“Of course it’s my name, it’s just a joke I like to tell because so many people don’t. I’ve always loved it, but then, I got it from my grandmother, and I always loved her—and I figured any man who didn’t like my name wasn’t worth chasing anyway, no matter how good he looked in his uniform.” She laughed again and looked at me. “And you, young man, what’s your name?”
“David,” I said, sticking to the same fake name I’d used the night before. I watched the woman in awe, wondering how Marci had managed to pick exactly the right person to talk to: she was kind, she was accepting or somehow ignorant of how filthy we were, and with the last few churchgoers streaming into the building, we were practically alone. If Ingrid was willing to talk, we could get all kinds of information out of her without raising any alarms or red flags.
“Like I said before,” said Marci, “we’re new here and we don’t know anyone. Do you mind if we sit with you at church today?”
“No,” I said, “we can’t—”
“He’s a little embarrassed that we haven’t had a chance to clean up,” said Marci, shushing me with a finger on my lips. I backed away from the contact but stayed silent. “Normally we’d never go to church without dressing up—he looks so handsome in a shirt and tie—but I think if we were sitting with someone nice, it might help us feel a little less self-conscious.”
“Oh, for crying out loud,” said Ingrid, “is that all you’re worried about? Half the boys in there can’t be bothered to cut their hair, let alone comb it. You’ll be fine.” She grabbed Marci’s arm and started walking toward the door. “Stick with me, and if anyone starts anything, I’ll fight them off with a cane.”
“You don’t have a cane,” said Marci, looking back at the car. “Should we go back and get it?”
“Oh, I don’t use a cane,” said Ingrid. “But we’re going to sit next to Beth and hers has a great big handle on the end. It fell on my foot once and I limped all day.”
“We can’t go inside,” I said, as firmly as possible. “We have a dog.”
“So does Pastor Nash,” said Ingrid. “Come on!”
I clenched my teeth, following them with Boy Dog at my heels. This was stupid—this was reckless and dangerous and completely unnecessary. We could have asked all the questions we needed right there in the parking lot, then disappeared into a back street and never seen Ingrid again. Why expose ourselves like this? Ingrid walked to a bench near the back, where a skinny, wrinkled woman with a blue dress and a matching hat sat. There was even a flower on it. She had a cane, so I assumed this was Beth; she moved it for us and Ingrid sat down, pulling Marci with her. I sat on the end of the pew, shrugging off my backpack, and Boy Dog flopped gratefully to the floor.
I leaned close to Marci and whispered: “What are you doing?”
“We’re going to be in Dillon for a while, right? I’m establishing connections.”
“They don’t want to connect with us,” I said. “We’re dirty and weird and we’re here to kill someone.” I said the last part so softly even I could barely hear it. “Don’t think I haven’t tried churches before—you ask them for information, and they give it because they’re polite, but then they call their friends, and their friends call their friends, and soon everyone is going to know about the creepy vagrants slinking around town.”
The man in the pew in front of us turned and glared; the pastor was droning on in the front of the room. I lowered my voice again, making sure absolutely no one could understand a word we were saying. “Getting shunned is a best-case scenario now—worst case: someone files a report or looks us up on a missing-persons database.”