Neil McMahon - Dead Silver

Of course, that crush was a long time ago. Renee was barely a teenager then.

I headed into the kitchen to clean up. It wasn't much of a job; she was a tidy housekeeper, and there were only the dinner dishes.

The more I learned about her and the circumstances surrounding the murders, the more I sympathized with her psychological quagmire. Now I was starting to see the heavy burden of guilt she must be carrying. She'd never had a chance to talk to her father about the event that had ruined his life. No doubt she'd harbored resentment and jealousy toward Astrid, the interloper who'd stolen him away, broken up their family and home-and was closer in age to Renee than to him. Then came the nightmarish crime itself, probably bringing the irrational fear that her anger was somehow to blame.

All that was seething beneath the surface, along with the tangible troubles crowding in on her. She was holding up a hell of a lot better than I would have.

As I finished up in the kitchen, drying the dishes and swabbing the counters, I was aware of the sound of the shower running upstairs. Then that ceased, and the old house was quiet.

Until I heard Renee's voice say, "Ohhhhh"-almost a groan, faint and far away but still conveying horror.

I went up the stairs three at a time and ran to her open bedroom door. She was wearing a bathrobe, her hair damp-backed up against a wall, arms drawn tight against her chest and fists clenched, staring at her open lingerie drawer.

Inside it was a dark bristly mass that looked loathsome even from fifteen feet away-a big pack rat, shot through the body.

I pulled the quilt off the bed and wrapped it around Renee, then held her for a minute, trying to calm her shivering and my rage. There was no doubt in my mind that this was the work of Ward Ackerman. I hadn't even thought about him still having a key to this place, but of course he would. Maybe he'd killed the rat somewhere else, maybe in the woods right here; after living in this house for years, he'd know where their dens were. In fact, he was probably on a first-name basis with them.

The only time he could have done it was while we were in Phosphor. I wondered if he'd just been driving around and realized we were gone, or if he'd been watching more actively. The Ackerman clan certainly might own an SUV like I'd seen up on the overlook earlier today.

Or maybe it was Boone who was watching.

The corpse had leaked blood and fluids on some of the garments; others might have been salvageable.

"You want to keep any of this?" I said.

"I-couldn't."

That was what I'd figured.

I carried the drawer downstairs, wrapped the rat and garments in a plastic trash bag, and took that out to the garbage cans. Then I just stood there, with my gaze searching the dark, suddenly hostile surroundings.

I had to let the sheriffs handle Ward, and stay out of it myself. I had to.

Back in the kitchen, I scrubbed the drawer out thoroughly with a Brillo pad and dried it with paper towels, making sure there wasn't so much as a hair left from the rodent's hide. I took it back upstairs and fitted it in place.

Renee watched me, sitting on the edge of the bed still huddled in the quilt. It struck me that she had that solemn expression I remembered from when she was a little girl.

"Will you hold me again, just for a minute?" she said.

I was more than happy to.

But the minute stretched longer, and when the holding turned into shy kissing and then went on from there, I swear it wasn't entirely my doing.

I was late for work at the Split Rock Lodge next morning. When I got there, Madbird was sitting on the steps of the motel cabin we were currently remodeling. That was not at all like him. His style was to hit the job running, and if you wanted to talk to him, you ran with him.

He scrutinized me critically. "You look like you ain't slept much."

"I never sleep good on Sunday nights."

"This is Tuesday." He watched me for a few more seconds, then jerked his thumb toward the cabin's interior. "We got a problem."

I exhaled. I didn't want a problem. I didn't want to be there. I'd been reluctant to leave Renee, but she'd gently shooed me out, reminding me that she had to go shop for underwear and didn't need my help on that. It was clear that she wanted some time alone. Even so, I had only come to work to tell Madbird I was going to take off again.

When I walked inside the cabin, that jerked me down to reality fast. All of our most expensive power tools-compound miter and table saws, his Hole-Hawg and our cordless drills, compressor and nail guns-were gone.

I came back out and sat down heavily beside him. We both knew what most likely had happened. We'd left the place locked and there were no signs of a break-in, but at Split Rock, anybody could have a key to anything. We probably wouldn't have to look far for the perp.

"Let's see what we can find out," Madbird finally said. We walked across the parking lot to the main lodge. The residents here didn't tend to get active until later in the day, and the place looked like a ghost town, with nothing moving across the vista but last year's dead underbrush sticking up through the melting snow and swaying in the fresh breeze. A couple dozen vehicles were scattered around, most of them in perilous condition and many looking like they'd never move again.

I spotted Darcy's car among them, parked around the side of the lodge. So she was here working. I wondered if Madbird had seen her arrive or if he'd talked to her, but he didn't say anything.

Split Rock's owner, Pam Bryce, was in the kitchen setting up the lunch menu. Pam was a pretty earth mother with a big heart; she was pushing fifty but possessed an enduring youthfulness, with hennaed hair in a Little Orphan Annie mop, big hoop earrings, and enough bracelets for a gypsy caravan.

Her goal in operating the place wasn't profit, but to provide a home for fifteen or twenty lost souls who had nowhere else to go and few skills for surviving in straight society-drunks and small-time dopers, old hippies, a couple of vets who were disabled physically or mentally, and other such castaways. They helped out here and there and paid Pam what they could, and while there was incessant squabbling, everybody got by.

The operation had been tottering along for years, but finally there were so many plumbing and electrical malfunctions that something had to be done. Pam, saddled with mountains of unpaid back rent and bar tabs, was in no position to hire a mainstream contractor. She'd asked Madbird and me for advice. We didn't have much else going on then and it would be a decent way to get through the winter. So we'd offered to do it for rock-bottom wages-straight time and materials, cash under the table. Pam could manage that, although our payday usually came late. We didn't like lowballing other contractors, but the alternative was for her to lose the place, which would have meant her clientele being pushed out into a world where they couldn't cope.

When she saw us come in, she took on a sassy look and put her hands on her hips. The bracelets tinkled like mini-wind chimes.

"I told you guys, one at a time," she said.

Madbird grinned. "Careful what you wish for."

"What fun would that be?"

"Good point." He lifted a coffeepot off its burner, poured two cups, and shoved one at me. "Anybody around here get rich in the last couple days?"

Pam's face turned serious. "Uh-oh."

"A bunch of our stuff's gone. We ain't out to bust anybody's balls, we just need it back."

She sighed. "Artie drank in the bar until late last night, and bought two cases of beer when he left. I'd had him cut off because of his tab, but this time he paid cash."

That synched in precisely with the scenario. Artie Thewlis was a longtime Split Rock resident who more or less redefined the term "loser"-a shifty little guy who ran endless petty schemes to buy, sell, or swap stuff that he hauled around in his beater pickup truck. As often as not, the deals fell through completely or segued into something else that would.