Daniel looked up.
‘You don’t need to be scared about falling asleep. I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere. I’ll stay on this couch until morning if you want me to, except when I got to go pee-pee, because we don’t want to be sitting on no pee-pee couch, do we?’
Daniel didn’t crack a smile. Usually even the mention of someone else’s toilet habits was enough to make him bust a gut. Daniel’s brow furrowed, and he asked his grandfather a question.
‘Why don’t I look like Mom?’
Owen assembled his features into his best poker face.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘What I said. Why don’t I look like Mom? Her hair is real light, and mine is dark.’
But it was more than that, Owen knew. The boy didn’t yet have the vocabulary to express the complexity of his feelings.
‘Because the two of you are just different, is all,’ said Owen. ‘Could be you have more of your father in your appearance.’
‘But you said you’d never met my dad.’
‘I’m guessing. That’s how these things sometimes are. Me, I always looked more like my father than my mother. If I’d taken after my mother, I’d have been prettier.’
Again, no smile.
‘Why doesn’t Mom ever talk about my dad?’
Where was this coming from?
‘It makes her sad.’
‘Why?’
‘It just does.’
‘Because he died?’
‘Yes. Because he died.’
Daniel’s gaze shifted to the window, and the woods beyond.
‘Can someone have two mommies?’
Good Lord.
‘Eh, I guess. Your friend Dina at school, she has two moms. Her daddy remarried, and Dina goes to stay with him and his new wife twice a month. Dina gets on okay with her stepmom, right?’
Daniel nodded.
‘So she’s a second mom, in a way. Is that what you mean?’
This time, Daniel shook his head.
‘What if your mom dies?’ he asked. ‘What if your mom dies and you go to live with another mom?’
Owen experienced a sense of constriction in his chest. If his left arm had gone numb and he’d keeled over from a heart attack, it wouldn’t have surprised him.
‘What about it?’
‘Is the dead mom still your mom?’
Owen was in alien territory now, lost in the boonies. There was no right answer here. He could only be honest.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She’d still be your mom.’
Daniel’s chin trembled, and Owen gathered the boy to him and held him close as he started to sob.
‘But which one is real?’ Daniel cried. ‘Which one is real?’
92
Days, even weeks, might have gone by before the remains of Garrison Pryor were discovered had the heat alarm in his kitchen not malfunctioned, causing it to beep incessantly, disturbing Pryor’s neighbors on either side and necessitating a visit from the super. Now a cadre of detectives and federal agents were staring down at what was left of Pryor’s body, along with the various pieces that had been excised from it and placed in the bathroom sink.
‘Someone really didn’t like him,’ said one of the agents.
‘There wasn’t much of him to like,’ came the reply.
‘There’s less now.’
They heard movement behind them, and turned to see SAC Edgar Ross of the New York field office standing in the doorway. While Boston was involved in the Pryor investigation, the main impetus was coming from D.C. and New York, and from Ross in particular. He didn’t look as though he appreciated the agents’ humor, but he left it to his expression to communicate his displeasure. Finally, after an awkward minute of contemplation, he departed.
‘How the fuck did he get up here so fast?’ said the first agent.
His colleague shrugged. ‘They say he has a place over in Cambridge.’
‘On a federal salary?’
‘You don’t know? Ross comes from money. He’s not hurting. Shit, he’s even a member of one of those fancy clubs …’
93
Connie White deposited into her bank account half the money given to her by Giller, spent some on wool at the local craft shop, and the remainder at Marshalls. Ordinarily she’d have saved a little, just in case, but she’d registered the look on Giller’s face when she told him about Holly Weaver’s boy: the Weaver name meant something to him, which guaranteed he’d be back with more money. White had no concerns that Giller might try to screw her over. He might not have been averse to negotiation – no businessman was – but she knew from asking around that Giller kept his word once a deal was made. To do otherwise wouldn’t have been good for his reputation as an honest broker.
White pulled up outside her trailer, expecting to see Steeler emerge from his kennel, but there was no sign of the dog. Steeler was familiar with the sound of her car, and could sometimes be as lazy as sin, but he always made an appearance to greet her. She could see his chain snaking into the kennel. It was odd, but she wasn’t alarmed.
‘Steeler?’
A bark came in response, not from the kennel but from inside the trailer. Maybe Eddy, her brother, had dropped by and allowed Steeler to go in with him – she’d been asking Eddy for weeks to take a look at the seal around the oven – although he wasn’t supposed to let Steeler enter the trailer because the dog was crazy for yarn and liked nothing better than to tear apart a ball of it with tooth and claw. But Eddy was fond of Steeler, and the dog knew it.
‘Shit, Eddy,’ she said, as she opened the door and stepped inside. ‘I’ve told you before about—’
An unfamiliar woman was sitting at the table, Steeler beside her, his front legs on her lap, his tail wagging. Steeler loved his mistress, and liked her brother a lot, but that had always appeared to be the limit of his affection for human beings.
Until now.
The woman was wearing a blue plastic skullcap, the hair beneath smeared tight against it. She had the skin of a drowning victim and the eyes of a doll. Then White was no longer looking at the intruder, or at Steeler, but at the gun that appeared from behind the dog’s back, the threat made more real by the suppressor on the muzzle. White had seen enough movies to know that nobody put a suppressor on a gun that wasn’t going to be used.
‘You have a nice dog,’ said the woman.
White tried to run, and Mors shot her in the back.
94
Leila Patton lived on a street of identical single-story houses in a development that probably dated from the seventies. Most of the homes were in good condition, although the Pattons’ bore indicators of neglect suggestive of a dearth of time, money, or both. Parker pulled into the drive and got out of his car. He waited, as requested, for Patton to go inside first and make sure her mom was okay. Ten minutes went by, during which nothing stirred on the road beyond a single black cat with a dead bird in its teeth, before Parker heard the sound of a couple of windows opening at the front of the house, and Patton waved at him to enter.
Although he did not comment on it, Parker could tell why she had opened the windows as soon as he reached the door. The house smelled of long-term illness, of the slow failure of the body and the steps taken to ease it. Parker heard the sound of a television from somewhere at the back of the house. A woman coughed, then was quiet.
Patton was waiting for him in the living room. It was tidy in the way of rooms that are rarely used. Perhaps it was his knowledge of the family’s circumstances that colored his perceptions, but Parker thought it felt like a space awaiting mourners. The only incongruous detail was the piano in one corner. Parker didn’t know much about pianos, but the instrument was clean and free of dust, and the surrounding carpet bore the marks of repeated repositioning of the piano stool, which suggested it wasn’t just a decorative feature.
‘Do you want something to drink?’ Patton asked. ‘I was going to make green tea.’