She trailed off. He waited. At last she pushed ahead.
“There is something very wrong with this, and the more you find, the wronger it gets. It scares me. That story Yune told you scares me. It’s basically a vampire story, isn’t it? I read Dracula in high school, and one thing I remember about it is vampires don’t cast reflections in mirrors. And a thing that can’t cast a reflection probably wouldn’t show up in TV news footage.”
“That’s nuts. There’s no such things as ghosts, or witches, or vam—”
She slapped her open hand down on the table, a flat pistol-shot sound that made him jump. Her eyes were furious, crackling. “Wake up, Ralph! Wake up to what’s right in front of you! Terry Maitland was in two places at the same time! If you stop trying to find a way to explain that away and just accept it—”
“I can’t accept it, honey. It goes against everything I’ve believed my whole life. If I let something like that in, I really would go crazy.”
“The hell you would. You’re stronger than that. But you don’t have to even consider the idea, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. Terry’s dead. You can let it go.”
“If I do that, and it really wasn’t Terry who killed Frankie Peterson? Where does that leave Marcy? Where does it leave her girls?”
Jeannie got up, walked to the window over the sink, and looked out at the backyard. Her hands were clenched into fists. “Derek called again. He still wants to come home.”
“What did you tell him?”
“To stick it out until the season ends in the middle of next month. Even though I’d love to have him home. I finally talked him into it, and do you know why?” She turned back. “Because I don’t want him in this town while you’re still digging around in this mess. Because when it gets dark tonight, I’m going to be frightened. Suppose it really is some kind of supernatural creature, Ralph? And what if it finds out you’re looking for it?”
Ralph took her in his arms. He could feel her trembling. He thought, Part of her actually believes this.
“Yune told me that story, but Yune believes the killer is a natural man. So do I.”
With her face against his chest, she said, “Then why isn’t the man with the burned face in any of the footage?”
“I don’t know.”
“I care about Marcy, of course I do.” She looked up, and he saw she was crying. “And I care about her girls. I care about Terry, for that matter . . . and the Petersons . . . but I care more about you and Derek. You guys are all I have. Can’t you let this go now? Finish your leave, see the shrink, and turn the page?”
“I don’t know,” he said, when in fact he did know. He just didn’t want to say so to Jeannie while she was in her current strange state. He couldn’t turn the page.
Not yet.
4
That night he sat at the picnic table in the backyard, smoking a Tiparillo and looking up at the sky. There were no stars, but he could still make out the moon behind the clouds that were moving in. The truth was often like that, he thought—a bleary circle of light behind clouds. Sometimes it broke through; sometimes the clouds thickened, and the light disappeared completely.
One thing was sure: when night fell, the skinny, tubercular man from Yune Sablo’s fairy tale became more plausible. Not believable, Ralph could no more believe in such a creature than he could in Santa Claus, but he could picture him: a darker-skinned version of Slender Man, that bugaboo of pubescent American girls. He’d be tall and grave in his black suit, his face like a lamp, and carrying a bag big enough to hold a small child with his or her knees folded against his or her chest. According to Yune, the Mexican boogeyman prolonged his life by drinking the blood of children and rubbing their fat on his body . . . and while that wasn’t exactly what had happened to the Peterson boy, it was in the vicinity. Might it be possible that the killer—maybe Maitland, maybe the unsub of the blurred fingerprints—actually thought he was a vampire, or some other supernatural creature? Hadn’t Jeffrey Dahmer believed he was creating zombies when he killed all those homeless men?
None of that addresses the question of why the burned man isn’t in the news footage.
Jeannie called to him. “Come inside, Ralph. It’s going to rain. You can smoke that smelly thing in the kitchen, if you have to have it.”
That isn’t why you want me to come inside, Ralph thought. You want me to come in because part of you can’t help thinking that Yune’s sack-man is lurking out here, just beyond the reach of the yard light.
Ridiculous, of course, but he could sympathize with her unease. He felt it himself. What had Jeannie said? The more you find, the wronger it gets.
Ralph came inside, doused his Tiparillo under the sink tap, then grabbed his phone off the charging stand. When Howie answered, Ralph said, “Can you and Mr. Pelley come over here tomorrow? I have a bunch of stuff to tell you, and some of it’s pretty unbelievable. Come to lunch. I’ll go out to Rudy’s and buy some sandwiches.”
Howie agreed at once. Ralph broke the connection and saw Jeannie in the doorway, looking at him with her arms folded over her chest. “Can’t let it go?”
“No, honey. I can’t. I’m sorry.”
She sighed. “Will you be careful?”
“I’ll tread with utmost caution.”
“You better, or I’ll tread on you without caution. And no need to get sandwiches from Rudy’s. I’ll make something.”
5
Sunday was rainy, so they convened at the Andersons’ seldom-used dining room table: Ralph, Jeannie, Howie, and Alec. Yune Sablo, at home in Cap City, joined them on Howie Gold’s laptop, via Skype.
Ralph began by recapping the things all of them knew, then turned it over to Yune, who told Howie and Alec about what they had found in the Elfman barn. When he was finished, Howie said, “None of this makes sense. In fact, it’s about four time-zones from making sense.”
“This person was sleeping out there in the loft of a deserted barn?” Alec asked Yune. “Hiding out? That’s what you’re thinking?”
“It’s the working assumption,” Yune said.
“If so, it couldn’t have been Terry,” Howie said. “He was in town all day Saturday. He took the girls to the municipal pool that morning, and he was at Estelle Barga Park all that afternoon, getting the field ready—as the home field coach, doing that was his responsibility. There were plenty of witnesses in both places.”
“And from Saturday til Monday,” Alec put in, “he was jugged in county jail. As you well know, Ralph.”
“There are all kinds of witnesses to Terry’s whereabouts almost every step of the way,” Ralph agreed. “That’s always been the root of the problem, but let it go for a minute. I want to show you something. Yune’s already seen it; he reviewed the footage this morning. But I asked him something before he watched, and now I want to ask you. Did either of you notice a badly disfigured man at the courthouse? He was wearing something on his head, but I’m not going to say what it was just now. Either of you?”
Howie said he hadn’t. All his attention had been fixed on his client and his client’s wife. Alec Pelley, however, was a different matter.