Fatal Flaw Part 25

"You much interested in history?"

"Julius Caesar?" said Skink. "The b.l.o.o.d.y fall of the b.l.o.o.d.y Roman Empire?"

"No, the recent past. Hailey Prouix's past. I'm taking a trip, and that's where I'm headed." I stared at his ugly mug for a moment, thought of his story and the tenderness behind it, and then said softly, "You coming?"

Skink tilted his head.

"I was looking through what you left me in the briefcase," I said. "Keepsakes from her past. I have some questions."

"What kind of questions?"

"The usual. An idyllic childhood that might not have been so idyllic. An accidental death that might not have been an accident."

"And you think all that has something to do with what happened to Hailey?"

"Now that you're no longer a suspect, maybe I do. That's what I'm taking the trip to find out. You coming?"

"Where to?"

"Pierce, West Virginia."

"Her girlhood home."

"You coming?"

"You won't find nothing."

"Sure I won't."

"It's been too long."

"Far too long."

"n.o.body no more knows nothing."

"You coming?"

Skink sucked his teeth for a moment. "I charge two-fifty a day."

"A hundred."

"Two hundred."

"One-fifty. Plus expenses."

"I'll need a retainer."

"You got thirty thousand already."

"Did I?"

"I need to settle a few things first. Take care of Beth, do some trial prep. But then it's West Virginia ho. You coming?"

He paused a moment, reading my face as if reading the newspaper, and then he broke into a gap-toothed smile as wide as the Mississippi and reached out his hand.

I took it and shook it, but before I let go, I turned it over and checked the knuckles. Rough and hairy, each as ugly as a slag heap, but no sc.r.a.pes, no bruises. Still holding on, I said, "How'd you know the safe-deposit key was missing from her house?"

"Private sources."

"You weren't the lug in black who beat the h.e.l.l out of that police technician?"

"Me? Nah, I'm a lover, not a fighter."

"You understand if you work for me, your mouth stays shut. Our little secret remains our little secret."

"Vic, sweetie, if we're going to be partners, we need to trust each other."

"I already have a partner," I said as I finally let go. "And the idea of trusting you is enough to get my stomach roiling."

"I seem to have that effect on you, don't I?" said Phil Skink with a laugh. "Don't worry, Vic, I'll play it your way, all b.u.t.toned up, while you convince yourself that your friend really done it and deserves whatever he gets. Now, take care of the check and we'll go on up and have ourselves a time. What say I teach you how to play c.r.a.ps?"

"I don't think so."

"Not to worry, Vic. We're sporting our lucky jackets. How can we lose? And better than that, I gots myself a system."

Part Four

Black Holes

29.

I HAD never imagined, before driving into it, how amazingly beautiful was West Virginia. The steep mountain faces, the slender valleys carved by winding rivers, the roads twisting like snakes, the lovely white churches sitting beyond every bend. When Skink and I dropped south out of the long left arm of Maryland into West Virginia, it was like dropping into the landscape of a purer age. Even the sound track was purer-all we could get on the car radio was gospel stations. There were houses all along the route, some fine, some trailers beautifully maintained, some out-and-out hovels, but all seemed to flow naturally from the contours of the landscape. We followed the main road as it crossed a green metal bridge and twisted low through a fertile valley dotted with livestock and then turned off onto a smaller route that started a slow, inexorable climb into the mountains. never imagined, before driving into it, how amazingly beautiful was West Virginia. The steep mountain faces, the slender valleys carved by winding rivers, the roads twisting like snakes, the lovely white churches sitting beyond every bend. When Skink and I dropped south out of the long left arm of Maryland into West Virginia, it was like dropping into the landscape of a purer age. Even the sound track was purer-all we could get on the car radio was gospel stations. There were houses all along the route, some fine, some trailers beautifully maintained, some out-and-out hovels, but all seemed to flow naturally from the contours of the landscape. We followed the main road as it crossed a green metal bridge and twisted low through a fertile valley dotted with livestock and then turned off onto a smaller route that started a slow, inexorable climb into the mountains.

