Ice Over America

Chapter 7

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personally selected by one of the most acclaimedshort stories authors and editors in the mystery

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byThe fire had taken the house right down to the slab, leaving behind a mountain of debris. Fallen beams, blackened furniture. The broken back of the roof. The charred shell of the refrigerator, the half-melted hull of the stove. Everything sooty, covered in ash, eaten by flames, or drowned by fire hoses. And above the remains, stark against the vast West Texas sky, rose the tombstone.

Okay, not really a tombstone, but Pete thought of it that way. It was a red brick chimney, the only bit of actual house still standing. It towered over everything else in sight—the blackened debris, the leaning tractor shed. The surrounding fields and pastures, scraggly mesquite trees, cactus, yuccas, junipers.

And Pete. Indoors, your average-sized seventeen-year-old guy. Out there, a tiny insignificant creature toiling alone between the cracked red earth and the blazing blue sky, shadowed by a tombstone chimney.

Someone had started the fire by splashing gas along the walls, the arson investigators said. Pete pictured uniform-clad people poking around in the still-smoking ruins, studying the position of the blackened body, measuring, discussing, writing things down on clipboards, while fire engines crowded the narrow country road, lights flashing red and white, sirens silent. Silent, because the emergency was over. At least for Mrs. Dean.

Pete knew what fire could do to a human body; he’d looked it up on the internet. He wished he hadn’t.

Pulling on his work gloves, he grabbed a crowbar and got busy. It was hard work—sweaty, dirty, lonely—but better than wearing a hairnet and flipping burgers at DQ. And Jerry Dean had pretty much begged.

“I can’t have some front loader coming in, scraping everything away without sorting through it,” Jerry had said. “This is my mother’s home we’re talking about. Anything worth saving, I want to save.” Raising the stump of his right arm, he’d waved it around so his sleeve flapped loose. “But I can’t do it myself.”

And whose fault is that? Pete had thought. Jerry Dean, drunk as usual one midnight, had staggered into the path of a Ford F-150. He’d been lucky to lose only an arm.

And whose fault is that?But it was true—Jerry couldn’t clear the debris.

For three weeks Pete had been working, clearing from the edges of the foundation inward, making his way toward the towering chimney. Hot work, hard work. He thought he could finish today. Which was good because his truck was running on fumes and he was flat broke. Plus it wore on him, spending all day in the heat, imagining the fiery furnace in which Mrs. Dean had died. Sometimes his arm brushed against a nail heated red-hot by the sun, and alongside the flare of pain flashed an image of Mrs. Dean screaming.

Pete wanted it to be over.

Wedging the head of his crowbar under a half-charred beam, he pulled. When the beam tipped toward him, he braced it on his shoulder and began fighting it free from the carcass of the half-burned couch.

Meanwhile Trigger, Pete’s terrier, darted excitedly around, smelling the trails of possums, raccoons, feral hogs—whatever critters trespassed in Mrs. Dean’s living room at night, rooting through her leavings, l*****g at the spot where her poor, murdered body had lain. Pete didn’t know exactly where that spot was, but the night animals no doubt knew. And Trigger.

The beam was stubborn; the muscles in Pete’s arms and back burned with effort. A trickle of sweat ran between his shoulder blades and evaporated in the dry wind. Gray-black bits of wood broke loose as Pete pulled, and ashes rose from the ground. He could taste them, feel them coating the back of his throat and nose with their acrid scent. Odors were particulate—as in, actual particles. Tiny pieces of Mrs. Dean’s house were filling Pete’s sinuses, his lungs.

Tiny pieces of Mrs. Dean.

Stripping off his work gloves, Pete pulled a blue bandanna from his back pocket and tied it bandit-style over his nose and mouth.

But it was so hot—ninety-eight in the shade, of which there was none. And even if no one else would see or know, Pete would know he was wimping out, being squeamish. Pete, and God, and maybe Mrs. Dean.

He jammed the bandanna back in his pocket.

