"It just sort of happened."

She gave him the eye, led him upstairs and said, "You can take my parents' room, right here. Has its own bathroom and shower. Not much of my father's will fit you, but anything that does you can have. I'm down the hall."

"I remember," he said.

He dreamed of Mary Burke, the girl his father had killed.

She was four or five years younger than him, but he vaguely remembered her from grammar school recess, when all the grades came out to play together. Burnished copper hair and large, almond eyes. A girl who usually sat alone watching the others without jealousy or interest, who preferred her own company. She usually carried a doll or a teddy bear. He was ten when he heard the news his old man had accidentally iced her.

In his dreams she was always bleeding and lying in his arms and the playground was covered with crows. Sometimes he was yelling and sometimes he was attempting to soothe her while she sobbed. When he dreamed he'd tussle and kick and lash out. He'd wake up with his own voice in his ears and Joan would be holding her arm, her breast, asking him if he was all right. That's what kind of woman she was. Joan would stare at him and he'd know he'd had another of the dreams, but she would never tell him what he'd said, if he'd said anything at all. It wasn't until Morena that he found out that he'd cry out, You're my sister, Mary. Morena took it literally, thinking his old man had screwed around on the side and Mary was Crease's half-sister.

Crease figured it meant that in his heart he knew his father had tied him to the little girl, making her a part of his life forever. The same way that Crease had made Morena a part of his life. Morena, the baby, even Tucco and his gunman Cruez. You couldn't make it through the world without a family. If you didn't have a family, you made one out of whoever was around, plucking them from out of the air.

Mary Burke dying over fifteen grand. His father destroyed. Crease's mother gone, his adolescence dragged into h.e.l.l, all for such an insignificant sum. Tucco used to carry twice that in his money clip, in hundreds, so he could tip the strippers a C-note at a time.

He awoke in the deep night and found Reb in bed with him, nude, laying back against the headboard, staring at him with the moonlight skipping playfully across her face. The wind had risen even more and the maples out front were swinging their branches in a savage dance.

"You want the money, don't you? That's why you're back."

"What money?"

"The money your father stole and hid."

"If he'd taken the money, he wouldn't have died a drunk in the gutter."

"There must've been a reason. Everyone knows he shot that girl and took the ransom money."

"They do, eh?"

"Yes, and so do you."

"He said he hid it and it was stolen from him."

"So you do want it."

"I want to know who wound up with it. I want to know why fifteen grand was enough to cost a girl her life."

"h.e.l.l, that's more than enough reason to lead to murder anywhere, much less in Hangtree."

She was right. He'd seen some of the Colombians take out a guy's eye for skimming a grand or two off the top. Crease had to remind himself that n.o.body really needed a reason to start a ma.s.sacre. People were always reaching for some kind of answer.

"You're going to kill him, aren't you?" she asked. "Who?"

"Sheriff Edwards."

Crease thought about it for a minute. "Maybe."

"Why do you say it like that?"

"Like what?"

"Like you don't really care one way or another."

"I don't know."

"You could've killed Jimmy pretty easily. He's considered tough around here."

"He's not."

"You kept his knife. I like that. Taking it away from him like a kid who's been bad and doesn't deserve his toy."

"I'm going to need a knife soon," Crease said.

"Why?"

It would come down to him and Tucco playing around with blades. As much as he tried, he just couldn't see himself shooting Tucco. There'd be a lot of talk and a lot of buildup, even some laughter along the way, but in the end Tucco would lash forward like lightning and Crease would have to be ready for it.

Chapter Three.

He went to visit his father's grave.

The 'Stang wanted to cut loose beneath him, and he found it difficult to keep it under control. Driving through Manhattan was h.e.l.lish with a light on every corner. Back here, you had hundreds of miles of back road without even a stop sign. The 'Stang was tuned fine, he'd burn past any of the local cruisers. It might be fun, running Edwards and the others around the county for a few hours, just for the h.e.l.l of it. Do some of the idiot things he hadn't been able to do as a kid.