The car struggled until it reached the top of Point Mountain, with its inevitable white church just off the peak, and then fell as the road switched back and forth down, down. After a few minutes, to our left, we could catch glimpses through the leaves of something green and narrow and far beneath us, something that seemed, from that distance, more legendary than real. A valley, busy with farms and houses and lumber mills, isolated and lovely in its crevice in the western reaches of the Appalachians. We shared the road with pickups and beat old logging trucks as we continued down into the heart of that valley. Here and there, where the map showed a town, were mere scatterings of houses, a church, a lumber mill, clouds of sheep, another lumber mill, a collection of commercial buildings, a food mart, a Laundromat, a Chrysler-Dodge dealers.h.i.+p. This was not a wealthy county, and there was the occasional shack, the rusted-out frame of a swing set, the boarded-up store, but still it was undeniably beautiful.

And then the valley widened and the road rose from the tumbling river and we saw a wooden frame, studded with the signs of the Lions Club, of the Kiwanis Club, of the Chamber of Commerce and the VFW and the various and sundry churches. On the frame, beneath the signs, the following words were affixed: WELCOME TO PIERCE, POPULATION 649. 649.

H.I don't want you to be thinking to all the c.r.a.p that Tina she spits out. She's just that way, always stirring up the pot once it stops a boiling. I like you, sure, like I like a lot of others, but I don't think you're like special or nothing, not like she says. Everyone knows that you're with Grady and he's with you and I don't want you thinking nothing like what Tina says. I like hanging out with you, is all. It's bad enough with Grady always on my a.s.s. I don't be needing you to get all weirded out too or anything. You looked at me yesterday like I was some alien from Mars or something and that's why I'm writing this.I maybe have a hard time talking about things. I find it easier sometimes to say what I feel when I'm alone with my mom's old L. C. Smith. Face to face it's harder, it's like my tongue twists in on itself and I get all stupid. I'm not the sharpest spade, I know, as Mr. Perrine makes sure to tell me in front of everyone, but I'm not as dumb as I sound when I talk which is why I'm writing this instead of talking to you at school or on the phone or something.That time in the quarry I wasn't leaving cause I was sad or anything. I was just tired, I don't know. And I feel weird when everyone starts lighting up. I know you say it's cool that I don't and no one says they mind but I feel weird. It's like suddenly everyone's at a party that I'm not invited to. And when everyone starts to laughing I don't like that I don't see nothing funny. I feel less alone sometimes when I'm alone, if you know what I mean. That's why I up and left. And Grady saying all them things and making jokes about my leaving, that's all right. I know Grady, he's just like that, but I only wanted to be alone. Which is why when I first saw that you were following me maybe I wasn't so nice and all. But I was glad finally that you did.I didn't know someone else felt as different and out of place as I do, though I have a hard time thinking you really do. I mean you're so pretty and you're with Grady and it's like you fit in more than anyone. But I guess that goes to show. Some people think because I play ball I'm all this way or that way but I'm not any way like that, I'm my own way, which is, I guess, the problem.Anyway, thanks for walking and for asking about Leon. I didn't say much, I guess there's not much to say, but it still was nice. It's like now that he's dead and with what happened and all it seems now no one wants to talk nothing about him. Maybe they're trying to make it easier on me, I don't know, but in a way it just makes it worse. Like he's some huge secret when all he was was a kid. I miss him every day, but if I mention him now my dad just yells at me to put it behind me and move on. Move on to where, I want to ask. Where the h.e.l.l am I going? He was my best friend, more I guess, and I feel real lost still without him even though it's been already two years.So that's all I wanted to say. I don't want you acting all weird around me. I'm hoping we can just be friends and hang out a little and maybe you'll watch me play. That would be something nice.J.

From the moment of Hailey's murder I had a.s.sumed that Guy, somehow, was at the heart of the story leading to her death. He was my contact in, my secret rival, the third point of our triangle of betrayal, and so I couldn't conceive of his somehow not being to blame for her murder. But after hearing Guy's story I suddenly had a different sense of it all. Guy was a p.a.w.n, so was I, and the master strategist was Hailey herself.