Mrs. Dean would have hated seeing her house like this. She would have hated even more becoming a thing of horror to Pete. For years, she’d driven into town to babysit him while his mother worked, and his mother was always working. First she’d waited tables at Hooters—the breastaurant—and then, when she got too old for that, she’d started a business selling custom-fitted “foundation garments.”

The euphemism was pointless, given that his mom had a big pink decal of a b*a on her minivan, signed her name deBRA, and went around asking strangers if their girls needed extra support.

“This is how you make a living,” his mother liked to say. “Find a job that nobody else wants to do but that you can do well.”

Pete breathed in his dead babysitter and dragged crumbling beams to the trailer hitched behind his truck.

After Trigger finished examining the foundation, he followed some especially interesting scent out into the yard behind the house, then farther on into the pasture. That was no surprise. He spent a lot of time out there. The surprise was the howl.

It was unnerving, the sort of sound that made people instinctively step closer together. The sort of sound that could make you believe in ghosts.

Pete froze, the hairs on his arms standing up. Then adrenaline filled his veins as he turned, scanning three-sixty, crowbar gripped tightly in his palm.

Road, field, concrete slab, yard. Listing tractor shed, untouched by fire, soon to be flattened by wind. Wheelbarrow pocked with rust. Stunted peach tree in desperate need of pruning, the ground beneath its low-hanging branches churned deep by feral hogs. A long section of shingled roof lying flat on the overgrown grass. The dark shadow of the chimney.

Pete was alone. No attackers. No ghosts.

“Trigger?” The call came out thin. Weak. Maybe it was the clutch of unease in his chest, or maybe the hot wind blew the word back down his throat.

Pete breathed deep, tried again. “Trigger!”

This time the word came out loud and clear, a man-sized bellow, but Trigger made no reply. There was only the sound of the wind; even the ever-sawing cicadas had fallen silent.

Pete squared his shoulders. Gripping the crowbar, he stepped down off the concrete slab and started across the yard. Around him lay the circle of the earth; above him stretched the wide blue sky. Dry grass crumbled beneath his feet and rose around his ankles, stirred by the wind into a semblance of life.

Pete felt like the last man standing.

Halfway across the yard he hesitated, courage failing. He hefted the crowbar, wishing it were a shotgun, and glanced back at his truck—not exactly contemplating escape, just confirming it was possible.

His truck stood solid and reassuring, right where he’d left it, windows down to keep from trapping the heat. For a while the engine had been ticking quietly as it cooled. Now it was silent, like its heart had stopped beating.

Pete wished he hadn’t noticed that.

Then he wished his cell phone got coverage way out there.

Then he wished a car would happen past.

It was rare, but two or three times a day a car did pass by. Late every afternoon Pete could count on seeing the yellow VW Bug driven by Katie Allen, the new girl, who lived even farther out than Mrs. Dean. Katie had a summer job in town, and on her way home she always stopped to say hi. She didn’t know many people yet; she was nervous about school starting.

Pete didn’t figure she had anything to worry about. Katie was pretty and classier than the local girls. Her hair was long and glossy, not bleached dry by chemicals, pool chlorine, or sun; and her voice ran smooth and sure, like water flowing in a mountain stream. Or so Pete imagined; he’d never actually heard a mountain stream. Katie probably had. She’d moved around a lot, traveled. Seen things, done things. Pete thought he might ask her out, eventually. If she still spoke to him once she met all the other guys. He wasn’t lacking in confidence, just realistic. Middle of the pack, that was Pete, and Katie was a frontrunner.

Thinking about Katie helped Pete man up almost as much as her actual presence would have. The horizon felt a little smaller, more manageable. The cicadas started buzzing again too.

“Trigger?” Pete had reached the pasture, rocky and vast, dotted with prickly pear cactus. “Where are you, boy?”

Trigger answered with a low growl. The growl was interrupted by a hiss.

Not a rattler. The hiss was louder than any snake’s—and ragged. The sort of sound someone might make if he’d just taken a blow to the throat.

