"You think she's happy?" Hale asked.

It must've been a subject that wasn't supposed to be breached, because Dirt.w.a.ter placed his hands firmly on his son's shoulders, shook his head at the boy.

"He doesn't like me asking questions like that. It upsets some people. I ask about heaven and G.o.d and if dead people are awake or sleeping. I can't help it. I can't help thinking things like that. My mother says it's because little boys aren't supposed to be around death all the time."

"It's not that," Crease said. "It's just that n.o.body has any of the answers, and they usually don't like to be reminded."

"You don't mind, do you?"

"No. I've been around a lot of death too. I've been curious on occasion."

"He says he can still see your sadness, but there's something else to it."

Like you didn't have enough on your mind, the kid had to just keep on spooking you.

"He says you're getting back to who you're supposed to be."

"That so?"

"It is."

"Maybe he's right. Maybe not."

Crease stared into the boy's eyes, seeing the child he was in there. You could witness a lot in Dirt.w.a.ter's face, and you could see as much, maybe even more, in his son's. The whispers of the wind made him turn his face aside, wondering what his old man would have him do now. Give up and run for it? Ambush Tucco while he was asleep in Morena's arms? Dirt.w.a.ter stepped up, as if knowing Crease's thoughts and wanting, in some way, to take the place of his father. It could get on your nerves, all this silence.

"You know what happened to her?"

"Mostly."

"Maybe that'll make her happy."

"I don't see how."

"He says that maybe you're thinking about it in the wrong way."

Crease figured that was probably true. "Okay, so how should I think about it?"

He kept his eyes on Dirt.w.a.ter while the man spoke tohis son in a language that wasn't language. He kept his eyes on him even while the boy talked. "You know who did it?"

"Yeah."

"You know why?"

"Yeah."

"What's left to learn then?"

"What happened to the money."

"Does that matter now?"

"Only because it caused all the trouble in the first place. It was my father's destruction. I'd like to find it and burn it, if I could. But I don't know who stole it."

Some mysteries you're not meant to answer. Some of them are supposed to continue on and on, marking your life.

"He says maybe somebody didn't steal the money. Maybe something else happened to it."

"What else could happen to it?"

"He doesn't know that, he's just offering a suggestion."

There would never be an end to this for him if he couldn't track the last piece of the mystery. He wouldn't be able to face Tucco with his head clear and his hand ready, not with the little dead girl in his back seat and Teddy hissing in his ear. The G.o.dd.a.m.n fifteen grand would be his finish too.

Chapter Fifteen.

Five hours she'd had on the loose.

He'd made an understandable mistake. He hadn't gone far enough when he was play-acting around here before. He'd stepped into his drunk father's shoes and imagined himself being Edwards at the door, but he hadn't thought enough about the girl.

Six years old.

Your aunt lets you off at the far end of the abandoned mill, tells you to shoo. Gives you a little push.

A six-year-old, you don't realize how sharp they are at first. They constantly surprise you-how much they hear, how much they know that you never expected them to pick up.

Mary Burke would've heard her aunt and Purvis discussing the cash. How important it was to them, how much they needed it to get out of debt, make the guys who'd taken Purvis' leg leave them alone once and for all. On the drive up to the mill they were probably laughing, talking about resettling somewhere, raising a family of their own. While Mary was in the back taking it all in, knowing that her aunt had just traded her in. For what, Teddy? Why is this happening? For some short green, Mary, that's the truth of love.

You're six years old. Teddy's giving you good advice but it isn't enough. You see your aunt walking away, getting back in the car. She's angry, there's something that's upset their plans.

Would you walk into a deserted mill, no matter what she'd told you? h.e.l.l no. You'd follow your aunt.

He saw Sarah Burke and Daniel Purvis getting into their car and pulling away onto the logging trail, heading back to town. Mary would start running after them, maybe crying.

You race along the trail for as long as you can, but soon you tire and the car is long gone. The forest is terrifying in its dark implications. You're alone and wailing and Teddy's abruptly gone silent.

What do you do, even if you are a smart six-year-old? You're still a baby. You hunch down and sob, waiting for somebody to come find and help you. Where are Mommy and Daddy?

Teddy mutters, Don't rely on them, you're on your own.

It's been a rough day. You've learned a lot about life and your family. Your aunt is a liar who loves only, entirely, another person. Your father and mother cannot protect you. Teddy really doesn't know so much and he's got a mean streak. These lessons would wear anyone out.