So my focus now was where it should have been from the start, on Hailey. The answer to her death lay somewhere in her life, and she had given me a map to its most significant moments. In her safe-deposit box she herself had chosen what I would see. The photographs and doc.u.ments that she had left for me would be my lever to pry open her past. And included among them were the letters, mash notes typed or scribbled by a boy long dead, words that bristled still with raw emotion.

H.I know you're mad at me and you got good reason and so I got nothing to say but I'm sorry. I'm sorry for everything. I don't know what got into me. It was for a time like the only place I felt free was with you or on the ball field and now, after the fight and the suspension, there ain't no place left. My dad he blames you for everything and tells me I'm not to see you no more and I tell him to go to h.e.l.l and that also is on the razor's edge of blows. So it all keeps getting worse and worse and I don't know why. We're just friends, just friends, why can't everyone see that? What's going on between you and Grady got nothing to do with me and what happened between Grady and me got nothing to do with you neither. We've been cruising toward this for years, Grady and me, only so many times you can hear yourself being called mountain trash without doing something about it. This has been coming since our boyhoods, you was just his excuse.But I'm not here writing to apologize about Grady. It's the other thing, the thing that got you p.i.s.sed at me in the first place. I can't be like you want me to be, I can't be all chatty and confessional, it's not in me. I know plenty of folk who go around telling their life's story to anyone who happens by but I've got no urge to puke my guts out on anybody's front porch.We all got a secret. I know you got yours, I can feel it, large and dark, but I got mine too. When I think about what I keep hidden it's so large it dwarfs me. Whatever you see on the outside is just some sort of a lie, it's the insides that matter and that's got to stay inside. Sometimes the secret is so heavy I feel about to be crushed, but it's never hard keeping it. I might as easily just rip out my insides and let you take a look as to start blatting about like a sheep. It's me, it's what I am, I wouldn't want to survive without it but like a kidney it ain't nothing I want to be showing around neither. I don't want you getting p.i.s.sed at me but it won't do me no good talking about it, that won't change a thing. It's there and I live with it every day, and there's nothing to be done. So when you say I'm not communicating well there it is. I ain't. And if that's gonna keep you mad at me, so be it.I don't know when I'll be back in school. Coach wants me back out there soon as he can the way Delmore's been booting the ball around short but it's not up to him. Grady's due out of the hospital in a few days and Chief Edmonds says I have to wait until he's out to see if they are pressing charges. They won't let me back in school until then so if I'm gonna see you before I'm going to have to sneak out but I'm willing if you are.Just take a little pity on me and don't ask too many questions cause right now things are such a mess I don't know what I'm going to do and I don't know how I'm going to do what I need to do if you stay mad at me.J.

Along with the letters in the box were the photographs, heartrending because I knew how it all turned out, how but not why. There was a picture of two girls, young girls, just kids, arm in arm, blond in their s.h.i.+fts, frowning both. I could see her face in the picture, Hailey's face, the cheekbones not yet p.r.o.nounced, the eyebrows not yet arched, the lips not the full buds they would become, but there it was, her sad face-twice. I knew she had a sister, I never knew she had a twin. Roylynn and Hailey.

I didn't glimpse the pictures once and quickly, like moving through a friend's photo alb.u.m. Instead I thumbed through them often, obsessively, time and time again. It was a strange sensation, this examining of the photographs, unseemly in a way, like pawing through the dresser drawers of some other family's memories. But they were a part of my route into her past. Roylynn had stayed in West Virgina and Hailey had left, Roylynn was still alive and Hailey was dead. How had that happened? They had shared each other's features, but what else, what history? I wondered if the pictures would provide a clue. I stacked them and restacked them, I shuffled them randomly and went through them again, trying to find, in the differing orders, a sense behind them, trying to divine the story.