Pete’s heart kicked into overdrive.

Then his brain caught up, and he smiled, shaking his head at himself. Trigger wasn’t hurt; he’d just met a batch of buzzards, that was all.

Sure enough, three of them came flapping awkwardly into view from behind a clump of cactus, Trigger skittering along behind. He saw Pete and barked once in relief—there you are!—and a second time—watch this!—and then nipped and herded, darting first at one bird, then another.

there you are!watch this!The buzzards hissed and grumbled, lurching around. Their talons dug into the dry earth and gouged deep scratches. They didn’t attack Pete’s dog, but they scolded him, flapping their enormous wings, sending clouds of dust coiling into the air. They were turkey vultures, Pete saw, not the minimally less revolting black vultures. Their wings started out black and faded to gray at the feather tips; their heads were scaly and a raw-looking red.

They outnumbered Trigger. As soon as the dog turned from one vanquished bird to deal with another, the first headed back toward the kill. Not their kill. Buzzards didn’t kill, just did cleanup. That was their job in life, and they felt strongly about it. They were determined.

theirBut Trigger was determined too, and finally—after much barking, nipping, and lunging—he managed to make all three birds take to the air simultaneously.

“Good dog,” Pete said.

Trigger threw an ecstatic glance at Pete, yipped happily, then turned tail and vanished behind the prickly pear.

Pete was curious about Trigger’s find but not curious enough to walk another forty yards. If you’ve seen one dead animal, you’ve seen them all. And it was hot, and he had too much left to do.

Back to work.

He hoped Trigger wouldn’t roll in whatever it was.

Pete worked all day, stopping periodically for water and once to eat. For a long time the buzzards circled, staying low, wobbling slightly as the wind hit their six-foot span of wings, looking like drunks driving home from a party. Maybe Pete imagined it, but he felt a fleeting drop in temperature each time their shadows passed over his face.

Trigger came to visit Pete every now and then, yapping invitingly. Each time, the buzzards saw their chance and descended, vanishing from view behind the prickly pear.

“I don’t want to see it,” Pete would say, and Trigger would give Pete a look of deep disappointment before darting back to shoo the vultures.

Finally even Trigger’s enthusiasm waned, and he abandoned his find and fell asleep in the black rectangle of shade beneath the pickup.

And on Pete worked, dragging large debris to the trailer, lifting medium debris into the truck bed, scraping small debris into black garbage bags. Sometimes, when he moved a blackened board, he caught a whiff of petroleum, or imagined it.

Soot blackened his arms, his face. Ash rose, insinuating itself into his clothes, gluing itself to his sweaty skin. By the time Katie showed up, Pete would smell thoroughly of smoke and look like a man in a black-and-white movie, gray-scale except for his bright blue eyes.

Every so often Pete climbed up into the truck bed, boots ringing on the sun-soaked metal, and shifted things around. It felt like standing in an open oven, and afterward he had to take a break, sitting in the shade of the pickup, drinking water straight from the big camping thermos, eyeing the ruts in the yard left by emergency vehicles.

The emergency was over for Mrs. Dean.

Pete took some comfort in that.

Apparently Jerry Dean didn’t. He looked worse every day, his face growing saggier, his eyes sadder, more bloodshot, more haunted. Like he wasn’t sleeping. Like he was drinking too much. Like he kept seeing his mother’s last moments. Probably—like Pete—he kept wondering who’d want to murder a harmless old woman.

The police had no leads. Mrs. Dean had been a sweet, churchgoing, law-abiding lady.

How she’d raised a two-bit loser like Jerry, Pete didn’t know. A small-time crook, a con artist. That’s why Mrs. Dean had always driven into town to keep Pete back when he was small, rather than taking him out to her place. Jerry lived with her off and on, and Jerry would deal with a crying toddler by offering him a joint.

That also was why Pete had set a nonnegotiable condition for this job: Jerry had to let Reverend Whitfield hold the cash until Pete finished. No way would he trust Jerry to pay him otherwise.

