“You plan on sticking around for this investigation?” Spengler asked Loren as they headed away from the river, back up the trail. She didn’t look directly at him, but quickly glanced his way from the corner of her eye.
“Is it a problem if I do?”
“No, just asking. I wouldn’t mind learning a few things from you.”
“You definitely will.”
She shot him a withering glare then.
“I was going to say, I’ve heard you’re the best, although I haven’t seen any indication of it so far.”
“If you were a man I’d punch you in the head for that comment.”
“Please don’t let my lack of testicles keep you from trying it,” she said. “I have a good feeling I’d kick your ass all over the side of this mountain.”
Loren stopped in his tracks, shocked. Spengler ignored him and kept going up the trail. He laughed. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had dared to smart off to him like that, unless it was Gallo—
That squashed the amusement faster than anything else could have.
They passed a tree with a trunk turned completely black and dead, bare of leaves. It looked like it’d been torched in a fire, leaving it twisted and warped while everything else around was left untouched. A hangman’s tree, Loren thought. With the one thick branch sticking off to one side like an arm, it was perfect.
“I’ve been thinking about what those campers said in their statement,” Spengler said slowly.
“What’s that?”
“They said they heard a woman beg, and then scream. And that was it.”
“I’m not following.”
“In his initial statement, Matt Evans said his wife screamed and fell. Then he said he’d gone to the edge himself and screamed her name. Said he shouted for help. He said he lost his voice because of how much he was yelling.”
“So if he’d been screaming, those guys would’ve heard him.”
“Right. Unless they were too drunk and stoned to hear anything. And that alone makes them unreliable witnesses.”
Loren shot her a look.
“I understand in cases like this the spouse is almost always the killer,” Spengler said.
“Yeah. I know,” Loren said. “How about less talk and more walk, eh? I’d like to get outta here. Nature gives me the creeps.”
Spengler drove fast, wove in and out of traffic like she had a demon on her ass, chasing her down the interstate. Loren liked that. He leaned the passenger seat back and stared out the window. A little red sports car shot by, going faster than Spengler’s little import could ever hope to go, and a minivan pulled up beside them. There was a girl in the backseat, no more than six or seven years old, with her hair cut so short she looked more than a little like Peter Pan. When she saw Loren looking she flipped him the bird. It made him smile.
Spengler thought he hated her, he knew. But he didn’t. He actually didn’t feel one way or another about her, and he treated her with the same indifference and derision he gave everyone, she just hadn’t realized it yet. She stayed silent as they drove, kept the radio set at a politely low volume. The bounce of the car as they sped along the road and the warmth of the muted afternoon light pouring through the windshield made him sleepy, and he didn’t fight the heavy lowering of his eyelids. He didn’t sleep much these days. Couldn’t sleep, that was a better way to put it. The insane were often insomniacs—or was it the other way around? Insomniacs were often insane?
He couldn’t remember.
His eyes shut and he didn’t quite fall asleep, but instead landed somewhere in between. He heard the soft notes coming from the car’s radio and the ticking noise of Spengler chewing her fingernails, but his mind was drifting like an empty raft on a calm sea. He thought of Chief Black telling him to keep busy. He’d gotten the same advice from the doctor he’d been seeing for more than fifteen years. Dr. Patel, a man with liquid brown eyes and discolored skin at his knuckles. He always had flecks of white spittle dried at the corners of his mouth, like he’d just had a glass of milk.
You have to keep busy, Ralph, Patel had said to him. His voice was soothing and melodic. A trace of a British accent around the vowels. An idle mind is the best way to fall into old habits.