“Hey. I was trying to help.”
“You’d have helped a lot more if you’d done as you were told. One body, Quince. One damned body. I could have handled the others.”
“One damned body, Omar? Fuck me. You’re getting a little overhet with the language there.”
I imagine more than see Duniway’s cheeks suck in with irritation. He turns his back on Quince and takes a few steps toward the asylum.
Between the bridge and me, the bank dips toward the road, with little cover except tussocky overhangs of dry grass. Boulders snarled with flood debris slope down to the water’s edge. The river rushes under the bridge, still too fast to risk a swim. My downstream trek warmed me up a bit, but now the night’s chill seeps back into me. I can’t linger here, but as long as they remain on the bridge, I’m stuck.
Duniway flicks his cigarette into the river, then turns back to Quince. “Once Xavier is freed up, I want you to get your boat. You can search the river faster from the water.”
“I’ll have to drive to Little Cherry. Nowhere closer to put in, and there’s all kinds of places a body can get snagged between here and there. Hell, she could be in a hole thirty feet below us and we won’t know till the river drops.”
“I’ll get Varney up here to walk the banks at sunup.”
“If she’s not dead, maybe she still has the gun.”
“So?” Duniway throws him a dark look. “Don’t get shot.”
“Jesus, Omar. You gonna warn him too?”
“What are you worried about?” Duniway’s voice takes on a mocking twang. “‘She hadda drown.’”
“You don’t think she did?”
“I didn’t think she’d wake up in the van.” Duniway shakes his head. “Just be careful. And if you do find that weapon, make sure it disappears down the deepest souse you can find. I don’t want it confusing things. Got me?”
Instead of answering, Quince turns toward a light in the trees. I drop my head as a white pickup rolls out of the forest and stops, its front wheels on the bridge. The right headlight is broken and dark, but the left catches Quince in the act of tossing his butt into the river. In the ambient glow, I see a red streak on the cracked bumper.
Trae Fowler’s Subaru was red.
Duniway leans over as the passenger-side window slides open. I can see the driver’s silhouette—hands on the wheel, head turned toward the open window—but the river and the idling engine drown out anything said inside the cab.
“I know, I know. You’d think the good doctor would understand his dosages.”
Duniway’s voice, at least, carries. “Doesn’t matter,” he continues. “Likely as not she’ll wash up at some fishing camp tomorrow. The river’s forty-four degrees up here.”
I can’t even tell if the figure in the truck is a man or a woman. Whoever it is seems to have a lot to say. Duniway listens for a while, his shoulders hunched up around his ear.
Suddenly he smacks the window frame. “I know it’s been a week. I’m doing everything I can.”
My ears perk up. It’s been a nearly week since the crossroad. But if Duniway has anything more to say about it, I can’t make it out. At a gesture from the pickup driver, he bends down, sticking his head almost through the open window. Whatever they’re discussing, the conversation remains heated. Finally he straightens up. “Don’t worry about that,” he says sharply. “The dash cam will have captured everything we want it to see and nothing we don’t. Even if she survived the river—”
Duniway goes quiet as a faint electronic beep sounds. He pulls out his phone and scans the screen, then turns to Quince. “Someone called in Chapman, and all hell is about to break loose. I’ve got to go.”
Quince stares at his feet. “What in hell am I supposed to do?”
“Wait here. Shouldn’t be long.”
As the pickup backs up, Duniway strides across the bridge, then angles toward the asylum gate. The truck makes a two-point turn, then departs the way it came. Quince ignores them both. When he reaches the asylum, Duniway opens the big padlock and throws the gate wide. A moment later, he drives out in his department Tahoe. As he crosses the bridge, he calls out the window, “Go lock up.”
But once the Tahoe is gone, Quince stays put. He jams a cigarette into his mouth, then fumbles with his Zippo, flicking it a half dozen times before it sparks. When he inhales, half the cigarette burns away. “Christ in a cooler,” he mutters through smoke. “I did not sign up for this shit.”