Here was one, the nuclear family, twin girls, still just babies with their mother and their father, their poor doomed father, short, swarthy, his forearms thick and meaty. What little girl wouldn't feel safe in those forearms? They were smiling, the parents, in that picture, and the babies had that satisfied contempt on their shapeless faces that marked them as happy. This was the "before" picture. Another, burned into my memory, Hailey dead and b.l.o.o.d.y on the mattress thirty years later, was the"after."

A photograph of the father, alone now, in a uniform of some sort with a peaked cap, his truck driver's uniform. Smiling, c.o.c.ky, gladiator of the road, master of his destiny, hero of country-and-western song, off to haul his cargo of lumber until a load s.h.i.+fted and a brace failed to hold and he was gone.

Where was the sense in the order?

I s.h.i.+fted them around, and now the father was replaced by another. It was a picture of one of the girls holding the hand of a man, not the father, a tall, rawboned man with a grizzled beard. Oh, I recognized him, yes I did. Lawrence Cutlip, younger and harder, not a man to be messed with for certain, but there, holding on to that girl when she needed him most. Who was the girl, Roylynn or Hailey? I couldn't tell, but there she stood, the girl in the picture, her father gone, squeezing, as if for dear life, the hand of the man who now was her sole protection against an oblivious world.

H.I am flying, I am floating through the air and I don't never want to come down. Never. I always thought when it came it would be heavy, leaden, that it would clutch me at the throat like it did before, but this is like drinking freedom pure. I am soaring, held high by something so magical it has no name. The moment we left apart I ran home, to my room, to my desk, so I could write all the things I found it impossible to say in the moment.I know I'm still in a world of trouble but that don't have grip on me no more. When you hit a ball solid on the meat of the bat there is an instant when the whole force flows though you like an easy wave. It's why I love the game so, the feel of that easy wave that flows through you for the instant it takes to finish the swing and send the ball a flying. But now I feel like I am riding that wave, surfing it like a Beach Boy's song all sweet and sure. All I can think about is you, your smile, your soft hands, the red of your lips, the silver tang of electricity I tasted in your mouth. How did this happen, I keep asking myself, how? One moment we're in the quarry, talking about something that happened in the past, huddling on the rock, talking as friends, leaning close, our knees b.u.t.ting up one against the other like friends, talking in near whispers, and the next moment I am overcome with something so powerful that it starts me to shaking and has me shaking still. There was a switch and I don't know how it turned or why but suddenly everything changed and the world was lit with a light I didn't know existed and I am flying. I don't know how it happened, I only know I have never been happy before, never, not like this, no, never.I was wrong when I said there was no use talking. I can't find the words to say what it felt like to finally trust someone enough to tell it all to, to tell it all and to see a reaction so different than ever I expected. There was no disgust or hate or even pity, you was just listening and nodding like, yeah, okay, and then what. You weren't sitting there like a judge, you were there like a friend and that meant so much even before the wave hit. And I was wrong when I said I was nothing but the secret because this is so strong, what I'm feeling now, and so outside what I had ever felt before that it makes me doubt whether it was so dark a secret in the first place. Maybe it was like you said, maybe we was young and feeling things we didn't understand and ended up doing things that meant nothing except that we loved each other in the best way. Maybe like you said it's common, it happens, and then you move on. And maybe we would have if Leon hadn't gotten so scared like he did and then played that game with the train that he knew he'd lose. Or maybe it wasn't just the talking that cured me, maybe you chased it out too, chased it with your kiss, like an angel chasing out something evil in my soul.Whatever it is I am ready to face what comes next. I know Grady's been talking about me, talking out of that wired jaw, and so he'll try something. I know that I even so much as cough in cla.s.s I'll be out on my ear. I know that the only reason I'm back on the team is because I was. .h.i.tting .467 and that if my average drops or I start fumbling at short coach will bench my a.s.s and smile when he does it. I know all that, but I'm not afraid, I'm excited. I can't wait. I can't wait to go to sleep tonight so I can wake up tomorrow and see your face and then after school and after practice run to the quarry so I can cover you in kisses till it's dark and we have to go home and then do it all again the day after and then again and then again.J.

Another photograph. The two girls again, older now, young, good-looking girls, high school girls.

