Of course I would have to be the one to clean it up.
Or maybe—Adrienne’s voice yawned in my head—you’ll pay someone to do the scrubbing for you. Or burn it. Toss it. Whatever. I always said that wall-to-wall was tacky, anyway.
At my feet, the cat rose up on his hind legs, meowing, begging for attention. I bent, scooped him into my arms, snuggled him close, and pulled the office door shut. The sun would be coming up in only a few hours, and when it did, I would have work to do. But down the hall, in that dark blue bedroom, there was nothing to do but sleep, and I did. Deeply. Dreamless. Dead.
Chapter 25
Bird
The fire had consumed the man in the way that fires did: from the outside in, starting at the extremities. The smallest bits were always the first to go, swallowed whole by the flames. Ears, nose, toes, fingers. All of them, gone. The body in Dwayne Cleaves’s truck had burned uninterrupted for a long time, and had no feet, no hands, and most unsettling of all, no face, just a featureless mass of charcoal with two slight indentations where the eyes had been. By the time the sun crept over the tops of the pines at the junkyard’s eastern border, there was nothing left for the techs to do but stir the ashes around in search of any pieces they might have missed, their fingers numb with cold. Mostly, they found nothing. Just ashes on top of ashes, everything sodden and stinking of smoke, tar, melted rubber. The state’s forensic team kept their eyes on their work; the local cops glanced their sidelong discomfort at each other over the tops of the masks they’d been told to wear to keep toxic particles out of their lungs. The mood at the lake the previous morning had been practically jovial by comparison, that blond jackass all but snickering about the mole and how they all knew about it, about what a tramp poor, dead Lizzie Ouellette had been. That same man was here now; Bird could recognize him by his beady eyes alone, and the little slice of his face visible above his mask and below the brim of his hat looked pale and sweaty. Not laughing now, eh, chief?
It was hard to know what was making the locals more uncomfortable: the fact that the body wasn’t one of their own, or the fact that their good friend Dwayne Cleaves was officially a multiple murderer, and now lying dead in a city morgue. Bird had told Sheriff Ryan, Ryan had told the rest, and the news had gone over like a sack of bricks as the cops of Copper Falls realized what it meant, and what was still to come. The press hadn’t gotten wind of it yet, but it was only a matter of time. When they did, they’d descend on Copper Falls like vultures, scrapping and snarling until they’d plucked the last scrap of meat off the bones of the town’s tragedy. The coroner told Bird that there might be some teeth still left for an ID, clenched shut behind the mottled black mask that used to be a man’s face. The medical examiner would need to get his hands on dental records, but as far as Bird was concerned, it was just a formality. The folks in Augusta would only confirm what he already knew: this charred body, its handless arms curled up in death like it was still trying to ward off the oncoming flames, was Ethan Richards.
Sheriff Ryan, red around the eyes and looking fifteen years older than he had the previous morning, pulled down his mask and rubbed a hand over the graying stubble on his chin.
“Hell of a thing,” said Ryan. “I know folks always say this, but goddamn, I knew Dwayne Cleaves a long time. We all did. Hard to believe he’d shoot his wife. Harder to believe he’d do a thing like this. Burning a man to death. Jesus.”
“Well, most likely he was dead before the fire started,” Bird said. “Or unconscious, maybe. But I take your point.”
“They say they’re about finished here. Debbie Cleaves is an early riser. I’d like to get over there and knock on her door, before someone else does. She’s going to have a real bad day ahead of her.” He shook his head. “Boston. Shit. They’re sure it’s him?”
“Seems that way,” Bird said. “She’ll have to drive down there to ID him, of course.”
“Of course.”
Bird watched the sun rise red above the treetops and climb until the light spilled over, illuminating the stinking, blackened ruins of the junkyard, burning away the last tendrils of creeping morning mist. He watched the team pack up, the local cops exchanging awkward shrugs as they rubbed their cold hands together and avoided eye contact. Myles Johnson wasn’t among them, and Bird wondered if he knew what was happening. What had happened. He and Dwayne Cleaves wouldn’t be taking any more hunting trips together—but after the past few days, maybe Johnson wouldn’t be so keen on killing things for sport anymore. Bird shrugged to himself. Either way, it was none of his business. If he had his way, he’d be gone from Copper Falls by sundown. He waited until the last of the cars pulled away, then climbed into his cruiser and followed them into town, where he pulled into a space at the far end of the municipal building that held the local law enforcement offices. He kept the motor running, turned up the heat, and closed his eyes. Later, Dwayne Cleaves’s friends and family would need to be re-interviewed, and paperwork would need to be filed, and coffee would need to be acquired urgently and first thing. But for at least the next blessed hour, there was nothing to do but nap.