No One Will Miss Her(68)

Sheriff Ryan, red around the eyes and looking fifteen years older than he had the previous morning, pulled down his mask and rubbed a hand over the graying stubble on his chin.

“Hell of a thing,” said Ryan. “I know folks always say this, but goddamn, I knew Dwayne Cleaves a long time. We all did. Hard to believe he’d shoot his wife. Harder to believe he’d do a thing like this. Burning a man to death. Jesus.”

“Well, most likely he was dead before the fire started,” Bird said. “Or unconscious, maybe. But I take your point.”

“They say they’re about finished here. Debbie Cleaves is an early riser. I’d like to get over there and knock on her door, before someone else does. She’s going to have a real bad day ahead of her.” He shook his head. “Boston. Shit. They’re sure it’s him?”

“Seems that way,” Bird said. “She’ll have to drive down there to ID him, of course.”

“Of course.”

Bird watched the sun rise red above the treetops and climb until the light spilled over, illuminating the stinking, blackened ruins of the junkyard, burning away the last tendrils of creeping morning mist. He watched the team pack up, the local cops exchanging awkward shrugs as they rubbed their cold hands together and avoided eye contact. Myles Johnson wasn’t among them, and Bird wondered if he knew what was happening. What had happened. He and Dwayne Cleaves wouldn’t be taking any more hunting trips together—but after the past few days, maybe Johnson wouldn’t be so keen on killing things for sport anymore. Bird shrugged to himself. Either way, it was none of his business. If he had his way, he’d be gone from Copper Falls by sundown. He waited until the last of the cars pulled away, then climbed into his cruiser and followed them into town, where he pulled into a space at the far end of the municipal building that held the local law enforcement offices. He kept the motor running, turned up the heat, and closed his eyes. Later, Dwayne Cleaves’s friends and family would need to be re-interviewed, and paperwork would need to be filed, and coffee would need to be acquired urgently and first thing. But for at least the next blessed hour, there was nothing to do but nap.

The buzzing of his phone awakened him some time later—not enough time, Bird thought, and looked at the clock to discover that only twenty-five minutes had passed. It was an email: the preliminary autopsy report on Lizzie Ouellette was complete. He scrolled it quickly on the tiny screen. Mostly, it was a restatement of things he’d either known or guessed already. CAUSE OF DEATH: GUNSHOT WOUND, HEAD.

MANNER OF DEATH: HOMICIDE.

The information he was looking for was toward the end of the report, and he frowned as he read it.

There is a puncture wound on the inner left forearm consistent with injection.

Track marks. So Lizzie was using, then. Her and Dwayne both, probably—that was usually how it worked—but it made him unhappy to see it there on paper, made him feel almost disappointed in her. He tried to picture it: Lizzie in the bedroom, a needle in her arm. Dwayne, standing by the bed with a gun. And then, stumbling into the tableau like a human non sequitur, Ethan Richards. Bird groaned, rubbing his eyes. He still needed coffee, but he also didn’t need a coffee to know that once he had one, the story this case seemed to tell would still make no damn sense at all. He opened the car door and gave his thighs a couple thumps to get the blood moving, then walked stiffly into the municipal building. He found the men’s room first, taking a piss next to two men he recognized from the junkyard scene and who studiously avoided looking at or speaking to him as they zipped up and left the room. He followed them a moment later, finding the station quieter than he’d expected. Some of the guys had gone home to change, maybe, or wash off the stink from all those hours wading through the ashes. There was a pot of freshly brewed coffee in the break room, and he filled a cup to the brim. Then he returned to his car and called Brady. His gravelly voice came on the line after three rings.

“Hiya there, Bird.”

“Hey, boss. What were you, sleeping?”

“I’d never do a thing like that,” Brady said. “Just one second.” There was a clatter as the phone was put down, and Bird heard a toilet flush.

“You know there’s a mute button for moments like this,” he said when Brady picked up again.

Brady snorted. “Noted. What’ve you got?”

Bird gave him the rundown: the facts as they stood, his frustrated sense that he was missing something. He waited while the older man read through the forwarded M.E.’s report. He thought again about Lizzie, needle marks on her pale, dead arm, the baffled regret in her former boss’s voice as he said, “She didn’t seem like the type.”

The type, Bird thought. There was something to that, the idea of categories, what kind of woman Lizzie was, what kind of wife, what kind of victim. And then:

“Oh,” Bird said. “That’s it.”

“What’s it?” Brady sounded distracted. “In the report? I don’t see—”

“No, no. I just realized, I’ve still been approaching this like a domestic incident.”

“Well, sure,” Brady said. “Dead wife, missing husband. Makes sense.”

“If it were just the two of them involved, yeah. But if that’s Ethan Richards in the truck, and I’m pretty confident it is, then I’ve been looking at this wrong.”