“I don’t smoke,” she said.
Mulligan turned away and looked around at the lighted houses on their small lots. “Someone must have heard something, seen something,” he said.
“Don’t bet on it,” said Kat.
Mulligan came down off the porch and went around the house to have a look at the back. The driveway led to a detached garage with an old-fashioned up-and-over door that was two-thirds of the way down. Light came from inside. When he was halfway down the driveway a floodlight mounted on the side of the house snapped on and he jumped. He continued slowly, breathing hard. He crouched to look into the garage and was surprised to see a Mercedes sedan. He stood upright to call to Kat just as the garage door swung open the rest of the way and out strode a trim middle-aged man in his shirtsleeves, carrying a full garbage bag, looking like any householder strolling nonchalantly down the driveway to toss his trash. He appeared surprised to see Mulligan. He dropped the bag, which landed with a sodden thump, and pulled a gun out of his pocket.
“Jesus,” he said. “I knew I heard someone.” He peered past him. “Are you alone?”
“No,” Mulligan said, his eyes on the gun. The man was holding it at his side, almost casually, as if he just happened to have it.
“How many of you are there?”
“Just two of us.”
“Where?”
“On the porch.”
“Did you go inside?” Now he raised the gun and aimed it at Mulligan. “Oh, for Christ’s sake. Of course you did. Now why’d you have to go and do that?” The man threw up his hands as if in disbelief. “Terrific,” he said. “More thinking for me to do. Just what I needed.” He gestured with the gun for Mulligan to turn around. They walked down the driveway, the man grumbling behind him. Before they rounded the front of the house, Kat appeared. She stopped dead and stared past Mulligan’s shoulder.
“You.”
“Well, well. The crusading scribe. And Jimmy Olsen,” said Argenziano.
Mulligan started to turn his head to look back at Argenziano, but received a shove.
“You’re working with him?” asked Kat.
“Who? Who am I working with?”
“Saltino.”
“Enough already with Jackie Saltino. Keep going,” Argenziano said. “Stand together against the side of the house. Both of you. I have to think for a minute.”
“You fucking bastard.”
“Language, Kat. I haven’t heard you talk like that. It doesn’t suit you. Now, who’s this?” Argenziano looked at Mulligan. “I’m asking you, pussyface.”
“Sandy.”
“And you and Kat came out here for what, Sandy?”
“To look at Becky. I mean, to see Becky.”
“Same difference, right? You stumbled upon the scene of the crime. Just like the proverbial jogger. ‘The badly decomposed body was discovered by an early-morning jogger utilizing the park’s secluded paths.’ Not bad, huh, Kat? Think I missed my calling?” He laughed. “You a colleague, Sandy? Kat con you into sticking your nose in all this?”
“He writes books,” said Kat. “He doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
“Oh, sure he does. Maybe he didn’t, but he does now. What are you going to do, unsee it? Come on.” He turned to Mulligan. His voice was cheery: “So you’re an author, huh? Impressive. I could write a very interesting book myself if there weren’t so many other things I needed to do. You must have a lot of free time on your hands.”
Even under these circumstances Mulligan was almost amused to find himself the recipient of the usual backhanded compliment. It emboldened him to ignore the gun for a moment and ask, “Who is this guy?”
“His name’s Robert Argenziano. He runs the casino at Manitou Sands.”
“I’m a consultant, actually.”
“Jackie Saltino worked for him.”
“Again with Saltino? Come on, Kat. Take the facts and apply them to the reality all around you.”
“The reality?”
“I’m getting tired of this game, Kat. We’ve been playing it since the first time you walked into my place. Aren’t you tired of it yet?”
“Why did you kill them?”
“Kill who, Kat?”
“Did you know about the whole thing from the beginning? Were you part of it?”
“What whole thing, Kat? Part of what?”
“Asshole!”
“For Christ’s sake. Do you really have to resort to name-calling?” He raised the gun. “Don’t make me lose my temper. All I need are these fucking drunk Indians around here to start swarming out of these shacks.”
“How did you even find her? Did Saltino help you? Is he here?”
“Jesus,” said Argenziano. “I said enough already with that. It was a good bluff, but you couldn’t have picked a wronger person to try it on.”
“Well, where is he?” Kat said.
Everyone was quiet for a long moment.
“He’s been buried in a hole behind the nuthouse in Cherry City since last Spring,” Argenziano said finally. “Jackie’s dead.”
EARLIER TODAY
Jeramy steered the truck to the side of the road and turned off the lights.
“The ignition,” said Hanshaw.
“It be cold, yo.”
“So? Stick your hands in your armpits.”
The boy didn’t say anything but shifted heavily, causing the truck to bounce on its busted struts, and Hanshaw sighed. He didn’t want the kid to go into a funk.
“Oh, go ahead and leave it on.” He eased open the passenger door.
“Where you going?”
“Where do you think?” Hanshaw shut the door softly and leaned against it to latch it. The cold of the metal was harsh on his palms, and he reached into the pocket of his field jacket for his gloves. He began trudging toward the house, moving to the middle of the road because his footsteps through the frozen unshoveled snow on the roadside crunched loud in the stillness. The house was the only one without the shifting light of the TV showing through its windows; without any light at all, in fact. But there was a big F-150 parked in the driveway. No sign of Argenziano’s Mercedes, though.
He heard a rustling to one side and turned to encounter a crow, standing on a fencepost. He and the animal regarded each other.
“Hello, Crow,” said Hanshaw. “Owl’s going to get you. Get back to your roost.”
The crow leaned forward, huffed its feathers, and cawed at him. It took off and flew into the darkness.
Hanshaw came up the driveway alongside the house. At its end was a detached garage, the door closed. That was where the Mercedes had to be. He felt the hairs on his body stand on end, rising in a wave, like when the barber ran clippers over the back of his neck. He had an uneasy feeling. Crows were messengers from the other world. He stopped short of the garage and listened intently, pressed close against the house. He could sense occupancy inside, but there was something wrong. He took two steps forward, bringing the backyard into view, and tripped a motion sensor light attached to the side of the house. Something thudded on the other side of the wall to his right and the structure shuddered slightly. He double-timed it heavily toward the backyard, coming around the rear of the house, where more light trickled thinly onto the ground to illuminate a rectangular pad of concrete containing two plastic chairs and a plastic table, all heaped with old snow. The light came from the other side of the sliding glass door that opened onto the patio. The view into the room inside was hidden behind the pale blue curtain pulled across the length of the glass, but Hanshaw could see the blood splattered across the fabric, soaking through it. A shadow entered the lit space inside; Hanshaw’s hairs rose again, and he held his breath. The shadow moved first to his left, and then to his right. It paused and Hanshaw could feel it, on the other side of the glass. He stared at it, and it seemed as if it stared back. He knew it was only Bobby Argenziano in there, standing over and maybe even admiring his handiwork. But he also could feel that the shadow existed quite apart from Bobby; that the shadow had passed into, inhabited, Bobby as he did whatever had painted the curtain with those kinetic splashes, and now the shadow was taking his, Hanshaw’s, measure.