Is there is something primordial in the attraction of high school girls for the male of the species? When we are younger, say, in junior high, they are the unavailable avatars of desire. What would Juliet have been in the Verona High School, a soph.o.m.ore? We can barely wait to grow older, to gain confidence, to take our turn with them. But when we ourselves are in high school, most of us find, to our shock, that the years did not bring the confidence or skills we expected to have come as our due. They are there, waiting for us, the high school girls, and yet we fumble our way into disaster after disaster and leave them unsatisfied and confused and looking for college boys. And then later, when we are old enough so that our skills and confidence have caught up with our desires, the high school girls are once again unavailable. We give them their own slang, jailbait, and prudently cross them off the list of possibilities. But does the desire ever die? Do we ever see a pretty high school girl walk by with her pleated skirt and young high b.r.e.a.s.t.s and not sigh in disappointment?

And now here, in the photograph, we have the o.r.g.a.s.mic fantasy of every red-blooded heteros.e.xual male on the planet earth: two great-looking high school girls who happen to be twins. But instead of desire, this picture provoked curiosity in me. One was dressed prim and proper, books held in front of her body like a s.h.i.+eld, smiling shyly. The other stared straight at the camera, arms on hips, hip c.o.c.ked, leaning slightly forward, defiantly, but without a smile. It was a sad defiance. Look at what I am, it said, look at what I have become. Oh, yes, two girls, twins, but now I could tell them apart. I knew nothing about Roylynn, but this girl, this girl staring with sad defiance at the camera, this girl was my Hailey. And so the question: Why the difference? What had come into their lives and pressed them in so very different ways?

One other picture grips at me. A boy in a uniform, a baseball uniform. He's on one knee, arms leaning on his bat, posing like a major leaguer. Solid, handsome, either serious or sad, it's hard to tell in the old black-and-white. Jesse Sterrett, I presume.

In the letters it was clear what had developed between Jesse Sterrett and Hailey Prouix, something strong and indelible, pa.s.sionate enough to have its great joys and great troubles. On a fragment of paper, a ripped portion of envelope, written in a hand overcome with some long-vanished remorse, he pleaded with her from the bottom of his soul.

It's killing me ever day, ever d.a.m.n day that we're not together. My heart weeps in the wanting. I'm less than a man without you, a carca.s.s already near dead, dying of lost love. You done this to me, you stole my world like a thief. Don't listen to what they are saying, it's nothing but lies, lies and d.a.m.n lies. I'm sorry for what I done but I never had no choice, I only done what I had to. Never a love been so fierce or fearsome, never has it cost so high or been worth the entire world. It'll kill me, it will, and d.a.m.n soon. I'm dying for d.a.m.n sure without you. Yes, I surely am.

The love was fierce and fearsome, seemingly worth every sacrifice, and I hoped so, because I knew how it ended, knew where Jesse Sterrett breathed his last breath and where he died. But why? What secrets had torn them apart? Jesse had a secret, something between him and Leon, his friend, something that dragged at Jesse's soul and drove Leon possibly to his death. It wasn't too hard to figure it out, two boys, two best friends, down by the tracks, the changes happening to their bodies, to their thoughts, waking up with strange sensations, two boys experimenting. Oh, it wasn't too hard to figure it out, Jesse's dark secret that wasn't so dark, his strange encounter that was less strange than he could ever have imagined. But Jesse also mentioned Hailey's own secret, large and dark. What was that, and how did that turn her in the direction of her life? Were the two deaths two decades apart linked in any way? Could learning the truths behind that death shed any light upon Hailey's? And why had Hailey, with a ragged line of pencil, slashed a brutal zig-zag-zig through the last of of Jesse Sterrett's letters, as if she were a deranged Zorro trying to deface the words?

