CHAPTER 31

I hadn’t got halfway back to town before I began to wonder just how bright an idea my walking three or four miles alone on those shady country roads had been. The sun was starting to edge ever closer to the treetops, but even at high noon the strange, scurrying sounds that came out of those forests would’ve been worrisome. So when I found myself on the edge of Ballston Spa again, a peculiar mixture of relief and disappointment at being back in “civilization” came into me. I kept moving quickly, onto Charlton Street, which road, like Malta Avenue, took its name from the town that it eventually led to. Before long I was back out among the farms and the woods again, moving south and west through country that was even less inhabited than those stretches what lay to the east of Ballston Spa. I had close to two miles to cover, and I was determined to enjoy the adventure and not let myself get wrapped up in fear again; but I have to admit that it took the sound of exactly one hooting owl to kick me from a fast walk into a solid run, and by the time I finally began to hear familiar human voices in the distance, I’d grown nervous enough that I actually broke out into a grin, and felt a few tears of relief come into my eyes.

The sight of the old Hatch house, though, when I finally reached it, was enough to send a shiver of lonely fear back through me, and I found myself again wondering if maybe I shouldn’t’ve stayed at the Westons’ farmhouse. For if that latter happy spot had a reverse image, it was the joint I was now approaching, no question about it. There was no paint at all on the outside walls of the old two-story building, just some dark shingling that over time had turned a blackish shade of brown, what made it look almost as if the whole house had been consumed by fire without actually being destroyed. There were big, wild hedges growing both outside and inside the busted windows on the bottom floor of the place. In the backyard loomed a huge dead oak tree, under which were a few old, worn headstones inside a rusty iron fence. The front yard, meanwhile, had pretty well turned into a hayfield, and you could hardly see the collapsing barn for a stand of maple saplings and creeping vines that had sprung up in front of it. There was evidence of some kind of life spilling out the front door and onto the grounds-broken bottles, rusted cans, yellowing chamber pots, and washbowls-but they were all scattered in a way that indicated the place had turned into nothing more than a popular spot for local kids in a troublemaking mood. A big rectangular space what figured to’ve once been the garden made up the far side of the yard: bushes, weeds, and time itself were making short work of the fence what had once run around it. Finally, beyond this last sign of human industry was the line of the woods, a line that was doing its best to creep back up and take over the whole area again.

The well, I remembered hearing Mr. Picton say, was down behind the garden, so I began to wade through the overgrown grass and bushes in the front yard until I came to the top of a high hill at the edge of the woods. I still couldn’t see the others, though I could hear them, so I cupped my hands in front of my mouth. “Detective Sergeants? Mr. Moore?”

“Stevie?” I heard Mr. Moore answer. “We’re down here!”

“Where’s ‘here’?”

“Bear left as you come down the hill!” he answered. “We’re just behind a stand of pine trees!” I started to follow the instructions, then heard Mr. Moore’s voice again: “Oh, dammit, Lucius, I don’t care what kind of pine trees they are!”

About halfway down the hill I did in fact catch sight of Mr. Moore and Marcus, who were standing in their shirtsleeves over a collapsed collection of heavy rocks, in the center of which was a hole what was just big enough for a man to negotiate. A wooden cover for the hole lay to one side of the rocks. Mr. Moore and Marcus’d placed a strong tree limb across the hole, and were slowly pulling a thick rope up through the opening. From the sounds that echoed out of the blackness below, I figured that Lucius was actually down in the well.

“Ow!” he shouted. “Will you please be careful, dammit?”

“Oh, for once in your life stop whining!” Marcus answered.

“Whining?” Lucius shot back. “I like that! I’m down here in this filth, exposing myself to God-knows-how-many diseases…!”

As I arrived at the well, the top of Lucius’s balding head began to appear through it. I gave Mr. Moore and Marcus a hand pulling the rope, and once Lucius was out he rolled over on the ground to catch his breath.

In his arms, he was cradling an old brown paper parcel.

“Is that it?” I said. “Is that the gun?”

“It’s a gun,” Marcus answered, starting to coil his rope. “And we’ve removed the pieces of the wagon that might have bullets lodged in them-the front wall of the bed and the driver’s bench.”

I nodded, then glanced around, noticing that someone was missing. “Where’s Miss Howard?”

“Took the rig back to town,” Mr. Moore answered. “She wanted to find that Wright woman-the Hatches’ housekeeper-and ask her a few questions. What about the Westons’ farm? How did it go? Oh, and you haven’t got a cigarette, have you, Stevie?”

Sighing at the question (he always asked it, even though he always knew the answer), I took out my packet and handed him a stick, then offered one to Marcus, too. “Maybe the smoke’ll keep some of these blackflies away,” Marcus said, swiping at the tiny insects what were starting to swarm around our sweaty heads. Then he lit up off a match I’d struck, blowing out a big cloud of smoke that did seem to send some of the bugs scurrying. “Did the Doctor meet the little girl?”

I nodded quickly. “It went good-I think Mr. Picton was surprised by how good. The Doctor had the kid holding his hand inside of five minutes.”

“Hmm,” Mr. Moore noised uncertainly as he smoked. “Holding hands isn’t talking, though-any sign her condition is psychological, rather than physical?”

“Well, she does make some little grunting noises,” I answered. “And she can laugh, or something close to it.”

Marcus looked encouraged by that fact. “But that’s conclusive-at least, I think it is.” He turned to his brother, who was still resting on the ground. “What about it, Lucius?”

“Well,” Lucius answered slowly, as he sat up, “grunts and laughter argue against physical trauma or some other pathology making her incapable of talking. Assuming, that is, that the bullet didn’t hit any of the throat organs associated with speech. There definitely wasn’t any brain damage, according to Dr. Lawrence’s report, and that would be the usual physical cause of the kind of muteness they were talking about at the time.”

“So if it’s not physical pathology or trauma,” Marcus said, “then it’s psychological.”

“And if it’s psychological,” Mr. Moore chimed in, “there’s a good chance Kreizler can break through.”

Nodding and then glancing up the hill, Marcus took a drag off his stick. “Let’s have another look at those pieces of the wagon,” he said, as he started back up.

Mr. Moore, Lucius, and I trailed behind him. “What are we looking for, exactly?” I asked.

“A bullet,” Marcus answered, his city shoes slipping a bit on the many years’ worth of dead and decaying leaves what coated the hillside. “Or, if we get very lucky, bul-lets. You see, Stevie, Dr. Lawrence’s report mentions only the point of entry for the two shots that killed Thomas and Matthew Hatch. They were dead when he arrived at the house, so he didn’t think to go into any more detail. He did trace the path of the bullet that struck Clara a little more carefully, since she was still alive. It had been traveling at an upward angle, but may still have embedded somewhere in the wagon-probably the underside of the seat.”