You hide and you take a nap. It's the thing you do when you are angry. When your face is covered with hot tears. You find a small warm spot to curl away in.

Even a happy child can fall into a state of depression. Let's say a half hour following the trail, a couple hours of bitter, dreamless sleep in the woods, wedged between two logs, using Teddy as a pillow.

When you awake, you're disoriented, but you don't cry anymore. You've been transformed by your new world view. Teddy is jazzed up again and really chattering away. You hug him close and start back along the trail the way you've come. Another half hour.

You stand outside the mill. You see a man in the woods but you don't trust him. There's no reason for you to. He's crouched behind weeds, his handsome face is marred by self-interest. Aunt Sarah told you to walk inside and you'd be found. You don't believe her, but you haven't got many options left. You're tired and hungry. So's Teddy, and he's really bending your ear about it.

You are quiet. You like to play hide-and-seek. Your father is not here to use his commanding voice to draw you from the niches and nooks of the house. You can be in charge of the game.

So it goes like this. Your body is at ease in the shadows. There are great bulks of machinery strewn about in the long, wide room.

The man inside is asleep, or almost so. There's something wrong with him. He mumbles in his sleep and he shakes. You silently slip around him, hoping for a better view. He is a policeman. Your father has told you to trust such men, but your father may have been lying too. He failed in his duty. He and mother are at home eating ice cream and giving presents to each other, glad to be done with you. Your anger swells. Teddy snarls evil words in your ear.

There are spoked metal wheels with little cars on wires. There is money on the floor beneath them. Cash, Teddy says, there's the d.a.m.n cash. It looks like the policeman tried to hide the bundles of bills, but some have slipped out, there is green paper sticking up.

You would hide behind the track that wheels ran on. You would crawl. You want the money because everyone else wants the money. Maybe you can show it to your aunt and then yank it away while she reaches for it. You'll laugh in her face. You will be able to buy many friends with the money and your friends will beat up your aunt and that man and your parents. Your friends will throw many hard things at them and your parents will cry and beg forgiveness and you'll laugh at them also.

Teddy tells you to do it. Go on, be careful, grab the cash, baby.

You carefully reach out into the wheels. It's easy, your hands are small. You stick the bills in your shirt until you're all puffed out with a big fat belly. You slide back to where there's a hole in the wall and you slip through it and quietly walk into the bushes. You leave the mill behind. The money is heavier than you expected it to be. You're dirty and sweaty and the paper sticks to your skin under your shirt. It's a warm day, you're very thirsty.

You know what you will do. You'll hide the money and then go back and demand the policeman take you somewhere safe, and for that you will pay him later. You'll come back and pick up the bills and you and Teddy will give him some of them.

Teddy goes, I like the plan, all cops are bent. They'll sell their mothers for a wad of stash.

You creep back into the mill through the hole, ready to approach the policeman. His hands are shaking. He's nervous or sick about something, probably because they don't pay him enough. She'll pay him and he will be her friend.

The door opens and the other policeman enters with his gun coming up and Teddy goes, Oh s.h.i.t.

Crease snapped himself out of it. His heart was clattering in his chest and his pulse ticked so heavily in his throat that it felt like Tucco was tapping the point of a b.u.t.terfly blade against his neck. Salt stung his eyes and it took a minute to settle down, get Teddy's voice out of his head. Jesus.

He turned and looked behind him and there was the hole that a little girl could've crawled through carrying a couple of short stacks of bills. Fifteen thousand, what his father thought would save him, spirited off by a six-year-old and a stuffed bear.

He moved out from behind the carriage of the trimmer and walked to the rusted flatbed with the bent spoked wheels and cut cables. The broad opening where the slabs of wood would be hauled down the incline led to a two story drop over an embankment. She couldn't have gone that way.

But down at the nearest corner rotted flooring disclosed the crawls.p.a.ce area beneath the decking. It was large enough for him to climb down into. Seventeen years ago, it would've been smaller, and might've been overlooked by everyone but an angry kid looking to settle a score.

He went out to the 'Stang, found a flashlight in his trunk. It surprised him that it was there, and that the batteries still worked. Except for the spare and a jack, you never found what you needed in the trunk when you needed it.

