“Yeah, I saw him. Looked like he got burned in a fire. And what he was wearing on his head . . .” He stopped, eyes widening.
“Go on,” Yune said from his living room in Cap City. “Let it out, amigo. You’ll feel better.”
Alec was rubbing his temples, as if he had a headache. “At the time I thought it was a bandanna or a kerchief. You know, because his hair got burned off in the fire and maybe couldn’t grow back because of the scarring and he wanted to keep the sun off his skull. Only it could have been a shirt. The one missing from the barn, is that what you’re thinking? The one Terry was wearing in the security footage from the train station?”
“You win the Kewpie doll,” Yune said.
Howie was frowning at Ralph. “You’re still trying to hang this on Terry?”
Jeannie spoke up for the first time. “He’s just trying to get to the truth . . . which I’m not sure is the world’s best idea, actually.”
“Watch this, Alec,” Ralph said. “And point out the burned man.”
Ralph ran the Channel 81 footage, then the FOX footage, and then, at Alec’s request (he was now leaning so close to Jeannie’s laptop that his nose was nearly touching the screen), the Channel 81 footage again. At last he sat back. “He’s not there. Which is impossible.”
Yune said, “He was standing next to the guy waving his cowboy hat, right?”
“I think so,” Alec said. “Next to him and higher up from the blond reporter who got bonked on the noggin with a sign. I see both the reporter and the sign-waver . . . but I don’t see him. How can that be?”
None of them answered.
Howie said, “Let’s go back to the fingerprints for a minute. How many different sets in the van, Yune?”
“Forensics thinks as many as half a dozen.”
Howie groaned.
“Take it easy. We’ve eliminated at least four of those: the farmer in New York who owned the van, the farmer’s oldest son who sometimes drove it, the kid who stole it, and Terry Maitland. That leaves one clear set we haven’t identified—could have been one of the farmer’s friends or one of his younger kids, playing around inside—and those blurry ones.”
“The same blurry ones you found on the belt buckle.”
“Probably, but we can’t be sure. There are a few visible lines and whorls in those, but nothing like the clear points of identity you’d need to get them admitted into evidence when a case goes to court.”
“Uh-huh, okay, understood. So let me ask all three of you gentlemen something. Isn’t it possible that a man who had been badly burned—hands as well as face—could leave prints like that? Ones blurred to unrecognizability?”
“Yes.” Yune and Alec said it in unison, their voices only overlapping because of the computer’s brief transmission lag.
“The problem with that,” Ralph said, “is the burned man at the courthouse had tattoos on his hands. If his fingertips burned off, wouldn’t the tats have burned off, too?”
Howie shook his head. “Not necessarily. If I’m on fire, maybe I use my hands to try and put myself out, but I don’t do it with the backs, do I?” He began slapping at his considerable chest to demonstrate. “I do it with my palms.”
There was a moment of silence. Then, in a low, almost inaudible voice, Alec Pelley said, “That burned guy was there. I’d swear to it on a stack of Bibles.”
Ralph said, “Presumably the State Police Forensics Unit will analyze the stuff from the barn that turned the hay black, but is there anything we can do in the meantime? I’m open to suggestions.”
“Backtrack to Dayton,” Alec said. “We know Maitland was there, and we know the van was there, too. At least some of the answers may also be there. I can’t fly up myself, too many irons currently in the fire, but I know somebody good. Let me make a call and see if he’s available.”
That was where they left it.
6
Ten-year-old Grace Maitland had slept poorly ever since her father’s murder, and what sleep she had managed was haunted by nightmares. That Sunday afternoon all her weariness came down on her like a soft weight. While her mother and sister were making a cake in the kitchen, Grace crept upstairs and lay on her bed. Although the day was rainy, there was plenty of light, which was good. The dark scared her now. Downstairs she could hear Mom and Sarah talking. That was also good. Grace closed her eyes, and although it only felt like a moment or two before she opened them again, it must have been hours, because the rain was coming down harder now and the light had gone gray. Her room was full of shadows.
A man was sitting on her bed and looking at her. He was wearing jeans and a green tee-shirt. There were tattoos on his hands and crawling up his arms. There were snakes, and a cross, and a dagger, and a skull. His face no longer looked like it had been made out of Play-Doh by an untalented child, but she recognized him, just the same. It was the man who had been outside Sarah’s window. At least now he didn’t have straws for eyes. Now he had her father’s eyes. Grace would have known those eyes anywhere. She wondered if this was happening, or if it was a dream. If so, it was better than the nightmares. A little, anyway.
“Daddy?”
“Sure,” said the man. His green tee-shirt changed to her father’s Golden Dragons game shirt, and so she knew it was a dream, after all. Next, that shirt turned into a white smocky thing, then back into the green tee-shirt. “I love you, Gracie.”
“That doesn’t sound like him,” Grace said. “You’re making him up.”
The man leaned close to her. Grace shrank back, eyes fixed on her father’s eyes. They were better than the I-love-you voice, but this was still not him.
“I want you to go,” she said.
“I’m sure you do, and people in hell want icewater. Are you sad, Grace? Do you miss your daddy?”
“Yes!” Grace began to cry. “I want you to go! Those aren’t my daddy’s real eyes, you’re just pretending!”
“Don’t expect any sympathy from me,” the man said. “I think it’s good that you’re sad. I hope you’ll be sad for a long time, and cry. Wah-wah-wah, just like a baby.”
“Please go!”
“Baby want her bottle? Baby pee in her didies, get all wet? Baby go wah-wah-wah?”
“Stop it!”
He sat back. “I will if you do one thing for me. Will you do something for me, Grace?”
“What is it?”
He told her, and then Sarah was shaking her and telling her to come down and have some cake, so it had just been a dream after all, a bad dream, and she didn’t have to do anything, but if she did, that dream might never come back.
She made herself eat some cake, although she really didn’t want any, and when Mom and Sarah were sitting on the couch and watching some dippy movie, Grace said she didn’t like love-movies and was going upstairs to play Angry Birds. Only she didn’t. She went into her parents’ bedroom (just her mom’s now, and how sad that was) and took her mother’s cell phone off the dresser. The policeman wasn’t in the cell’s contact list, but Mr. Gold was. She called him, holding the phone in both hands so it wouldn’t shake. She prayed he would answer, and he did.