Muriel Gray - Furnace

‘Yeah. The once.’

‘So that’s all I’m askin’. Like what next?’

‘It’s different each time. Has to be.’

Harry looked at his hands. ‘Delivery’s the same.’

Bernard pulled the last of the overall from his foot and turned to look at his companion with a sigh. ‘She doin’ well, huh?’

Harry blinked at him.

‘Huh?’

‘That daughter of yours. The one you got in that fancy twenty-thousand-dollar-a-term college up in New Hampshire.’

‘Yeah. She’s doin’ fine.’

Bernard waited a beat, his eyes never leaving Harry’s, then nodded. ‘Mighty glad to hear that. Can we get back to the sawmill now? Them backs ain’t gonna stack themselves.’

While Harry looked at the floor and cleared his throat, Bernard crumpled up the overall and threw it in the back seat beside the other one. The blood would come off in the wash. It had stained the green cross and half the word ‘paramedic’, but it would be fine with some rub-on detergent before the rinse cycle.

And anyway, they wouldn’t need them again for a long time. They were woodsmen. They had their own work-wear.

Pace helped Josh into the passenger seat as though he were an elderly female relative visiting for Thanksgiving, then climbed breathily into the driver’s seat and drove off slowly at policeman’s speed. Josh looked across at him, waiting for an explanation. Pace kept his eyes forward.

‘How were you feeling before the accident? Just when you thought you saw the woman.’

Josh’s temples throbbed. He put a hand to his head. How had he been feeling? He had been feeling guilty, sad, screwed up and crazy without sleep. That’s how. So crazy he even thought he might have invented the woman to chastise himself for driving away from his problems. Remember, Josh? Remember? Oh, he remembered all right, and he wrestled with the truth of it before answering.

‘I felt fine. Hungry. That’s all. I needed something to eat.’

What else could he have told this man? That he had fallen asleep at the traffic lights, then woken thinking about how his girlfriend was going to kill his baby? Just seconds before he killed someone else’s?

Pace nodded as though that was what he wanted to hear, and steered the car carefully into a wide tree-lined avenue. Josh looked away in shame and turned his attention to their destination. If Furnace’s suburbs had been impressive then this was even more so. They had arrived in the land of the seriously rich. The houses here were set far back from the road, and the maturity of the gardens, ringed with ancient oaks and high rhododendrons, told the story that they’d been here a long time. The same uncomfortable alienation that had introduced him to this town was returning. He turned back to Pace.

‘What’s the deal with this town? Where’s the money coming from?’

Pace raised an eyebrow as if the question was not only irrelevant but also impertinent. He shrugged. ‘Same as anywhere. Rich folks here got old money, poorer folks do what poor folks do. Work.’

Josh shook his head, undeterred by this oblique answer. ‘No, I mean what’s the bottom line? Farming? Mining? What?’

Pace looked like he was thinking hard. ‘Well, I guess that’s a good question. I reckon mostly it’s land and timber, but we got a few people here deal mostly in money, know what I mean? Like they don’t make nothing, they just sit on the phone or the fax and move money around the world. Seems to make more.’

‘Up here? In the mountains?’

‘You got a phone and a fax it don’t matter if you’re on the moon. I guess they like the mountain air.’

Josh nodded, disappointed at the mundane explanation. The easy resolution of the mystery did little to make him feel better. But then he was far from feeling good. He was feeling worse than he’d ever felt in his life. The image of that tiny foot, that thick black blood, bobbed to the surface of his consciousness like a plastic ball held under bath water and released. He swallowed hard, fighting back his horror, as Pace brought the car to a stop outside a sprawling white house. The sheriff cut the engine and sighed deeply. He tapped the wheel thoughtfully for a moment, then turned to Josh.

‘This is out of order and I ain’t no psychiatrist but I reckon if you meet this lady you’re goin’ to realize that you made a mistake.’

Josh felt cold. My God. This was her house. John Pace was going to make him talk to her, make him look again into those eyes that had drilled him just before she …

‘But I don’t want you tellin’ her why we’re here, you understand? That’s important. No way am I goin’ to treat Councillor McFarlane like a suspect. This here visit is just so you can straighten things out in your mind and get on your way again. Can you handle that?’

Josh looked up to the dark windows of the great house and knew he had to see her. He nodded. Pace studied his face for a moment returned the nod, then got out of the car. Josh followed him, a few steps behind.

The arrival of the police car had already made one of the drapes twitch. A child’s face looked out from behind pale flowery material, and opened its mouth in naked delight that the sheriff was coming up their driveway. The drapes fell and swung as the child dived away.

Pace rang a doorbell that buzzed deep inside the house. There were voices, children’s and an adult cheerfully telling them to be quiet, and then the mock-period door swung open.

She opened it. The murderer.

Councillor Nelly McFarlane was wiping her hands on an apron that hung loosely around the waist of a plain denim knee-length dress. Her red hair was tied back in a knot and her open friendly face was without make-up. Clinging to her skirt was a girl of about nine or ten, and in the background a younger boy and a slightly older girl hopped around with open curiosity.

Nelly McFarlane looked at them both and smiled, showing those fine white teeth that graced her campaign handbill.

‘John! Hi! Come in.’

She motioned to the men to enter, but looking questioningly at Josh. He was aware that he looked like a criminal. Take a trucker from his truck and he always does. He was well used to being followed round factory outlet malls by store detectives who fixed on his clothes and haircut like pointer dogs on a duck. But right now, he was more aware that he was looking at a criminal. A first-degree murderer. Pace put a hand behind Josh to push him gently forward, speaking to the woman as he did so.

‘I want you to meet Josh Spiller. He’s a trucker from Pittsburgh.’

She widened her smile and raised her eyebrows. Josh was grateful that she didn’t offer a hand to shake. He was barely in control, but to have been forced to touch the flesh that had launched the baby into oblivion …

The children scuttled away inside and vanished, satisfied that the police visit was to be a dull social one.

Josh hesitated, his heart racing in his chest. The space between his shoulderblades told him that he was about to be clubbed from behind with a baseball bat, but his eyes, his logic, his head told him he was the unannounced guest of a bewildered and respectable Furnace citizen. He stepped into the large, cool hall. In the spacious living room to which she led them, a television was blaring cartoons to a room now vacated by children. Nelly McFarlane moved to a low mahogany coffee table, picked up the channel changer and silenced the noise.

Josh flicked his eyes to it just in time to see a coyote being pursued on a dusty road by a huge rolling rock before the picture fizzled away to black. He looked away quickly, a hot, sick feeling returning to his head. She sat down on a long sofa and motioned for the men to do the same on an identical one on the opposite side of the coffee table. They sat, and Pace clasped his hands on his knee.