H.I am so angry I could strangle a porcupine, and scared too, so scared, impossibly scared. I love you so much, want you so much, but now I have learned that secret you've been hiding, my anger burns least as bright as the love.I don't know what to do, but I got to do something and there is only two answers that I can see. One is to stay and fight. Take my word on this, if I do stay there is no way it won't turn to blood. My rage is so murderous now I couldn't stop with one blow here or there. Remember how I was with Grady on the ground that time, how I couldn't stop myself from slamming his grinning face, how the only reason I didn't kill his a.s.s was that you stopped me? The way I feel now is ten times worse, twenty times, a hundred, and nothing, no power, not even what I feel for you will stop me. I'll kill him, I will, and they'll lock up my a.s.s even though the b.a.s.t.a.r.d had it coming, and that would be fine by me because I would have done right by you which is all I care about.But there is another answer, to run, to leave, to up and get the h.e.l.l out of this town, this state. I know we got nothing, you and me, nothing but the burden of our pasts, but we can make a go of it. What we feel one for the other will get us through. The scouts have been sniffing. I'll be up in the next draft and till then I can play semipro somewhere or in some unaffiliated pro league where they'll sign anyone, no questions asked. I'll talk my way into a tryout and smack the apple all over the yard and they'll sign me, I know they'll sign me. And if they find us and come after us we'll go down to Mexico and change our names and I'll play down there. They got leagues down there that play all year. And when I'm seasoned enough I'll make the bigs, I know it, and we'll be so rich we'll have a swimming pool the size of this entire county.All I'm asking is that you trust me. All I'm asking is that you put your faith in my feelings for you. I got a truck from my cousin Ned, a beat-up old thing but it runs, and I've packed what I need and I'm ready to go. But I ain't going without you.I'll be at the quarry tonight, I'll be waiting for you. If you trust me enough to come I'll dedicate my every waking hour of the rest of my life to making you happy, I will. I swear. But if you don't come, if you won't run away with me, then I'll do it the other way. I'll do what I need to do to protect you and whatever consequences that come my way I'll bear gladly because I'll be bearing them for you. Tonight, I'll be waiting. Tonight.J.

30.

PIERCE, WEST VIRGINIA, was a county seat, and to prove it, on a hill smack in the center, they had set the county courthouse, a blocky brown building with a single turret, built of sandstone quarried out of a ledge of rock at the far end of the town. To one side of the courthouse the city climbed the slope of the mountain, to the other it fell gently toward the river and then reached across to the far bank, where scattered houses sat in the shadow of another steep rise. The main street, imaginatively named Main Street, jogged around the courthouse. It was built up with brick buildings, squat and aged black, all pressed together along the narrow street as if real estate had once been a prized commodity in the county. The buildings had signs from the middle of the last century, stylized neon banners advertising gifts and flowers and the Courthouse Hotel, signs that hearkened back to a prosperous past. But Pierce didn't look prosperous now. It looked as if nothing had been built in fifty years, except for the modern and unpleasant Rite Aid that sat just before the turnoff. Something had slipped away from Pierce, some vitality. In its buildings and slumped posture you could sense the vaguely disturbing notion that Pierce was at the heart of an American dream that had suddenly s.h.i.+fted. was a county seat, and to prove it, on a hill smack in the center, they had set the county courthouse, a blocky brown building with a single turret, built of sandstone quarried out of a ledge of rock at the far end of the town. To one side of the courthouse the city climbed the slope of the mountain, to the other it fell gently toward the river and then reached across to the far bank, where scattered houses sat in the shadow of another steep rise. The main street, imaginatively named Main Street, jogged around the courthouse. It was built up with brick buildings, squat and aged black, all pressed together along the narrow street as if real estate had once been a prized commodity in the county. The buildings had signs from the middle of the last century, stylized neon banners advertising gifts and flowers and the Courthouse Hotel, signs that hearkened back to a prosperous past. But Pierce didn't look prosperous now. It looked as if nothing had been built in fifty years, except for the modern and unpleasant Rite Aid that sat just before the turnoff. Something had slipped away from Pierce, some vitality. In its buildings and slumped posture you could sense the vaguely disturbing notion that Pierce was at the heart of an American dream that had suddenly s.h.i.+fted.