I don’t know what he’s whining about. Duniway isn’t planning to pin Jeremy’s murder on Quince Kinsrow. He’s going to pin it on me.
FORTY-SIX
C’est Moi
I’m not even surprised. I’ve been drugged, battered, frozen, and nearly drowned. Of course Duniway wants me to go down for Jeremy’s murder too. He’s had me in his sights ever since the bodies waltzed out of the New Mortuary. Ever since Quince took them—though it sounds like the chief deputy would rather he hadn’t.
“One damned body.”
The sheriff never confirmed to me that the fourth body in the retort was a girl, but I no longer doubt it. It had to be the baby’s mother, carried away for unknown reasons by Pride’s mystery vehicle, the white pickup. The others—the crossroad dead—Duniway could have handled, as he said. Written them off to the accident. It sounds like Quince’s task was to get rid of only the girl’s body, but he decided it would be helpful to grab three more.
Not that I can prove it.
I could walk into Sheriff Turnbull’s office and lay it all out, including Varney’s phone call and my narrow escape, but Jeremy’s dash cam still points to me. Only one person drives the Stiff these days.
As Landry might try to say, “C’est moi.” Melisende Dulac.
For my part, I can talk all I want. Pride’s fourth vehicle, his collection of spent cartridges and crash diagram. Where’s all that now? As for tonight—a ridiculous story. “Quince drove the Stiff, Duniway fired the shot. I was in the back, drugged by the medical examiner …” A good catch, that Dr. Varney—pillar of the community, though one with terrible taste in coffee.
Everyone knows Jeremy and I were seeing each other—“No secrets in Samuelton, sweetie.” The newest gossip will be the juiciest yet. I’m the common thread tying together every sordid detail of Barlow County’s Crime of the Century. No one will question it.
“I heard she killed a man in Bahs-ton.”
“Claimed she saw the Spirit.”
“Tried to punch me at the Pig.”
“Total psycho.”
“Nympho too.”
“Necrophiliac.”
Soon enough, the accepted narrative will be that I stole the crossroad dead to satisfy my ghoulish needs, then tried to burn the evidence. Why those three? is a question no one will ask—and one I can’t answer if they did. People will say Chief Deputy Duniway wouldn’t have arrested me for no reason. Sure, I got out, but that doesn’t make me innocent—just means I have a good lawyer.
Rémy and Elodie may get some measure of sympathy. They’re Old Barlow. But it’ll be diluted by unspoken blame. They brought me here, didn’t they?
And if Duniway’s plans work out, I won’t be around to muddy things anyway.
I’ll die wondering why two boys and two men drove a hundred-fifty miles from Portland to Barlow County. Why they stopped in the middle of a remote intersection. I’ll never know what they were doing when Zachariah Urban came tearing up the highway with a horse trailer, doing seventy-five in a fifty-five zone. Too fast, but it was nearly midnight. The only time there’s traffic in Barlow County is when there’s good snow at Brother Drop or if some steers get past a cattle guard.
So many dead, all for what?
The deep sky overhead has no answers.
I shift against the tree, the gun heavy in my hand. Perhaps the very gun that killed Nathan Harper.
“What’s it going to be?”
Not Fitz this time. Me.
What would the woman who pulled Land
ry out of that pickup do?
What will Melisende Dulac do?
My legs are stiff, and my joints all throb. I ignore the pain and pull myself over the fallen tree. Only twenty-five feet away, Quince seems to only care about his cigarette. He doesn’t hear me, doesn’t see me. I scan the bridge, the dirt road. That way isn’t an option, not with all hell breaking loose because of Jeremy. It’ll be lights and sirens from Shatter Hill to Dryer Lake.
The way through the forest is my best bet. From the trailhead, I’ll stick to the trees along Hensley Lane and then cut through the old ghost town to the back entrance of Crestview. Aunt Elodie will listen. Even if the cops get to her first, she’ll hear me out. But first, I have to get past Quince.
He coughs a pillow of smoke. It would feel so good to shoot him in the back.
Then I have a new thought, a crazy thought.
Take him with me.
