Mark Spragg - Bone Fire

She turned and lurched toward the bedroom, holding a palm out against the wall to steady herself, and he heard a picture fall in the hallway.

“I’m Janey Schilling,” the girl said. “My sister said you wanted to talk to me.”

They walked out around her car and he held the door open to the cruiser and she ducked in.

“I’m sorry it’s so late,” she said. “I saw your lights on, so I thought it would be okay.”

“I’m glad you did.”

She turned in the seat and pressed a hand up against the wire mesh separating the front seat from the back, then looked at him.

“This your first ride in one of these?”

She nodded.

“Go on ahead and put your seatbelt on,” he said, backing them around and thinking about driving out north with the windows down, through the troughs of cool air holding tight against the sloughs along the roadway, thinking that might put her at ease. But he didn’t know if she was crazy, in which case it’d be better to have her in the office, even if it scared her a little.

“I almost didn’t come over tonight. I almost just went back to Denver.”

“You’re doing the right thing,” he said.

“Anyway, I don’t sleep hardly ever. I’m up all the time.”

“Yeah, that’s me too.”

When he crossed the bridge east of town, a night hatch came up out of the willows along the river and the insects pocked the windshield like puffs of ash.

“I guess the fish’ll be biting on those bugs tomorrow.” She tried to make it sound conversational, like they knew each other.

“I don’t know the first thing about fishing,” he said. “Sometimes I act like I do, but I don’t.”

“My stepdad took me.”

“I met him.”

“ Benton?” She turned to look at him in the dashlights. She was fingering the ring in her lip.

“Your mother too.”

“Kayla just said you called and were looking for me.”

He turned onto the main drag and hit the switch to spray washing fluid over the windshield, the wiperblades streaking the insects across the glass. When he noticed the car idling in front of the office, he pulled into the lot next to the drugstore.

They sat staring across the street at the building, a bleak institutional green except for the northwest corner, now weathered down to the gray cinderblock. A raised “R” had fallen off the sign above the door: ISHAWOOA CO. SHE IFF OFFICE. Then Starla reeled out onto the front stoop with two younger women, all hanging onto and shushing one another between bursts of laughter. They loaded into her ’93 Pontiac, and she backed out and drove off. Crane pulled across the street and parked and got out, but the girl didn’t even open her door.

“It’s all right,” he said. “We’re just going in here to talk. I’m not going to lock you up.”

She walked with him past the lighted cubicle where the night dispatch sat.

“Evening, Pearl,” he said.

She looked up from her crossword-puzzle book, pink plastic barrettes in her gray hair, her hands thin and liver-spotted. “I had nothing to do with it,” she said.

“Never entered my mind.” He continued down the hallway, the girl following just a step behind.

“Did you know those people?” She was whispering.

“The tall one works dispatch during the day.” He threw the keys on his desk and dropped into his chair. “Every once in a while she and her buddies get shitfaced and come in to fire up the Breathalyzer and see what they blow. Like a competition.”

“Nice.” She stepped to the window beside the door and put up the blind, staring at the jail cells across the hall. “I’m not tweaking anymore.” She turned, hugging herself. “I been in rehab. That’s where I was when you were trying to find me.”

“I’m going to need to know what happened to your boyfriend,” he said, motioning toward the chair across from him.

She sat down, sucking on her lip ring. “If I start crying you shouldn’t worry about it,” she said. “I cry more than I used to.”

“That won’t bother me.”

She was knitting and releasing her fingers now, over and over, and when she saw him watching she laid her hands out on her thighs. “I didn’t have to come up here. Nobody made me. I was doing real good in rehab.”

“I understand that.”

“It was an accident.”

“All right.”

She looked over her shoulder.

“You want me to close the door?”

She nodded, so he got up and swung the door shut and returned to his desk.

She started to cry quietly. “I swear I didn’t know Brady had a gun.” She was staring at the floor. “I don’t think JC knew either.”

“You mean Brady Croonquist?” He tried to keep his voice natural, as she had when talking about what bugs a fish might rise to. “Jake Croonquist’s son?”

“I don’t know what his daddy’s name is.” She pulled her sleeve down over her hand and wiped her eyes with it. “Brady owns a ranch. I know that.”

“Was it his trailer?”

“He said it was safe, that nobody could come on his place without permission. But his house isn’t anywhere near the trailer. It’s way back up the creek from there.”

“I know where it is.”

“I was only there once. At his house.”

She held her hands up over her eyes and started to sob, rocking out over her knees. He walked a box of Kleenex around to her, setting it on the floor beside her chair and sitting back against the desk.

“You’re saying Brady’s the one cooking the stuff?”

She blew her nose, holding the used tissue in her lap. “It was JC and me, but Brady showed us how.”

“He set you up?”

“Yeah, but for a long time Brady just bought whatever anybody stole. So they’d have money if they needed to get high. Like he’d buy stereos or guns or computers, whatever. He’s got a barn full. JC used to help him take loads of it up to Billings to sell. One time they drove a truckload down to Denver.” She blew her nose again. “Brady used to always say he didn’t make nothing but profit, then a couple months ago he said he might as well make all the profit. That’s when JC and me started cooking for him.”

“I can’t help you if you’re going to lie to me.”

“I’m not lying.” Her eyes sparked, and then she remembered where she was. She looked to make sure the door was still shut. “I swear I’m not.”

“And nobody else was out there?”

“Just JC and me, and when Brady drove up I even waved to him through the window. Then there was this explosion and JC was on the floor, on fire and screaming. It knocked me down too, but I didn’t catch fire.” She was crying hard again.

He walked back around his desk and sat down. “It counts for something that you came all the way up here,” he said. “You’re sure you weren’t the one with the gun?”

She was sniffling and shaking her head. She wiped at her eyes. “Brady’ll kill me if he finds out I told you.”

“Nobody’s going to find out.”

She pushed her hair away from her face. “I just came up for my stuff. When I left I didn’t take nothing, not my clothes or anything. I left it all with my girlfriend.” She was trembling. “I don’t know why we even done it,” she said. “Mostly they cook it over on the reservation.” She was standing now, and he stood up too. “I don’t mean the Indians. They don’t. It’s other people from someplace else, and they sell it to the Indians and everywhere off the reservation, and Brady could’ve just bought it from them.” She pointed to the jail cells through the window across the hallway. “Can I go in there?”

“If you want.”

He stood outside the bars while she went in and sat down on a cot, hugging herself again like she was cold.