“What did you need to speak with me about?” Core asked.
“Just trying to get all this figured out, Mr. Core. This mess we have here.”
“I just saw what happened. I saw you on the news. You killed that man? Cheeon?”
Marium said nothing. His face did not change.
“How’s a person do that?” Core said. “What Cheeon did here?”
“I was hoping you’d tell me that.”
“Me? How would I know that?”
Marium looked at him through the steam of his coffee.
“If you corner an animal he’ll try to claw his way out,” Core said. “But that’s not what happened here.”
No animal, Core knew, does what Cheeon did. What Slone did at the morgue.
“I read some of your book last night,” Marium said. “The one about wolves that Medora Slone had? I forget the title. Good book, though, the part I read.”
“Why’d you want to read that?”
“I was hoping to learn something about Medora Slone.” He paused. “Was hoping to learn something about you too, Mr. Core.”
“Learn what?”
“Why she asked you to come here.”
“And did you learn that?”
“Nope. Didn’t learn a thing. Zip. I saw that wolves remind me of some bastards I know.”
“That’s unfair to wolves,” Core said. “They have a logic some of us could use more of.”
Marium looked at him over the top of his cup. “So I need to jog your memory, Mr. Core.”
“How so?”
“You’re the last one to see Medora Slone. Last one to talk to her. You found that boy. And right now I’m wondering why you’re still here.”
Core looked away to consider the hills, knowing he had no believable answer as to why he had not left this place. Because he’d been dreaming of Medora Slone. Because he’d been ruptured since finding the boy. Because he had little to return to. Because he was beginning to fear that man belongs neither in civilization nor nature—because we are aberrations between two states of being.
“I told you everything I know,” Core said.
“Why are you still here?”
“You suspect me?”
“I’m just asking. It’s my job to ask.”
“I told you everything I know.”
“I’m hoping you can tell me just a little more. That woman contacted you because she thought you’d understand her.”
“That woman contacted me because she wanted me to find the boy,” Core said.
“And that’s my question, Mr. Core. Why you? Why a total stranger?”
“I don’t know why me. She found my book on wolves. What are you implying here?”
“I’m not implying anything. I’m just stating what happened. A woman kills her boy and writes a complete stranger to come go on a wild wolf chase and then find the boy in a root cellar. Explain that, please.”
“You asked me these questions two weeks ago.”
“And I’m asking them again, fourteen bodies later.”
Core felt grateful for the smoke hanging there between them like a curtain. He recalled Medora’s body next to his on the sofa, the vision of her in the tub.
“Nothing happens here in a way that makes any sense,” Core said. “You told me that yourself.”
“That’s not exactly what I said. What I’m saying now, Mr. Core, is that Medora Slone must have mentioned something to you, something that might tell me where she could be right now. Because if we want to get this thing figured out, we better find her before her husband does.”
“Is that why Slone killed those cops at the morgue?”
Marium stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray, then looked at the Slones’ cabin. “He couldn’t take the chance of us finding his wife before he did. That’s my view of it. So they wouldn’t take her to where he couldn’t get at her.”
“And the coroner too, why?”
“To get the boy’s body,” he said, pouring more coffee for himself and Core. “Or else he’s just evil. It’s not as uncommon as you might think.”
Evil is a distortion of love—Core couldn’t remember who said it or when, and didn’t know how it helped explain what was upon them now.
“Slone let you drive away from the morgue that night,” Marium said, lighting a new cigarette. “He let you go. Why would he do that? The wife calls you here, the husband lets you live. Why?”
Two village boys, eleven years old, padded in fur and face masks, blared by on a snow machine that sounded like a chain saw. Villagers shoveled pathways around their cabins. With their faces pressed deep into hoods, toddlers stood nearly immobile in moose-hide suits. Every few minutes someone stopped to stare at the men in the truck but did not raise a hand of welcome. The sun was nowhere. Core cracked the window another inch, felt the air move in his stomach.
“Are you gonna answer my question, please? Why did Slone let you drive away that night?”
“He wants a witness,” Core said.
“A witness to what?”
“To this story he’s telling.”
“This story he’s telling, okay. And Medora, she wants a witness too? That makes you the chosen storyteller, Mr. Core. Please explain that.”
“How can I explain this?”
“Vernon Slone is a man and every man is explainable.”
“What kind of man does this?” and he nodded out the window at the village, as if all of Keelut were the direful work of one person.
“The human kind,” Marium said. “You should get a grip on that and you won’t be so surprised all the time.”
The human kind, Core thought, distressed in his new wavering between words, between animal and human, in this place where one world grated against the other. They sipped their coffees through silence, the wind-roused snow like mist against the glass. Core felt hungry for the first time today. Marium pressed on the radio, turned through the stations, searching, Core thought, for a weather report, for some fact he could understand. He didn’t find anything he wanted and pressed it off.
“You didn’t answer my question, Mr. Core.”
“Which?”
“Why are you still here?”
“Because I’m trying to understand this thing, just like you,” Core said. “I’m telling you everything I know. I’m trying to help. You should be talking to the people of this village, not me.”
“These people will tell us nothing,” Marium said. “They have their own laws. Or they think they do. They think the whole world is their enemy.”
“They’re your people, aren’t they?”
“They sure as hell don’t think so. And they’re probably right. Just because you’re from this region, that doesn’t make you part of the blood of this village. Besides, as long as I have this job I’m their enemy.”
“Slone killed that old woman here?” Core asked.
“I think so. It wasn’t Cheeon, not his style. These people took her body. That’s what I mean. They have their own laws.”
“Did you find the boy’s body?”
“Nope, not his either. You can’t look anywhere now. Every eight hours new fall covers whatever there is to find.”
“What about Slone’s parents? Or Medora’s? Has anyone talked to them? I imagine they can help you more than I can.”
“Slone’s father has been dead awhile,” Marium said. “I’m not sure how. I don’t know anything about his mother, never met her. I believe I’ve met Medora’s mother in town, years ago. Very blond hair and white-white skin. Strange-looking woman, her mother. Her father disappeared on a fishing trip. Someone told me that. Went to sea and never came back. But I don’t know that for sure.”