A big grasshopper landed on Pete’s arm, eyes bulging. It looked a little like Jerry Dean. As Pete shook it free, an engine purred in the distance. Pete knew it was too early for Katie, but all the same he turned expectantly toward the road. Just in case.

A dark Camry loomed into sight, trailing a cloud of dust, and blew past without slowing. The driver didn’t even raise an index finger in greeting.

“Yankee,” Pete muttered, by which he meant rude arrogant city-boy ignoring local courtesies. You slowed down on a dirt road if you were passing someone so you wouldn’t choke him with dust. And you waved or at least raised a friendly finger. Acknowledging another person’s existence. Saying hey, you aren’t alone under the sun; we’re all in this life together.

rude arrogant city-boy ignoring local courtesieshey, you aren’t alone under the sun; we’re all in this life together.Pete shook his head, wiped grit from his eyes. Raised an unfriendly finger at the receding car. Went back to work.

The large rubble was hard to maneuver, but Pete preferred it to the little pieces. A cracked plate bearing a child’s painted handprint. A large magnet. A blackened mousetrap, metal bar still in place, waiting to spring. A leather-bound Bible, damaged but still readable, which had been protected by the carcass of the couch.

Big things on top, impersonal. Little things on the ground, heartbreaking. Broken, blackened, lost.

It was sort of like archaeology, Pete told himself, searching for a mental category that might ease the ache in his chest. He was a scientist excavating Mrs. Dean’s family history.

“I want it all,” Jerry had said, blinking rapidly. Trying not to cry, Pete supposed, though he looked more frightened than sad. Pete got that. Grief felt a lot like fear, in his experience. Fear of the unknown, fear of being left alone, fear of how big the world was and how small and powerless you were.

“Everything personal,” Jerry said. “Every little thing, no matter if it’s burned or broken. I want it all.”

Weirdly, though, Jerry never more than half-glanced at the items Pete dutifully carried to him. Then, “You can take that on to the dump.”

That, Pete didn’t get.

“He can’t face it,” Pete’s mother said. She was unpacking a box of bras, looping one shoulder-strap from each over her forearm so they dangled in a row, all different sizes and colors. “He thought he wanted mementos, but having the pain stirred up again…”

That’s what Pete was doing. Reaching down with gloved hands, stirring up broken bits of pain. Bagging it, watching for sharp edges. Pulling down the tatters of yellow crime-scene tape, shoveling up mounds of cinders. Heaving everything into the trailer so he could drive it to the dump and watch it slide down the slope, joining other people’s painful pasts.

There were worse jobs, he supposed, than hauling away unwanted memories.

And orders were orders, so every day Pete salvaged keepsakes, laying them on the seat of the pickup like corpses at a funeral parlor. Jerry wouldn’t do them justice, so when Katie stopped by Pete would show her, item by item, the remnants of Mrs. Dean’s life. A porcelain shepherdess, lightly scorched. A blackened fork. Mrs. Dean’s extra pair of eyeglasses, one lens broken.

“That’s so sad,” Katie would say, eyes welling up, and somehow her tears unloosed the knot in Pete’s chest. Like the universe required a certain amount of pity for these small abandoned objects, and if Katie did the pitying, then Pete didn’t have to.

“Jerry isn’t the only one who lost Mrs. Dean,” Pete’s mom said when he told her about his private little memorial services. “We lost her too. Especially you.”

She was trying on a new style of b*a, fastening it on top of her clothes. Pete was probably going to develop some weird boob aversion, thanks to his mom’s deBRA business. He’d have to go to therapy.

“How did it start?” she said.

“Huh?” Hot pink b*a, tight over her white T-shirt. Like Superman with his underwear over his clothes. WonderBra Woman.

She smiled at him. “I said, how did you happen to start showing Mrs. Dean’s things to Katie?”

Pete had a sudden image of Katie meeting deBRA for the first time, and the back of his neck went hot.