Alone, all I have is a farfetched tale with more questions than answers. But maybe I don’t need to explain the whole sordid mess.
Maybe I just need to sow doubt.
I heft the gun. Quince, like it or not, is going to help me do just that.
FORTY-SEVEN
Quince
Quince sits on the downstream edge of the bridge, legs hanging off and wriggling like a troll tied to an anthill. A line of smoke rises past his ear. I remember his leathery hand gripping my face and fight the urge to shove him over the brink. Below, the river rushes down the steep gradient, a hundred yards of bucking whitewater with standing waves six feet high and woven eddies pouring into black, swirling holes. Class No-One-Gets-Out-of-Here-Alive.
I nudge him with the tip of my boot.
He jerks so hard he almost goes over anyway. The cigarette drops from his mouth in a shower of sparks. When he sees me, he scuttles away as if he knows what I was thinking.
“Christ, Spooky. You scared the piss out of me.” His face is shrouded in shadow, with only dark holes to indicate his eyes and gaping mouth.
“How you doing, Quince?”
My right arm hangs at my side, gun in hand, trigger finger flat against the barrel—one of Uncle Rémy’s lessons.
“Been better.”
The rushing river swallows my humorless laugh. With my left hand, I gesture across the bridge. “Let’s walk.”
When he doesn’t move, I raise the gun until the barrel catches moonlight. Quince’s cavernous eyes gleam white, and he jerks like a puppet, all but hopping across the bridge. I trot to keep up, neither easy or painless. He makes for the gate.
“Not that way.”
With the gun, I point upstream along the bank. In the dark, it seems unlikely the security cameras could pick us up this far from the gate, but I’d rather not take the chance. “Stay near the river.”
“Where we going?”
“Just be glad I’m not pushing you down a draw.”
Another white gleam sparks in his eyes. His jangly body radiates skittish energy. Mine feels like it’s made of mud. If he tries anything, I might not be able to stop him. But he doesn’t know that.
Shoulders slumped, he heads along the riverbank. I follow, keeping my distance should he get any ideas. The asylum’s upper stories and cupola peek over the wall. Faint light leaks from around the plywood covering several of the third-floor windows.
“Is someone inside?”
Quince looks back over his shoulder. “How the hell should I know?”
I let that go. There will be time for talk when we’re less exposed. “Pick up the pace.” He obliges without further comment.
I’m not used to Quince doing anything without making a speech first.
Once we move under the wall, I relax a little. The shadows are inky black, and the old stone amplifies the river sounds, welcome shrouds against eyes and ears. But negotiating the uncertain footing in the dark reawakens the stitch in my side. Spikes of pain start shooting from my ankle to my knee. At the corner, I call for Quince to hold up. I’m almost surprised when he does.
“Now what, boss?” There’s a smirk in his voice, as if he can see my grimace.
Here on the back side of the asylum, the forest creeps down to the rocky berm at the foot of the wall. I gesture toward a knee-high hump of stone, and he sits without argument. Behind us, the river washes through burbling riffles. He gazes at the water with longing.
“I have some questions.”
Moonlight glints in his eyes. “What makes you think I have answers?”
“You always have answers, Quince.”
“Not about this shit.”
“Who was driving the pickup?”
He looks up at the wall, as if the answer can be found in the lichen-rimed basalt. His shoulders twitch in a marionette’s imitation of a shrug. “I don’t recall any pickup.”
I have to remind myself everything is a game to Quince, a performance, a calculated effort to rankle or rile.
“There’s still a chance you walk away from this. No one has to know you helped kidnap me.”
His head lifts again, but he doesn’t speak. A niggle of disquiet runs through me, and I turn, half-expecting spying eyes atop the wall. But all I see is dark stone and the old water tower.
On a hunch, I ask, “Was it Xavier Meyer’s pickup?”
Quince’s eyes bug out like a couple of boiled eggs. “Sorry. Can’t help you.”
“Yet you didn’t mind cracking my head against the ground. I know we’re not friends, Quince, but I had no idea things were that bad between us.”
