CHAPTER 6

It was just before daybreak when I pulled into the yard of the sisters. There was no one up, not even the chickens. I waited in my car, put my head back, and drifted off to sleep. I dreamed I died. I didn’t know how, but I was dead and yet I was staring down at my dead face on the ground. I awoke to see my face in the outside rearview mirror. I looked dead enough. I glanced over the yard and saw a blue pickup truck that I hadn’t seen in the darkness. The house door opened, and Sister Irenaeus emerged smiling and clapping her hands. She called back for the others, and they came out equally full of glee and good cheer. They must have smelled the cash. They danced around my car chanting some nonsense or other; two of them were lost in tongues. It all made for awful music as I worked my stiff limbs free of the car.

“Do you have our money?” Sister Irenaeus asked.

I didn’t like the way she said our money, but I responded, “Yes.”

Just then a man walked out of their quarters. A short, wide-shouldered man with a matching broad face and a shag of stringy white-blond hair. He had bad skin that somehow looked okay on him.

“This is Thornton Scrunchy,” Sister Irenaeus said.

Well, of course he is, I thought, and nodded hello.

“He is our architect,” she said.

“I didn’t know you had an architect.” There was something different about Sister Irenaeus. The other sisters were still prancing around like loons. But Sister Irenaeus was standing near me, with Thornton Scrunchy. Scrunchy’s blue eyes were piercing, but only because of their color, I thought. In fact, he seemed to have the glassy-eyed look of an alcoholic or at least of someone who was drunk. There was a toothpick sticking out the corner of his mouth.

He shook my hand. “So, you’re Mr. Poitier. Mr. Poitier. Mr. Poitier. The sisters have told me all about you.”

“You’re an architect here in the town of Smuteye?” I asked. “Smuteye, Alabama?”

“Well, that’s a yes and a no,” he said, “Mr. Poitier.” He seemed to like saying my name. “You see, I’m a man of many professions. It’s so kind of you to help the sisters out. They’re such good souls.” He turned to Sister Irenaeus. “We’re going to build us a church, ain’t we, Sister?”

“Praise the lord,” she said.

Scrunchy stared at my face. “You look just like that Sidney Poitier, the Hollywood actor.”

“I know,” I said.

“But you’re not Sidney Poitier.”

“I am.”

He moved the flat toothpick from the left side of his twisted lips to the right side of his twisted lips.

Remembering the Scrunchy from the bank in Montgomery, I asked, “Are there a lot of Scrunchys in Alabama?”

“Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi. There are Scrunchys all over, Mr. Poitier. Whether we’re related, I can’t tell you, but there’s a mess of us. We Scrunchys have been around forever. I heard tell we was on the Mayweather.”

“Mayflower,” I said.

“You have our money,” Sister Irenaeus said.

“Some of it,” I lied.

“How much?” Scrunchy asked.

I looked at him.

“Well, we need to get moving on this thing.”

“So, do you have some plans drawn up?” I asked.

“I do,” he said. “Been working on them all night. They’re right here inside on the big table.”

I followed him to the door. I looked to Sister Irenaeus, but could not read her face. It was no surprise; I didn’t know her well enough to read the most obvious expressions. “Sister, when did you find this guy? Where did you find this guy? Why did you find this guy?”

“You said we needed plans. He has drawn the plans,” she said. “He made the blueprints so that we can build our church.”

Inside the house country music was playing. I looked to the corner and saw a stack of 45s on an old turntable. Patsy Cline was singing. I recognized her voice, but the song I did not know. It was a lament, or so I thought, but with all the dancing and howling in tongues, I couldn’t really hear. On the table was a rolled-up sheet of white paper, about two feet long. Scrunchy unfurled and held it open with his soft-looking and meaty hands.

“Well, here it is,” he said.

I looked. The drawing was just slightly more detailed and skilled than the little piece of paper I had been shown earlier. It was a crude pencil sketch of a rectangular building with a pitched roof and a steeple on one end, and beside it was a floor plan that showed there was nothing to it but four exterior walls. There were no measurements or marks indicating windows or doors or any other architectural symbols. I looked at them in turn.

“These aren’t blueprints,” I said. “They’re not even blue. This is a sketch and a bad one at that.”

“Well, son, this is just a start. I just got hired yesterday. The sisters have been asking me to help all along, but they didn’t have any money.”

“And now we do,” Sister Irenaeus said.

“Not yet,” I said.

“You know how it is,” Scrunchy said. He nodded to me as if I knew what he was talking about. “People are always coming to me and asking for plans, then they look at them and go build it themselves.”

“Do you have a state license?” I asked.

“I’m not a contractor,” he said. “Ain’t that something, the way them gals blather on like that?”

“God has sent you with our money,” Sister Irenaeus said.

“Well, he sent me with some of it,” I said. “He sent me with a thousand dollars to get Mr. Scrunchy here going on the blueprints.”

“That is all?” she asked.

“For right now,” I said. I watched her shoulders sag and observed the disappointment on her face. “I’ll get it.”

The other sisters had caught on that not all was well and had stopped chanting and howling and dancing and merely looked at us from across the room. They stood there with their shoulders waiting to sag.

I left them inside and went to my car. I opened the satchel in the backseat and tore the band from a stack. I took ten hundreds and looked at the forty-nine thousand remaining dollars. It was bad enough that some people driving around believed I had this and worse that in fact I did. I took the thousand dollars back inside.

“This is all?” Sister Irenaeus said.

“For now,” I repeated.

Scrunchy took the bills and fanned them through a count. “This will work for my retainer. You will be able to pay me for the rest of my services?”

“How much will it cost, the rest of your services?”

“I would say about five grand, I mean, a thousand more for a complete set of expertly rendered and delivered blueprints,” he said. He glanced at Sister Irenaeus and smiled.

“I can get that much,” I said.

“You said fifty thousand dollars,” Sister Irenaeus said.

“That’s a lot of money, Sister,” I said. “I couldn’t get it all at once.” In my mind loomed the fact that I had in a matter of twenty-four hours met two people named Scrunchy. If that was not an incredible coincidence, then the pock-faced man in front of me was well aware that I had the balance of the fifty thousand dollars in my possession, stashed somewhere, if not on me. So, I added, trying to sound confident, savvy, like anything but the clueless idiot that I truly was, “I’d be a fool to travel with that much money on me at once.”

“I suppose you would be, son,” Scrunchy said. He turned to Sister Irenaeus. “Well, Sister, I guess I’ll go get to work on those blueprints.” Then again to me, “You take care now.” He walked out, got into his truck, and drove away.

