"You oughta stay out of the trash," he said. "You don't know what might be in there."
Letty said, "Nobody knows what might be in there. Phil gets all kinds of good stuff out of there."
"Who's Phil?"
"Drives the Cat," she said, nodding at the bulldozer. "He gets about one good computer a week."
"Won't do you any good if you die of some weird disease," Lucas said. "You better take a shower when you get home."
"Water kills cancer?"
"You're also a little stinky," Lucas said.
"Yeah? It'd be worth it, stinky, if I could get a good computer out of it," she said. "My computer is worse than this old piece-of-crap.22."
They were loading into the Acura as she said it. Del asked, "If the gun's a piece of crap, why don't you get another one?"
" 'Cause they cost money, and this one works," she said. "I mean, it's a piece of crap, but that's all I need. My computer… that's just a piece of crap." As they were backing out, she added, "You know what I'd do if I was a cop? I'd tell the guy at the dump to turn in all the computers he found. Most of them work, they're just old. When people throw them away, they leave all their letters and stuff on them-he finds out the neatest stuff about people, messing with the old computers. It's his hobby. One time he found, uh… " She suddenly colored, and snapped her mouth shut.
"What?" Lucas asked.
"Never mind."
They both looked at her, and then Del said to Lucas, "I need to get my old computer back."
14
SINGLETON COULD NOT remember feeling exactly like this: unable to breathe, unable to think. He'd driven out of the dump, down the gravel road, and straight through the stop sign onto the highway. He was heading south before he realized he'd missed the stop. He might have died right there, he thought, if there'd been a Molson truck coming through from Canada.
Goddamn Letty West. She was out there all the time, trapping the goddamn 'coons. He was sure that she hadn't been out there when he'd buried the girls. Except that he hadn't checked. He had the same sense of uneasiness that came when he was sure he'd unplugged the iron before leaving town, or when he was sure that he'd locked the doors before going to bed…
He was sure, but he wasn't sure.
He knew she was often out there, even late, because he'd seen her walking along the highway in the evening, carrying her rifle and her bag.
If she had seen him, hauling the garbage bags that held the girls' bodies, she would have assumed that he was getting rid of his own household trash. Though it wasn't legal, people did it-did it all the time, after hunting and fishing trips, to get rid of fish guts or deer remains.
But: the girl had been dragging around town with the two state cops, had apparently helped them reach the unbelievably quick conclusion that the Sorrells had been involved in the hanging of Deon Cash and Jane Warr. Now she had taken them out to the dump.
Did she know something? Were the state cops looking at him? Maybe he shouldn't have left so quickly, maybe he should have stopped and chatted. He could say that the dump was part of his check-route. But if they started to ask him questions, what would he have said? He wasn't ready for that.
Then: if the state cops were looking at him, why hadn't he felt anything at work? There hadn't been any curious looks, or veiled questions. Could the state cops be holding it that close, not even letting the sheriff in on it?
Or-how about this-they'd found out that he'd been hanging around Calb's, and in the process of checking on him, they'd talked to Letty and she'd mentioned seeing him at the dump, dragging the bags. Of course, putting him with Calb wouldn't get them to Deon and Jane, because he'd kept that connection very quiet.
Think.
All right, here's another possibility: it was all a coincidence. She was out there trapping, and the cops had taken her out. But why would the cops do that? It wasn't like they were a taxi service.
Think.
Better talk to Mom.
THE DAY HAD started simply enough. He'd slept late after a strenuous evening with Katina Lewis, had then gotten up, gotten dressed, and had gone into the office to see if anything had happened with the murders of the Sorrells.
Micky James was working the comm center: "The state boys are back," James said. "They've been asked in to cover the Sorrell murders, too. They're going to be up around Broderick. What the hell you think is happening?"
"Dope dealing up at the res, if you ask me," Singleton said. "It's all gotta be tied together."
Back home, he'd decided that snooping was probably more dangerous than doing nothing-and his thoughts turned to the Caddy out in his garage. He needed to do some fine sanding on the last clear coat, and doing that kind of work always smoothed him out, along with the car. Gave him a chance to think.
In the garage, he realized that his breathing gear was still out at Calb's, and the paint he was using always specified breathing gear. That meant a trip to Broderick.
He'd gone to Broderick without a thought in his mind. As he came into town, he saw a silver SUV pulling out of the body shop, heading out on the highway, north. He pulled into the spot that the SUV had just left and found the shop deserted. Not unusual for a Sunday. He ran the door up with his remote control, went inside, and got the breather gear. Didn't feel the slightest vibration from the silver truck.
"Loren?" A woman's voice called to him. He looked back to his right, and saw an older woman walking across the highway from the church. "Hey," she called. "Did you talk to Katina?"
"Not since last night. She said she was heading back here… " And for a moment, Singleton thought the woman was going to tell him that Katina was missing. If she'd gone missing, for any reason, he might be cooked.
"She was here, until ten minutes ago," the woman said. She was an older woman, who looked like a Saturday Evening Post caricature of Grandma. "She tried to call you-she's probably down at your place, now. She said if you came by, looking for her, to tell you that she'd wait."
"All right."
"Did you talk to the state policemen?"
"No… "
"They were just here. They've been going around town."
"Silver truck?"
The woman nodded. "Yes. You just missed them."
THEY WERE HEADED north. To Letty West's? He thanked the woman, and as soon as she was back in the church, headed north out of town, after the silver SUV. He was no more than fifteen minutes behind it, he thought. He took it slow going out, looking for their car at West's house. It wasn't there-in fact, there was no car at West's. Of course, they might have come back past Calb's when he was getting the breathing gear, but he hadn't seen or heard any traffic, and the shop was quiet.
They were headed north…
Then it hit him. Shit. The dump. He denied it to himself -Couldn't be the dump.
He wheeled the Caddy out of the parking lot and put his foot down. The Cadillac would make a hundred and ten. He had to fight the undulating highway and the soft suspension, but he stuck with it, pushing the car as hard as he could. The dump road came up in four minutes, with no sign of the silver truck. He turned the corner, eased down the road… saw nothing until he came to the entry.
Turned in.
There they were, caught like deer in the headlights. The whole goddamned bunch of them, standing around the SUV.
He lifted a hand, mind gone blank, backed out, and raced away…
THE SCENE WENT round and round in Singleton's brain, and he couldn't stop it. There were too many permutations, but it all came back to one problem: he didn't believe in coincidence. The state cops had been out there with Letty West for a reason.
He'd put the two girls four feet down in the center of the landfill, under the clay cap. He'd dug through to the garbage layers, shoved the bodies in, refilled the holes and carefully tamped down the clay. Even if he went out to look for the bodies, now, he'd be lucky to get within twenty feet of them. Letty West, if she'd been back in the woods and had seen him cutting the holes, would never be able to put the cops on the exact spot.