Percival Everett - Assumption

“I think I get it.” Warren pointed at the computer. “Doing any good? Where to now?”

“Pilar. I’m looking for a Conrad Hempel. I found a Cyril in the white pages.”

“It’s a C anyway.” Warren bit his lip. “So, let’s go.”

“Bucky tell you to keep an eye on me?”

Warren shrugged. “He wants to make sure you don’t get hurt. After all, one man is dead.”

“Tell you what, why cover the same ground twice? You search and I’ll search and we’ll see if we can’t find Conrad Hempel and an eleven-year-old who might be named Willy Yates.”

Warren didn’t want to agree, but he did. “I’ll call all the schools in the morning. You can’t go to Pilar tonight.”

“I’ll go to my mother’s house.”

“Good.”

Ogden didn’t walk into his mother’s house like he always did. Instead, he tapped lightly on the door and waited for her to answer. She was confused by his knocking. She looked beyond him to see if he was alone.

“What’s going on,” she said. She closed her robe against the cold night air. “Get in here. What do you mean by knocking like that? What is it? What’s wrong?”

“You know Terry Lowell?” Ogden asked. “Works for the Fish and Game Commission?” He followed his mother inside and they sat on the sofa, where they never sat.

“No.”

“Well, he’s dead.”

“Oh my. What happened?”

“Somebody shot him.”

“I’m sorry, Ogden. Was he a friend of yours?”

“I knew him, but that’s not the real problem. For me, anyway. Some people seem to think I killed him.” Ogden watched his mother swallow hard. She pulled her robe even tighter “Now I’m trying to find the man I last saw him with.”

“Oh, Ogden. What can I do?”

“Nothing, nothing at all, thanks.”

His mother hugged him and he hugged her back.

“Do you mind if I sleep here?” Ogden asked.

Eva Walker was puzzled by the question. “Of course you can sleep here. Ogden, are you all right?”

“No.”

“Are you hungry?”

“I can’t eat. But thanks. You go on to bed now, Mom. I’ll be out of here really early, so don’t worry when you wake up and don’t find me.”

She stood, looked down at his face, and sat again. “You’re scared.” It was her way of saying she was scared.

“Yes, Mom, I’m a little scared. I’ll get it sorted out. Don’t worry. Get some sleep.”

Just before daybreak Ogden dressed without showering. He started to strap on his empty holster, but stopped, tossed it onto the high shelf in the front closet. He made some coffee and drank it while he stood in his mother’s kitchen. He held his hand out in front of him to see if he was steady. Not quite. He told himself that he had never liked carrying his pistol, but someone had shot Terry Lowell. Someone out there was dangerous. Ogden went back to the same front closet and found the Colt.32 semiautomatic his father had bought for his mother so many years ago. The so-called hammerless pistol was old, but it had never been fired and so Ogden had no idea if it would discharge now. He loaded seven.380 cartridges into the magazine and slapped it in. It needed oiling, but he didn’t have time. Anyway, if he needed it he hoped it would be for show and not action.

He quietly left the house and drove south toward the pass and to Pilar. His overeagerness had him in the front yard of Cyril Hempel at an inappropriately early hour. He thought it best to wait for some sign of movement or at least seven o’clock before he started knocking. In the draw, the early hour was accentuated by the walls of mountain that blocked out the rising sun. He put his head back on the seat and drifted enough to dream.

Terry Lowell was walking toward Ogden. Ogden was standing on the stream just above the hatchery, far enough away that the hatchery office was out of view. The light of the moon was diffused behind a bank of drifting clouds.

“What are you doing?” Terry asked. The patch sewn to the sleeve of the man’s right shoulder was starting to come away at the top. Threads frayed. Everything was fraying.

“What am I doing?” Ogden said. “What do you mean, what am I doing?”

“Here, with that shovel.”

“You should leave, Terry. Go get in your truck and drive away,” Ogden said. He could feel that his eyes were red. They burned. He looked up and saw clouds moving clear of the ridge. “Really, you should get out of here.”

“What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing?” Terry asked again and again.

“Really, Terry,” Ogden said. The water in the stream seemed to slow. A crow landed in a nearby tree and cawed wildly. Ogden pulled his Sig from his holster.

Ogden jumped. He was awake. Light had crept over the top of the mountain and was making the sky pink. A bearded man was looking out through the curtain at Ogden’s rig. Ogden looked at his watch. Seven fifteen.

He got out and walked to the door. The house was little more than a shack. It was set up against a bluff, the huge rock looming over it and making the house look even smaller. There was a rock chimney and a weak pulse of smoke rose out of it. Ogden knocked even though the man had seen him approaching.

“Awful early in the morning,” the man said. He was old, maybe eighty, maybe older.

“Sorry about the hour,” Ogden said. “Are you Cyril Hempel?”

“Who wants to know?”

“I’m Deputy Walker from the sheriff’s department.”

“What you want?”

“Do you have a son or a grandson, a relative, by the name of Conrad?”

“No Conrad.”

“Do you have any male relatives?”

“I got a spinster sister down in Albuquerque.”

“Male.”

“I got a son named Leslie.”

“Does he ever use the name Conrad?”

“Why would he do that?”

“Is he about six feet, light-colored hair, tattooed? Slightly receding hairline?” Ogden tried to see past the man into the house.

“That sounds like my son, but I ain’t seen him in weeks. But that ain’t unusual.”

“Do you have a daughter? A grandson?”

“Hey,” the man said. “What’s this all about. No, I ain’t got no daughter.”

“And you don’t have a grandson named Willy or Billy or William or anything?”

“I’m not sure I’d tell you if I did, but I don’t, so I don’t have to worry about that. Like I said, I haven’t seen my so-called son Leslie in a couple of weeks.”

“You say that’s not unusual?”

“Not really. He’s a drughead. He’s on that meth and he looks like shit that’s been stepped on. If you find him, arrest him for me and then get him straight and I’ll give you a whole American dollar. What do you say about that?”

“Where does Leslie live?”

“Hell if I know. He’s a druggie, like I said. Where do druggies live? I don’t look for him. I stopped looking for him years and years ago. You should see what them drugs done to him. Find him and shoot him and I’ll give you two American dollars.”

“Do you know a boy named Willy Yates? Do you know anyone named Yates?” Ogden heard someone in the house. “Somebody here with you?”

“My girlfriend. Got a problem with that?”

“Mind if I ask her a couple of questions?”

Hempel turned and called into the house, “Penny, put on a robe and come here. Man’s got a question for you.”

A young, almost pretty woman in her mid-twenties came to the door. She clutched an orange robe close to her narrow frame. Ogden looked her bony face, her green eyes and dark hair, then down at her bare feet. The toenails on her left foot were painted black, the toenails on the right were unpainted.

“Do you know Mr. Hempel’s son?”

“I’ve met him.”