In the doorway, the sheriff said, “What do you think?”
I waved him inside. “I think you and Mr. Jeffries are looking for the same thing.”
He snorted, lowering his head to fit the bill of his cap through the door.
“What?”
“Ah.” He sighed. “Nothing.”
“No, really. What?” I stood with crossed arms.
“Oh. Already, huh?”
“What are you trying to say?” I thought of Joshua’s pronouncement that Joe liked little boys. It was pure crap, the kind of thing boys say to cut someone down. Surely the sheriff wouldn’t be making juvenile jokes.
“It’s nothing. Nothing.” He wouldn’t look at me. “Joe Jeffries likes to compete. He always has, and he probably always will.” He shuffled the dirt floor with a boot heel and looked down at the line he’d scraped there. “I just mean that if there’s something new and shiny to have, Joe Jeffries will want to have it first.”
Now I saw the joke he was actually making. “New and shiny, huh?”
“Or elusive. You know. Hard to get.”
I turned back to the job at hand. “Will this ladder hold?”
“It did for the kids, so I imagine it will for us. If we go up one at a time.”
I put a foot on the lowest rung and put all my weight on it. When nothing creaked, I started the climb. At the top, I leaned over the side. “Do you smell smoke?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, grasping the ladder and making his way up. “That’s why we’re here. A little graffiti, Bob Banning don’t mind. A little fire? Well. He minds.”
“Or a big one.”
“Exactly. The place is a tinderbox looking for a match.” He reached the platform, rising from a crouch straight into the sloped ceiling of the barn. The top of his head slammed into a low rafter. He hissed in pain and flinched away, both hands to his head.
“You’re OK?”
“Not as OK as I was a minute ago. I think I ripped my hat.”
“You’ve got about a hundred of those, though.”
He took off the hat to show me the flap of fabric torn from in its crown. “Two,” he said, as though I had accused him of something. He patted gently at the back of his head and looked at his fingers.
“Bleeding?”
“I’ll live. So? What do you think?”
“Of the artistry?” I went to the wall and studied it. “What I said. You and Joe are looking for the same kids. Here’s some of their work. Three boys, probably between twelve and fourteen. The school isn’t that big, is it? Small town, small-town school?”
“It’s got more than three boys between the ages of twelve and fourteen. And I can’t force a confession,” he said.
I turned back toward the long wall. Some of the paint seemed dull. I studied a particular foul phrase for a second. It was a different author. “Some of this is older than the other stuff. It’s layered.”
“It’s an old hangout,” he said, gesturing toward a dark corner. In it, the remnants of squatting: a plaid blanket thrown over old newspapers, fast-food bags, and empty bottles of beer and cola. “Like I said, Bob’s not worried about the paint so much. So over the years . . .” He waved his hand over the tableau.
“But the fire—”
“Right. He thinks the last set of kids here might have had a campfire down below. There are signs of one just under the loft, pretty recent.”
I was back at the wall, walking the length of the loft until I found a prolific section in the most recent layer. The vandals had put down a fresh layer of white paint with a roller, and then unleashed themselves upon their canvas. “Advanced planning. Nice. Here’s your pro,” I said, one hand upon the section I was sure was Steve Ransey’s doing. His hand was as steady as any trained artist. In blue: his Mona Lisa, her monstrous breasts exposed.
“Your follower right next door.” I drew a pointed finger along the bottom of a large red SMITHIES SWALLOW. “Smith County rivals, I’m assuming. Classy. And here’s our clumsy fellow,” I added, letting my hand pause over another rendition of his favorite four-letter expletive, this time in green.
Keller had followed me along the wall. “What about that one?” He had his hands stuffed into his front pockets, gesturing with a nod to the wall beyond my shoulder.
I turned. I could have taken my time. I could have spent a few minutes drawing it out for him. But I realized the instant I saw the words that, as with most of what happened in and around his town, he must already know. “That. That is Joshua’s handwriting.”
He waited as I kneeled on the loft floor next to it. I traced the outline of a big black L with my finger.
“It’s dry,” he said.
“I know. It’s just been a long time. Since I saw . . . it’s not important.”
“It’s him, then. You’re sure?”
I sat back on my heels and took in the words. In black, unsteady letters:
LIAR GO TO HELL
“Absolutely sure.”
The sheriff stood behind me. “Just the four of them, you think?”
I nodded and bowed my head. I thought of the package of photos placed in my path, the requests that had brought me along to this spot. The sheriff was the shepherd, and I was the sheep. “You knew it was Joshua, didn’t you?”
“I thought . . . maybe.”
“You didn’t bring me out here to tell you for sure, though,” I said to the loft floor. Behind me, his boots shuffled in place. I wanted to fly past him, off the loft and through the door, down the lane, into my truck. Reverse, retreat. “You didn’t need me to tell you what you already knew.”
“I didn’t know. I had a feeling.”
“A vibration?”
“Why are you mad at me now? I didn’t put the can in your kid’s hand. I only brought you out here—”
“To make sure I knew how badly I was falling down? Sheriff Keller, I hardly need anyone to tell me.” I stood and faced him. He took a step backward. “I have the reminder living in my house, remember. When he’s not brightening up the walls of old barns, he’s finding new ways of making me feel like shit for giving birth to him.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Will you arrest him?”
“I brought you out here,” the sheriff said quietly, “so that you could talk to him yourself. Bob’s not interested in sending these kids to jail.”