“How?” Latovsky leaned on the table and rocked the whole booth.
Simms smiled. “We don’t want to wreck the joint.”
Latovsky forced himself to sit back. “How?” he asked again. “Give her something to do, to let her see that the thing can help, even if it didn’t help Adam Fuller.”
“It helped all the women he’d’ve taken into the woods between June and October.”
“I know that—so will Eve eventually. She’s stubborn, not dumb. Think of something for her to do, Lieutenant, and Franny and I’ll do our best to see she does it.”
“Like what?”
“Don’t be dense,” Simms said almost angrily. “You’re a cop. You must have lots of things a woman who can go anywhere without a warrant could do.”
Latovsky thought a second, then said excitedly, “An eight-year-old girl’s been missing from Ticonderoga since Monday.” It was Wednesday. “Maybe Eve could go up there, see the girl’s room, talk to her folks.” Touch her clothes, Latovsky thought, letting the idea race away with him, pick up her teddy bear. “And if they found the kid alive, because of her...”
“Or found her at all,” Simms said.
“Yeah.” Sweat dribbled down Latovsky’s face and he wiped it away and drank more beer. “Lots of missing kids, lots of... other things. You think... ?”
“Yeah, I do,” Simms said.
He’d given Latovsky the first hope he’d had in months, and he felt pitifully grateful.
“Look, I don’t suppose—I mean, if you talked to her today... then I could talk to her since I’m here.”
“You’re that crazy to see her?” Simms asked gently.
That crazy, Latovsky thought, but he just shrugged.
“No soap,” Simms said. “She’s in Sawyerville.”
“For what?” Latovsky cried.
“She went to his funeral in May, went back in June and ordered monuments for him and his mother. Went back today to see them put up. Stupid, pointless, self-destructive maybe. Me’n Frances tried to talk her out of it, but like I said, she’s stubborn.”
“Looks real nice, said Don Fuller. He was being kind. They looked huge and garish in the little cemetery with the simple, humble stones around them, and Eve was sorry she hadn’t listened to the stone cutter. But she’d wanted the best.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I’ll get them changed.”
The two stone setters sighed and looked at each other and the old man cried, “You’ll do no such thing, little lady. Those stones’re terrific; F—you, they say, F—the whole world. I love ’em.”
She looked at him. He was sober and beaming; he meant it, and maybe he had a point. Here lies Adam Fuller, the Wolfman: monster, fiend, murderer of eight... and a good doctor. And fuck you all. She and the old man smiled at each other suddenly, like conspirators.
“So they stayin’ or goin’?” asked one of the stone setters.
“Staying,” Eve said in her best Tilden voice.
The man pulled the brim of his cap, would have pulled his forelock if he’d had one, she thought, and the men went down the hill to the flatbed; the little back hoe trundled after them and they started loading it.
It was September, the sun beat down on her head, and she felt enormous, pushing that huge belly in front of her. She seemed to sweat more than the men and she took a handkerchief out of her purse and mopped her face. The sun shimmered on the fields, and smells of growing onions and cut alfalfa filled the air. Better than when the mills were going, she thought, and you smelled burning oil and tasted grit.
“You should get out of the sun,” the old man said. “The way you are, I mean.” He looked at her belly, blushed, and looked away.
“Car air-conditioned?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Well, get on in it. No use being any more uncomfortable than you need to be. You won’t be back, I guess.”
“I guess not,” she said.
He held out his hand to her. She smiled, wiped her palm on her handkerchief, and shook with him, then didn’t let him go. “Mr. Fuller, what kind of man would he have been?”
He pulled his hand away from hers, looked at the big hunks of the best marble money could buy, and shook his head. “You asked me that last time, too. And time before. I got no answer, little lady. No one does. So it’s kind’a a stupid question, ain’t it? No offense meant,” he said quickly.
“None taken.”
“Well, then, ’bye now. I do thank you for the nice monument for him and his ma. I do indeed.”
He nodded at her and went down the rise to his pickup.
He stopped once and turned back. “You should get under cover, little lady. Sun’s fierce.”
“I will,” she called back.
She waited until he’d pulled away, then she went down the rise to the small shallow valley at the base of it. She passed the slate stone with the willow on it that she’d taken shelter behind that night and kept going. The old man had said Edna Janecki was buried right up the rise from Barbara Fuller, so the stone must be right around there somewhere. She found a clutch of Fullers going back to the 1830s. One, another Donald, had a small bronze plaque for the Grand Army of the Republic on a metal stick in front of his grave, along with some long-dead flowers they must have put on the Civil War graves on Memorial Day. Then, at the end, with an empty plot next to it waiting for Adam’s father, she found Barbara Healy Fuller: born June 9th, 1929, died May 20th, 1965. Beloved Wife and Mother said the epitaph, and Eve whispered to the stone, “My ass, you bitch.”
She touched the top of the stone, then pushed a little, experimentally. The earth was dry and crumbly from the dry heat and the stone moved very slightly. Eve set her purse down, wiped her hands on her skirt, and set to work. She was covered with sweat and exhausted, all her muscles were jumping with strain, and she knew this was not work for a pregnant woman, but she felt a wild burst of triumph when she finally worked the stone loose and pushed it over, leaving a deep ridge in the dry dirt.