“Uh, I don’t know,” he said. “Just for something to say, I guess. She kept stopping by, acting lonely. She doesn’t know many people yet.” He sounded defensive, and he wasn’t sure why.

“Just curious.” His mother turned sideways to the mirror, casting a critical eye at her bosom’s profile before raising her gaze to meet Pete’s eyes in the mirror. “Obviously she’s interested in you, not some dead woman she never even met. You get that, right?”

Pete looked away. “She’s just lonely,” he said again. “Can you take that thing off? Rob and Jared are coming over.”

Pete thought about that conversation as he sifted through the last layer of charred remains. How had it started, his daily memorial with Katie? He remembered being exhausted the first time she’d stopped by. He’d been working under the blazing sun and had looked up—sweaty, filthy, dehydrated—to see a pretty girl standing in the driveway.

“It’s such a shame,” she said. “A whole life gone. All the things she treasured.” Then she’d given a little shake of her head. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m Katie. Someone said you go to Hamlin High? I start there this fall.”

That was the beginning. Their first conversation, and before even telling him her name, Katie had gone straight to the heart of things. If they ever started dating, he’d tell her that.

Today’s finds weren’t impressive. A mousetrap, a magnet. The shattered remains of a glass jar, insides coated with a yellowy-brown crust. Mustard, maybe.

Nothing interesting.

Pete was seeing the debris now, he realized, through Katie’s eyes instead of Mrs. Dean’s. Thinking of it as show-and-tell, as a way to hold Katie’s attention, a way to spin out a few more minutes with her. Was that wrong? Or did it only mean he was getting used to the fact of Mrs. Dean’s death?

Mrs. Dean wouldn’t expect him to get all weepy over a broken jar. She wouldn’t expect or even want any weepiness from him at all. Boys were boys, she used to say.

Still, he felt a little guilty.

He turned a piece of crusted glass over in his hand. Maybe it had been a candle, most of the wax now melted away. That was more likely than mustard in the living room. Though perhaps Mrs. Dean had been sitting in her armchair having a snack—she loved summer sausage with brown mustard—when someone walked in, whacked her on the head, sloshed gasoline, lit a match.

It could have happened that way. The investigators knew Mrs. Dean had suffered a blow to the head, and they knew she’d breathed smoke, which meant she’d still been alive when the fire started. They didn’t know if she’d been conscious. They didn’t know if she’d been afraid or if she’d felt the fire l*****g at her arms, her legs, her face.

Gently, Pete swept the broken glass and the mousetrap into a trash bag, along with an armful of unidentifiable small charred things.

Then he was done. Except for a thin layer of gray ash, the concrete slab lay bare. He still needed to collect the strip of roof out back, but that was all.

Pete could hardly believe it; he’d finally finished laying Mrs. Dean and her house to rest.

Reaching out, he touched the red brick chimney. His finish line.

Pete would go away and live his life, but that chimney would stand for decades, marking Mrs. Dean’s death.

Something caught his eye. Inside the fireplace, toward the back of the grate meant for wood, sat a small steel box, dented, blackened with smoke.

Weird.

Pete picked it up, shook it, heard something inside rattle. He pried it open and a photograph fell out onto the hearth. A Polaroid snapshot.

A pornographic Polaroid snapshot.

Pete felt his face go hot.

There was a woman, and there was a man. Despite what they were doing together, they didn’t look like they belonged together. The woman was young; the man was not. He was looking straight at the camera, bright-eyed and grinning, as if his favorite football team had won the playoffs. His face was vaguely familiar; it reminded Pete of television ads. Maybe the guy was a businessman, or somebody running for office, or the president of the local college. Whoever he was, Pete would lay odds that the woman in the photo was not his wife.

Pete tucked the photo carefully back into the box and closed the lid. Then he turned the box over in his gloved hands. A magnetic strip ran down the back, twin to the one Pete had found on the floor.

