“We can’t go down there.”
In the passenger seat, Jess looked sharp at Burke. “What the hell do you mean? That’s my goddamn house that’s on fire, and you know it.”
Burke nodded. “Yep,” he said. “And that won’t be a coincidence, either. Harwood set that fire, and a hundred bucks says he’s waiting down there, hoping we’ll do something foolish.”
“That’s my house, Burke,” Jess said again, feeling sick. “That’s all my belongings, it’s where I live. That’s everything I own in that house.”
Burke didn’t look at her. “It’s already gone,” he said. “All of it.”
In the back seat, Lucy whimpered. Jess felt like doing the same—but on second thought, forget crying. Jess felt like kicking some ass.
“That son of a bitch,” she said. “I’ll make him pay for this, Burke. You understand?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Burke said. “I believe you. But there’s gotta be a time and place.”
Jess leaned back in her seat, closed her eyes. She could block out the sight of the smoke over the highway, but she couldn’t chase the smell from her nostrils.
“Fine,” she said, opening her eyes again. “So what are we still doing here?”
Burke glanced at her. She avoided his eyes. He shifted into gear and pulled back onto the highway.
They parked a few blocks from where Shelby Walker lived, stuck the Blazer in a copse of trees on an abandoned lot, hoped the shadows would hide it as the daylight gave out. Nobody should have been looking for a Blazer, but there was no harm in being careful.
“We leave Lucy here, we could lose her again,” Jess told Burke, pushing the back seat forward so Lucy could get out. “I’m bringing her.”
Burke didn’t say anything, just nodded, waited for her to help Lucy out of the truck and close the passenger door. They crept out to the edge of the lot and looked up and down the road, the old fish plant a block down on their right, primer gray and rust red and deserted, a handful of hardscrabble houses to their left, some with lights on inside and vehicles at the curb, some swaybacked and empty, tagged with clumsy graffiti. Weeds and tall grass everywhere, litter, busted crab pots and torn fishing nets and worn rope.
Jess pointed across the road to a row of houses on the next street over. “Probably best if we go in through the back.”
Nobody seemed to notice as they crossed the road and slunk between two houses into Shelby Walker’s backyard. Lucy followed, obedient, pausing to sniff at a clump of weeds, a corner wall, peeing once in the grass and then jogging to strain on her lead toward Burke. The ex-convict walked ahead of Jess and Lucy, his hand lingering near the pistol he’d stashed in his waistband, even though he had never shot a gun in his life and had no idea where he was supposed to be going.
Men, Jess thought.
She let Burke have his little moment, gave him directions, and soon enough they were crossing the Walker backyard, ducking under a sagging clothesline that seemed almost comical in this ceaseless rain, and climbing up the wooden steps to Shelby’s back door.
“Best if I take the lead from here, Burke,” Jess said, handing him Lucy’s leash. “That’s if you don’t mind.”
Burke stepped back, and Jess rapped on Shelby Walker’s screen door, a harsh, angry sound. She tried to push her hurt feelings down, tell herself this was about something bigger than Ty now, that whatever Ty and Shelby Walker had had going on, it didn’t matter anymore. And then the Walker door swung open, and Jess found herself face-to-face with the tramp who’d taken up with her husband, and all those nice thoughts went for nothing.
“Oh.” The girl’s eyes went wide as soon as she saw Jess, and she backed away from the door. She was a girl, Jess could see, with an uncertainty to her movements and a childish innocence of expression. Jess hated Ty more and more.
But then the girl’s eyes hardened, and she seemed to gather herself and chase that childishness away. She glared at Jess. “I guess you’re here about your husband.”
Jess guessed that Shelby Walker had been preparing for this moment ever since she’d met Ty, guessed the girl had a pretty good idea how she wanted things to go down.
“I’m not here because you were fucking him, if that’s what you mean,” she said, raising her hand as the Walker girl began to argue. “But I do expect you have some information as to why he wound up dead.”
The Walker girl only stared at her, and Jess figured that meant she’d knocked her off-balance. She tried a smile next.
“You want to invite us inside?” she asked. “It’s cold out here in this rain.”
The Walker girl looked at her. Looked at Burke, and the dog. Looked at Jess again, and Jess doubled down on that smile.
Finally the girl sighed.
“All right,” she said, stepping away from the door.
It was a well-kept little house, neat and cozy and warm. Not much to it—a little living room and an open kitchen and dining area, a hallway leading off toward the bedrooms—but it was tidy, and it was clean; there were dishes drying on the rack by the sink, a couple of magnets stuck to the fridge with old pictures beneath them. The kitchen was lit bright, fluorescents overhead, but the living room was darker, a pair of lamps casting a soft glow, comfy-looking furniture, a room for curling up with a good book and waiting for the rainy season to end. It was a house that looked lived in, looked like somebody’s home, somebody who still cared about keeping up appearances, and Jess thought about her own little four-room disaster and wanted to hate Shelby Walker even more.
