"So do you," Sears said.
"Yeah. Suppose I do. I never saw bodies like those two, exactly. Even Freddy Robinson wasn't that bad. You ever seen bodies like that, Sears James? Hey?"
Sears shook his head.
"No. You're damn right. Nobody ever did. And I'm gonna have to store 'em up in the jail until the meat wagon can get in here. And I'm the poor son of a bitch who has to take Mrs. Hardie and Mr. Barnes along to see those goddamned things to identify them. Unless you'd like to do that for me, Mr. James?"
"It's your job, Walt," Sears said.
"Shit. My job, is it? My job is finding out who did what to those people-and you two old buzzards just sit there, don't you? You found 'em by accident I suppose. Just happened to break into that particular house, just happened to be taking a walk on a goddamned day like this, I suppose, and just thought you'd try a little housebreaking-Jesus, I oughta lock all three of you in the same cell with them. Along with torn-up Lewis Benedikt and that nigger de Souza and the Griffen boy who froze to death because his hippy mommy and daddy were too cheap to put a heater in his room. God damn. That's what I ought to do, all right." Hardesty, now entirely unable to hide his anger, spat into the fireplace and kicked at the fender. "Jesus, I live in that fucking jail, I really oughta haul you three assholes along and see how you like it."
"Walt," Sears said. "Cool down."
"Sure. By God, if you two weren't nothin' but a couple of hundred-year-old lawyers with teeth in the palms of your hands, I'd do it."
"I mean, Walt," Sears calmly said, "if you will stop insulting us for a moment, that we'll tell you who killed Jim Hardie and Mrs. Barnes. And Lewis."
"You will. Hot damn. Guess I don't have to get out the rubber hoses after all."
Silence for a moment: then Hardesty said, "Well? I'm still here."
"It was the woman who calls herself Anna Mostyn."
"Swell. Just dandy. Okay. Anna Mostyn. Okay. It was her house, so she's the one. Good work. Now. What did she do, suck 'em dry, like a hound'll do to an egg? And who held 'em down, because I know no woman could have taken that crazy Hardie kid by herself. Huh?"
"She did have help," Sears said. "It was a man who calls himself Gregory Bate or Benton. Now hold on to yourself, Walt, because here comes the difficult part. Bate has been dead for almost fifty years. And Anna Mostyn-"
He stopped. Hardesty had clamped both eyes shut.
Ricky took it up. "Sheriff, in a way you were right about all this from the beginning. Remember when we looked at Elmer Scales's sheep? And you told us about other incidents, lots of them, that happened in the sixties?"
Hardesty's bloodshot eyes flew open.
"It's the same thing," Ricky said. "That is, we think it's probably the same thing. But here, they're out to kill people."
"So what's this Anna Mostyn?" Hardesty asked, his body rigid. "A ghost? A vampire?"
"Something like that," Sears said. "A shapeshifter, but those words will do."
"Where is she now?"
"That's why we went to her house. To see if we could find anything."
"And that's what you're gonna tell me. Nothing more."
"There is no more," Sears said.
"I wonder if anyone can lie like a hundred-year-old lawyer," Hardesty said, and spat once more into the fire. "Okay. Now let me tell you something. I'm going to put out a bulletin on this Anna Mostyn, and that's all she wrote. That's all I'm gonna do. You two old buzzards and this kid here can spend the rest of the winter ghost-hunting, for all I'm concerned. You're screwball-as far as I'm concerned, you're plumb outta your heads. And if I get some goddamned killer who drinks beer and eats hamburgers and takes his kid out for a drive on Sundays, then I'm gonna call you up and laugh in your faces. And I'll see that people around here never stop laughing when they hear your names. You understand me?"
"Don't shout at us, Walt," Sears said. "I'm sure we all understand what you said. And we understand one thing more."
"Just what the hell is that?"
"That you're frightened, Sheriff. But you have a lot of company."
Conversation with G
7
"Are you really a sailor, G?"
"Um."
"Did you go lots of places?"
"Yes."
"How come you can hang around Milburn so long? Don't you have a ship to get back to?"
"Shore leave."
"Why don't you ever want to do anything but go to the movies?"
"No reason."
"Well, I just like being with you."
"Um."
"But why don't you ever take off your shades?"
"No reason."
"Someday I'll take them off."
"Later."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
Conversation with Stella
8
"Ricky, what's happening to us? What's happening to Milburn?"
"A terrible thing. I don't want to tell you now. There'll be time when it's all over."
"You're frightening me."
"I'm frightened too."
"Well, I'm frightened because you're frightened." For a time, the Hawthornes simply held each other.
"You know what killed Lewis, don't you?"
"I think so."
"Well, I discovered an astonishing thing about myself. I can be a coward. So please don't tell me. I know I asked, but don't. I just want to know it'll end."
"Sears and I will make it end. With young Wanderley's help."
"He can help you?"
"He can. He has already."
"If only this terrible snow would stop."
"Yes. But it won't."
"Ricky, have I given you an awful time?" Stella propped herself up on an elbow to look into his eyes.
"A worse time than most women would," he said. "But I rarely wanted any other women."
"I am sorry that I ever had to cause you pain. Ricky, I've never cared for any man as much as I have cared for you. Despite my adventures. You know that's all over, don't you?"
"I guessed."
"He was an appalling man. He was in my car, and I just overwhelmingly realized how much better than he you were. So I made him get out." Stella smiled. "He shouted at me. It seems I am a bitch."
"At times you certainly are."
"At times. You know, he must have found Lewis's body right after that."
"Ah. I wondered what he was doing up there."
Silence: Ricky held his wife's shoulder, aware of her timeless profile beside him. If she had not looked like that could he have endured it so long? Yet if she had not looked like that, she would not have been Stella- it was an impossible speculation.
"Tell me something, baby," she breathed. "Who was this other woman you used to want?"
Ricky laughed; then both of them, at least for a time, were laughing.
9
Motionless days: Milburn lay frozen under the accumulating snow. Garage owners took their telephones off their hooks, knowing they already had too much snowplow business with their regular customers; Omar Norris carried a bottle in each of his coat's deep pockets, and rammed the city's plow into twice his usual quota of parked cars-he was on triple time, often plowing the same streets two or three times a day, and sometimes when he got back to the municipal garage, Omar was so drunk that he simply rolled onto a cot in the foreman's office instead of going home. Copies of The Urbanite stood in wrapped bundles at the back of the print room-the newsboys couldn't get to their collection points. Finally Ned Rowles shut the paper down for a week and sent everybody home with a Christmas bonus. "In this weather," he told his staff, "nothing's going to happen except more of this weather. Have yourselves a merry little Christmas."