World of Trouble (The Last Policeman #3)(35)

“No, young man,” she says. “Our surname is Miller. Joy is—” She leans to the plain-faced daughter seated beside her, and they exchange whispers.

“Joy is an acronym,” says the daughter. “A way of living. You are to set your mind first to Jesus, then Others, and lastly to Yourself.”

“Ah,” I say. “Oh.”

Atlee takes me by the elbow. “Now,” he says quietly. “We will walk the property.”





4.


The butt of Atlee Miller’s pitchfork thunks in the gravel of the path as we walk away from the house. He is silent for a minute, two minutes. Just our shoes on the gravel, the rhythmic chunk-chunk of the pitchfork on the path.

I am about to say something, try something out, when he starts.

“You and I will walk abreast to where the path bends, just there,” he says. “It continues on there, about a quarter mile to the left, back down to the county road, to our old farm stand. At the bend I will turn to the right, go on along the property line, back around to the house. You will continue on.”

The same words he used when we were together in the rainstorm, when he was pushing me forward. You will continue on. Same steady tone, somber and uninflected. He doesn’t look at me while he’s speaking, just keeps moving, moving fast for as old as he is, long strides with the pitchfork, fast for an old man. As for me, I’m doing my best, hobbling a bit, wincing with my injuries, but I keep up as well as I can—noticing in the meantime, despite all my physical discomforts and the anxiousness of this situation, that the Amish farm in late-day rain-streaked sunlight is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen: green fields, white fences, yellow corn. A flock of healthy sheep gamboling in small circles in their penned lea.

“Your dog,” the man says gruffly, pointing, and there is Houdini, huddled like a phantom behind a shed, staring out. Poor confused sick dog. He sees me, and holds up his head to look me over with watery eyes. He starts to come and then scuttles back behind the little wooden building. I know how he feels. I’m not ready to go—I can’t.

“Mr. Miller, can I just ask you a couple of quick questions?”

He doesn’t answer. Walks faster. I nearly drop my blue notebook into the dirt as I fumble it out of my pocket. “Can you confirm that you did a construction job for a group of strangers, at the police station in Rotary?”

He keeps his eyes forward, but I can see it—a wave of surprise, of confirmation, rushing over his features and then away again.

I press on. “What did you do there, Mr. Miller? You did some concrete work up there?”

A sidelong glance and that’s it. We’re running out of road here. Running out of time.

“Mr. Miller?”

“I will tell my people you decided to return,” he says. “You are overcome with grief for those you love and have decided to take your chances with the plague.”

I scowl. I limp to keep up with him. No, I’m thinking. No. Whatever else is going on here, I have not come this far merely to continue on now, to limp back down to the vegetable stand and my abandoned bike, back where I started.

“I’ll tell them,” I say. “I’ll sneak back in and tell them.”

Now he answers—now he answers right away. “You won’t. You can’t.”

“Of course I can.”

“I’ve made it impossible.”

“How?”

He stops talking, just shakes his head, but this is good. This is what we need. All you need is a conversation. To work toward the information you need, to get what you want from a suspect or a witness—all you need is a conversation to begin, and then you shape it, push it.

“Mr. Miller? How are you doing it?”

Just a conversation. That’s police work, that’s half of it right there. I wheel back, change tack, try again. “How did it start?”

We’re at a line of fencing. I stop, lean back on a post, as if to catch my breath, and he stops too. “No more about concrete,” I say, raise my hands in mock surrender. “I promise.”

“It was a Sunday,” he says, and my heart glows. A conversation. That’s half of it, right there. He’s talking, I listen while he talks. “Church was at Zachary Weaver’s. One or two men will go early and help to prepare the service. The others come along later. I was there early, on this day. At the Weavers’ all was in an uproar. Someone had heard a radio broadcast. There was—lamentation. Distress.” He shakes his head and looks at the ground. “And I could tell, d’you see? I knew in the crack of an instant what I would need to do. I could see it in their eyes, these people, the change that would be wrought on them. It was already happening, d’you see?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer. I don’t interrupt.

“I went out on the porch and I saw my family walking to the house from our house and I made this decision in the crack of a moment, just like that. I just—I waved with my hand—like this—I waved—” He stops on the path and raises a hand, pushing at the air: go back, stop, turn around. “I walked out of Zachary Weaver’s and I walked my family back to our home and I gave them all of that. The story you’ve heard.”

“The illness,” I say. “Pandemic.”

“Yes.”