“Do you trust that guy?” I asked Sister Irenaeus.

“I do,” she said. “Where is the money?”

“It’s coming.”

“We must build the church,” she said.

“I understand that, Sister.” I looked at the faces of the other women. They seemed more confused than disappointed or put out. Now, their shoulders sagged. “I’m going to grab a bite at the diner.”

I walked out to my car. They didn’t follow. I drove away and stopped just beyond the bend in the drive, still hidden from the road. I got out, took the satchel from the floor in the back, and concealed it under some brush at the base of a twisted and memorable tree. I kept a thousand with me. As I fell in again behind the wheel I observed my face in the mirror. I looked so much older, felt so much older, stiff, and beleaguered. If I hadn’t known better I would have said I had a gray hair.

At the diner, I found Diana Frump shaking her ample rump under her white waitress dress to country music on the jukebox. A couple of men were watching her and laughing. She stopped when she saw me.

“And he’s wearing a suit,” Diana said. “Looking sharp there, Mr. Poitier. Who died?”

I’d forgotten I was wearing the suit. I must have been a sight after sleeping in the car in it. “I might think I did,” I said.

“Come on in, Sidney,” she said. “Have a sit-down.”

I sat at the end of the counter. “A party?” I asked.

“Yep,” she said. “A party because work’s coming to Smuteye. I heard tell that them sisters got money to build their church. That means construction, that means construction workers, that means customers for me. A party. What can I get you?” She walked to the other side of the counter.

“A burger,” I said.

“Cheese?”

“Okay,” I said.

“Ain’t got none.” She laughed. “Just foolin’ with you.” She slapped a fist of meat on the griddle. “Yeah, them sisters found somebody to foot the bill. I guess praying ain’t such a bad gig.”

“Some fool,” one of the men said. He was wearing a John Deere cap. “But I’ll take the work.”

“You know somebody named Scrunchy?” I asked Diana.

“Thornton Scrunchy?”

“Yes.”

“Never heard of him,” she said, then laughed again. “Just foolin’ with you. Yeah, he lives around here. Owns some land. I hear a lot of land, over by the river. He had something or other to do with the paper mill way back when.” She studied my face for a second. “Why?”

“Is he an architect?”

“Elroy, is Scrunchy an architect?”

“Thornton Scrunchy is a lot of things,” said the man in the cap. “An architect? I don’t know.”

“He ain’t no architect,” said the other man, a fat man. “I reckon he’s a Baptist jest like the rest of us.”

The screen door opened and slammed shut, and I turned to see a policeman of some kind standing rigid, in dark glasses and a Smokey Bear hat that wore him. He was a skinny, young man with a bad shave. He rested his right hand on his sidearm, a large-caliber revolver, and rested his eyes on me.

“Hey, Horace,” Diana said.

“Diana,” he said.

I looked away from him and at my near-ready burger sizzling on the griddle. Diana watched the man behind me, seemed nervous as she flipped the patty once more. I felt the deputy approach me, hover at my shoulder.

“What’s your name, boy?” the deputy asked.

“This here is Sidney Poitier, Horace,” Diana said.

“Not the Sidney Poitier,” Horace said.

“No,” I said. “Not Sidney Poitier.” I knew it was a bad idea to say that as soon as I opened my mouth.

“Why don’t you step out and put your hands on that counter for me,” the deputy said.

I turned to look back at him. “What did I do?”

“I think you know what you done,” he said.

I supposed that was true of all of us, and in a strange way I found it a reasonable utterance.

“Now, I ain’t gonna ask you again.” He released the leather keep on his holster. “Hands on the counter and spread them legs.”

“What’s this boy done?” asked the man in the tractor cap.

“I think I done caught myself a murderer.” The deputy seemed ready to giggle he was so excited.

“You don’t say,” said the fat man.

I leaned against the counter as instructed, and Horace kicked my feet into a wider stance. He then frisked my torso, under my jacket, and then moved down to the pockets of my trousers. He found the lump of cash in my front pocket.

“What do we have here?” he said. He pulled the wad of bills out, looked at it, and whistled. “Boy, howdy!”

“What is it, Horace?” asked tractor cap.

“A ton of money.” The deputy leaned closer to me. “This here is a lot of money for a nigger to be carrying around.”

I cleared my throat and said, quite without good judgment, “One, I’m not a nigger, and two, that’s not that much money.”

“Oh, I got me an uppity one,” the deputy said.

“He’s uppity, all right,” tractor cap said. “Tell by that suit.”

“How much money he got?” from the fat man.

“Ten crisp one-hundred-dollar bills,” the deputy said.

Tractor cap whistled. “That must be close to a thousand.”

“Pretty close,” I said.

“Shut up, boy.”

I shut up.

The deputy reached out and took my left wrist and pulled it behind my back, slapped a cuff on it, and then said, “Put the other back here.” I did and I was cuffed. “Don’t you try running now.”

“I won’t run,” I said.

“Okay, let’s go.” Horace put his hand in the center of my back and shoved me through the screen door and across the gravel to his battered squad car. He opened the back and muscled me down into the seat. He let out a rebel yell and said, “Have mercy. I done caught myself a crook.”

I tried to get comfortable against the ripped vinyl, but my hands were tied behind me and my suit coat was bunched up. I pressed my face against the cool, dirty window and looked at my Skylark as we rolled away. Just down the road from the Smuteye Farmers Savings and Loan was the Smuteye Police Station.

Deputy Horace rooster-strutted into the crumbling station house with me in tow. “I got him, I got him,” he said in a singsong. When the big-haired dispatcher asked him who, he said, “The killer, the killer.” I wondered as I observed the woman sitting at the ancient radio set whom and to what would be dispatched in Smuteye. Horace pushed me through the first room and into the dank back where the cells were. He opened a barred door and roughly shoved me in. I stumbled, but I didn’t fall. I sat on a metal bed that was attached to the cinder-block wall and looked up to see a filthy white man sitting on the bunk opposite me.

“Nice suit,” he said.

“Got it in Montgomery,” I said.

“Good place to buy a suit. What are you in here for?”

“I don’t know. You?”

“Stealing,” he said.

“Stealing what?”

He shrugged. “I steal a lot of things. It’s kinda what I do.” He studied me for a second. “You ain’t from around here.”

“The suit give me away?”

He laughed. “Funny nigger.” Then, “Naw, just the fact that I ain’t never seen you before.”

