Lowell said, "Oh, Christ."
Sheriff Broghin remained extremely drunk, and the other deputies looked at him with the quiet, unhappy resignation of sons watching their father making a damn fool of himself.
Lowell nodded his head at me and asked the pretty blond EMT, "You taking him in?"
"He could use a CAT scan, to be on the safe side. Most of the wounds are superficial, a couple of deeper lacerations on the back of his head and neck, but you can't mess with a concussion."
Lowell stared at me hard, considering factors, friendship, the weight of murder. "I want to ask him questions first."
"I'm fine," I said, pretty shaky and sick, but at least my voice sounded a lot steadier.
"We've got to get that other kid out of here," she said. "He's stabilized, but still in bad shape. If he'd earned his muscles the hard way and wasn't swallowing steroids like me going through coffee he'd be a lot better off. A beating like that is a hell of a lot of trauma." She cocked a thumb at me. "Bring him by as soon as you can."
"Will do," Lowell said.
"Will do," I said.
She packed up her medical kit and joined the others in the ambulance, slammed the back doors and drove off across the lawn past all the traffic that had piled into the driveway.
"No comment about my hard head?" I asked.
"You're fortunate he liked to play games."
“I am?"
"Sap feels light, closer to three ounces instead of the usual five. If he wasn't taking his time toying with you, you'd be dead."
Lowell watched Broghin walking around doing his best not to stagger. He didn't comment on the fact that the sheriff had given an open invitation to a crime scene.
"You ready to take it from the top?"
"Yeah," I said, about to get into it, but couldn't shake my curiosity about something. "In just a second. What were you calling me about?"
"I'll tell you later."
"Come on, let's have it."
His stern face didn't soften as he decided whether to tell me or not. I knew it had to be bad then. When he realized I'd picked up on that he had no choice. "Somebody broke into Katie's flower shop. Roy was doing his rounds downtown, saw broken glass, and checked it out."
"Devington," I said. "Or his mother."
"It's not too bad, not like you might think. Just a few tossed plants and some busted pottery. No real damage. Wasn't even the front window, one of the little side panes."
"Couldn't have been his mother then, she'd never have gotten in."
"Roy cleaned it up, got some boarding to cover the window."
My head started to throb again, not where the sap had hit, but over on the other side where Devington's fist had caught me. I wondered how that might be possible, feeling the specific pain just by seeing his face again, the bile rising in my throat. "Some people have a hard time learning lessons."
He gave me a long humorless stare. "I've noticed that myself."
My cell phone rang and white-heat anger and agony came spearing down directly through the center of my brain and ignited Mrs. Devington's chunky putty face. Lowell came over and pressed a couple buttons on the phone and said, "You can adjust the volume."
"Jesus Christ, thanks."
I answered. Katie sounded sleepy and eager for company, and I didn't know what the hell to tell her about my hideous night and what had happened to the shop. I decided to wait and did my best to act unconcerned, praying she wouldn't worry. I flubbed it. I heard the rustling of her covers as she shot up in bed and said, "What's wrong?"
"It's okay. It's nothing."
"I hate when you say things like that. Now I'm really scared."
It took a couple of minutes to ease her mind enough to where she'd let me off with the promise of having breakfast with her.
Broghin pushed Anna toward us, and she had to reach down and grip the tires to brake herself or he would've shoved her right into the divan. My grandmother smiled sadly and took my face in her hands the way Katie sometimes did. I liked when they were willing to do that for me.
She looked at Lowell and said, "How is he, Deputy Tully?" She knew he was incapable of lying, even to soothe feelings.
"Lucky."
She shifted in the wheelchair and asked me, "How do you feel?"
"Lumpy."
"Yes dear, I'm afraid you're quite correct."
Her fingers worked softly through my hair, and Lowell let out a huff. He needed to get answers. Oscar Kinion stood behind the sheriff and leaned forward on him, and Broghin leaned forward onto the wheelchair. They both teetered a bit and stared at the rest of us as though we were speaking Mandarin Chinese. I got a pleasant thrill at imagining Broghin passing out and snoring loudly at the murder scene. Alice Conway continued to sob, standing alone and occasionally glancing over at Shanks' corpse, waiting for somebody to do or tell her something.
Anna kissed my cheek, waiting-like Lowell-for me to start telling it. She had more resolve than anyone I'd ever met, and I wondered what that, coupled to Harnes' calculating nature, could do in the world. She continued smoothing my hair as I told Lowell everything that had happened in the house. I kept out the fact that I'd picked up Nick Crummler outside of Harnes' estate and said I'd met him on the road much closer to town. I could feel the silky strands of secrecy wrapping around us, with my grandmother unwilling to let me in on whatever it might be she was keeping to herself.
When I brought the situation up to the moment Nick answered my phone, Anna stopped rubbing my head and sat staring at me. I stared back and we came to the silent understanding that when we got home the rest would have to be unraveled.
"Who the hell is Nick Crummler?" Lowell said.
In a faraway voice, as if he were trying to struggle back into himself and couldn't quite get there, Broghin said, "Zebediah Crummler's brother. Thought he'd be dead by now."
"Crummler has a brother, and everybody knows this except me?" Lowell called Roy over and passed on the information I'd given him.
"Haven't seen him in damn near fifteen years," the sheriff said sleepily. He was breathing only out of his mouth, taking large gulps of air like a hooked trout tossed up on the dirt. "He ought to be dead."
"I don't think you'll catch him," I said.
"Why?" Lowell asked.
"He reminds me too much of you."
"That's about as left-handed a compliment as I've ever been given."
His attention turned to Alice Conway and she drifted over like she'd been called to the head of the class. She worked her large, pouting lips, the deep brown circles under her eyes looking like they might eventually scrape bone. He said, "Do you know anything about what happened here tonight, Alice?" He wasn't really asking. He wanted answers and knew she probably had at least a few of them. A man had died in her living room and a friend of hers had bled so much that the wood of the floor would be permanently stained.
Anna said, "Take your time, dear."
Without further prompting, the sentences rippled from between her sobs. "Mr. Harnes drove my father out of business. Daddy put up a hell of a struggle but it didn't come to much. We lost everything less than two years ago. When my parents died last year there wasn't even any insurance. My father had been driving drunk. He drank a lot at the end."
Anna drew a short, noisy breath, and perhaps I did, too. My parents had died in a car accident, initially blamed on my father's drinking before we discovered that his best friend and business partner, my Uncle Phil, had actually rigged the brakes and murdered them. Anna had been in the car and crippled in the crash that night.
Alice sat on the divan where Brian Frost had bled, and the camera flashes went off in the other room, capturing Sparky's corpse from every angle. "Mr. Harnes doesn't care about anyone or anything, but most of you know that already. Look at this place." She made a sweeping gesture to show the extent of the house's emptiness. "He took it all. I'm telling you, he killed my mother and father, really. Really, he did. You should have seen them, how happy they were. How they used to dance, they loved to waltz, right here in this room. He's evil."