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  She pulled the mask down off her mouth, let it hang around her neck. To the coroner she said, “I’ll get these to you within the hour.”

  “Appreciate it,” he said. He took a drag from his cigarette, then flicked it into the yard and blew out a smoky breath. “If you want, we can take Harvey down to my place. While we have the ambulance here.”

  “Oh,” she said, and worried for a moment that the pink drive was not completely concealed in her hand, but did not want to look down and draw attention to it. “For Harvey, yeah,” she said. “But you should ask Kenny where he wants Jennalee to go.”

  The coroner looked to the sheriff, who returned the look with a tiny nod.

  The sheriff said, “Kenny and his mom are gone too, Laci. Deputy Landers is over there now. I’m on my way.”

  “Gone where?” she said. But the confusion lasted only a moment. “Oh my God no. No.”

  The coroner said, “I thought we could take Jennalee and her family to Murphy’s. He’s got a bigger operation than I do. Unless you want Harvey and Jennalee together. It’s your call. Yours and Will’s.”

  “I can’t believe it,” she said, and squeezed her fist tighter. “How did they die?”

  “According to the deputy,” the sheriff said, “it looks like they were beaten to death.”

  “By Harvey?” she said.

  “We don’t know that yet. To be honest with you, we don’t know diddly-squat. I’m hoping you and Will can fill me in a little on what was going on with them all.”

  “Nothing was going on,” she said. “I had coffee with Jennalee yesterday. My God. I just can’t believe all this.”

  The coroner gave her a few moments. Then he asked, “You up for another batch tonight? I know it’s asking a lot of you.”

  She said nothing. Was watching the cigarette ember in the yard. It looked like a dying firefly. Its soul a wisp of smoke clinging to the grass.

  The coroner said, “I’m going to call somebody else. You don’t have to do anything more tonight.”

  “No,” she said. “No. I’m all right. I want to do it.”

  “If this is too much for you . . .” the sheriff said. “Hell, it’s too much for me.”

  “I’m good,” Laci said. “Just let me do my job.”

  The coroner said, “Why don’t you ride over with me, then? You can send Will back home.”

  The sheriff said, “Ask him to come talk to me in the morning. See if we can’t figure this whole thing out.”

  She nodded. Then looked toward the curb, where Will was sitting with his car door open, feet atop the concrete, gazing her way. She said, “Does he know about Kenny and Louise?”

  “We haven’t talked to him yet,” the sheriff said.

  She held the camera in her right hand, pressed her fist against her hip. “I need to tell him.” And she moved away from the two men. Across the wide porch. Down the steps. Heard the paper booties making a hissing sound through the grass.

  “I’ll see you over at Kenny’s place,” the coroner said. “No need to rush.”

  58

  Laci walked to the car as if she were in a hurry but didn’t really want to get there. One bootie peeled away from her, dragged for a few steps, then lay atop the grass.

  She climbed into the car and set her camera between her legs and without buckling her seat belt turned the ignition key to start the engine. Her left hand remained closed in a fist, held tight against her belly. Will swung his feet back inside the car and closed the door just as she was pulling away from the curb.

  He said, “I didn’t get to see Harvey.”

  “They’re taking him to Donaldson’s.”

  “Is that where we’re going?”

  “Not yet,” she said.

  She drove for another minute, then pulled over on a dark street and put the gearshift in park. “Kenny’s dead too,” she told him. “So’s his mother. Both beaten to death.”

  He took a shallow breath. Another. And nodded.

  “You knew?” she said, her voice louder now.

  “Chris Landers told me.”

  “How could he tell you? He’s over at their house.”

  “Before he went there. He said they weren’t answering the phone.”

  “So you knew what Harvey was going to do?”

  “No,” he said. “No, I . . . I just had a feeling.”

  She brought her fist away from her body then, held it open to him. And said, her voice louder than she intended, “Is this why he killed them?”

  He flinched. “Please don’t yell.”

  “And now you’ve dragged me into it!”

  He winced again. Then asked, “How did you get it?”

  “I picked it up. It was under Jennalee’s leg. Do you know what it is—what’s on it?”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Because of you! I heard you and Harvey at the bar. How are you involved in this?”

  “I’m not,” he said. “I just . . .”

  “Do you know what’s on it?”

  He nodded. “Pictures.”

  “Of what?”

  “Jennalee. And Kenny. And other men.”

  Her head drew back a little. She looked down at her hand. Then lowered her hand to the seat, turned her hand over, reclaimed it, empty, and laid it against her throat. She said, “Jennalee with Kenny?”

  “Yep,” he said.

  Both of them were looking down at it now. The pink thing. Its color muted by the darkness.

  “Harvey said he wanted it,” she said. “At the bar. And you said Stevie had it.”

  “He must’ve gone to Stevie’s after leaving the bar.”

  “So Stevie’s seen it too.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Did Harvey know she was doing that?”

  “No. I mean . . . He told me tonight—last night, I guess—that back before they got married, he had some suspicions. But never wanted to believe it.”

  “So what’s on here,” she said, and touched the seat beside the flash drive, “this was all a surprise to him?”