His boiled-egg gaze steals to the river. The man is tanned leather and bone strung together with baling wire. The river here isn’t too rough, a section of relative calm before the bridge. If he kept his feet, maybe he could make it across. But if he stepped in a hole, he’d sink right to the bottom.
“Forty-four degrees,” I say, just in case he’s thinking about it.
“I’ve been in the water around here. Don’t think I can’t handle it.”
“Could you handle it if I shot you in the back?”
His head drops.
I don’t know what I expected. Not a tearful confession—not from Quince. But not a complete shutdown either. He’s usually too much of a showboat. I expected him to tease something—a connection, a name, some small piece of the puzzle—but he’s just sitting there with his chin on his chest.
It’s all well and good to threaten to shoot him, but if it comes right down to it, I’m not sure I could follow through—assuming the gun even works. That incendiary moment after Duniway killed Jeremy was one thing. But here, under the eaves of the forest with the river whispering at my back? Quince goes back years with Uncle Rémy and Aunt Elodie. Hell, for all his ridiculous bluster, he taught me a lot when I first got to Barlow County.
There has to be a better way.
I let out a slow breath. “Do you remember the last county removal you and I did together?”
“You know how many removals I’ve done, Spooky?” He speaks into his chest.
“Not so many with me.”
“Ain’t like I kept a log.”
My lips purse. “It was a drowning on the Palmer footbridge below the fire watchtower. Last October.”
He doesn’t say anything at first, then nods. “Eagles Lift.” He fidgets until curiosity gets the better of him. “What about it?” Quince loves a story, even if it isn’t his.
“You were in a foul mood because the river would be closed for fishing soon. While we waited for Fire and Rescue to pull the body out of the water, you complained about how in another week you’d be stuck with the reservoir or long drives to rivers with year-round fishing.”
“So what?”
“‘A man with priorities,’ is how the sheriff described you when I told him you came by the New Mortuary that day after the crash. You couldn’t help because you had trout to clean.”
He shrugs. “What’s your point?”
“I guess I never quite understood how important fishing is to you.”
“Lik
e you said, Spooky, we ain’t never been friends.”
I lick my lips. Half-turning toward the water, I gesture with my aching left hand. “Is this the Palmer River?”
He hesitates, as if it’s a trick question. “Yeah. Why?”
“This must be part of your fishing grounds.”
He eyes me like I’ve said something stupid. “Not a big fishing stream this high up. Oh, there’s some good spots, but you have to hike to reach any of them. Rafters and kayakers can put in up at Ours Lake, but the whitewater is too big for drift boats. I mean, a lot of drifters think they can go anywhere a raft can, but I like my boat too much. Anyway, it’s all catch and release up here.”
“What does that mean?”
I can’t hear it over the river, but the sigh is clear in his posture. “You’ll only hook wild trout up here, but you have to let ’em go. That’s why it’s called catch and release.” The dumbshit is silent. “They stock the lower river with farm trout.”
“How do you tell the difference?”
“They cut the adipose fin off hatchery trout. That’s the little one between the tail and dorsal fin.” In case I was wondering. “Catch one of those, and so long as it’s over the size limit, you’ve got dinner. Mushy farm trout maybe, but it eats.”
Quince isn’t one to let niceties like the rules get in his way, but I keep that thought to myself. “So you don’t fish in this part of the river?”
“Oh, I come up here a few times a year. Wild trout are wilier than farm trout. Worth the hike. But on the lower Palmer, I put in below the Goose Creek Hatchery.”
I’ve seen Quince’s boat a few times being pulled behind his pickup. Aluminum, not unlike a rowboat, but with a wide, flat bottom and a high bow. Oars, no motor. “You drive to wherever you want to put in, launch from your trailer, then float downstream?”
“Yeah. So?”
“So Duniway said he wanted you to search for me with your boat. Is it nearby?” If his boat is close, his truck is too. And that means I might not have to walk on my throbbing ankle all the way to Crestview. Quince should even know his way around the backcountry logging roads so we can avoid whatever law enforcement Duniway has rallied.
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