The arrest in the diner and drive in the cigarette smoke–soaked squad car and the hustle back to the dingy cell all seemed unreal enough that I felt simply lost. Now, sitting in the cell across from my fellow prisoner, the reality of the situation settled on me. I began to shake. I held out my hand and looked at it.

“Scared?” the man asked.

I nodded.

“At least you ain’t no fool.”

I was in fact terrified. It was a ghostly kind of fear, a kind of distant growl or rumble in the ground. I was in jail and being accused of murder. I had a notion that I could just get up and walk out, but I knew that was just a way to get myself shot. And I didn’t want the last words I heard in life to be, “I got me one.” My stomach felt empty and icy and hot and crowded all at once. My stupid foot tapped with a mind of its own, and I stupidly watched it.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Poitier.”

“That French or something?”

I nodded.

“My name is Last.”

“Last?”

“Yeah, last face you’ll ever see.” He laughed hard.

There was commotion in the front of the station. I lay back and looked at the ceiling. Horace came to the door and told me to get up. “Come on, boy, the Chief’s here, and he wants to see the killer I caught.”

“Who is it that I’m supposed to have killed?” I asked.

“Woooeee, don’t you talk pretty, boy,” the deputy said. “Just get your black ass up and out here.”

The bald, wide Chief was sitting in his office trying to get a drawer open. “Horace, didn’t I tell you to fix this here drawer?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, did you fix it?”

“Not yet.” Horace pushed me in the middle of my back farther into the room. “Chief, here’s the prisoner.”

“You a killer, boy?” the Chief asked.

“I’ve killed no one,” I said.

“See how he talks, Chief.”

“Shut up, Horace.”

“Just where were you yesterday morning?” the Chief asked.

“I was in Montgomery.”

The Chief bit his lower lip and looked up and out the window. “Anybody see you there?”

“A banker named Scrunchy.”

“Horace, did you ask the prisoner any questions?”

“No, sir. But I ain’t never seen this boy before. And he had all this money on him, just stuck down in his pocket.” The deputy pointed to the wad on the desktop in front of the Chief. “That’s close to a thousand dollars.”

The Chief counted the money and frowned at Horace. “Pretty close.” He looked at me. “This here is a lot of money, boy.”

“Not really,” I said.

“Whoa, he say ‘not really.’ You hear that, deputy? He say ‘not really.’ ”

“I heard it, Chief.”

The Chief picked up my wallet, opened it. “Not Sidney Poitier,” he said, looking at my license. “That your name?”

I nodded.

“Where you from, boy?”

“Like the license says, Atlanta.”

“Atlanta,” he repeated. “Big city. What you doin’ here, boy?”

“Passing through. And don’t call me boy.”

“What do they call you in Atlanta?” he asked.

“They call me Mr. Poitier.”

“Well, Mister Poitier, you can go on back to your room now while I call me a fella named Scrunchy in Montgomery. What bank was that?”

“First National Bank of Alabama.”

“You do a lot of business with banks, do you?”

“Some.”

“Take him on back there, Horace.” The Chief gave me one last disdainful glance. “Then I want to see you in here, you hear me?”

“I hear you, Chief.”

Deputy Horace took me back to the cell and I sat on the same bunk and looked across at the same face. “So, what’s your name?”

“Why, I’m Clark Gable.”

“Pleased to meet you.”

“You can call me Billy.”

“I’ll do that.”

“So, they say you killed somebody,” Billy said. He was sitting way back on his bunk, his back against the wall. I noticed that he had one boot off.

“That’s what they say.”

“Well, I don’t believe it,” Billy said. “You don’t look like you could kill nobody.”

I understood this to be intended as an insult, and the thought occurred to me that I should take it as one as a matter of decorum, but I didn’t. I looked at him looking at me. “You’re right, I couldn’t.”

“Hmmm. So, who did you kill?”

“I don’t know yet,” I said. “I take it you live around here. What do you do? To pay the bills, I mean?”

“A little of this. A little of that. Now and then. Off and on.” He ran a hand through his greasy hair. “Steal.”

Horace came back to the cell door. “Okay, boy, on your feet. Chief wants to see you again.”

I followed the deputy back into the Chief’s office. Horace pushed me to the chair in front of the desk and gestured for me to sit. The Chief was chasing a fly around the room with a swatter. He missed again.

“I suppose you can do better,” he said as he sat.

“Did you call the bank?” I asked.

The Chief called into the outer office. “Horace, get your sorry ass in here right this second.”

Horace entered and sheepishly walked over to stand by the window. He looked at his shoes.

“I want you to hear this, Horace,” the Chief said.

“Yes, sir,” Horace said.

“Well, Mister Poitier, I called the bank in Montgomery, and I talked to this Scrunchy, and it turns out he remembers you.”

“Therefore?”

“Therefore?” the Chief repeated, leaning back in his chair and looking at me with his head tilted. “Therefore? You hear that, Horace? Therefore.”

“I told you he talks fancy. Don’t he talk fancy?”

“Shut up, Horace,” the Chief said without looking at the deputy. “Therefore, Mister Poitier, you couldn’t have killed our dead man. And you know something? I don’t like you.”

I said nothing. I glanced over at Horace. He seemed amused. His ugly face seemed ready to break into a giggle.

The Chief looked at Horace, too. “And I sure as hell don’t like you right now, Horace.”

Horace straightened.

The Chief looked at me while holding the wad of bills in his hand. “You still ain’t told me where you got this money.”

“I got it from the bank. It’s my money.”

He looked at it in his hand, then pushed it across the desk to me along with my wallet.

“So, I can go?” I said.

“I don’t think just yet. I need you to take a look at our dead man and tell us if you know him.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I don’t know who he is,” the Chief barked.

“Well, I don’t know anybody around here.”

“That’s good, that’s good. Because the dead man ain’t from around here. If he was, I would know who he is. He’s got that in common with you. That and the fact that he’s a black boy.”

“I don’t know him,” I said.

“You might know him. It’s possible. You never know. Just do me this favor, Mister Poitier.”

I didn’t want to look at a dead man, and yet in some way I knew I had to. I looked out the window behind Horace at the late afternoon light. I remembered the money hidden under that tree. I felt cold with fear.

“Do you know another guy named Scrunchy? His name is Thornton, and he’s from around here? A strange-looking man.” I thought of the banker. “I mean, how many Scrunchys are there?”

Horace blurted out a laugh. “Hell, boy, you can’t turn around in these parts without bumping heads with a Scrunchy.”

