She nodded. "Yes. I do." Their words hung in the air like dust motes floating through the late-morning sun. He had that sense that he only ever got around Clare, that they were saying one thing and talking about something entirely different.
"So." She studied her watch. Glanced toward the barn. "I guess I'll see you around."
"Yeah." He took a step toward the waiting Scout. Turned back toward her. "How have you been?"
She looked surprised. "Good. I've been good. Keeping busy. Last Sunday was Pentecost, that's a big one, and this evening we've got the concert, and then the parish picnic is coming up next week, So… busy. Good." She looked at him, with her eyes that always seemed to say You can tell me anything, and it'll be all right. "You?"
"I'm doing okay. Still at my mom's for the time being."
She nodded. "I bet that helps. Both of you."
"Yeah. I-" Miss you. He cleared his throat.
"¿Señora Reverenda?" They both turned to see the young man they had been discussing lope across the barnyard, a small duffel bag clutched in his good hand.
"This way, Señor Esfuentes." Clare pointed toward her car, already moving, already leaving him. "Sorry," she called over her shoulder. "I can't be late for the noon Eucharist. Say hi to your mother for me." And then she was gone, slipping into her Subaru, starting up the engine before the kid had even shut his door. Eager to get away from him. Not that he could blame her.
The Scout honked. Knox powered down the window. "Are you coming, Chief?"
He nodded. Better this way. He climbed into the backseat. "Let's go," he said.
VI
She had worried about not knowing what to do. She had worried about not fouling the scene. She had worried about looking like a raw newbie with nothing but the fig leaf of eight weeks of classes to cover her.
What she should have worried about was her breakfast.
"You all right?" Chief Van Alstyne patted her back. In response, the rest of her stomach lurched up and out and spattered onto the ferns and grass at the creek's edge. Oh, God.
"Nothing to be embarrassed about," he said. "We've all done it."
From her doubled-over vantage point, Hadley saw jeans and sneakers approaching. "He throws up all the time," Mrs. McGeoch said. Now that Hadley had fallen apart, the chief's sister seemed a whole lot calmer. "Here. Water from the truck. It's clean." Hadley squirted a cupful into her mouth. It was hot and tasted of plastic. She bent over again and spat it into the creek.
"I do not," the chief said, over her back.
"You do, too. You throw up when you're stressed."
"If I threw up when I was stressed I wouldn't be able to leave the damn bathroom for more than ten minutes at a time."
Hadley straightened. "Sorry," she croaked.
"Don't worry about it," the chief said. She heard the snapping of footsteps through the brush and then Scheeler's voice.
"If we didn't vomit five or six times the first year of medical school, the professors didn't think they were doing their job."
Hadley wiped her mouth with her sleeve and turned toward the pathologist, keeping her eyes on him so as not to glimpse the bloated, fly-blasted corpse.
"I remember this one old coot," he went on, "used to have us drink urine. We were supposed to be able to-"
The chief peered at her face. "I don't think that's the best topic of conversation right now."
"Oh. Right. All right, then, let's talk about John Doe, here. Or maybe we should call him Juan Doe."
"That is a gunshot wound, isn't it?" the chief said.
Scheeler nodded. "The occipital entry point has been enlarged by animal depredation"-Hadley's stomach lurched again when she translated the med-speak as animals ate his brains-"but there's no doubt. I suspect, from the lack of any anterior damage, I'll be digging out a small load. Maybe a twenty-two."
"Knox." The chief's voice, addressing her, caused her to snap to. "Tell me what you can infer from what Doctor Scheeler here has told us."
"Uh…" She took a deep breath. The surfaces of things seemed hallucinogenically bright; the sun bouncing off the chief's uniform buttons, the razor edges of the willow leaves drooping toward the ground. "A twenty-two. Not much stopping power. Whoever killed him would have had to have been pretty close."
"Do you think it could have been a hunting accident?"
"Do people hunt with twenty-twos?"
Scheeler snorted.
"Yes," the chief said, his voice patient.
"Uh… no. A hunting accident would mean someone mistook him for an animal from a distance, or discharged their weapon up close by mistake. A shot in the back of the skull doesn't jibe with either of those."
"Good."
She was surprised to find she felt better.
"I very much doubt that the guy was a farmworker, not with two-hundred dollar sneakers and that trendy jacket. So what was he doing out here?"
"Flynn told me Mexicans sell most of the pot up here. Maybe he was a dealer?"
"The gangs dominate wholesale distribution. They have networks of locals who do the retailing."
"Maybe a carnie from Lake George?" the pathologist suggested.
"Maybe. I'm going to put in a call to the state CSI, see if we can get Morin or Haynes over here with the van. I want you to get up to the top of that rise in the woods-" the chief pointed to where the mountain first flanked up from the creek bed-"and start working downward. You're looking for anything: fiber, hair, impressions, cartridges."
She nodded.
"Do you think he was rolled from above?" Scheeler asked.
"Can you assure me he didn't drop where Janet found him?"
The pathologist shook his head. "It's been at least a month. His blood patterns are gone."
"It's a funny spot to be hanging around, waiting to get shot. But if he got tapped up there, he might easily roll until he lodged against that bush." He turned toward his sister, who was hanging back at the edge of the stream. "Janet, is that still your property?"
"Yeah. It goes back into the hills a ways, until you see some blaze markers. It's useless land."
The chief's mouth thinned. "Not entirely. It's a pretty good place to hide a murder."