All the Inside Howling (Hollow Folk #2)(19)

“What’d you fuck up?” Jim said. When I didn’t answer, he slid back into his seat and added, “You going to talk sometime.” He picked up a magazine and started flipping through it. It was a porno rag, and Jim flipped through it with slack-jawed amazement, like he’d heard about breasts but never seen them before, and hell, weren’t they nice.

This was my home. This was Vehpese. This, I thought as the ache in my arm and shoulder grew, this was what I was trying to protect from Mr. Big Empty. Jesus, let him have it. Something was poking me in the side. Perfect. Couldn’t they at least have a decent chair? I shifted, but something poked me again. Sharp. A wire maybe. But when I examined the chair, I couldn’t find anything. I leaned back, and it jabbed me again.

Now I was determined. I ran my hands over the chair, over every inch of the molded plastic. Nothing. So where—

The jacket. River’s jacket. The jacket whose hem was soaked in blood. I plunged my hands into the pockets, but they were empty. That made sense. Whoever had gotten rid of it would have searched it first, in case it had anything identifying. I slipped out of the jacket and patted the denim inch by inch. A quarter of the way back, near where the jacket would rest over my hip, I found it. Something hard, maybe an inch long, and thin.

I tried the pockets again, and this time I found the slit in the lining. Either this was normal wear and tear, or River had made himself a secret hiding spot. Wriggling my fingers deeper between the denim folds, I shook the jacket until something fell into my hands. I pulled it out. It was a small brass key. A57 was stamped on one side, the legs of the A worn almost completely away.

Before I could give it any more thought, a voice interrupted me. Fred Fort’s voice, which meant the words came in clipped packages. “Get in there.” A pause. “Sheriff wants to see you.”





When I stepped inside the sheriff’s office, Deputy Fort slammed the door behind me. I stood eye to eye with a stuffed bird, which hung from the ceiling. Two different stag’s heads were mounted on the wall, three more stuffed birds sketched a V in flight, a row of trout hung over a kerosene heater, their scales glistening in the heater’s red glare, and on the desk in the center of the room, posed to look as though it were ready to spring, stood a full grown cougar. Aside from the kerosene stove, the predominant smell was preserved fur. I’d never smelled it before, but I knew what it was immediately, and it made my skin prickle.

Sheriff Ed Hatcher wasn’t in his chair. Instead, on my side of the desk, he leaned towards the cougar, inspecting it. He was so close that when he exhaled, his breath misted the big cat’s glass eyes. A moment passed, and then another. As carefully as I could, I slipped my hand into my pocket and deposited the little brass key. It was the only lead I had at the moment, and I hated letting go of it, but my hands were sweaty and slick and I needed to focus.

“What’re you doing?” the sheriff asked. Red-faced, his thinning hair carefully flattened across his pink scalp, the sheriff stood like a man who’d lost everything—not all at once, but bit by bit. A year. Ten years. Maybe twenty. His shoulders dropped, and he sighed before turning to face me. Once again, his breath misted the cougar’s eyes.

I dropped my hand to my side. “Nothing.”

Dragging a handkerchief from his back pocket, the sheriff shook his head. “Criminal mischief.” He wiped his face. “Vandalism.” The handkerchief curlicued down the side of his neck. “Theft.” Wringing it between his hands, like a washerwoman on an old TV show, I don’t know, Bonanza maybe, he added, “Trespassing.”

I shrugged.

“Boy, don’t be hardheaded,” the sheriff said. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

“I didn’t steal anything.”

“Then why in God’s name do I get a call from Lawayne Karkkanew telling me you’re rummaging through his Dumpster this fine Saturday morning?”

“If it’s trash, it’s not stealing.”

“That depends,” the sheriff said, shaking out the handkerchief. He took a step towards me, and I stepped back. My head cracked against the big gray bird, and it swung in a lazy gyre on its wires.

“I didn’t break any laws.”

“You trespassed. That’s a private lot, and the Dumpster is smack-dab in the middle of it.”

The sheriff took another step. I fought the urge, but I lost, and I stepped back again. I hit the wall.

The sheriff’s ruddy face softened. “You been through a lot. I know that. I was there that night.”

“I’m fine.”

For a moment, the sheriff seemed to toy with that, turning it over. He spun a chair around and sat, looking up at me. “I’ve been wanting to ask you something. You going to sit?”

I shook my head.

“That night we found you in the cabin, with Luke Witkowski dead and that son of a bitch likely to shoot you too, well, doctors say some of those bruises on you were pretty old. They didn’t come from that night.”

He waited, his eyes red and watery, winding the handkerchief around his hand.

“I don’t make it a habit to interfere in people’s private business, but if your dad—”

“I’m fine.”

“If there’s someone at school—”

“Are you deaf?”