His answer, not surprisingly, did not make me feel better. I was certain that there was no answer to that question that would.

“What about Thornton Scrunchy?” the Chief asked.

“Is he an architect?”

“I doubt it.” The Chief stood and walked around his desk. “Come on, let’s go look at the stiff.”

I stood on still-unsteady legs and realized for the first time that my feet were hurting from the dress shoes that no longer perfectly fit.

The Chief led the way outside, then along the road two doors down to a one-story wooden house with a sign on the lawn that simply read, Undertaking. We walked in through the front door without knocking.

“Donald!” the Chief called out. “Don-ald!”

“Who is that yelling in here?” a tall, gray-headed man said as he came out of the back. “Chief?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

Donald adjusted the straps of his overalls and regarded me suspiciously. “What’s this all about?”

“Where’s the body?” the Chief asked.

“Which body?”

“How many bodies do you have, Donald?”

“Just one.”

“Well, that one.”

“What about it?” Donald asked.

“I want to see him,” the Chief said.

“Him, too?” Donald pointed to me with his nose.

“Him, too. Now, where is he?”

“I got him out in the garage.” Donald turned and started away toward the back of the house.

“Garage?” I said.

“It’s also my lab,” the man said without looking back.

The Chief looked at me, seemed embarrassed. “Donald is our coroner. Sort of by default.”

“I heard that,” Donald said.

“I know you heard me, Donald. That’s why I said it.”

We entered the kitchen, passed through another back room with stacked magazines, Boys’ Life and Outdoor Gazette and National Geographic, and through a door into what really was the garage. There was an old Plymouth on blocks on the far side and a stainless-steel table in the middle of the near side. Against the wall opposite the garage doors were three white chests that looked like deep freezers. Donald led us to the middle one.

“Here he is,” Donald said, then pulled up the lid. He stood there, his arm extended, holding it open. He scratched his neck with his free hand.

I was standing well behind the Chief, and he turned to look at me. “Well, step on up here. I’ve already seen him. Just tell me if you know him.”

I moved forward and leaned over. The man was young, black, with short-cropped hair. His eyes were closed. His lips were slightly parted. He was circumcised. He looked just like me. He looked exactly like me, a fact that was apparently lost on Donald and the Chief. I wanted to say, “That’s me.” The thought of saying it was strange feeling and scary. My chest was tight, and my ears were ringing. I was lying in the chest, and yet I wasn’t. I said, “I don’t know him.” I was lying, I thought.

“Okay,” the Chief said. “Close it up, Donald.”

Donald let down the lid. “I heard somebody say that he came here to help them crazy nuns or whatever they are.”

“What killed him?” I asked.

Donald cleared his throat. “Somebody smashed him on the back of the head with something harder than his skull.”

“How do you know when he was killed?” I asked.

The Chief cocked his head and looked at me. “Because one minute he wasn’t there, and the next minute he was, along with a lot of blood that wasn’t nowhere except under him.”

“Chief,” I said, “I’d like to help you find the killer.”

“That’s a weird thing for you to say. What makes you think I’m looking for a killer?” he said.

“I just thought … ”

“For all I know this boy beat himself in the back of the head with a bat. You want to find yourself a killer, go ahead.” He looked at the ceiling and over at the disassembled Plymouth. “There ain’t nothing here that makes a difference to nobody. Do what you want.”

The face of the dead man haunted me. I stared at the closed lid of the deep freezer.

The Chief yawned. “Can we get out this way?” He pointed to the wide garage doors.

Donald hit a switch on the wall and one of the doors rolled up. The sight of the late afternoon turning to dusk terrified me. There were people out there looking for me, wanting my fifty thousand dollars. I knew they would kill me for it and I wondered if in fact they already had. As we stepped out of the makeshift morgue I thought that if that body in the chest was Not Sidney Poitier, then I was not Not Sidney Poitier and that by all I knew of logic and double negatives, I was therefore Sidney Poitier. I was Sidney Poitier.

“When we get back to your office, may I use your phone? Collect call. After all, I never got my one. Don’t prisoners usually get one call?”

“Yes, you may. One,” he said. “One call. Collect.”

Back in the dimly lit police station I placed a collect call to Podgy, who again reaffirmed his absolute refusal to come to any place called Smuteye. “What even does that mean?” he asked.

“I don’t know. You don’t have to come. Just call Ted and Professor Everett and tell them that I need them here.”

Podgy said he would, and I hung up. I looked around at the station walls, at Horace in the corner watching me, at the dispatcher who might have been sleeping, at the calendar with a woman leaning over an Oldsmobile beside the passage to the cells, at the open door to the Chief’s office. I wanted to ask if I could spend the night there, but I knew what that answer would be. Hell, they were probably tied in with the people who were after my money. I stepped over to the Chief’s door.

“This might be a stupid question, but is there a motel in Smuteye?” I asked. I leaned against the jamb.

“No,” he said, “there’s no motel, but I do know where you can rent a room.” He looked at his desk and nervously rearranged some papers. “I just now got off the phone. That was the state police over in Montgomery, and they told me that them boys up in Washington want this murder solved or they’re gonna come down here and go through all of our drawers, the ones in my desk and the ones I’m wearing. They say this is a matter of civil rights. I say it’s a matter of a boy being dead. I don’t want no suits down here crawling up my ass. You think you can figure this out?”

“I’m not a cop.”

“You’re a smart guy. You don’t think you can help the dumb crackers?” He smiled smugly at me. “Don’t you want show up us peckerwoods?”

“I can find out who killed him.” I didn’t know why I said that, except for the fact that I somehow believed I would be investigating my own murder. I wanted to know who would kill me.

“You didn’t think that man over there looked just like me?” I asked.

“You all look alike to me.”

I felt stupid for having set that one up.

“Stay around and show up the poor white folks,” he said.

“I think I will,” I said. “I’ve asked some friends to come here. They’ll help.” Truth was I didn’t know whether either of them would come, and I certainly didn’t know whether they would help or whether they could help. But I wanted someone to know that someone knew where I was. I was, in effect, trying to cover my ass, my tremendously exposed and vulnerable ass. My black ass. “Where’s this room that I can rent?”

“My house,” the Chief said.

