Shorty’s “house” was nothing more than a garden shed behind a two-story farmhouse. I cut off my headlights, gliding past with only parking lights on. The lights in the front house were off, the windows dark as sightless eyes. Even so, I rolled gently into the yard as though my Nova could tiptoe if I were light enough on the gas.
Following the rutted dirt, I drove all the way around the back of the shed, where my car wouldn’t be visible from the road. I killed the lights, then the ignition. When I got out, I left the door cracked so it would make no sound in closing, switching off the dome light first so it wouldn’t drain the battery.
I held the flashlight under my armpit while I laid out the tools I’d need for the lock. The door actually looked flimsy enough that it would have come down under a couple of kicks, if I had the luxury of being so obvious.
As soon as I touched the knob, I knew I wasn’t going to have to pick the lock. The door was already unlocked.
Something about that struck me as wrong. But I told myself, Come on, relax. What does a guy like Shorty have that’s worth stealing anyway? Everything’s fine. What are you waiting for?
Then I stepped inside and switched on the flashlight.
A figure rose up in the beam, close and fast. I went for my.40.
“Sarah, wait, it’s me!” The shadow before me was already dropping to the ground.
“Gen?” I pointed the flashlight down. She squinted up against its glare, one hand coming up against the flashlight’s beam. “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you,” she said. “I had a head start. Don’t shine that thing in my eyes.”
Later I would realize how changed she was at that moment, how revived in comparison to the zombie of weeks past.
My heart started slamming belatedly. “Are you crazy? I almost shot you!”
“Could you get the light off me?” she said again. “There’s something you should see.”
As she got to her feet, my light played over her hand. She was holding something.
“What is that in your hand?” I asked.
Wordlessly she held it into the light and tilted it. Something flashed: the holographic seal of the State of Minnesota. It was a driver’s license. Michael David Shiloh’s driver’s license.
I’d been sure, but I hadn’t been ready to face it, not really. I don’t know how long I would have stared at his license if she hadn’t spoken again.
“What the hell is going on?” she demanded.
“Where’d you find this?”
Genevieve pointed. I followed her hand with the flashlight’s beam.
There was a backpack on the floor. Also Shiloh’s. He’d used it sometimes when he’d had to go to the library for research and bring home a lot of books. He’d taken it out infrequently enough that I hadn’t even missed it in my search of the closet.
I walked over to it and knelt. Inside was a railroad atlas and a bruised, cidery apple. And the billfold, empty of money.
“Shorty,” I whispered. “That son of a bitch.”
“Yeah,” Genevieve agreed. “But what happened? How’d you know to look here?”
I pointed the flashlight up at the white ceiling, so we’d both have ambient light to see each other in.
“You were wrong,” I said quietly, and my voice was steady enough. “Shorty didn’t steal that truck. Shiloh did.”
“Shiloh?” She was incredulous.
“He came down last week, while I was visiting you. As soon as I was out of town, he jumped a freight.”
“A train?”
“He and his brothers used to ride freights over short distances, for kicks. He knew how. And that’s why he didn’t leave a traiclass="underline" Greyhound, Amtrak, nothing. Nobody saw him, nobody picked him up hitchhiking. The train took him right to the Amtrak station, where he could steal a vehicle that no one would miss for a while. Afterward he could ditch it and get a freight back home.”
“But why?”
“Kamareia,” I said, and was about to go on when noises from outside distracted me, the creak and slam of a gate very like the one between this property and the road. Genevieve heard it, too, and went to the dirty, unshuttered window, pressing her face close to the glass to see what could be made out in the dim night.
“Looks like Shorty’s done drinking for the night,” she said rather mildly.
I got to my feet. “We can’t be here,” I said. “Legally.”
“I’m not going to run from that murdering prick. Are you?” she challenged me.
“No,” I said. “Hold the flashlight. Point it down low.”
Genevieve did, sitting on her heels to get it close to the ground. I moved to the door. Gravel crunched underneath footsteps, and we both watched as the doorknob turned counterclockwise.
As soon as Shorty was through the door, I sent my fist as hard as I could into his solar plexus. As he doubled over, I grabbed his hair and pulled his face down into my rising knee. He hit the floor with a hiss of painful breath.
“How they hanging, Shorty?” I said. “I felt a little unsatisfied with where we left things at the bar.”
Genevieve was still holding the flashlight down. “Why don’t you turn on the overhead light?” I suggested.
She pulled the string and we had light.
It was a shitty little place. A bare bulb overhead, a narrow cot. A card table, a folding chair, a cheap dresser. A bathroom through the doorway; I caught a glimpse of an old freestanding tub, an ancient sink on one porcelain leg. The kitchen was a sink and a hot plate.
But Shorty had his skills. He was obviously converting the place into a residence. I saw plumber’s tools on the bathroom floor, a wrench and some pipes. In the main room were things he most likely used in his day job: housepainter’s things, coveralls, a wallpaper shaver with a foot-long handle and a sharp, asymmetrical blade.
Shorty rolled onto his side to look at Genevieve. When he saw her, he looked like a man getting a visit from the harpies.
“Tell me about Mike Shiloh,” I said, as if we’d never left the bar.
“Fuck you,” he muttered. He’d been afraid to say that to a cop earlier, but clearly he saw that things had changed.
“You’ve got his backpack, his very empty billfold, and his driver’s license. That looks bad,” I said.
Shorty sat up. “I found them. In a ditch.”
“A ditch where?”
“On the county road.”
“Pretty near where you put your fingerprints all over that pickup?”
“This is illegal,” he said. “You broke into my place. What do you think a judge is gonna do with anything you find here? This is a fucking illegal search.”
Shorty knew a little about the system, like a guy with his rap sheet should have. And in his face I saw cunning that can, for a while, substitute for true brains.
I pulled out my gun again and pointed it at him. “Nobody in this room is thinking about the courts,” I told him. “Except you.”
Shorty stood up and faced me. He looked pretty tough for a guy with blood all over the lower half of his face. He said nothing. Somehow he’d seen the truth in my face: that even after everything he’d done, I wouldn’t pull the trigger. Just a little bit of the bar smirk came up to his lips.
Then he turned to Genevieve and said, “Your daughter loved fucking me.”
His eyes went back to me, to see how I was taking his little joke. That was his mistake. He was mostly paying attention to me. He hadn’t searched Genevieve’s face to see what could be read there.
“Gen, don’t!” I yelled, but I was too late. Her arm was a blur as she embedded Shorty’s own wallpaper shaver deep into the arteries of his neck.
Shorty made a sound like a cough, and I couldn’t jump back in time to keep his blood from splashing me. He stumbled backward, eyes rolling toward Genevieve. She lunged again, digging the blade yet deeper into his neck.