  “Absolutely,” he said. “I mean . . . it was proof. Probably the first time he had any proof.”

  “And where did it come from?” she asked. “How did it end up with Stevie?”

  Now he looked up at her, eyes full of sorrow. “It was in Kenny’s desk at school.”

  “That was you at the school?” she asked, again so loud that he winced, kept his eyes closed for several seconds. “The three of you?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “We didn’t know it was there. We just wanted . . .”

  “You wanted to act like children? You wanted to behave like a bunch of idiots?”

  “Please,” he said. “I’m sorry. It was stupid, I know.”

  She tapped her fingertip atop the seat. The flash drive bounced with every jab. “I committed a crime here, Will. Because I knew this had something to do with you. I knew it did!”

  He said, “We should just get rid of it. Nobody will ever know.”

  She leaned away from him. Sat with her back against the door. Breathed loudly through her nose, long sucking breaths and quick exhalations.

  He put his hand over top of the flash drive. “I’ll get rid of it,” he said.

  And she put her hand atop his. “No.”

  He waited. Made no attempt to move.

  She took two of his fingers in her hand, and lifted his hand off the flash drive. “The way things are going to look now,” she said, her voice soft, words measured and slow, “this was all Harvey’s fault. First he beat Kenny and Louise to death, and then he went home and . . . maybe told Jennalee what he’d done. Because the way the bodies are, the way it looks, he sat down, maybe fell asleep, and she took the shotgun and killed him. And then shot herself.”

  “So she really did it? She really shot him?”

  “That’s how it looks, yes. People will say she had a right to. They’ll say he deserved it. But I knew she was cheating on him, Will. She as much as admitted it t
o me. And I don’t want Harvey taking the blame for everything. I don’t want Molly spending the next four years in this town hearing about how awful her uncle was.”

  He kept his eyes on hers. Could not look away. She said, “Harvey’s hands had fresh marks on them, right across the center of his palms.”

  “What kind of marks?”

  “If you stood one hand on top of the other, the marks would match up perfectly. Like it was a rope burn, you know? Like he was holding on to a rope and somebody pulled it through his hands.”

  “That’s how we got into the school. Through the skylight.”

  She nodded. Said nothing more for a while. He knew that she was thinking now, faster and better than he ever could, keeping her anger and disappointment at bay while she thought things through. So he said nothing. He waited.

  Finally she said, “I’m going to take you home. You need to get your head straight on this. Because the sheriff wants to talk to you in the morning.”

  “He wants to talk to me?”

  “He’s looking for why Harvey did this, that’s all.”

  “They know he did it? Killed Kenny and Louise?”

  “Who else would have done it? And why else would Jennalee have killed him?”

  He crumpled forward again, hands and forehead against the dashboard. She laid a hand against his back.

  “We’re the ones who have to live with this,” she told him. “You and me and Molly. But we both know what a prick Kenny was, and what a bitch his mother could be. And I know what I know about Jennalee too. So if there’s anybody’s reputation we have to protect, it’s not theirs. You understand?”

  He remained motionless; said nothing. He could feel the car’s vibration in his head and hands; could feel it in his eyeballs and teeth. And there was a second kind of rumbling too, a low and rolling rumble located somewhere in the back of his brain, not at all like the engine noise with its staccato vibration but more fluid, smoother, like the thunder of a huge wave rolling in, building from the back of his brain, getting ready to slam forward and wipe out everything in its path.

  “Will!” Laci said.

  Another wince. “Take me home,” he told her.

  59

  A state policeman was stationed on the front porch of Kenny’s house. He recognized Laci and directed her to the basement game room. Just inside the house, Deputy Chris Landers sat on the foyer floor, wedged into an empty corner where the stairs to the second floor descended, his knees drawn up, one hand splayed against the slate tile, his eyes heavy, face drawn and pale.

  “You doing okay?” she asked.

  “Two in one night,” he said. “All people I know. People I grew up with.”

  She nodded. “I hear you,” she said.

  “There’s gloves and booties for you in the kitchen,” he told her.

  “Thanks, Chris. Hang in there.”

  “I don’t know how you do it,” he said.

  “On autopilot, I guess.”

  In the kitchen she donned a fresh pair of booties. She had not worn gloves in Harvey’s house and disliked using them. Sensitivity in her fingertips was important when working with the camera. Besides, she was always very careful to touch nothing but the camera when doing her work. But this time was different. This time she had the flash drive to contend with.

  The basement door stood open and the voices of two men drifted up the carpeted stairs. The coroner and the sheriff. She knew they would have processed the scene by now and were waiting for her to finish up. It was going to be difficult to plant the flash drive with the two men just standing around and watching. She had been thinking about it ever since dropping Will off in front of the bar. She had wiped the device clean of her own fingerprints, plus Will’s and Stevie’s, and consequently Kenny’s and Harvey’s too. It was going to look fishy if not a single print was found on it. She had hoped to be able to rub the plastic case over Kenny’s fingertips, but now doubted it would be possible. But maybe they wouldn’t even bother to check it for prints. Not after they viewed the contents.

