17

AFTER PULLING OUT onto the main drag, the first thing Fisher does is crack the windows. Cold whistles in where his hat should be, across his scalp and his forehead, a freezing burn that he squints against. He’s thinking: Brian shot a cop. The guy who’s been step-dad to Bree, the guy Jan left him for, went nuts and shot a cop, and if he wasn’t dead, he’d be out hunting for Bree and he’d shoot her too. Does it make him feel angry? Sure—but not as angry as thinking about why Brian was naked in her bathroom.

He thinks: Goddamn freak, he’d have killed her too.

He thinks: Always knew there was something wrong with him.

He thinks: Naked. In her bathroom. What the hell?

His ears are going numb. He tugs up his hood, never mind that it makes him feel like a deep-sea diver, his world shrunk to what’s right in front of him.

The inside of his head’s aching from Zane’s smoke. The bottle of ibuprofen in the glove compartment’s empty. He needs coffee. What happened to the coffee he bought at the convenience store? Must have left it behind, and now the nearest place is the coffee hut down at the intersection with Bartlett. He drives one-handed, the radio on high and his right hand punching through the pre-sets, but it’s past the hour and there’s no news on. The paper’s behind him in its plastic bag. Part of him wants to reach back for it and pull over to the side of the road, right here, right now. C’mon Fisher, he tells himself, be better than that.

Although the fog’s not so bad this morning, nothing’s where it should be—the burger joint with its bright windows shining out into the murk when he thought he’d passed it, the gas station suddenly on his right, the turn-off to the coffee hut coming up so fast he has to swerve to make it.

A woman leans out the serving window in a pink knitted hat pulled down almost to her eyes. He tells her all he wants is a regular coffee. “Regular size?” she asks, and he tells her sure. “Medium roast?” and he says sure. “Cream and sugar?” and he says, “Go to town, why not.”

The cup she passes him isn’t what he’d call regular. At least, it’s not what you’d call regular if you buy your coffee in convenience stores and diners. It’s so big he has to stretch his fingers around it, so tall it towers out of his cup holder. He drives across the lumpy snow to the movie theater parking lot, which is empty except for two dead-looking cars. He pulls up far away, just in case, and spreads the newspaper over the steering wheel. Already his heart’s jumping against his ribs. He turns on the dome light and there’s his shadow across the paper, and it grows sharper as he leans forward to read.

This is what he finds out: last night local business woman Janice Armstrong returned early from a brief trip out of town and found a man’s body on her deck. She didn’t recognize him. The body was quickly identified as that of the missing trooper. He had a bullet wound to the chest. No statement about possible suspects has been issued. Mrs Armstrong was being questioned. Both her husband, Brian Armstrong, and fifteen-year-old daughter, Bree Fisher, are missing and the police are requesting information as to their whereabouts. No mention of the militia. No mention of missing guns and computer equipment.

Fisher thinks: he and Grisby had felt strangely safe in that house as they cleaned it and loaded up the car, as though no one was going to disturb them. Any earlier and they’d have run into the militia guys; any later and Jan would have walked in on them. For fuck’s sake, he thinks, that house was like Grand Central Station.

And now another thing occurs to him. Somewhere—perhaps still at the hardware store, or driving back to the motel and mad as hell—is Ada. She’ll complain to Fisher’s dad about his useless son and then pour herself a cup of her watery coffee and prop herself against the reception desk with the paper in front of her. Fisher imagines the way her lips will tighten, how she’ll lay a finger next to the paragraph at the very end that says the police are looking for Brian Armstrong and Bree Fisher. She’ll smile to herself because she’ll have caught a whiff of something not right, and there’s nothing she likes better than ferreting out secrets.

He shouldn’t have pissed her off, Fisher thinks. What was he thinking—dumping her like that in the hardware store? Because she won’t forgive him for that, oh no, she’ll find a way of paying him back. When Fisher was fifteen, she sent him to fix the toilet in one of the motel rooms at six in the morning. The police had been called during the night and the couple who’d occupied the room had fled leaving an unholy mess and a toilet that kept running. To Ada that was like letting money wash down the drain, so she woke Fisher and told him to fix it before he went to school. He remembers how the room smelled of sweat and cigarettes. From the bathroom came the slow rush of water. In the toilet bowl, cigarette butts swirled round and round. He lifted off the top of the tank and right then saw the problem: a plastic bag jammed in against the flapper and holding it open. He yanked it out and the flapper dropped shut. The bag dripped on his feet as he held it up. Inside, a stack of twenties held together with an elastic band.

He didn’t say a word to Ada. He hid the money in one of his old running shoes under his bed then went to the office. There he snatched up a donut from a box and gulped down some coffee while Ada watched him. At last she said, “Well? Gonna tell me?” He forced himself to look at her with as blank a look as he could come up with. He said, “About what?” but she wasn’t having that. “Oh come on, you always get this look when you’re hiding something. What’s it this time, huhn? Find another bottle of bourbon? A box of condoms? Some porno mags? D’you hide them in your closet next to those photos of your ma?” and she let out a sour laugh. He wiped the sugar from his mouth and said, “I’m late,” then shouldered his way past her.

When he got back that afternoon she was standing in the doorway with the spring sun harsh on her face and a cigarette trailing smoke behind her. She didn’t say a word as he stalked past. Up in his room he put his hand in the shoe, but he knew already. The money was gone. Later that afternoon, Ada went out and insisted Fisher come along. She bought a brand-new TV, unfurling twenties from a roll she took from her handbag, and counting them out with her tongue smacking against the roof of her mouth. He said, “What’s this all about?” but of course she just smiled, said, “Felt like treating myself. What’s wrong? You don’t like it?” She made him carry the box across the parking lot, and he remembers how badly he wanted to hurt her, and how she stood at the open trunk and watched him, leaned so close he could have shoved the box at her and she’d have fallen beneath it, and how she smiled like she was daring him to.

Fisher fills his mouth with coffee and its taste washes over his tongue. He tears open the bearclaw’s plastic wrapper and takes a bite. Dry and over-sweet. He takes another sip of coffee and lifts the pastry like he’s going to eat more. Only he’s not hungry enough, not when his belly’s all knotted up.

Nothing seems pinned down the way it should be, nothing feels safe. He thinks of Ada reading the paper, and Grisby with Brian’s stuff piled in boxes against his wall—even the gun used to kill him, for fuck’s sake. What had he been thinking, letting Grisby take it? Because now it’s not just a matter of Brian being dead, there’s a dead cop too, and the militia guys all stirred up, and Bree lost somewhere out there in the darkness.

He was buying Grisby off to keep Bree safe. Isn’t that why he let him take the gun, and all the rest of that stuff? Because Grisby’s the kind of friend you can’t necessarily count on otherwise, though what kind of a friend is that?

Fisher’s fingers are sticky from the bearclaw. He licks them and they’re still slick when he pulls his phone from his pocket and turns it on. Eight messages. From Ada, he’d bet. Christ, from Jan too, most likely, because mustn’t she be out of her head with worry, her husband gone, her daughter too, and a dead cop on her deck when she got home?

But he doesn’t check his messages. He calls Grisby’s number, even though Grisby won’t pick up unless he’s on break. He leaves a message: “Call me, OK?” Nothing else. Nothing that could be incriminating. But he can’t leave it at that. He dials the diner’s number and the woman who picks up sounds real pissy, and she gets more pissy when he asks for Grisby because Grisby hasn’t shown up for the breakfast shift.