The Chief’s house was a clapboard box set on cinder-block footings stuck far off the road in the center of a clearing of thin pines. The slow night drive there in his somewhat less foul-smelling police car was a bit nerve-racking. The idea of this white, rednecked, little southern town sheriff, or whatever he was, driving an unarmed, naïve, and solitary and stupid black man into the deep woods was unsettling at best, surreally terrifying at worst. The headlights panned across the yard and settled on the house. It was predictably dark, and it had the look of a man who lived alone.

“It ain’t much, but it’s paid for,” he said.

“How much for the room?” I asked. “We never talked about that.” I was afraid of what he might say. He knew that I had a thousand dollars on me. I wondered again if he knew about the rest of the money. Even if he wasn’t involved with the people trying to get my money, perhaps Scrunchy had told him on the phone about my business in Montgomery.

“You know the kind of money you’re carrying around is enough to get a boy killed,” he said.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

We walked into the front room. The Chief walked through the darkness to a standing lamp in the corner and switched it on. There was a saggy sofa, the original color of which was a mystery, and a matching stuffed chair. There was a rolltop desk under a window. There were no curtains on the windows. There were no rugs on the linoleum floor.

“You never told me how much the rent is.”

“You don’t have to pay me anything,” he said. “Have a seat.” He moved some magazines from the sofa, but I sat on the chair.

I sat.

“You want a drink?”

“I guess.” I was uncomfortable. I was especially uncomfortable with the fact that he was all of a sudden acting cordially. “What are we drinking?”

“Rye whiskey,” he said. He took a bottle from the desk and brought two glasses to the coffee table in front of me. He sat on the sofa, leaning forward. He poured the whiskey. “You like rye?”

“Never tried it,” I said.

He laughed. “Drink it slow.”

I sipped the drink. It burned my throat, but I didn’t gag or cough, thus surprising myself, and so I think I let go a little smile.

“Good, ain’t it?” he said.

On top of the desk was a dark lamp and a photograph. I stood and took the glass of whiskey with me. I was determined to nurse the three fingers he had poured for as long as possible. I walked over to the picture, looked at it without switching on the lamp. It was of a woman.

“Who’s this?” I asked.

“My mama,” the Chief said. “She’s dead now.”

“Did she live with you here?”

His eyes narrowed. “No, she did not live with me here. Does this look like the kind of house a decent lady would live in?”

I looked around at the bare windows, the dingy walls. “This house isn’t so bad,” I lied.

He knocked back the rest of the whiskey in his glass and automatically poured himself another. “How you doin’?” he asked. “That’s enough whiskey for you, boy. Your judgment is already impaired.” He laughed.

“Maybe so,” I said. I sat back down.

“What do you do back there in Atlanta?”

“Nothing,” I said, quite honestly.

“How do you make your money?”

“Inheritance.”

“So, you’re rich.”

“You could say that.”

“Well,” the Chief said. “Around here, we’re poor, dirt poor.”

I nodded.

“You got a girlfriend?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Just curious.”

His curiosity was strange and a bit annoying. I watched his lids get heavy. “I don’t. Do you have a girlfriend?”

He laughed. I must have looked as if I were pitying him because he said, “No pity, now, boy. I don’t need your pity. Nosiree, I do not need your pity.” He poured himself another glass.

“Do you drink like this every night?” I asked.

“What if I do?”

I shrugged. “Expensive habit,” I said, pretty much because I could think of nothing else.

He knocked back that glass and glared at me before closing his eyes, either because he could no longer stand to look at me or because he couldn’t keep them open. I was trying to figure out where I was and why. I understood that I was in his house because he had more or less arranged it, but it was also clear that I was there because I was afraid to be anywhere else. I didn’t know whether he was aware of my hidden money. He certainly knew I had a thousand dollars, which seemed to be a fortune to most of the residents of Smuteye, though he seemed unimpressed enough. Certainly this man didn’t believe that I could help him solve a crime. However, I in part had chosen to remain because I needed to solve the murder; I believed somehow that the body I had seen in the freezer was my own. I sat there through the night as the dust and mustiness bothered my nose, the policeman’s snoring filled the room, the sick light from the lamp at once too harsh and too dim.

The morning came with my stupid ass still sitting in that same lumpy chair. Watching. Watching the red, puffy, snoring face of the Chief. Watching the rain. As soon as there was light, there was rain—a hard-driving rain with wind that bent the pines severely. While he continued to sleep I got up and walked into the kitchen. To my surprise, it was not the sty I expected. It was in fact spotless. The sink was extremely white and the short curtains above it were crisp, bright yellow, and pulled aside evenly. One cup and one saucer were left on the drying rack. I actually turned to look at the doorway to the living room to be sure I was still in the same house. It was so strangely clean that I felt uncomfortable and so returned to my chair.

“Storm,” the Chief said, waking, rubbing his eyes. He sat up and poured himself another drink. “You sleep?”

I shook my head. “What now?”

“You’re the one that wants to find a killer.”

“What do you know about me?” I asked. “I mean what did the bank man tell you about my business with him?”

“He just told me he remembered seeing you.”

I wanted to believe him. “He didn’t tell you what my business was?”

The Chief just looked at me.

“Do you think that dead man looks like me? And don’t give me that shit about how we all look alike.”

“A little.”

“A lot.”

“Okay,” he said. “A lot. What’s your point?”

“I was in Montgomery picking up fifty thousand dollars,” I told him and then waited for a reaction to show on his face. None appeared. This I found odd. “That doesn’t surprise you?”

He drank from his glass. “What do you want me to say, Sidney? You want me to say, ‘Wow, that’s a lot of money’? What do you expect?”

“I don’t know what I expect.”

For whatever unfathomable and idiotic reason I decided to level with him further. “I became afraid that I was followed from the bank, that somebody was going to steal my money. And then when I met that Thornton Scrunchy, you know with the same last name as the guy from the bank, I got really scared.”

Still, he listened without showing any reaction.

“Why so much cash?”

“It was for the sisters. It’s for their church. They seemed to think god sent me down here to build their blasted temple. I don’t know how to build anything, so I had some money wired to the bank in Montgomery. The money was for them. I would have given it to them, but that Scrunchy was there.”

“So, you’re one of them good Samaritans.”

I laughed. “An idiot.”

“Where’s the money now?”

“I hid it.”

“Good move.”

“Is this where you point a pistol at my head and make me take you to it?” I asked, half smiling.

He swallowed the last of what was in his glass. “No, this is where I close my eyes and sleep for another five or ten minutes. You think about this killer you want to catch. Maybe I’ll dream about your kind of money. Fifty thousand good ol’ Uncle Samuel Greenbacks. Man oh man.” He laughed softly as he seemed to drift off.