He took it slow across town and pa.s.sed by the police station, keeping an eye out. He didn't see anyone he recognized, and at the next light he pulled a hard left and tromped the gas pedal.

The area grew lush with wild maple and the seething, fiery colors of the dying leaves. The tourist traffic would be heavy for another couple of weeks. Families on road trips through New England, kids hunting through the pumpkin patches. The last of the maple syrup for the season would be going out in buckets before it got too cold.

The high arching gate-work narrowed his attention as Crease slowed, turned off the road, and drove past the spear-point fencing and brick pillars into the cemetery.

He parked and threaded his way to his father's grave, each step somehow calming him instead of bringing the fever forward. He felt like he was doing something wrong, that he might not care enough to actually accomplish what he'd set out to do. His resolve seemed to be waning. Strange that should happen here, where he'd buried his own father and been run out of town.

The old man's grave had sunken in about a foot. Crease hadn't packed enough of the frozen earth back into the hole that night. The yellow gra.s.s on it grew in scruffy patches. There was no tombstone, but Dirt.w.a.ter, or someone, had put a few large rounded rocks where the headstone should be. The spring rains had dragged mud up against them to form a kind of k.n.o.bby crest.

Dirt.w.a.ter was busy fifty yards off tr.i.m.m.i.n.g some brush, his back to Crease. A boy of about eight years old held onto a rake with a wooden handle taller than he was, smoothly drawing leaves and sticks into a pile.

Crease leaned up against a tree, lit a cigarette, and wondered what it was that had driven him all this way, nonstop, from New York. Some kind of mild need for revenge that, at the moment, he didn't quite feel anymore. His father's apathy was still affecting him through all the years, even from his own death. Crease had fallen into the same rut he'd been in when carrying the man on his back through the streets, when nothing could anger or harm him.

"Hey!"

Crease turned and saw the boy was rushing toward him. He had a nice fluid way of moving, trained not to step on the graves. He nimbly maneuvered through the aisles and skimmed past the clutches of angels and virgin mothers with outstretched arms.

"Who are you?" the kid asked. "If you don't mind me asking."

"I don't. I'm Crease. How about yourself?"

"I'm Hale. You're not supposed to smoke here."

"Why?" Crease said, genuinely curious.

"We had a dry summer and the fall's no better. There's been some bad brush fires. There's a ban on smoking in wooded areas."

Crease wouldn't exactly call the graveyard a wooded area, but he decided not to argue with the boy. He put his cigarette out on the heel of his shoe and, not wanting to throw the b.u.t.t on the ground, replaced it in his pack.

"Are you Dirt.w.a.ter's son?"

"Yep."

"You look just like him."

The boy smiled. "He tells me I look like Mom. He says that's a good thing, since he's ugly. But I know he's not. He's not really handsome, even Mom knows that, but he's not ugly, not too ugly anyway, so I'll take what you said to me as a compliment."

The kid liked to talk and showed a real maturity, just like Stevie. "Good, because that's how I meant it, Hale."

"So thank you."

"You're welcome."

Dirt.w.a.ter didn't know how to do sign language, but through expression and gestures, he could hold a pretty d.a.m.n good conversation. It was a nice balance that he should have a boy who enjoyed talking so much, and was so good at it.

"I'd like to talk to him," Crease said.

"Do you know my Dad?"

"I did a long time ago."

He was worried that Dirt.w.a.ter wouldn't remember him. Crease couldn't even show him any identification, since all of it was in his cover name. All he could do was flash his father's badge at him, which wouldn't mean anything. Maybe point at the old man's grave.

But when he looked over again Dirt.w.a.ter was already staring at him. Those dark expressive eyes showing recognition. Dirt.w.a.ter smiled and opened his arms, waving both hands. Despite himself, Crease let out a laugh.

