“Neither,” Parker said.
Lindahl came to join them, from farther to the left. “How is he?”
“Dead,” Parker said.
Thiemann was trying to get the artist’s drawings out of his pocket without letting go of his rifle. “Damn,” he said. “Damn! Tom, hold this a sec.”
Lindahl took Thiemann’s rifle, and Thiemann got out the two papers, unfolded them, and went down on one knee beside the dead man. He was clearly reluctant to touch the body, but had to turn the head in order to see the face.
“He’s not one of them,” Parker said.
Thiemann wasn’t ready for that, not yet. This man on the ground in front of them was small, scrawny, old, with thin gray filthy hair and a thick gray untended beard. He wore tattered gray work pants and a moth-eaten old blue sweater, stained everywhere. Lace up black shoes too big for him were on his feet, without socks, the ankles dirty and scabbed from old cuts.
The face, when Thiemann used both hands to turn the dead man’s head, was bone thin, deeply lined, with scabs around the mouth and under the eyes. The eyes stared in horror at something a long way off.
Thiemann squirmed backward, rubbing his fingers on grass and leaves. “He’s some old bum,” he said. His voice sounded the way the dead man’s staring eyes looked.
Lindahl said, “Fred? You didn’t get a good look at him?”
“He was . . . running. What the hell was he running for?”
Parker said, “Men with guns chased him.”
“Shit.” Thiemann was trying to find some rope to grasp, something, some way to get his balance back. “Doesn’t he know? The whole countryside knows. Everybody’s out looking for the bank robbers. Nobody wants him, what the hell’s he running for?” He stood leaning, looking at nothing, arms at his sides.
Lindahl said gently, “Fred, that guy wasn’t up on the news. He’s up in here, he’s some old wino, he goes down sometimes and cadges or steals, but he doesn’t keep up with current events, Fred.”
Thiemann said, “I’m feeling, I can’t, I gotta . . .”
Parker and Lindahl grabbed him, one on each side, and eased him down until he was seated on the ground, the dead man just to his left. Not looking in that direction, he pushed himself around in a quarter circle until he was faced away from the body. “Do you think,” he said, much more humbly than before, “do you think we should bring—it—him, bring him out? Or should we just tell the troopers where he is?”
“No,” Parker said.
Thiemann looked up. “What?”
“We don’t tell the troopers,” Parker said. “We don’t tell anybody.”
Lindahl was holding his own rifle in his right hand, Thiemann’s in his left. Looking warily toward Parker, moving as though he wished that left hand were free, he said, “What do you mean, Ed?”
“They told us,” Parker said, “don’t exchange gunfire. Even if this was one of them, we weren’t supposed to shoot. He isn’t one of them, he isn’t armed, he was shot in the back.” Parker looked at Thiemann. “If you go to the troopers with this, you’ll do time.”
“But—” Thiemann stared left and right, looking for exits. “That isn’t right. We’re like deputies.”
“Search,” Parker said. “Observe. Don’t engage. If you go to the law, Fred, it’s bad for you, and it’s bad for us.”
That snagged Thiemann’s attention. “Bad for you? Jesus, how is this bad for you?”
Parker could not have the law interested in this trio of hunters. He wouldn’t survive five minutes of being looked at by the law in a serious way. But what Thiemann needed was a different reason. “You shot an unarmed man in the back,” he said, to twist that knife a little. “A man who isn’t one of the ones we’re looking for. Tom and I were right here with you, and we didn’t stop you. That means we’re part of it.” Looking at Lindahl, Parker said, without moving his rifle, “You know what I’m saying, Tom. It’s just as important for us. This thing didn’t happen.”
Lindahl, face paler than before, understood both what Parker was telling him and what Parker was telling Thiemann. He said, “My God, Ed, you mean, just leave him here? You can’t do that to a human being.”
“Tom,” Parker said, “what that guy was doing to himself was just as bad, only slower. He didn’t have much of a life, and there wasn’t a lot of it left. What difference does it make if he dies back there in that ruin from exposure or starvation or DTs or liver poisoning, or if he dies out here from Fred’s bullet? He’s dead, and the animals around here’ll take care of the body.”
“Jesus,” Fred said, and put his shaking left hand up to cover his eyes.
“I can’t even think that way,” Lindahl said.
“I’m thinking for you,” Parker told him. “This is a bind we’re in, and the only way out of it is that it didn’t happen.”
Lindahl looked helplessly at the dead man, at the huddled shape of Thiemann, at Parker. “Should we at least . . . bury him?”
Parker scuffed his toe on the stony ground. “In this? How? Even if we had three shovels, and we don’t, it would take hours to make a hole in this ground. And what for? Fred, what animals you got up around here, besides deer?”
Thiemann seemed surprised to be spoken to. Slowly he took his hand away from his eyes and squinted upward, toward Parker, but not quite meeting his eye. “Animals?”
“Predators. Scavengers.”
Thiemann sighed, long and shuddering, but when he spoke, his voice was calm. “Well,” he said, “we got coyote, not a whole lot, but some.”
“Bobcat,” Lindahl said.
“That’s right,” Thiemann agreed, and gestured skyward. “And a whole lot of turkey buzzards.”
“They’ll get here,” Lindahl said, “right after we leave.”
Thiemann shook his head. “Well, no,” he said, “not that fast. A few hours later, it’s gotta get—” He stopped, squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head. “God damn!”
“You thought it was the right guy,” Parker told him. Now that Thiemann wouldn’t be any more trouble, it was best that he not get excited. “It could have happened to any of us.”
“That’s right, Fred,” Lindahl said.
Thiemann spread his hands. “I was just so— I thought, Wow, I’ve got him! Me! I’ve got him!” He shook his head again, disgusted with himself. “When I said we were acting like kids, I didn’t really mean it, I thought it was a joke. It wasn’t a joke.” Looking now toward Lindahl, he said, asking forgiveness, “I never killed a man before. A human being. I never killed anybody. Deer, you’ve got venison, you’ve got . . .”
“A reason,” Lindahl suggested.
“I’m not sure I can even do that any more.” Thiemann looked around, but not toward the body. “Would you guys help me up?”
They did, and he said, “I can’t do this any more, I gotta go home, I gotta, I don’t know, get by myself somewhere. I can’t do this today.”
Parker said, “You got a wife at home, Fred?”
“Sure,” Thiemann said, “And one daughter still in college.”
“Can you tell your wife things? Can you trust her?”
That drew Thiemann’s startled attention. “Sure I can trust her. But tell her about”—with a hand gesture behind himself, toward the corpse—“about that?”
“You’ve got to tell somebody,” Parker said. “You can’t put it where you can’t ever talk about it, because it’ll eat you up. You won’t last. And you can’t talk about it with anybody else, not even Tom here. Tell your wife, talk it out with her.”
“He’s right, Fred,” Lindahl said. “Jane will help you.”
Thiemann made an awkward shrug, uncomfortable with himself. “Get me back to my car, will you?”
They started back through the thick shrubbery toward the ruined railroad station. Thiemann hadn’t asked for his rifle back, seemed not to want to know it was his, so Lindahl carried them both under his right arm, leaving his left arm free to push through the branches along the way.