Then Jess remembered she didn’t even have a house to go back to, not after this afternoon, and she felt sad and angry and stupid for even bothering to be jealous. There was nothing she had in her life that someone like Shelby Walker could covet.
Shelby ducked into the kitchen, came back with a bottle of Wild Turkey and three tumblers, an ice tray. She cracked the ice from the tray and dropped a couple of cubes into each glass.
“I don’t know about you all,” she said, “but if we’re going to do this, I need a drink.”
She poured for the three of them, generous pours, gestured to the seats at the little table, and took a healthy draw from her glass as Jess sat, and Lucy wandered, sniffing around the kitchen, to the end of her leash. She nosed up to Shelby and sniffed at her, too, nuzzling under her hands until the girl relented and pet her, her tail whapping hard against the legs of the table, Shelby smiling despite herself. The dog was a regular goddamn Benedict Arnold.
Burke remained standing. If he was amused by Lucy’s antics, he wasn’t showing it.
Shelby set her tumbler down, looked him over. Then she looked at Jess again. “He doesn’t sit?”
Jess shrugged. “I guess not.”
“Does he talk at least?”
Burke shifted. “I talk.”
Shelby looked at him again. Longer, appraising. “Looks like an upgrade from the old man, anyway,” she told Jess finally. “No offense.”
Jess sighed. “Are we doing this, or what?”
“We’re doing this.” Shelby sat down opposite Jess at the table. “What do you want to know?”
Jess surveyed the little house again. Wondered if the Walker girl had played house with Ty here, if she’d cooked hot meals for him, if they’d cuddled on the couch, watched movies together.
She wondered if Ty had fucked Shelby Walker here, in this house, while Jess was getting her ass shot at in the Hindu Kush. While Jess was watching Afia die.
“Seem awfully young to be living here by yourself,” she said.
“Old enough for your husband,” Shelby retorted, and it was so obvious that Jess rolled her eyes, and even Shelby seemed to feel embarrassed. “This is my mama’s house,” she continued, and gestured toward the dark hall off the living room. “She doesn’t move around so much these days, since she had the stroke.”
“And your dad?”
“Who knows?” Shelby drained her glass. Reached for the bottle. “Is this really what you came here to talk about?”
“Just trying to get a sense of things,” Jess said.
“Yeah, well, don’t.”
Burke made to say something. Jess raised a hand, stopped him. Shelby watched the exchange, a little smirk on her face. But she didn’t say anything.
“We know Kirby Harwood’s taking deliveries off the ships,” Jess told her. “We know Ty knew about it, and he got hold of one of Kirby’s shipments. Probably stashed it somewhere and tried to work Kirby for some money to return it, and Kirby killed him instead. And I figure Ty wasn’t smart enough to put all this together on his own; he had to have help on the inside.” She met Shelby’s eyes. “And that’s where you come in.”
Shelby sat back, crossed her arms. “Sounds like you got it all figured out.”
Jess hesitated. She hadn’t expected to have her hypothesis confirmed so damn fast. “You know where Ty hid that package?” she asked.
“No, I surely do not.” Shelby laughed, cold. “Lady, if I knew where that package was, I sure wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you. That whole score was supposed to be our ticket out of here.”
“You and Ty.”
“Me and my mama,” Shelby said. “Look, I think you’re overestimating what me and your husband had going on together. No offense, but he wasn’t exactly the missing piece to my puzzle.”
“Why don’t you tell us how you got mixed up in all this in the first place?” Burke. “What the plan was, you and Ty. Maybe we put our heads together and get a lock on that shipment.”
Jess watched how Shelby flinched when Burke spoke. Just a little bit, and recovered fast, but there it was, a break in the girl’s armor.
She’s just a child, Jess thought. And she’s scared shitless, like the rest of us.
“We find that package, you can have it, for all I care,” Jess told Shelby. “I don’t give a damn about the money, and neither does Burke. I’m just concerned with getting Kirby Harwood off my back. After that, I couldn’t care less what happens.”
Shelby studied her across the table. Spent a long time doing it, chewing on her bottom lip like she was thinking hard. Then Lucy flopped down onto the linoleum beneath her chair, clearly bored, rolled onto her back, and pawed at Shelby to scratch her, her tongue lolling.
Shelby stifled a smile. Leaned down and rubbed Lucy’s belly, as powerless as Rengo to resist the dog’s charms. With her free hand, she reached for her glass, took another long draw. Tossed it back with a grimace she couldn’t quite hide, set the glass down.
“Damn it,” she said. “All right.”