They shook hands and Crease was surprised at Dirt.w.a.ter's strength. He'd run up against guys a lot tougher but none of them contained the same kind of immense inner power that Dirt.w.a.ter exuded. Crease imagined it must have been very hard for him to have taken that punch from Edwards ten years ago and not broken the deputy's neck.

Crease didn't know what to say or how to say it. Dirt.w.a.ter could read lips perfectly, but Crease couldn't find any words. All this way and now here he was face to face with another person from his past, but anything he might ask or tell him seemed moot. There was too much significance in the moment and also not enough.

He c.o.c.ked his head and Dirt.w.a.ter grinned and nodded, patted him on the shoulder and gave him a brief hug. Dirt.w.a.ter gestured, his hands fluttering, his eyes and features shifting expression. Crease looked back over his shoulder at his father's sunken plot.

Hale told him, "He says he knew you'd show up again one day. He's been waiting for you."

"He knew more than me then."

Dirt.w.a.ter's lips were moving, but since he'd never heard speech and couldn't actually talk, Crease didn't grasp how these could be actual sentences. But Hale watched him carefully and obviously understood. "He says he can see your sadness. You waited too long."

"I originally planned on six months. Time got away from me."

"He says you're not who you're supposed to be."

That straightened Crease's back. Hard enough hearing such things inside your own head without some deaf mute saying them to you, by way of his chatty son. Crease wanted another cigarette. "That's probably true of any of us."

"More so for you, he says."

Crease stared into Dirt.w.a.ter's eyes. You could witness a lot in Dirt.w.a.ter's face. His silence allowed for a great deal of sudden contemplation, and the hush of the cemetery only added to it. He tried to read the man's face but only saw something of himself there, a cloudy reflection. Maybe Dirt.w.a.ter was doing it on purpose or maybe it was just his natural skill at communicating without a voice.

Crease let out a little grin, the one that Tucco's people knew to beware of, and Dirt.w.a.ter's face closed up like a fist.

Hale said, "He's not saying anything."

"Good. I want to see where Mary Burke is buried."

Dirt.w.a.ter and the boy wafted between headstones like ghosts. Crease followed, tripping over roots and chuckholes, catching his jacket on fat little angels' wings.

Hale was in the lead and Crease wondered why the kid should know where Mary's grave should be. Crease got that feeling again that his past was rushing forward to encompa.s.s and color and affect the present. That every move he made was the completion of some small action started ten years ago.

"Here," Hale said.

The stone was plain. It simply said: Mary Burke, Beloved Daughter, Taken From Us Too Soon.

"She mean something to you?" the kid asked.

"I don't know."

"How could you not know if a dead girl means something to you?"

Dirt.w.a.ter drew the boy back by his arm and pressed a finger over the kid's lips. The three of them stood there like that for a while, Crease enjoying the breeze blowing against the back of his neck.

He knew he would never know who kidnapped her. He'd never be sure of where the money went or even if his father had truly shot the girl. Some mysteries you're not meant to answer. Some of them are supposed to continue on and on, tainting your life.

There would never be an end to this for him, and it didn't really matter, he was just killing time. But he decided he would visit with her family, ask questions, nose around a decade and a half too late.

It wasn't to make amends for the old man. He could never do that and wouldn't bother trying. But he'd come back here for some reason and he figured this might be a part of it, and anyway, he had a day or two until Tucco showed up.

Hale brushed against Crease's arm. "He wants to know if your father picked her up.. . no, took her ... like everybody thought."

Crease looked over at Dirt.w.a.ter. "No, but he planned to grab the money, only somebody beat him to it. Edwards was there, in the woods, but my father didn't think he got his hands on it either. It vanished from the mill that night. Either the real kidnappers got it or somebody else did."

Dirt.w.a.ter furrowed his brow, moved his hands and fingers, made sharp gestures in the air. "He says you should forgive your dad."

"I have, a long time ago."

"If you want, I can put some flowers on her grave. On his too, if you want."

"That would be nice, Hale." Crease got out his wallet and held out a twenty, but the boy didn't take it.