No one wanted to talk after that. They found their rest in leather recliners, or doubled up on the sofa beds. Roadrunner was mothering again, covering everyone with blankets before he stretched out in the middle of the aisle and immediately fell asleep.
To his everlasting shame, Harley woke up in the middle of the night on one of the sofa beds, with both arms wrapped tightly around a happily sleeping Agent Knudsen.
SHARON MUELLER was up at dawn, shrouded in a big terry robe from the RV's closet, standing near Deputy Douglas Lee's bloodied patrol car.
It was quiet in the field. Dew sparkled on the seeded heads of tall grass, and a hawk flew overhead, screeching occasionally for its mate.
She heard the RV door close softly in the distance, then felt Hallo-ran approaching. She didn't have to look to know it was him. She would never have to look to know he was there.
He moved up beside her, hands shoved in his pockets, light eyes fixed on the car. "Who killed the man who was pretending to be Deputy Lee?"
"I did."
It was amazing how easily it slipped out-no guilt clouding the issue, no lingering questions, none of the doubts that used to fill hermind whenever she held a gun so similar to the one that had ended her mother's life, hesitant-always hesitant-to pull the trigger and end someone else's. It was part of the reason she'd been shot in the Monkeewrench garage all those months ago. She hadn't been too slow to get at her gun and pull the trigger to keep a killer from shooting her. She'd just been paralyzed by the past, and that had made her a bad cop. But that was over. She could go back to Kingsford County now if she wanted. She could go back on the street. Maybe she could even go back to Halloran.
Halloran didn't even bat an eye. He just nodded. "It was a righteous shooting."
"I shot him in the back," Sharon said.
"Even so."
"I know. I'm okay with it."
Halloran swallowed hard and wondered how people did this.Youdid it when you were a kid,he told himself.You did it every time you stepped to the edge of that cliff at the lime quarry, swung the rope out over the water, and hoped you didn't shatter yourself on the sharp-edged rocks that were waiting below, always waiting.
"I was thinking maybe we should get married. Have kids. Do the whole thing."
Sharon bent in half almost immediately, laughing out loud, and Halloran thought either he'd just proposed to an absolutely insane woman or he'd screwed this up just like he'd screwed up everything else in his life.
"Oh, God, I'm sorry, Mike," Sharon finally gasped, straightening, at least making an attempt at a sober face befitting the occasion. "But we haven't even had a real date yet."
"Okay. We could do that first if you want."
She turned toward him then and grabbed his whiskered face in both hands and pulled it down to hers. Then he felt the woman beneath the thick terry robe and saw in his mind's eye the woman in the red dress, high heels, and lips like colored water, who had laid her hand on his heart in the Kingsford County Sheriffs Office way back last October, and refused to let go.
FIVE HOURS LATER, Gino and Magozzi were leaning against the side of the RV, staring across an empty tar road, across a field at a huge barn. Grace's Range Rover was parked right behind them. The road was so narrow that both vehicles blocked it, but from what they'd seen in the past hour, chances were slim that another vehicle would ever come along. Northern Wisconsin was the end of the world, according to Gino. They could hear a single blackbird calling from a cornfield next to the barn, and not much else.
"So that's what started all this," Magozzi said, tipping his head to get a different angle on the barn.
Grace walked up from the Range Rover and leaned between them. "That's it."
Gino shook his head in disbelief. "Sharon took you fifty miles out of your way to see this?"
"That's right."
Gino pushed away from the sun-heated metal skin of the RV. "Well, it's about the dumbest thing I ever saw in my life," he said, heading back inside for a little liquid refreshment and some more of that gooey chocolate crap with the unpronounceable name that Harley had made last night. He hadn't wanted to make this side trip. He'd been anxious to get home to Angela.
"I think it's pretty amazing," Magozzi said after Gino had left.
The whole side of the barn was painted in a huge, amazingly accurate replication of Leonardo's Mona Lisa, wearing a T-shirt with "On Wisconsin" emblazoned across the front.
Grace smiled at him like the Mona Lisa on the barn. "The thing is," she said, "if we hadn't gone out of our way to see this barn that Gino thinks is about the dumbest thing he ever saw in his life, we ever would have gotten lost. We never would have ended up in Four Corners, and a thousand more people would have died."
They both stared at the barn for a while longer, Grace thinking of lungs that had happened and things that might have been, Magozzi linking of things that were to come.
"You want to make out now?" he asked.
Grace looked down at the ground and smiled, thinking that you ever knew how short your time was. But sometimes, if you were sally lucky, you got the faintest glimpse of how you should spend it.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
LONG, LONG AGO, back when P.J.'s body parts were all still relatively close to their original locations, we sent an unfinished manuscript over the transom. The agent who read it saw through the problems to the possibilities, and championed the story and the author in spite of the book's flaws. We spent the next ten years promising ourselves that one day we would send our thanks in the form of a book that the poor woman could sell. That book wasMonkeewrench. We were not sure what a "good" agent was, so we settled for an amazing one. Ellen Geiger of Curtis Brown Ltd., this one's for you, babe.
Amazing people apparently gather in packs, because Ellen Geiger led us straight to Christine Pepe, executive editor, vice president, and all-around wonder woman at G. P. Putnam's Sons. We know what you're thinking-that every author says really nice things about his or her editor in these acknowledgment pages-but you have to understand that this woman has already earned any accolade you can think of. She is a truly gifted editor with laser-sight judgment who makes everything we write better. We respect her professionalism, we admire her intelligence and talent, and, most of all, we value her friendship.
We began the Monkeewrench series with these two women and heir colleagues in their respective firms. At Curtis Brown, a very special thank-you to David Barbor, who tolerates our nonsense with immutable grace; to Ed Wintle, who parries our nonsense with surprising skill; and of course, to Anna Abreu, who can brighten the darkest day with the sound of her voice. You people are the best.
At Putnam, we are indebted to Carole Baron, president, a consummate professional and truly a class act; to dedicated, delightful Marilyn Ducksworth, who won us over in about two seconds; to the patient and talented Kara Welsh and the New American Library family; to Dr. Michael Barson, who babies us on tour, and his staff, Megan Millenky and Lisa Moraleda. And a thousand thanks to tireless, sweet, unflappable Lily Chin, assistant to Christine Pepe.