One time, when a deal had gone sour in an apartment building in the south Bronx, Crease had seen a guy hurl himself into a wall thinking he was going to crash right through. Big guy, went maybe two-fifty of gut, but he had it in his mind he could work up enough momentum to bust out the other side. Get into the next apartment and make a run for it. Crease and Tucco watched the guy smash himself again and again into the wall-which did crack a little, a few paint chips spurting off-while the guy mashed his ribs and busted his face. It got surreal after a while, the guy trying to dig through the sheetrock. Tucco and Crease were enthralled watching him, and finally it was Cruez who came up with his Magnum and put the guy through the wall once and for all.

Crease thought of that scene as he worked to enlarge the hole, kicking out some of the flooring. It took him twenty minutes before he could really climb down, carefully maneuvering himself along the joists and beams and cement foundation built into the side of the hill.

Daylight dappled the groundwork base and rodents squeaked and rasped as he made his way down. There was hardly any need for the flashlight as he braced himself and moved from board to board. He saw Mary Burke doing the same thing, laughing as Teddy spurred her on, thinking about how her family would learn the hard lessons. The bundles under her shirt fattening her up, the bills soft but cold against her skin.

The belly of the building, this was the best place to hide.

He hit bottom and saw, by the sweeping rays of light, a clear path through which he could exit. He shined the flash around and knew Teddy would be extra sharp even now, telling Mary what to do. He'd want her to hide it, just in case.

Lots of hidey holes between the timbers. Crease hunched down, looking up, seeing this place the way someone smaller would. He let the urge to be hidden begin to overwhelm him. He wanted to stay in the shadows, allow them to twist about him and what he had brought into them. Teddy's voice would be loud under the mill, every squeak exaggerated a hundredfold.

Mary had things to do. She wouldn't be able to go with her impulse to play, to enjoy the darkness. Six years old and already so strong. What kind of a woman would she have become?

The timbers and joists and cinderblocks all looked the same. She wouldn't want to stray far. She'd need to find the money again for when she used it to reign over her family.

Bent over, Crease backed up and put his hand out where the first two beams crossed leaving a V-shaped open ledge. He touched paper. His fingertips were electrified and actually pained him. He shined the flashlight down on the area and saw red eyes reflected back at him. He instinctively snapped back as squeals retreated to the distant corners. He reached into the spot again and pulled out wads of rat-eaten, water-soaked, disintegrating bills.

The reason for the girl's death.

After Mary had hidden the cash she'd walked back out around the bottom of the foundation, up the incline to the far end of the mill, and in through the open side where Sarah Burke had originally given Mary the little push to go on. The girl had walked between his drunken father and the greedy deputy busting in the front door, the two guys gunning for each other.

The last thing she would've heard was Teddy going, Oh s.h.i.t. She'd have hugged him closer and maybe closed her eyes an instant before Crease sat in the darkness, feverish. He wanted to kill somebody, but everyone who mattered was already dead.

It didn't take much to get you believing in fate.

Thinking your life was wrapped around somebody else's that you hardly even knew. For years the thread connecting you wouldn't be noticed, and then one day it started to tug and you got reeled in.

He pulled out the clumps of money and the shredded bills crumbled to pieces in his hands. He took off his jacket and threw the decaying paper in. The stacks were even smaller than he'd imagined they would be. A lot of the cash had been torn up and dragged off for nests. He knotted the sleeves together, threw the bundle over his shoulder, and climbed back up out of the hole into the mill. He went out the front door and got in the 'Stang and stomped the pedal, throwing mud everywhere.

Finding the cash wouldn't allow his old man or Mary to rest any easier. He couldn't even give it to Reb to show her how little it was. Finding the cash just didn't mean a d.a.m.n thing.

He never should have come back to Hangtree. He should've marched down to the club where Tucco and Cruez were in the back getting lap dances, walked into the place and shot them both in the face. He would've got his medal and gone on from there.

Chapter Sixteen.

But at least it was done.

He drove over to the sheriff's office, parked, walked in with the bundle, and saw Edwards at his desk in back. Edwards spotted him coming and started shouting orders to the deputies, who all looked terrified at getting yelled at. You could tell it wasn't that kind of police station. n.o.body laid a hand on him.

Crease unknotted his jacket, threw the decaying cash on Edwards' desk, and said, "Here it is."

"Here what is?"

"Mary took it herself. Her own ransom. She was a smart kid. She knew what was going down. She hid it under the mill."

Edwards' expression went from joyful surprise to complete despair in half a second. "This isn't money."

"Yeah, it is."

He looked closer. "No it's not, it's some kind of clothing, isn't it? But-"