  She slipped on one glove, then extracted the flash drive from her pocket and tucked it into the collar of her high-top skate shoe, then pulled the top of the paper bootie up as far as it would reach. Then heard footsteps coming up from the game room. She hurried to stand erect and reached for the other glove, her heart racing.

  The sheriff appeared at the top of the stairs. He said, “I’m not sure I want you down here, Laci. You’re related to these people.”

  “I was related to Harvey and Jennalee too.”

  “That was a murder-suicide. It was clear who did what.”

  “I know my work,” she told him. “Who are you going to get that’s better?”

  “Coroner already made that argument for you. I still have to ask you some questions.”

  “Go ahead,” she said.

  “Where were you last night from between . . . let’s say ten and two?”

  “Home with my daughter,” she said. “Until I got the call to go to the school. Where you saw me.”

  “And after that?”

  “Home. In bed with my husband.”

  “How about your husband?”

  “What about him?”

  “Where was he during the same time?”

  “Before being in bed with me? Downstairs in the bar. Working on the books. Harvey was there with him when I left to go to the school.”

  “Was he there when you got back from the school?”

  “Will was. But I saw Harvey on the street just down from the school when I left.”

  “You saw Harvey there? Just after the break-in?”

  “He said he was walking home from the bar, decided to swing by the school and see what was going on.”

  “So you stopped and talked to him?”

  “I asked him what he was doing. Then I offered him a ride home.”

  “Did he take you up on it?”

  “No.”

  “How did he seem to you?”

  “Same way he did in the bar. Like he had a lot on his mind.”

  “Did he seem angry?”

  “Not particularly. More sad than angry. He didn’t say much at all at the bar.”

  “Is that typical of him? To show up at the bar on a Sunday night?”

  “The bar is part of our lives,” she said. “An extension of our home. They come and they go, Harvey and Stevie both.”

  “You have any idea where Stevie was last night?”

  “None whatsoever.”

  He nodded. “When was the last time you saw Jennalee?”

  “Yesterday afternoon. We had coffee together at the mall and shopped for shoes. She bought some, I didn’t.”

  “Did she talk at all about her marriage? Say it was in trouble or anything like that?”

  “Not that I can recall, Sheriff. Little other than the normal pleasantries. Mostly she talked about shoes.”

  “She didn’t seem angry or depressed about anything?”

  “Just the opposite.”

  She waited for him to respond, to nod or ask another question. But he stood motionless on the stairs, left hand on the rail, eyes gazing downward.

  She said, “Anything else you want to know?”

  A few more moments passed before he looked up. “Harvey didn’t say anything about being ticked off at Kenny over something? Either last night or any other time?”

  “Not last night,” she said. “But before? Yes. There was a thing about a motorcycle.”

  “What kind of thing?”

  “Harvey and Jake had restored an old motorcycle together. And Jake had promised to leave it to Harvey in his will. Except that after Jake died, Kenny and Louise said there wasn’t any will. So Harvey tried to buy the motorcycle, but Kenny kept raising the price on him. And yes, Harvey was ticked off about that. But enough to beat two people to death? Over a motorcycle? I just can’t believe that’s true.”

  “I’d hate to believe it myself,” the sheriff said. Then he made a slow turn and
started down the steps again. “Come on down when you’re ready,” he said.

  She remained at the table a couple minutes longer. A chill rattled through her. Then her body flushed with heat. Her hands trembled as she pulled on the second glove.

  60

  After checking on his daughter, still sleeping soundly, beautiful little princess, heartbreaking just to look at, Will tried standing at the window but kept feeling like he was going to tumble forward into it, out into the darkness stretching away like a squared-off tunnel of some kind, telescoping into the distance. In fact he wanted to fall into it. Could envision himself leaning forward, head and shoulders silently pushing out the screen, body in slow-motion free fall just like in that movie Inception, or like George Clooney in Gravity, not a bad thing at all, just drifting into the blackness, thinking nothing, becoming nothing . . .

  But Molly. Laci. They had to come first. Before he could disappear into nothingness. Get your head straight, he told himself.

  He went downstairs so that Molly would not hear him on the phone. Stood in the kitchen, leaning against the upright cooler. For some reason he did not want to go out into the barroom, the last place he had seen his brother. Afraid he might see him standing there at the corner of the bar, his chest a ragged, gaping hole. Great plan you had there, Will, Harvey would say. Way to go, brother.

  On the fifth ring the call went to voice mail, so Will hit End Call and tried again. This time Stevie answered. “We need to get our stories straight,” Will said.

  He could hear Stevie sitting up in bed, heard the squeak of bedsprings, the headboard thumping once against the wall.

  Still groggy, Stevie asked, “Did you call me a while ago?”

  “Of course I did.”

  “I thought maybe it was a dream.”

  “I wish it was, Stevie. Are you awake now? We need to talk about this.”

  “She really shot him, Will?”

  “She really did. But that’s not all of it. First he went over to Kenny’s place and killed him and his mother. All four of them are gone now.”

  “Holy shit,” Stevie said. And then his voice became muffled. “What the hell happened? Why would he do such a thing?”