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“Maybe I’ve got hemorrhoids,” he said. “I’m dealing with a real pain in the ass right now.”

“Cut the bullshit, Harry. The fuck is going on? And what about Hillman? You still haven’t found him.”

“For all I know, Walter Hillman left town. There’s no evidence of foul play.”

Rachel had been whispering up to now, but her voice was growing in volume. “Except that he walked away from his Business Depot job without telling a soul, there’s been no action on his credit cards, and his car’s still parked at his place. Just like with Tanner.”

The woman behind the counter shot her a look.

“Let’s do this outside,” Harry said, taking her by the arm and getting a nasty look in return.

Once they were clear of the building, and Rachel had shaken off Harry’s grip, she said, “Do you even have a possible make and model on the car that hit Tanner? If a car evenhitTanner, because you’ve never said one way or another. You know I’ve talked to everyone who lives along there, probably the same people you did, and none of them heard anything like a car hitting somebody. No screeching brakes, nothing like that. The one who called it in was driving the pickup?” She dug a notepad from her pocket and flipped through the pages. “Tracy. Yeah. I know about him. He told me what he saw.”

She paused to catch her breath. Harry said slowly, “You done?”

“No.”

“Are you done for asecondor two?”

“Okay.”

“What I like about you is that you’re a professional. You don’t print rumors, you don’t print stuff you can’t substantiate, you don’t go with sources unless they’re reliable, and I am here to tell you, you can’t put any stock in what Tracy told you. It was the middle of the night, he was tired, working two jobs, probably never seen a body in that state before, and is not what I’d call an experienced observer.”

“I bet he’s smart enough to know when someone’s naked.”

“Would you like to go ahead and print that? That you have new information, that Angus Tanner, fifty-two, married and a father of two, was naked. Just that. Would that answer a burning question, or prompt another dozen that you don’t have the answer to? What will you do when Mrs. Tanner calls and asks what that’s supposed to mean? Because she will. If you were her, wouldn’t you call?”

“Christ, I’m not going to write a story that says nothing more than that the deceased had no clothes on. Give me some credit. Andeven if I did, and she called, I’d tell her to talk toyou,and askyouwhat it was supposed to mean, and to give me a call back when she got a straightforward answer.”

“Let me be as straightforward with you now as I can,” Harry said, then added, “Off the record?”

Rachel considered the request. “Okay.”

“There are... aspects to this investigation that make it slightly more complicated. I can’t get into what those are yet. Releasing snippets of information’s going to raise more questions I can’t answer. So—”

Rachel was rolling her eyes. “Come on, Chief, give me a break here. At least you can tell me whether—”

The Nokia in Harry’s jacket began to ring. Harry grimaced, brought out the phone, and put it to his ear.

“Yeah.”

“It’s Mary.”

Harry turned his back to a scowling Rachel and walked three steps away. “What’s up?”

“Dell Peterson found his goat. Thinks you’re gonna want to have a look.”

Fourteen

“Happy birthday, dear Auden... happy birthday to you!”

Once they were finished singing, Christina and Darryl Pidgeon clapped their hands together in celebration as they sat around the kitchen table and watched their son, Auden, blow out the ten candles atop his birthday cake.

“Did you make a wish?” Christina asked.

“I didn’t have to,” said Auden cheerily. “I already got something better than I was asking for.”

That, of course, would be the Chesapeake & Ohio freight train made up of a steam locomotive and several cars, which was already running nonstop on a large oval of track on the dining room table. The relentless din of metal spinning on metal, as the cars made loop after loop, reverberated through the table’s wooden surface, making it even louder, but Darryl had argued that the engine needed to be broken in, and that having it run continuously for an hour or so would have the effect of fine-tuning the toy’s mechanism.