Ogden felt bad for having tied the dead cat up in a plastic bag to be taken to the lab in Santa Fe. He imagined that the old woman would have wanted the cat buried. He walked back to his rig and radioed in.
“Anything?” he asked Felton.
“No escapes from no place,” Felton said. “Checked the pen and the hospitals and the animal shelter. Everybody’s present and accounted for. Well, except the mental hospital. They want to know when you’re coming back.”
“Thanks.”
“They said your brain will be ready on Wednesday.”
“Thanks, again.”
“What’s your twenty?”
“I’m up here at the old lodge.”
“Don’t freeze up there.”
Ogden hung up the handset. He looked at the field of white against the backdrop of the slope of aspens, spindly and naked.
It was afternoon when Ogden received the call to go to Mrs. Bickers’s house. Bucky Paz’s car and two other rigs were already parked in front. Neighbors were hanging about on their porches and Ogden took this as a bad sign. Inside he found Paz just hanging up the telephone. He paused at the look on the big man’s face.
“I got a notion to come here and look around,” he said. He looked away and coughed into his fist.
Ogden didn’t speak. He waited.
“Well, I figured out why no one saw anything.”
“Why is that?”
Paz asked Ogden to follow him out of the parlor and across the hall to the room with the television. The rug was pulled back. Ogden stopped to observe the trapdoor in the floor.
Ogden hummed.
“I came in and found the rug turned back like that.” He paused and put a cigarette in his mouth. “The old lady’s still down there.”
Ogden felt his stomach turn a little.
“Just like the cat,” Paz said.
“Christ,” Ogden said.
“Christ ain’t got nothing to do with this, son.” Paz stomped his foot down on boards of the trapdoor. He took a slow breath and leveled his eyes on Ogden. “She knew whoever it was.”
“How do you know that?”
“The killer knew the house. At least that much is true. She sure as hell didn’t tell him about her trapdoor.”
That sounded reasonable to Ogden.
“Ogden, after we run through this place, I want you to go through her closets, drawers, desk, papers, everything.”
“Okay.” He wanted to climb down and look at the dead woman’s body.
“You okay?” Paz asked.
“Fine.”
“You want to see?”
Ogden nodded.
Paz took his foot off the door and stepped back. Ogden reached down and pried his fingers into the crack and pulled up the panel. Mrs. Bickers was lying right below, her pale skin easy to see against the dark ground. A spider crawled along her thigh. Her dress was hiked up, exposing her underwear. She was there, dirt-covered, faceup, eyes open and death-gazing, pupils finding different lines, her throat bruised. He let the door back down.
“Shouldn’t we pull her out?” Ogden asked.
“Pictures first. Coroner’s on his way.”
The men waited.
Morning. Ogden rolled over to answer his phone. It was his mother and she’d just heard about Mrs. Bickers. He agreed with her that it was terrible thing and how it just wasn’t safe to go out of your house anymore or even stay in. “I’ll be right over,” he said to her. He dressed and also packed a bag. His mother was frightened and rightly so, an old woman alone. He would stay with her for a few days.
Eva Walker had the door open before he was out of his truck. “You didn’t sleep,” she said.
“I slept. I didn’t sleep well, but I slept.” He followed her into the house and took off his jacket. He glanced over at the woodstove and saw the red glow behind the glass panel.
“But you didn’t eat.”
“You’ve got me there. I didn’t eat. Can you help me out?” He walked behind her into the kitchen.
“Isn’t it awful?” she said.
“It is that.”
“How could such a thing happen?” She pulled down the skillet and placed it on the stove. “Why?”
Ogden shrugged. He watched as she took eggs from the refrigerator, and sausage. “It’s a cruel world out there?”
“Any leads?” she asked.
“What?”
“Leads.” She dropped the sausages into the pan.
“You’ve been watching Columbo again. No, not yet. No leads.”
“Well, it’s just awful.”
“We believe Mrs. Bickers knew whoever mur—killed her.”
“Killed doesn’t sound any better than murdered,” his mother said. “No fingerprints?”
“Plenty. Including mine. Prints seldom help. At least that’s what they tell me.”
“All I know is what I see on the television.”
“Well, anyway,” he said. “I don’t think you need to worry.”
She turned the meat over.
“But I will sleep here for a couple of nights, if you don’t mind. It’ll save me a little driving.”
She beat the eggs. “I don’t need you here. I wish somebody would try to break in here. I’d pop him with this skillet and poke him with this fork and pour hot grease on him and then I’d get mad.” She tended the food in the pan. “I didn’t know her very well. Just to say hello. Not that I ever wanted to say hello to her.”
Ogden nodded.
“Did she suffer?”
“I don’t think so, Ma,” he lied.
She removed the meat and poured the eggs into the pan. She plugged in the toaster and grabbed a loaf of whole-wheat bread. “You do want toast.”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Such good manners. I wonder who trained you.”
“Some crazy woman,” he said.
Eva put the food in front of her son, poured them both some coffee, and sat down to watch him eat. “What’s wrong, son?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. Something’s bothering you. Tell me what’s on your mind. It’s been eating at you for a while now.”
“Nothing really,” he said. He sipped his coffee.
“That’s not fair. You come in here all the time and I can see the sadness on your face and I’m just supposed to ignore it? It’s not right. Either you talk about it or you learn to pretend you’re happy.”
Ogden put down his fork. She was right; it wasn’t fair and he told her that. He then said, “I just wonder what I’m doing. Am I wasting my time here? I don’t mean in this house. I mean in this town.”
“I know what you mean,” his mother said. “And, yes, you are.”
He looked at her.
“You really think that.”
“Yep.”
“What would Dad think?”
“He’d think the same thing. But, like me, he’d be proud of you.”
“For what? For hanging around here playing deputy? Not even that.”
Ogden’s mother leaned back and studied his face, smiled. “If you need to get out and live somewhere else, that’s fine. Son, that’s normal. But don’t think your father wouldn’t be proud of the man you are. He would be damn proud. I know that. You’re a good man, Ogden. There are not a lot of good men around.”
Ogden nodded. “Thanks, Ma.”