"Why beat the kid to death, mutilate him, and then hold him in your lap?"
"You want to ask him? Look over there, he's still spouting. I think he's up to the part where the giant alien insects in black robes are robbing Egyptian tombs. You'll like that one, it's one of my favorites."
He grabbed at his hair again and made a show of hiking his belt up, but a moment later everything sagged back in the same place. "Did you hear anything?"
"Arguing? Sounds of struggle?"
“No."
"You're always at the center of the storm, aren't you, Jonny Kendrick?" That sounded fairly poetic for him, and I could tell he was proud of himself for coming up with it-I didn't argue the point that there was actually calm at the eye of the storm. His mouth curled and twisted. "Did Crummler say anything when you found him?"
"No, he only repeated what he said last night. That he'd been in battle with himself."
"His conscience bothering him? Maybe he's been planning this."
''That's ridiculous."
"Don't go getting involved any more than you already are. Tell your grandmother the same."
I already had. I knew that no matter what happened from here on out, I'd always get back to past misfortunes that followed, and how deeply immersed I became in new troubles because of those in the past.
"What did he tell you last night?" I asked, but Broghin was already stomping off.
They tossed Crummler's shack, wrapped the shovel in plastic and tagged it. Lowell drifted back about an hour later, when the reporters started bustling over, looking to interview me. They kept to a tight but distant ring since Anubis occasionally stalked forward and they were forced to draw back. A couple shouted and asked if the dog had ripped anybody else's throat out. Lowell ordered the other deputies to back them off.
"What about the grave he was lying on?" I asked. "Any connection there?"
"The fella died over a hundred years ago, so I tend to doubt it. Cletus Johnstone, died of tuberculosis in the winter of eighteen seventy-three. His headstone says he fought bravely at Gettysburg. Killed his own cousin, Thomas Johnstone, in the name of God, country, and freedom of these beloved United States. Survived by his loving wife, Annabelle, and twin teenage daughters, Rachel and Ruth."
"Christ, they managed to fit all that?" I knew Lowell would check the name out further. "Who is the kid?"
"Found a wallet in Crummler's shack. It belongs to Teddy Harnes."
"Teddy? Does that make him the son of Theodore Harnes?"
"I'm guessing so. If it's him at all, and not just a lost wallet."
Theodore Harnes was the richest man in six counties, and though he'd spent most of the last decade out of the country, he still had more news and gossip floating around him than anyone else in a couple hundred-mile radius. The facts though, as I recalled them, included paternity suits and rape charges leveled against him that he'd either been innocent of, or had paid his way out of, and didn't cost him any lasting trouble.
Rumors were another matter. They said he'd used a hammer to murder a turncoat company partner. They said that in the past thirty years he'd helped more people in this part of the state than any of our senators of governors. They said he owed factories overseas where children were sold into sweatshop work. His assembly plants drove all the smaller competition out of business. They said he bought rat poison by the vat and fed it to the Indonesian kids who tried to run. He was a philanthropist who donated millions to hospitals, shelters, museums and libraries. People protested against his factories constantly, and others reviled the protesters. I could only remember having seen a few photos of him in the paper and thought him a highly unassuming man. If those rumors were true, I wondered what being the son of such a man might be like.
I said, "If Teddy wanted to fake his own death for some reason, perhaps to get away from his father, this might just be the way to do it."
"Yes," Lowell said.
"What are you going to do with Crummler?"
"You already know. Bring him to the jail. He'll stay there for a day or two and then we'll need a psychiatric evaluation."
Broghin got into his car and threw it into drive, languorously easing up the cemetery path. Crummler kept waving out the back window to me, his hands in cuffs. His gaze, in even those last few seconds, floated with chunks of madness, innocence, lucidity and rage.
Tomorrow he'd be in Panecraft.
FOUR
Anna could read a dozen mysteries at once and never confuse the complexities of plot lines. She appeared to be in a hard-boiled phase. In the past few weeks I'd sent her Chandler's Lady in the Lake, Lawrence Block's The Devil Knows You're Dead, Charles Williams' Go Home, Stranger, and Andrew Vachss' Strega. I'd met Block and Vachss at an autograph party in the city, and liked them personally as much as I enjoyed their work. Anna never cared if she read a signed first edition or not. She wasn't a collector as such, but I tried to get rarities when I could. Block had written, "For Anna, a true lady of mystery…." He'd seen us on the news after Richie Harraday's body had been found in her garbage can.
I tossed the novel back on the pile and got off the couch. Katie and Anna were in the kitchen discussing herbal teas, Lamaze, marriage, and mortgage rates in the Grove. As far as conversation topics went, I was rooting for tea to come up from behind and start leading the pack. The world seemed to be sprawling away from me, but not quite violently out of control yet. I felt if I planted my feet and took a firm stance on anything in my life, the sudden shifting of what had been set in motion behind me would rise up across my shoulders and crash over my head.
I looked out the window at the spot on the lawn where Harraday's body had been dumped, and where Lisa Hobbes had left her best friend Karen Bolan's corpse as well, hoping to make the murders seem connected. The tougher reporters, or those less informed, occasionally knocked on the door and tried to peek into the only window with its shade not fully drawn. I left it that way on purpose: when somebody attempted to peer inside, Anubis would draw himself up, lean his front paws on the windowsill, and stick his flat, black muzzle against the glass. The reporters left in a hurry, trundling back down the ramp beside the porch stairs.
Katie and Anna entered the living room, Katie with a huge grin that highlighted her dimples and made my heart tug to the left. Her palms angled evenly across the hand grips pushing Anna's wheelchair-it took a little getting used to, shoving the sometimes unwieldy chair across the wears in the carpet; the smaller guide tires tended to sink and slip. A silver platter of cups and cookies lay across my grandmother's lap. I wondered if we would ever be able to make the break to having liquor in the house again after my father's alcoholism.
Mortgage rates in the Grove, I was informed, were quite reasonable, and the market appeared to be getting even better this fiscal year for homeowners.
I waited it out. Anna would crack soon. We were into something ugly again, and while she didn't feel haunted by it, she did grow more and more enthralled, possibly even delighted. Katie also sensed the change in atmosphere as they talked-my grandmother's attention not only wavering but diverting, leading into another direction. Anna's questions and responses got slower and shorter. She started saying "That's nice, dear," a lot. Katie gave me an amused frown and I shrugged. She sat on the couch, put the television on, and ran the channels, searching for some news.
"Such mutilation of the boy's features has meaning," my grandmother said, sipping her tea, and we were into it.
"Means somebody probably didn't like the guy too much."
Naturally it had significance-you cleave somebody's features off, chances are you're trying to make a pretty big point.