Experimentally, he raised the box into the chimney, pressed it flat against the inside wall. The magnet grabbed, attaching itself to the metal chimney liner, and held briefly before sliding slowing down, juddering, to land crookedly on the grate.

The heat had loosened the glue holding the magnets to the box, Pete figured. Other than that, it was a darn fine hiding place.

Pete grimaced. It was this photo—not mementos of Mrs. Dean—that Jerry had wanted found.

Adultery. p*********y. Mrs. Dean would have been horrified.

Gingerly Pete picked up the box, the same way he’d pick up a dead rat, and carried it to his truck. He set it on the floorboard, slid it under the passenger seat as far away as it would go.

Then he clicked his tongue, rousing Trigger from his nap.

“I’m going to pull the truck around,” he told the dog. “Got to get that piece of roof, and then we’re done.”

Done with the house, anyway. Not with Jerry Dean.

What did Jerry expect? That Pete would find that photo, hand it over to Jerry? No way.

Pete would take the photo to the police. Sign a statement. Testify in court, if need be. Because Pete could just picture it—Jerry, somehow obtaining an incriminating photograph. Blackmailing the man. The man arguing, cajoling, threatening. Following Jerry. Figuring out—somehow—that the photo was somewhere in this house.

Burning the house down, and Mrs. Dean with it.

No wonder Jerry looked awful. He knew who’d killed his mother. And he knew it was his fault.

Pete drove around behind the disintegrating tractor shed, as close as possible to the fallen section of roof. He grabbed it, dragged it, wedged it into the trailer. The wind rattled the shed’s corrugated siding, threatening to blow the whole thing down on top of Pete’s truck. The sun blazed cheerily down; Trigger whined hopefully, head c****d.

But why did Jerry want the photo? Not for more blackmail; he’d be too frightened, now, for that. Maybe Jerry planned to give the photo to the man in it. Make nice.

Tough. No way would Pete let him hand that photo over, not after Mrs. Dean had died because of it. Jerry should have known that.

Maybe Jerry did.

Maybe Jerry expected Pete to take the photo to the police. Pete would like to think Jerry had that much decency left. For Mrs. Dean’s sake.

Trigger ran toward the clump of cactus, came back. Made pleading noises.

“All right,” Pete said to the dog. “If it means that much to you.”

He almost felt compelled to go. The vultures had seemed, all day, a bad omen.

Pete followed the dog into the pasture, catching the scent of death as he drew near the clump of prickly pears. It was more potent than he’d expected. Usually things didn’t stink for long, thanks to the hot dry wind. Maybe it wasn’t a raccoon or possum but something bigger. A bobcat or coyote. A deer.

Pete rounded the stand of cactus, careful not to brush against their sharp needles.

He spun away, staggered a few yards. Threw up.

Jerry Dean. At least Pete thought so, based on the missing arm, but he couldn’t be sure. The scavengers had been busy.

Trigger wagged his tail, gazing up at Pete hopefully.

“Awesome, Trigger,” Pete croaked. “Good dog.”

Trigger did a happy dance, spinning around Pete’s ankles. It was so wrong, so inappropriate, but the dog didn’t know that.

Pete looked again at the corpse, squinting, as if a slantwise glance might mute the horror. It had been buried, judging from the hole beside it. Buried, then dug up and dragged out of its shallow grave by feral hogs. Four-legged buzzards, folks called them. Somebody hadn’t known to bury the body deep.

Killed. Buried. Dug up. Eaten by feral hogs. Eaten by buzzards.

Pete gagged again and turned away.

He needed the police.

“Let’s go,” he said to Trigger, starting for the truck.

He was thinking about how far he’d have to go before he’d get a phone signal, thinking about being low on gas, thinking it was good he’d get paid even though Jerry was dead. He felt a little mercenary, thinking about money right then. But feeling mercenary beat feeling sick, and disgusted, and frightened.

Halfway to his truck, Pete realized Trigger wasn’t following. Instead, he’d sat down by the body. Guarding it. Wanting to show off, now that Pete had finally noticed it and praised him.