If I wasn’t digging myself deeper, I was certainly lengthening the trench. The rain was not letting up, but was now smashing into the windows. I couldn’t see the trees clearly anymore.

What I did see clearly was the murder of the doppelganger of Not Sidney Poitier. He was struck on the back of the head by a redneck named Thornton Scrunchy who was subsequently disappointed to find no cash in the dead man’s pockets. Probably every KKK-connected miscreant in a five-county swath of Alabama was in on the murder and the search for the money. Whether the Chief was, I obviously didn’t know. But as he slept there I resolved to attempt to Fesmerize him upon his waking. I thought I might have a better chance and an easier job if I awoke him before he was ready. I perched myself on the edge of my seat and leaned into my stare—my eyebrow arched, my head tilted slightly, and I cleared my throat, again, louder, again. The man stirred, slowly opened his eyes, grew immediately alarmed by my posture, then fell into what I recognized as a successful Fesmerian submersion. He sat there even more like a lump and stared into the space that was me.

“Can you hear me, Chief?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Tell me your full name.”

“My name is Francis Rene Funk.”

“Really?” I leaned closer to him. “When did you learn about the fifty thousand dollars?”

“When you told me,” he said.

“Do you know who killed the man in the chest?”

“No.”

“Do you suspect anyone?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Whom do you suspect?”

“Thornton Scrunchy.”

“Why?”

“Because of what you said. He thought the black boy looked like you. He does look like you.”

“Do you want to hurt me?”

“No,” he said.

“Will you hurt me?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you believe my life is in danger?”

“Yes.”

“Look into my eyes,” I told him, and when he did, I said, ‘When I say ‘Chief, I need your help,’ you will help me. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“You will defend me, protect me if I need you, if anyone is trying to hurt me. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

I told him to go back to sleep and wake up in ten minutes. I sat there just a little less afraid than I had been, convinced at least of the fact the man with me meant me no harm. I was certainly no less confused. I felt terribly guilty for the man who looked enough like me to have been killed. I didn’t know what to do about the money. I had been stupid about it. I should have taken Sister Irenaeus to the bank and simply had her open an account, but it was too late to change any of that. I thought of the money hidden in the satchel and wondered how it was faring in the rain and wind. For all I knew one-hundred-dollar bills were floating all over southern Alabama.

The rain was letting up when Chief Francis Rene Funk awoke, but there was no sign or promise of a blue sky to come. There was only gray, dark clouds, wind, and mud. We got back into the Chief’s car and slipped and slid our way back to the highway. We drove to the diner, and I saw my car in the parking lot, at least what was left of it. It had been stripped and left open and bleeding in the pouring rain. The only consolation to what I saw as the loss of a friend was the fact that the thugs had not found what they were looking for.

“What now, city boy?” the Chief asked.

I shook my head, shrugged.

“Well, let’s eat something.” He parked beside my Skylark. “Need to eat something.”

“Tell me, Chief, what is a Smuteye?”

“You never had corn smut? Come on, boy.”

In the diner, Diana was surprised and pleased to see me. “Sidney,” she said. “They didn’t kill you?”

“That’s a matter of opinion,” I said.

She laughed.

“Give this boy some corn smut,” the Chief said.

“You sure you’re ready for this?” Diana asked.

“No. What is it?”

“Corn cancer is what it is,” said the man in the tractor cap who was sitting right where he had been seated when I was arrested.

“It’s a fungus,” she said. “Tastes real good. We eat it with eggs. The Mexicans called it Huitlacoche.”

“What Mexicans?” I asked.

“The two that come through here about three years ago. They said it means raven shit.”

I looked at the Chief’s face and recalled his charge to not let any harm come to me. I nodded. “Okay, let me have some.”

Diana scrambled some eggs in a pan, divided them onto two plates, slapped some toast beside the servings, and the opened a plain jar from which she scraped black matter. She slid the plates in front of us.

“Have at,” the Chief said. “The Mexicans said it’s good for you-know.” He glanced down at his crotch.

“What happened to these Mexicans?” I asked.

The Chief smirked. “Well, we chased them into the swamp, and one of them never come out. We caught the other one, what was left of him, and sent him to the county jail farm.”

“What did they do?” I asked.

“I don’t rightly recall.”

I finally took a bite of the corn smut. I didn’t gag like I thought I might. It was a little like mushrooms. I at once sort of liked it and wanted to spit it out across the counter.

“What do you think?” Diana asked.

I was saved from having to answer by the opening of the screen door. A familiar voice split the room.

“Anybody here seen a fellow who looks just like Sidney Poitier?” It was Ted.

“Ted,” I said.

“Nu’ott?”

“It’s me,” I said.

“If you say so. Podgy told me you needed some help. What are you eating?”

“It’s called corn smut,” I said.

“And you’re eating it? Is it good?”

I shrugged.

Ted looked at Diana. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” said Diana.

“Fix me up a plate of that,” Ted said.

“You can have mine,” I said.

Ted sat beside me, and I pushed my plate in front of him. “Ted Turner,” I said, “this is the chief of police.”

“How you doing?” Ted said, a mouth full of eggs and corn smut. “This ain’t terrible.” He pointed his fork at Diana. “But I wouldn’t order it a second time. No offense.”

“None taken,” she said.

“And this is Diana,” I said.

“You ever notice how some people spell your name with two n’s and some with one? How do you spell it?”

“One,” Diana said.

“Now, see, that makes sense to me. Why would you need two of them doing the same duty? What is this shit called again?”

“Corn smut,” I said.

“I don’t doubt it. Tell me, Nu’ott, why am I here?”

“Someone is trying to kill me,” I said.

He looked at the plate in front of him.

“Not with that.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

I wanted to suggest to him further that perhaps I had already been killed, but that would have sounded as crazy to him as it did to me. “I did something stupid. I needed fifty thousand dollars to help these religious women build a church, and I got it in cash, and now somebody wants to kill me for it.”

Diana and the tractor-cap man were hearing about the money for the first time, and their mouths dropped open. The story I had just tried to tell in shorthand would have come across as nutty and surreal to anyone but Ted.

“Did you get your money in twenties or hundreds?” Ted asked.

“Hundreds.”

“That’s where you went wrong. People go crazy for hundred-dollar bills. You can give a caddy seven twenties and he’ll forget you in a week, but give him a hundred, and he’ll remember you forever.” He nodded to the Chief. “And that’s why I don’t play golf.”

