The Searcher(127)

He smiles at Cal over his shoulder, as he puts the mugs in the sink. “Go on, now,” he says, the way he’d say it to Kojak. “And get some rest. If you don’t get back up and running soon, Lena might get impatient and find herself another fella.”



While Cal was out, which he feels like he has been for a very long time, Trey gave up on training Nellie. She and Lena have broken out the painting gear and are working on the front-room skirting boards. The iPod is playing the Dixie Chicks, Lena is humming along, Trey is sprawled on her stomach on the floor to get a corner perfect, and Nellie has taken over the armchair. Cal wants to turn around and walk straight out again, taking his knowledge with him.

Trey glances over her shoulder. “Check this,” she says. She sits up and spreads her arms. Lena must have somehow convinced her to take that bath; she’s noticeably cleaner than she was when Cal left, and she’s wearing the new clothes he brought her from town.

“Looking snazzy,” Cal says. The clothes are a size too big. They make her look so little it hurts. “Till you get paint all over yourself.”

“She was restless,” Lena says. “She wanted to be doing something. I figured you wouldn’t mind.”

“I can just about live with it,” Cal says. “The reason those aren’t done yet is ’cause I wasn’t looking forward to getting down on the floor like that.”

“You know what we oughta do,” Trey says.

“What’s that?” Cal says.

“That wall.” She points at the fireplace wall. “In the evenings it goes gold, like, from the sun coming in through that window. Looks good. We oughta paint it that color.”

Cal is startled by something rising up inside his chest that might be a laugh or a sob. Mart was right again: here he is, with a woman bringing ideas into his house. “Sounds good to me,” he says. “I’ll get in a few paint samples, we can pick the one that matches best.”

Trey nods. Something in Cal’s voice has caught her; she gives him a long look. Then she picks up her paintbrush and goes back to the skirting board.

Lena looks at the two of them. “Right, so,” she says. “I’ll be off.”

“Could you maybe hang around a little longer?” Cal asks.

She shakes her head. “I’ve things to do.”

Cal waits while she puts on her big jacket and packs her accoutrements away in its pockets, and snaps her fingers for Nellie. He walks them out. “Thanks,” he says, on the step. “Could you give the kid a ride home, later on?”

Lena nods. “You got things under control,” she says, not really asking a question.

“Yeah,” Cal says. “I did. Or close enough.”

“Right,” Lena says. “Good luck.” She touches Cal’s arm for a second, in something between a pat and a shake. Then she heads off through the rain towards her car, with Nellie lolloping along beside her. It comes to Cal that, while she doesn’t know anything for sure and doesn’t want to, she’s had a pretty fair idea all along.

He closes the door behind them, turns off the Dixie Chicks and goes to Trey. His knee still hurts enough that he has a hard time finding a position he can take up on the floor; he eventually settles for sitting with his leg stretched out at an awkward angle. Trey keeps on painting, but he can feel her stretched taut as a wire, waiting.

He says, “I talked to some people, while I was out.”

“Yeah,” Trey says. She doesn’t look up.

“I’m sorry to tell you this, kid. I got some sad news for you.”

After a moment she says, like her throat is tight, “Yeah.”

“Your brother died, kid. The same day you last saw him. He met up with some people, they got in a fight. Your brother took a punch, and he fell over and hit his head. No one meant for him to die. Things just went bad that day.”

Trey keeps on painting. Her head is down and Cal can’t see her face, but he can hear the hard hiss of her breathing.

She says, “Who was it?”

“I don’t know who threw the punch,” Cal says. “You said all you need is to know for sure what happened, so you can leave it. Did that change?”

Trey says, “Did he die quick?”

“Yeah. The punch knocked him out, and he died just a minute later. He didn’t suffer. He never even knew what was happening.”

“D’you swear?”

“Yeah. I swear.”

Trey’s brush scrubs back and forth over the same patch of skirting board. In a little bit she says, “It might not be true.”

“I’m gonna get you proof,” Cal says. “In a few days’ time. I know you need that. But it’s true, kid. I’m sorry.”

Trey keeps up the painting for another second. Then she lays down the brush, leans back against the wall and starts to cry. At first she cries like a grown adult, sitting there with her head back, her jaw and eyes tight, tears trickling down the sides of her face in silence. Then something breaks and she sobs like a child, with her arm across her knees and her face buried in her elbow, crying her heart out.

Every cell in Cal’s body wants to grab his rifle, head back up to Mart’s place and march that bastard all the way to town and into the police station. He knows it wouldn’t be the slightest bit of use, but he still wants to do it, with such ferocious urgency that he has to stop his muscles from propelling him onto his feet and right out the door.