you to be here.”

The man turned his head, as if something had pained him. “I’ll do what I can to be here for you. I just can’t do what we planned. I just can’t . . . not right now . . .”

At these words, the girl saw something in her mother’s face break apart. Her mother made a sudden choking sound. The man walked away from them, never glancing back at her, never seeing her again.

The girl looked away immediately. Someone cried, that’s what you did. Her grandmother told her that. She looked down at the ground. The tissue blossomed on the brown earth, a damp, milky flower.