“Who are you?” the Chief asked.

“My name’s Ted Turner. What’s yours?”

“Chief.”

“Interesting.” He ate another bit of corn smut. “You know, Diana-with-one-n, this is isn’t half bad. It’s more like three-quarters bad.”

“Glad you like it,” Diana said.

Just then Horace burst into the trailer. “I got him, Chief! This time I got me the right one! No question about it!”

“Got who?” the Chief asked.

“The killer. Caught him snooping around the outside of the hardware store. He’s a nigger, so I arrested him.”

“Well, let’s go see what the hell you’re talking about.” The Chief slid off his stool and walked out. Horace, Ted, and I followed.

“What exactly is going on here?” Ted asked me as we sat in the backseat of the Chief’s car.

“I’m not sure,” I said.

At the police station, we filed in and heard laughter coming from the cells. The big-haired dispatcher said, “Been like that since you put him back there, Horace.”

The Chief walked toward the back, and I followed. And there was Professor Everett, doing push-ups and counting loudly. “Sixty-three.” He paused at the top and laughed. “Sixty-four.”

Billy, my former cellmate, was counting with him, laughing as well.

“What the hell is going on here?!” the Chief shouted.

“Push-ups,” Everett said.

My first thought was that he could not possibly have done sixty-four push-ups. My second thought was an affirmation of my previous suspicion that Horace’s murder suspect was Everett.

Everett sat on the floor, his back against the wall. “Okay, Billy Bob Jack, whatever-the-fuck your name is. Beat that.” He looked up at me and smiled. “I’ve been working out.”

“I guess so.”

“How are you, Mr. Poitier?” Everett asked.

“You realize you’re in here for murder,” I said.

“My friend Billy told me as much. Who did I kill?”

“Me,” I said.

He looked me up and down. “I didn’t do a very good job.”

“Who is this guy?” the Chief asked me.

“He’s one of my professors. I called and asked him to come down here.”

The Chief moaned. “Horace, would you please let this man out of the cell? And don’t speak to me for the rest of the day.”

“Yes, sir,” Horace said and unlocked the door.

Everett stretched as he exited the cell. “Billy, it was good doing time with you. Look me up when you get out.” He looked at me. “Now, tell me, what the hell am I doing here?”

I didn’t answer his question, instead I introduced him to Ted. “Percival Everett, Ted Turner. Ted, this is my professor.”

“Was,” Everett said. He looked at my face. “You look a lot older.”

“He’s right,” Ted said.

Everett shook Ted’s hand. “Ted.”

“Prof.”

“Well, ain’t this just sweet and friendly,” the Chief said. “This is a damn jail. Everybody out of here.”

Everett reached through the bars and shook hands with Billy. “Take care of yourself, you pathetic peckerwood motherfucker.”

“You, too, you darkie sumbitch.”

Everett smiled at me. “It’s a special thing when you do time with a fellow.” He led the way back into the main room of the station. “So, tell me how I killed you, and why it didn’t stick,” he said.

I ignored Everett’s question and told him what I’d told Ted, that someone wanted to kill me. I then told him why.

“That was stupid,” he said. “That’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard.” He looked over at Ted. “I hate colorization.” He then turned to the Chief. “I’m not speaking metaphorically.”

“I have mixed feelings about it myself,” Ted said. “Don’t you just hate when you’re watching a movie, and you can’t remember if it’s the first version or a remake. You know, like Heaven Can Wait.”

“No, I kind of like that feeling.” Everett turned and looked me up and down. “What’s with the monkey suit?”

Ted looked at his thumb. “What do you call it when you get that painful bit of nail on the side of your cuticle and you can’t help but push up and make it hurt more and you never have a clipper with you?”

“I never knew what that was exactly. Is that what I’m supposed to call a hangnail?” Everett asked.

“I guess that’s what you call it,” Ted said.

“You’re right, though. It is really annoying,” Everett said. “I always get them right before I’m about to have sex for some reason.”

“Would you two shut up?” I said.

The Chief and Horace looked on as if they had been invaded by Russian-speaking madmen. The big-haired dispatcher dozed in her chair. The rain had started up outside again, and the wind howled.

“I say we go get your money and put it in the bank,” Ted said.

“I agree,” Everett said. “That doesn’t mean it’s the right or smartest thing to do, but I agree with it.”

It was the thing to do. And as long as I kept the Chief with me, I figured I was relatively safe. Even though the rain was falling more heavily than ever, I felt an urgency about getting the money. I looked out the window and at the black sky.

“Listen, I want everybody out of this goddamn station right now,” the Chief barked.

The dispatcher sat up and said, “Weather Service just announced a tornado watch for all of Bullock County.”

Horace whistled. “It does look bad out there.”

“What’s the difference between a tornado watch and a tornado warning?” Ted asked. “I mean, which one is worse?”

“I think a warning means somebody’s seen one,” Everett said.

“But how can you watch something that’s not there?” Ted asked.

Everett scratched his head.

Ted looked at Everett’s face. “Percival Everett. Didn’t you write a book called Erasure?”

Everett nodded.

“I didn’t like it,” Ted said.

“Nor I,” Everett said. “I didn’t like writing it, and I didn’t like it when I was done with it.”

“Well, actually, I loved the novel in the novel. I thought that story was real gripping. You know, true to life.”

“I’ve heard that.”

It grew darker outside. The wind screamed. The dispatcher calmly crawled under her desk. The front door blew open, hit the wall, and then slammed shut. Horace was shaking.

“Wow,” Everett said. “I’ve always wanted to see a tornado, if in fact this is one. Could be just a bad storm.”

“I read that tornado is a messed-up form of some Spanish word, tronada or something like that.”

Everett scratched his head. “Could be from the Latin tonare, to thunder. Anyway, I like the word twister better.”

“Maybe you two should step outside there and get a close-up look,” the Chief said.

“Maybe I will,” Everett said. He smiled at the Chief. “Tell me, constable, just what is a Smuteye?”

“It’s a dish,” I said.

“I tried it,” Ted said. “Tastes like shit.”

Everett looked at the Chief and around the station. “I can well imagine.”

The whole building rattled.

“Well, we can’t go out in this mess,” the Chief said. “The best we can do is hunker down in here. And the best place for that is back in the cells.” He leaned over the dispatcher’s desk. “You’re gonna have to come on back, Lucy.”

So we did. Horace unlocked the cell doors and we all joined Billy sitting on bunks and against the walls.

