Jeannie could see hope filling Marcy Maitland’s eyes like water filling a well.
“Yes. Yes, I can do that. But what is the story?”
“The meeting we had was only about trying to clear Terry’s name. Nothing else.”
“Just about clearing his name.”
“At that meeting, Bill Samuels agreed to re-interview all the witnesses Ralph and the other officers questioned, starting with Willow Rainwater and working backward. Right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“The reason he couldn’t start with Claude Bolton is that Mr. Bolton is in Texas, helping out with his mother, who’s not well. Howie suggested that he, Alec, Holly, and my husband should go down there and question Claude. Yune said he would join them if possible. Do you remember that?”
“Yes,” Marcy said, nodding rapidly. “We all thought that was an excellent idea. But I don’t remember why Ms. Gibney was at the meeting.”
“She was the investigator Alec Pelley hired to check on Terry’s movements in Ohio. She got interested in the case, so she came down to see if she could give further assistance. Remember now?”
“Yes.”
Holding Marcy’s hand, looking into Marcy’s eyes, Jeannie gave her the last and most important part. “We never discussed shape-changers, or el cucos, or ghostly projections, or anything that might be called supernatural.”
“No, absolutely not, it never crossed our minds, why would it?”
“We thought that someone who looked like Terry killed the Peterson boy and tried to frame him for it. We called this person the outsider.”
“Yes,” Marcy said, squeezing Jeannie’s hand. “That’s what we called him. The outsider.”
FLINT CITY
(After)
1
The plane chartered by the late Howard Gold landed at the Flint City airport just after eleven o’clock in the morning. Neither Howie nor Alec was aboard. Once the medical examiner finished his work, the bodies had been transported back to FC in a hearse from the Plainville Funeral Home. Ralph, Yune, and Holly shared the expense of that, as well as a second hearse, which transported the body of Jack Hoskins. Yune spoke for all of them when he said there was no way the sonofabitch was going home with the men he had murdered.
Waiting for them on the tarmac was Jeannie Anderson, standing next to Yune’s wife and two sons. The boys brushed past Jeannie (one of them, a husky preteen named Hector, almost knocked her off her feet) and bolted for their father, whose arm was in a cast and a sling. He embraced them with his good arm as best he could, disengaged himself, and beckoned his wife. She came on the run. So did Jeannie, her skirt flying out behind her. She threw her arms around Ralph and hugged him fiercely.
The Sablos and the Andersons stood in family embraces near the door to the little private terminal, hugging and laughing, until Ralph looked around and saw Holly standing alone by the wing of the King Air, watching them. She was wearing a new pantsuit, which she had been forced to buy at Plainville Ladies’ Apparel, the nearest Walmart being forty miles away, on the outskirts of Austin.
Ralph beckoned her, and she came forward, a little shyly. She stopped a few feet away, but Jeannie was having none of that. She reached for Holly’s hand, pulled her close, and hugged her. Ralph put his arms around both of them.
“Thank you,” Jeannie whispered in Holly’s ear. “Thank you for bringing him back to me.”
Holly said, “We hoped to come home right after the inquest, but the doctors made Lieutenant Sablo—Yune—wait another day. There was a blood clot in his arm, and the doctor wanted to dissolve it.” She disengaged herself from the embrace, flushed but looking pleased. Ten feet away, Gabriela Sablo was exhorting her boys to leave papi alone, or they would break his arm all over again.
“What does Derek know about this?” Ralph asked his wife.
“He knows that his dad was in a shootout down in Texas, and that you’re all right. He knows two other men died. He asked to come home early.”
“And you said?”
“I said okay. He’ll be here next week. Does that work for you?”
“Yes.” It would be good to see his son again: tanned, healthy, with a few new muscles from swimming and rowing and archery. And on the right side of the ground. That was the most important thing.
“We’re eating at the house tonight,” Jeannie said to Holly, “and you’ll stay with us again. No arguments, now. The guest room is all made up.”
“That would be nice,” Holly said, and smiled. Her smile faded as she turned to Ralph. “It would be better if Mr. Gold and Mr. Pelley could sit down to dinner with us. It’s very wrong that they should be dead. It just seems…”
“I know,” Ralph said, and put an arm around her. “I know how it seems.”
2
Ralph barbecued steaks on a grill that was, thanks to his administrative leave, spandy-clean. There was also salad, corn on the cob, and apple pie a la mode for dessert. “Very American meal, señor,” Yune observed as his wife cut his steak for him.
“It was delicious,” Holly said.
Bill Samuels patted his stomach. “I may be ready to eat again by Labor Day, but I’m not sure.”
“Stuff and nonsense,” Jeannie said. She took a bottle of beer from the cooler beside the picnic table, pouring half into Samuels’s glass and half into her own. “You’re too thin. You need a wife to feed you up.”
“Maybe when I go into private practice, my ex will come around. There’s going to be a demand for a good lawyer here in town now that Howie—” He suddenly realized what he was saying and brushed at his cowlick (which, thanks to a fresh haircut, wasn’t there). “A good lawyer can always find work, is what I meant.”
They were quiet for a moment, then Ralph raised his beer bottle. “To absent friends.”
They drank to that. Holly said, in a voice almost too quiet to be heard, “Sometimes life can be very poopy.” No one laughed.
The oppressive July heat had let up, the worst of the bugs were gone, and the Anderson backyard was a pleasant place to be. Once the meal was finished, Yune’s two boys and Marcy Maitland’s two girls drifted to the basketball hoop on the side of the garage, and began playing Horse.
“So,” Marcy said. Even though the kids were a good distance away, and absorbed in their game, she lowered her voice. “The inquest. Did the story hold up?”
“It did,” Ralph said. “Hoskins called the Bolton house and lured us to the Marysville Hole. There he went on a shooting spree, killing Howie and Alec and wounding Yune. I stated my belief that it was me he was really after. We’ve had our differences over the years, and the more he drank, the more that must have eaten into him. The assumption is that he was with some as yet unidentified accomplice, who kept him supplied with booze and drugs—the medical examiner found traces of cocaine in his system—and fed his paranoia. The Texas HP went into the Chamber of Sound, but did not find the accomplice.”