“Trigger!” Pete said.

Trigger settled himself more firmly.

In the distance, an engine whined. Katie, finally?

Pete’s truck was out of sight of the road, hidden by the tractor shed; she wouldn’t know he was there. For a moment he considered staying put, letting her drive on past.

But he’d sure like to see someone alive. Someone normal. Someone clean.

He didn’t have to tell her about the body or even the photo; he could protect her from that. Just see her before he went to give his statement to the police and got pulled into the investigation, the trial, the whole sordid business. Just five minutes with Katie before it all descended.

Breaking into a jog, he rounded the peach tree just as the dark Camry from earlier turned into the driveway.

Pete dropped flat, out of sight behind the low line of the foundation. He felt foolish, but he also felt afraid. The Camry might have nothing to do with anything, but then again…

He couldn’t get to his truck without being seen, but he might make it to the chimney.

A soft creak told him the Camry’s door was opening. “Didn’t think that blasted kid would ever finish,” a man’s voice said.

Pete crawled forward on his elbows across the dirt and dead grass, not daring to glance up. When he reached the fireplace he pressed hard against it, the chimney rising high above him. He hoped Trigger was inclined to stay put and stay quiet.

Another creak. Another voice. “That kid did all the heavy lifting. You ought to be thanking him, not complaining. Look at this—you won’t even get your hands dirty.”

Two doors slammed.

Footsteps on concrete.

Pete tensed. The chimney and fireplace weren’t especially wide ones. He’d be hidden from sight as long as the men walked straight toward him, but if they veered off to another part of the slab—the kitchen or the bedrooms—he’d be plainly visible.

If that happened, he’d run like crazy for his truck. As long as they didn’t have a g*n, he’d make it. Even if they had a g*n, it didn’t mean they’d shoot at him. Even if they shot at him, it didn’t mean they’d hit him. Most people were lousy shots.

He couldn’t believe he was hiding behind his dead babysitter’s chimney, calculating the odds of getting shot.

A metallic screech sounded, mere inches from Pete’s head, and he flinched. It was the damper in the fireplace, opening or closing.

“There’s nothing here,” the first man said. His voice sounded hollow, echoing. He had his head stuck up inside of the chimney, twelve inches or so from where Pete’s face pressed against the hot rough brick.

“That’s fine,” said the second voice. The calmer one. “We just needed to be sure.”

“But what if the kid found it?”

Pete closed his eyes, held his breath.

“He didn’t. If he had, we’d have heard.” There was something familiar about the calmer man’s voice, but Pete couldn’t quite put a finger on what it was.

“You’re sure?” said the other man. The anxious one.

“I’m sure. I told you, I have a back-up system in place.”

“So the fire got it.”

The far got it. This guy was local or at least West Texan. The calm man wasn’t. The calm man had one of those neutral accents.

The far got it.“The fire,” the calm man said. “Or else it got thrown away in a heap of rubble. In any case, your career can proceed unimpeded.”

“I wish I’d seen it destroyed with my own eyes. I don’t like loose ends.”

“Which is why Jerry is gone, and the old woman is gone, and the house is gone.”

“But not the kid.”

“The kid can be gone too, if that’s what you really want. But it won’t come cheap, and it carries its own risks. And I’m telling you, there’s nothing to worry about. I’ve kept a close eye on him every step of the way. You brought me in to fix matters, and I fixed them. Trust me on this.”

Their voices faded. Their footsteps receded. Car doors opened, closed. An engine started.

Pete breathed again.

After the rumble of the Camry faded, after his heart stopped pounding in his ears, he got to his feet.

“Trigger!” he called sharply, and this time the dog came. They got in Pete’s truck. They pulled out from behind the tractor shed and circled around toward the road, trailer bumping along behind.

Pete could almost picture the Camry’s license plate. Curvy letters, no sharp ones. Then a string of twos. Then something pointy, maybe a seven.