Everett stared at the disgusting, seatless toilet. “I grew to hate that during my incarceration,” he said.

The roof shook, and we all looked up. Dust fell from the ceiling into our eyes. The wind roared like an engine.

“It’s a bad one,” Horace said.

“Thanks for the news,” the Chief said.

I pictured the satchel of money swirling up into the funnel cloud, opening and scattering the bills across six counties and into Georgia. I felt nothing for the money; it was only fifty thousand, a drop in my so-called bucket. However, I felt I needed it in order to make a show of depositing it into the bank—a move designed to protect myself from the would-be robbers. And I wanted the sisters to have it, though I was unsure why that was important to me, if in fact it was and not some mere and strange act of perversion on my part.

Ted was marveling at the storm and saying wow over and over. “I read that twisters in the northern hemisphere rotate counterclockwise, I think, opposite from the ones in the southern hemisphere. Hey, you ever try on trousers and they’re too short in the rise and for some reason you buy them anyway?”

“That happens to me a lot,” Everett said. “I don’t know why. Mr. Poitier was one of my favorite students. That is until he cowardly dropped out of school. I think it’s because no girls would sleep with him.”

The roof made a loud cracking noise, and we let out a collective gasp, but the structure stayed together. The dispatcher prayed loudly. Billy comforted her, called her “Mama.”

Horace said, “Think we’re going to die, Chief?”

“We’d never be so lucky,” the Chief said. “If I could only get that fucking lucky.”

Then the wind stopped. Rain leaked in through the damaged roof, but the blowing stopped. All was silent. “I guess that’s it,” the Chief said, disgust in his voice. He walked away back into the station room.

I followed him. “Chief, I think we ought to go get that money now the weather has broken.”

“Oh, you do,” he said. “That’s just like one of you selfish muckety-mucks from the city. I’ve got to go out there and check on the folks. I might have to rescue some poor peckerwoods from the tops of trees or some such. And all you can think about is your money.”

“Actually, it’s the sisters’ money,” I said.

“You and your friends go and find your damn money. I got pressing business to attend to.”

“But I’m afraid I’ll be in danger,” I said, slowly.

He looked blankly at me, then said, “Horace, drive around and see what’s what while I help this boy find his money. And do it right now and don’t go visiting that Sarah Purdy that you think I don’t know you visit every day.”

“Yes, sir, Chief.”

The road outside was strewn with fallen limbs and whatever garbage there was in the town of Smuteye, but it didn’t appear that any of the buildings had been ripped from their foundations. Ted and Everett sat in the back of the car while I sat in the front and reminded the Chief how to get to the sisters’ place. We turned off the road and bounced over a few limbs. Then I saw her. Actually, I first saw the white head of Thornton Scrunchy, then I saw Sister Irenaeus. I told the Chief to stop, and we got out. Sister Irenaeus and the man were shoving bills back into what I recognized as my satchel. When they saw us, they ran through the woods toward a pickup parked at the side of the road. Sister Irenaeus looked back when she reached the passenger-side door. She looked wild eyed, nothing like the woman I had met before. She turned, got into the cab, and slammed the door. Thornton Scrunchy punched the accelerator and sprayed the bushes behind him with mud and gravel. The truck sped away into the wet, windy, dismal gray of Bullock County.

I walked over to what had been the money’s hiding spot. Bills were still all over the place—in the crooks of tree branches, in puddles, on the muddy ground. They hadn’t gotten nearly all of them. Everett started collecting the money he could reach and stuffed it in his pockets.

“We have to catch him,” I said, realizing suddenly just what was happening. “He’s the one who killed me.”

The Chief, Ted, and Everett studied me, quizzically.

“We have to stop him,” I said, again. My heart was pounding. “He killed that man because he thought he was me. Someone is dead because of me. Because of my stupidity.”

We hurried back to the car. The Chief slammed his foot on the gas as we hit the highway again. The weather began to turn bad once more. We were driving into another storm. Sheets of rain washed along the road and then over us. The rain fell so hard that the wipers did little to help our vision through the windshield. The rain stopped, all of a sudden.

In front of us was the overturned and mangled blue Ford pickup of Thornton Scrunchy. Engine parts littered the road. As did Sister Irenaeus and Scrunchy and Scrunchy’s hair. The utility pole into which it had crashed was broken and lay on the ground beside it; the wires were sizzling and popping on the wet road.

Ted whistled as we stood there staring from a safe distance. “Hell of a thing,” he said.

“Do you think they’re dead?” Everett asked.

“Dead enough,” the Chief said. He was at the open door of his car and on his radio. “Lucy, call Donald and have him come over to Two Forks Road and the highway with his wagon. And call the county and tell we need a cleanup, some power lines down.”

“What if they’re alive?” I asked. The electrical line bounced and danced across the asphalt.

Ted turned to Everett. “Does rock beat paper or does paper beat rock?”

“Paper beats rock, but I have no idea why,” Everett said. “A rock should go right through paper, don’t you think? I mean, I love paper as much as, or more than, the next guy. My guess is that it’s the function of some kind of privileged intradialogical and embedded enunciator.”

“What are you talking about?” Ted asked.

“Paper beats rock. What beats paper?”

“Scissors.”

“Ah, yeah.”

“Your friends are nuts,” the Chief said to me.

I had to agree. And so I did. I didn’t know why I’d asked them to come. But somehow things had worked out for me. The same could not be said for Sister Irenaeus. Neither could it be said for the unfortunate young man in the freezer who may or may not have been me.

The sun burst through the dingy steel gray sky and made everything bright. For whatever reason the power line appeared to discharge and then after a few last pops lay there quietly, unmoving. The Chief and I stepped forward toward the bodies. Except for the twisted metal and carnage on the road, the sun had made it a beautiful day. It was pretty clear once we were close that both Sister Irenaeus and Scrunchy were quite dead. All four eyes were wide open and staring into what I believed the sisters would have called the afterlife—into what my mother would have called nothing.

The Chief pointed to the satchel. It had been tossed clear of the truck and was lying in the tall brown grass at the side of the highway. “There it is. Take it. It’s your money.”

“It’s not evidence?” I said.

He gave me a get-real look.

I picked up the bag. “I’ll give this to the sisters.” I walked back over to Everett and Ted.

Everett handed me the money he’d collected in the woods. “What do I need with money? I’ll just gamble it away.”

“You have a gambling problem?” I asked.

“Not yet.” He looked at my face. “What now?”

“Why don’t you just fly to Los Angeles?” Ted said.