The Searcher(17)

He appears to have picked the wrong kid for that: Trey has no problem with silence. He finishes the shelf to his satisfaction, brings it over to Cal and holds it out.

“Good,” Cal says. “Have another. I’m gonna wax this one up here and here, see? and then fit it in where it belongs.”

Trey hovers for a minute or two, watching Cal rub wax along the dadoes, and then drifts back to his spot and starts sanding again. The rhythm has changed, though, got faster and less neat. The first shelf was to prove himself. Now that that’s done, there’s something else moving around in his mind, looking for an exit.

Cal ignores that. He kneels by the desk, lines up the shelf and starts gently hammer-tapping it into its grooves.

Trey says, behind him, “I heard you’re a cop.”

Cal nearly hammers his thumb. He’s been careful to keep that piece of information to himself, going off his experience with the people around his grandpa’s place in backwoods North Carolina, to whom being a cop as well as a stranger would not have been a big plus. He has no idea how anyone could have found out. “Who said that?”

Trey shrugs, sanding.

“Maybe next time don’t listen to them.”

“Are you?”

“I look like a cop to you?”

Trey surveys him, squinting against the light. Cal looks back. He knows the answer is no. That was one of the points of the beard, and the overgrown hair: no more looking like a cop, and no more feeling like a cop. More like Sasquatch, Donna would have said, grinning, twisting a lock around her finger to tug it.

“Nah,” Trey says.

“Well then.”

“You are, but.”

By now Cal has made up his mind: no point playing games if people already know. He considers a deal—you tell me where you heard, I’ll answer your questions—but he decides it wouldn’t fly. The kid is curious, but not enough to rat on his own. Deals need to wait a while longer. “Was,” he says. “Not any more.”

“Why not?”

“Retired.”

Trey examines him. “You’re not that old.”

“Thanks.”

The kid doesn’t smile. Apparently he doesn’t do sarcasm. “Why’d you retire, so?”

Cal goes back to the desk. “Things just got shittier. Or seems like.”

He wonders too late about cussing, but the kid doesn’t seem shocked, or even startled. He just waits.

“People got mad. Seemed like just about everyone was mad.”

“About what?”

Cal considers this, tapping at the corner of the shelf. “Black people got mad about being treated like crap. Bad cops got mad ’cause they were getting called on their shit all of a sudden. Good cops got mad ’cause they were the bad guys when they hadn’t done anything.”

“Were you a good cop or a bad cop?”

“I aimed to be a good one,” Cal says. “But everyone would say that.”

Trey nods. “Did you get mad?”

“I got weary,” Cal says. “Bone-weary.” He did. Every morning got to be like waking up with the flu, knowing he had to trek miles up a mountain.

“So you retired.”

“Yeah.”

The kid runs his finger along the wood, checking, and goes back to sanding. “Why’d you come here?”

“Why not?”

“No one ever moves here,” Trey says, like he’s pointing out the obvious to a moron. “Only away.”

Cal jiggles the shelf a quarter-inch farther in; it’s a tight fit, which is good. “I was sick of shitty weather. You guys don’t get snow or heat, not what we’d call, anyway. And I’d had enough of cities. Round here is cheap. And good fishing.”

Trey watches him, unblinking gray eyes, skeptical. “I heard you got fired ’cause you shot someone. On the job, like. And you were going to get arrested. So you ran.”

Cal did not see this one coming. “Who said that?”

Shrug.

Cal considers his options. “I never shot anyone,” he says, truthfully, in the end.

“Ever?”

“Ever. You watch too much TV.”

Trey keeps watching him. The kid doesn’t blink enough. Cal is starting to fear for his corneal health.

“You don’t believe me, Google me. Something like that, it’d be all over the internet.”

“Don’t have a computer.”

“Phone?”

The corner of Trey’s mouth twists: nah.

Cal takes his phone out of his pocket, unlocks it and tosses it onto the grass in front of Trey. “Here. Calvin John Hooper. The signal is shit, but it’ll get there in the end.”

Trey doesn’t pick up the phone.

“What?”

“Might not be your real name.”

“Jesus, kid,” Cal says. He leans over for the phone and puts it back in his pocket. “Believe what you want. You gonna sand that, or not?”

Trey goes back to sanding, but Cal can tell from the rhythm that he’s not done. Sure enough, after a minute he asks, “Were you any good?”

“Pretty good. I got the job done.”

“Were you a detective?”

“Yeah. The last while.”