A cheery yellow Bug appeared, turning into the driveway. A visitor from another world, from a place where nice old ladies didn’t get murdered thanks to their blackmailing loser sons. Where Pete didn’t stumble over bodies and sleazy photos. Where strangers didn’t threaten to vanish him.

Katie got out of her car. Her dark hair shone in the sun; her legs were tan, her fingernails and toenails pink-painted.

She walked toward him. Pete didn’t turn off his engine, and he didn’t get out of the truck. He felt filthy, inside and out. He couldn’t look Katie in the eye.

“Hey there!” Katie said, coming to stand beside Pete’s open window. She smelled like flowers. “Looks like I almost missed you!”

Why couldn’t he remember the license plate?

Beside him, Trigger whined. Feeling Pete’s tension.

“You look exhausted,” Katie said. Her teeth were white against pink lipstick that matched her nails. “Long day?”

Pete couldn’t find any words; he just wanted to listen to Katie’s pretty voice, to her smooth civilized cadences, until he could remember the license plate number of the men who had burned Mrs. Dean.

Maybe the police could hypnotize him.

Maybe the police had a list of Jerry Dean’s associates.

Maybe they’d recognize the man in the photo.

Maybe they’d recognize the woman.

Katie rested one elbow on the open window and studied Pete curiously. “Find any new treasures?” she asked. “Or did the fire get everything else?”

The fire.

Voices. The fire…the far.

farPete suddenly wanted nothing more than to see his mom.

“My mother’s name is Debra,” he said. Said it right, not deBRA. “What’s your mother called?”

“Judith.” Katie seemed faintly puzzled but willing to go along.

“And your dad?”

“Rick Allen. Short for Richard Allen.” Katie drew the name out, making it sound pompous. Trying to tease Pete out of his grim mood.

“Bet you can’t guess what my mom does for a living,” Pete said. Being awkward, talking through the open window with the truck running. Like some socially inept hick. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel. His mouth felt dry.

Katie’s eyes were clear and untroubled. “Sounds mysterious,” she said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “What does she do?”

Pete forced a smile. “Sells bras—from a van. Not making this up.”

“Could be worse.”

“You think?” He raised an eyebrow. “What do your parents do?”

“My mom’s a computer geek. My dad’s some sort of consultant. Super boring.”

For a long moment Pete studied her. Shiny hair, long legs, sun-kissed cheeks. Smooth voice. New in town.

“I’ve gotta go,” he said abruptly, reaching for the stick shift, stepping on the clutch.

The truck lurched into gear, knocking Katie’s elbow from the window. “I can’t believe you were going to leave before I got here,” she said, smiling brightly. Not stepping back. “I thought we were partners.”

“Katie.” Pete looked her straight in the eye. “The job’s over.”

She glanced over her shoulder at the bare slab, then back at Pete. “Hey, congrats. So…do you want to go to Sonic or something? We could celebrate.” She was trying to act natural, Pete could tell, but she wasn’t dumb, and she wasn’t that good an actress.

“Not my job,” he said. “Yours.”

Her eyes met his, and he saw the swift flash of understanding before she covered it with a mask of pretty bewilderment.

“She didn’t deserve this,” Pete said. “Mrs. Dean. She was a good woman. She deserved better.”

And he eased off the clutch, stepped on the gas, and pulled away. Toward cell phone range. Toward the police.

Beneath his seat, a smutty photo.

In his head, a license plate number.

In his mouth, a killer’s name.

And in his rearview mirror, the killer’s daughter and accomplice. A back-up system. Keeping her eye on the small-town hick, monitoring his finds, ready to destroy evidence should the need arise.

Katie Allen. Too good to be true.

Pete should have known.

He let himself glance back, again and again, as she shrank small in the distance.

Then she was gone, and all that remained was a red brick chimney, stark against the wide West Texas sky.

Amanda Witt is the author of the four-novel dystopian Red Series and a variety of short stories. She lives in Texas with her husband and way too many pets and plants. Learn more at AmandaWitt.com.