We drove around a bit to get our bearings and then took the Hailey Prouix tour of the city. Our first stop was the high school, stretching out on the banks of the river, home of the Fighting Wildcats. It was big for the town, too big, and the buses in the lot told us that children from all over the valley attended. This was where the likes of Hailey Prouix could mix with the wealthy Grady Pritchett as well as mountain trash like Jesse Sterrett.

Our second stop was up the hill from Main Street, a lovely little house painted white with a porch that wrapped around the front like a generous ribbon. The lawn was neatly trimmed, the flowers in the beds were blooming brightly, a swing set could be seen in the side yard. It was the all-American home, it even had a picket fence. The sign said THE LIPTONS THE LIPTONS, and it seemed as if the Liptons had lived there for generations, but that was an illusion. This was Hailey Prouix's girlhood home. I wondered how it smelled when she was young, whether the paint then was peeling, the lawn untrimmed, the beds brown and weed-ridden. I wondered what I could have seen through those windows had I been here twenty years before. But time had bleached that house clean of whatever then went on inside. Nothing to be learned here.

And, finally, nothing to be learned either at the quarry on the far edge of the town. I was directed to it by a kid at the Sunoco who eyed me suspiciously when I asked, as if it were a sacred place that I was intending to desecrate. I took a road that twisted up into the mountain and stopped at a turnoff the boy had described. There was a fence, and there were signs warning of dangers and signs prohibiting trespa.s.sing, and there was a gate wrapped with chains and fastened by a lock. But the lock was rusted, the signs defaced, the fence torn apart at certain edges. It didn't take a thing to slip through.

It was getting dark now, but we could see the contours of what had been left after the stone had been ripped from the earth. The walls formed a shoehorn-shaped canyon browned by age, with bushes and scrub trees growing in the cracks, weakening the stone as the plants fought for purchase. There was a wide ledge below us and a path that seemed to travel down to the ledge, a path that required grabbing hold of certain bushes and the roots of certain trees as you made your way down. The ledge was uneven, rough, and littered with beer cans and cigarette packs and graffiti. JK JK & &FS. CATS CATS RULE RULE.JOHN G.LOVES TINA R. I wondered if there was a GRADY LOVES HAILEY GRADY LOVES HAILEY or maybe a or maybe a HP HP & &JS, but I couldn't spot such from where we stood. And then, beneath the ledge, at the bottom part of the quarry, was a road that rolled out to the river, to take the mined stone to the trains. Between the great stone walls and the road was a reservoir of sorts that seemed to be filled deep with water. I could imagine it all, hanging on the ledge and swimming in the reservoir, a few beers, a little laughter, high dives and skinny-dipping, shrieks of abandon, a little tonguing under the cover of the night, or maybe something a little more than a little tonguing. It was almost enough to make me wish I were seventeen again. Almost. This was the lake, I supposed, that drew the local kids on hot summer nights. And this was the lake from where they dragged the body of Jesse Sterrett.

"So what's the agenda, mate?" said Skink as we stood over the edge and looked into the dark water.

"Go in town, ask some questions, find the truth about that boy's death."

"Sounds simple, it does. So simple, you'd have thought someone would have done it by now."

"You'd have thought."

"We just stop anyone on the street, or do you have a plan?"

"I have a plan."

"That's encouraging."

Pause.

"Don't you want to know what it is?" I asked.

"Not particularly."

"Not even curious."

"Only thing I'm curious about is why you brought me along."

"A lawyer always brings an investigator when he questions witnesses."

"That he does. But my guess, Vic, is you don't want me nowhere near that courtroom."

He was right, I didn't. As far as I knew, only Skink could connect me to Hailey Prouix, and that I couldn't allow. "Maybe not. Maybe I just like your company."

"I am charming, I am. But if I was a hundred and fifty dollars a day charming, I'd be in another line of work. You don't know what the h.e.l.l you're getting into, do you?"

"Nope."

"And you wanted to bring some muscle."

"Something like that."

"All right, then."

"Don't you want to know my plan?"

"Nah," he said, turning from the edge and heading back for the path up the hill. "Far as I'm concerned, you're chasing here after your own tail. I don't need no plan. I'll just sit back and watch the show."