On the vanity top sat a wooden box with the lid down, a brush and comb set, and a color portrait in a frame of dull silver, but the image that stopped her was the face in the mirror: waxy, pale face of shadows, of cracked lips and black ropes of hair.
Another girl altogether was pictured in the silver frame—a picture she’d seen before on TV and in the newspapers. It was Holly Burke’s high school graduation picture, and she knew that the girl had hated it and would not have placed it here herself. In it she was pretty and honey-skinned, her brushed hair catching the light. Bright-green eyes and a young woman’s mouth of glossed lips and white teeth, and nothing in that face to convey a heart with so much in it, so bursting and hungry and bruised and defiant, so alive!
The brush and comb set were not silver as in her dreams but fake tortoiseshell and when she lifted the brush she saw no hairs and when she put it to her nose it smelled of nothing but the synthetic bristles. Brand-new.
Inside the wooden box was a stash of jewelry: silver and gold and colored stones all in a rich jumble. She chose an antique-looking silver ring and slipped it over her knuckle, admired it against the pale skin, slipped it off again and lowered the box lid without a sound.
The floorboards popped and the door hinges creaked and she stepped into the hallway and stood at the head of the stairs looking down, listening. He would’ve heard the floorboards, the hinges, would’ve come to the stairs and called up to her, or by some other means let her know of his presence, but he did not and she knew she was alone in the house.
The bathroom looked like a bathroom in a hoteclass="underline" not a thing in it to indicate a man had used it even once. Pale-blue towels folded and stacked largest to smallest on the counter. A new tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush still in its packaging placed beside an empty glass. A pink razor in its packaging next to ladies’ shaving cream. Ladies’ deodorant. New bar of soap in the wire rack under the shower head, matching bottles of shampoo and conditioner.
There was a bolt on the door and it popped cleanly into its socket.
She pulled the flannel shirt over her head like a dress and stripped off the heavy socks and stepped out of the panties and stood looking at the creature in the mirror. White as bones. Thin as bones but for the fat purple club at the end of one arm.
She’d have stood under that showerhead forever, just forever, but she didn’t want to use up his hot water, and at last she shut off the valves and ran the largest towel over her skin and made sure the bottoms of her feet were dry before she stepped on the bath mat. Then, with the towel wrapped around her, she peered into the hallway and listened again—not a sound, not even a light on downstairs that she could see—and then she scooted back to the bedroom, her dirty clothes clutched to her chest, and shut the door behind her.
42
HE CROSSED INTO Iowa on the 52 and twenty minutes later he found the building on Main Street and there was an open space out front and he took it. It was just 2:15, a cold and gray Wednesday afternoon in Iowa, as it was in Minnesota.
Her fever had broken and she’d opened her eyes long enough to see him sitting there beside the bed, and he’d told her he’d be back in a couple of hours, and she’d nodded and shut her eyes again and was asleep before he’d stood up. He didn’t like leaving her alone in the house like that, but the fever had broken and she was going to be all right and he couldn’t wait any longer.
He went up the steps and opened the glass door and stepped into a large room. There were four wooden desks and only one of them manned—a young deputy on the phone, looking Gordon over and holding his forefinger in the air.
“Yes, ma’am,” the deputy said into the handpiece. “I don’t blame you one bit, ma’am.”
Gordon stepped up to the desk.
“Yes, ma’am, I’ll let him know the second he gets back. You have a good day, ma’am.” The deputy hung up the phone and shook his head and looked up at Gordon. “Afternoon, sir. What can I do for you?” The ID on his pocket flap said dep. kurt short. Gordon read it twice to be sure.
“I need to speak to the sheriff.”
“All right. I bet I can help you out. Did you want to report something?” He fetched a form and readied his pen.
“No, I just need to speak to the sheriff. Is he here?”
“’Fraid not. He’s out on a call.”
“How long.”
“Sir?”
“How long will he be out.”
The deputy tapped his pen on the form. “Can’t say, sir. How about you give me your name and your trouble and I can pass it on to him when he gets back?”
“What makes you think I’ve got trouble?”
The deputy stopped tapping his pen.
“Sir, either you let me help you out or you let me write something down or you go sit in a chair over there and wait for the sheriff to get back.”
“You forgot one.”
“One what.”
“One option.”
“I don’t believe so.”
“You forgot the one where you call up the sheriff and say Gordon Burke drove down from Minnesota to get Audrey Sutter’s things and he’s standing right here in front of my desk, Sheriff, what do you want me to do.”
Fifteen minutes later he’d loaded the last of it into the back of the van and he was just closing the rear doors when a sheriff’s cruiser pulled into the spot beside him and Ed Moran stepped out.
“Hey, Gordon.”
“Hey, Sheriff.”
“You get everything all right?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t exactly have a list.”
“Well, whatever the Prices didn’t take, the rest is hers.”
“Then I guess I got it all.”
“Sorry I wasn’t here to help you. I had to go pick up a sick boy from school and find him a sitter.”
“One of yours?”
“My youngest, Eli. Sick as a dog.”
“It’s going around.”
“So I hear. How’s she doing?”
“Her fever broke, anyway.”
“That’s good.”
“So I thought I’d run down here and get her stuff.”
Moran nodded. Hands on his hips. “Can I ask you something, though?”
“Go ahead.”
“How the heck did she end up at your house in the first place?”
Gordon told him about the firewood, the girl burning up with fever, the ice-cold house, and Moran shook his head.
“Like she hasn’t been through enough as it is,” he said.
Gordon watched the sheriff’s face in the shadow of his wide hatbrim. He looked like he might have another question on his mind, but if he did he didn’t ask it. Gordon said, “You made any progress on any of that?”
“Not as much as I’d like. County attorney says we’re about one eyewitness shy of a case.”
“She told me you showed her some pictures—the girl did.”
“She tell you what her old man did down here?”
“Told me that too.”
Moran shook his head again. He squinted up at the blue winter sky. “Well, I guess I best get back to work here.”
“I don’t suppose you care to have a cup of coffee, Sheriff.”
Moran looked at him.
“On me,” Gordon said.
Moran slid back his jacket sleeve to check his watch.
“Yeah, I might could use a cup,” he said. “Why don’t you go on ahead to the Blue Plate just down the street here—it’s that blue sign, you can see it from here—and I’ll come along soon as I check in with the boys.”