"Because whoever did it didn't bother to step around the blood on the floor. I found two sets of boot prints. One's just a brogan, nothing special about it except small-sized for a man, but the other is something fancy. Narrow toed, nothing you'd buy around here. From the size and shape I'm betting it's a woman's. All I've got to do is find a match, and the fact that I'm here should tell you I know where to look."
"I'd be careful about any accusations," Pemberton said. "I have no idea who this Jenkins woman is. She doesn't work for me."
"Your wife and that henchman of hers thought she'd tell them where the Harmon girl and her child were. That's what I think. They went to the girl's cabin first. The door was wide open this morning, and I know for a fact it was fastened last night. Cigarette butts by the barn as well. Only I don't know which one they were after." McDowell paused. "Which one was it, the child or the mother? Or was it both?"
"The Harmon girl and the child," Pemberton said. "You're saying they weren't harmed?"
"Ask your wife."
"I don't need to," Pemberton said, his voice not as assertive as he wished. "Whatever happened, she wasn't involved. Any tramp off a train could have killed that old woman. If you're looking for a suspect, you should go down to the depot."
McDowell looked at the floor a few moments as if studying the grain of the wood. He slowly raised his eyes and stared directly at Pemberton.
"Do you people think you can do anything?" McDowell asked. "I went over to Asheville last week and found out more about Doctor Cheney's killing. There were at least five possible causes of death and all of them slow. Campbell at least got killed quick, the Nashville sheriff says. Harris did too."
"Harris fell and broke his neck," Pemberton said. "Your own coroner said it was an accident."
"Your coroner, not mine," McDowell replied. "I'm not the one paying him off every month."
The sheriff's uniform was rumpled, as if he'd slept in it the night before. McDowell suddenly seemed conscious of this, and tucked his shirt tail tighter into his pants. As he raised his eyes, his features pinched into a rictus of loathing.
"I can't do anything about Buchanan or Cheney or Harris, maybe not Campbell either, but I vow I'll do something about the murder of an old woman, and I'll not let a mother and her child be killed," McDowell said, then more softly. "Even if it is your child."
For a few moments neither man spoke. The sheriff splayed his fingers and ran them through hair he'd obviously not combed that morning, revealing a few streaks of gray Pemberton had never noticed before. The sheriff let the raised hand settle over the right side of his face. He rubbed his forehead as if he'd banged it against a door jamb or window sill. The hand was withdrawn, resettled on the side of McDowell's leg.
"When's the last time you saw that boy?"
"January," Pemberton answered.
"Amazing how much he favors you. Same eyes, same hair color."
Pemberton nodded at an invoice on the desk.
"I've got work to do, Sheriff."
"Where's your wife?"
"Out with the cutting crews."
"How far from here?"
"I don't know," Pemberton said. "She could be anywhere between here and the Tennessee line."
"That's convenient."
McDowell looked at the clock, kept his eyes on it a few moments.
"I'll be back," he said, and turned and walked toward the door, "and I'll have an arrest warrant next time."
Pemberton watched from his window as the sheriff got in his car and drove across the valley toward Waynesville. He went to the gun rack and opened the drawer beneath the mounted rifles. The hunting knife was in the same place as before, but when Pemberton pulled its elk-bone handle from the sheath, he saw that blood stained the blade. The blood was black, clotted. Pemberton scratched a fleck free and rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger. He felt a residue of moisture.
The phone rang and Pemberton almost didn't answer it, picking up the receiver only after the eighth ring. Calhoun was on the line, asking a question about the contract Serena had shown him and Lowenstein. Pemberton's voice felt hardly a part of himself as he told Calhoun that the paperwork was nearly done.
Pemberton did not set the receiver back on the hanger. Instead, he made a call to Saul Parton in Waynesville and left a message with the coroner's wife. The knife still lay on the desk, and Pemberton picked it up, briefly considered taking the weapon to the saw mill and throwing it in the splash pond. But it was, Pemberton reminded himself, his wedding present. For a few moments, he allowed that scalding thought to resonate through him. Then he wet a handkerchief with his spit and wiped off the blood. Pemberton slipped the knife in the sheath and placed it back in the gun rack's drawer. He picked up the receiver again and told the operator he wished to make a call to Raleigh.
Afterwards, Pemberton left the office and searched for Vaughn but had no luck. He did find Meeks in the dining hall, discussing next month's payroll with the head cook. The conversation was a halting exchange, the North Carolina highlander and New England yankee struggling with each other's dialects like two ill-trained interpreters.
"I've got to go to Waynesville," Pemberton told Meeks. "Stay in the office and answer the phone. If Saul Parton calls, tell him not to send his report to Raleigh until I see him."
"Very well," Meeks said with exasperation, "though I'm a bookkeeper, not a linguist. If your callers speak the same barbarous parlance as this fellow I'll have no idea what they are saying."
"If you see Vaughn, he can spell you. I'll be back as soon as I can."
As he drove out of the valley, Pemberton saw Galloway sitting on the commissary steps, a half-eaten apple in his hand, enjoying a day off for working late last night. Pemberton wondered if Galloway had seen the sheriff's car. As the Packard passed, Galloway's gray eyes looked up, but they were as blank and fathomless as his mother's.
McDowell's patrol car was parked outside the courthouse, a relief since Pemberton wouldn't have to search around town for him. Pemberton found a parking place and walked up the sidewalk, crossed the courthouse lawn. Only the desk's lamp was on when he entered the office, and Pemberton's eyes took a moment to adjust to the gloaming. McDowell was in the room's one cell pulling a dingy mattress off its spring base. As the sheriff did so, dust motes floated upward, suspended in the cell window's barred light as if in a web.
"Checking for hacksaws and files, Sheriff?"
"Bedbugs," McDowell replied, not looking up. "I suspect you and Mrs. Pemberton have them as well. They aren't particular about who they lay down with."
Pemberton seated himself in a rickety shuck bottom chair set in front of the sheriff's desk. Above, a ceiling fan stirred the air with no noticeable effect. McDowell took the mattress from the cell and down the narrow hall to the open back door and set it outside. He came back in and repositioned the regulator clock's calendar hand. Only then did he sit down behind his desk.