chapter 21

Every time I drove 169 south, and this was my third time in a week, I did it faster than before. It was a testament to the unhappy acceleration of my life in the past seven days. When I reached the Mankato city limits, I saw I’d shaved nearly thirty minutes off my last time. Amazingly, there wasn’t a single speed trap along the way. It wasn’t much longer before I was cruising through the quiet streets of Blue Earth.

Would Shorty be at home, or at the bar? People liked to say that barflies were in their favorite watering holes “every night,” but that was usually an exaggeration. For all I knew, Shorty could have stayed at home tonight.

I wouldn’t have long to wait to find out. Already I could see ahead a bright neon duck, flying away from a low building with tinted windows. I didn’t have to cruise past to know I’d found the Sportsman.

If I were smart, if I were careful, I would wait for tomorrow. I would approach Shorty at his job, in the sober light of day, under the full color of my authority. But I’d never been smart, and what I’d painfully learned about being careful was drowned out under the relentless drumbeat of my need to know.

The place wasn’t busy for a Saturday night. The Timberwolves were on the TV, and the jukebox was so low you could actually hear the play-by-play. Shorty was at the bar with two friends. Well, barroom friends at least. They might not even like him in daylight.

I walked directly to him, and virtually everyone in the bar watched me do it.

Shorty had seen me on the stand at his pretrial hearing, where I’d been established as Kamareia’s friend and as the main prosecution witness against him. And of course, Shorty had known I was a cop. Now, when he saw me coming his way, his eyes widened. He looked so alarmed for a moment I thought he might just bolt for the back door.

Then he got control again, remembering that the case against him was dead. His face hardened from alarm into contempt and he didn’t take his eyes off me.

I stopped a foot from his bar stool and said, “I need to talk to you. Outside.”

That was my first mistake, specifying “outside.” He only had to refuse and I would lose face. He looked at his friends and started to smirk. “Uh-uh,” he said.

I looked at his friends, making them for more-or-less law-abiding types. I took my badge out and laid it on the bar, not opening the holder until it was down on the bar. I didn’t want everyone to see me flash it around. But Shorty’s pals saw it and looked back up at me.

“Leave,” I said succinctly.

They got up, carrying their steins, and went to a booth. The show of authority took the edge off Shorty’s good mood; his expression was moving toward being a scowl. I slid onto a stool one of his drinking buddies had vacated.

“So what do you want?” he said.

“Tell me about Mike Shiloh.”

Unease wiped the last of the smirk away. “I don’t know who that is,” he lied. Then he took a sip of his beer, the mug a symbolic foxhole for him to dive into.

“Yeah you do. You can tell me about it now, or I can get a warrant for your arrest.” It was my turn to lie. I didn’t have anything near probable cause.

“You’re harassing me,” Shorty said. “Everyone will know it’s because of that stuff in the Cities. They won’t listen to you.”

That rape and murder, you mean, is that what you mean by “stuff”? No, don’t antagonize him or you’ll never get what you need. Easy.

“Tell me what happened now, before this gets any deeper,” I persisted. “It’ll be easier that way.”

“Easier than what? I beat you last time. It couldn’t get any easier than that.”

Then Shorty realized that what he had said was dangerously close to an admission. The case against him was dismissed for insufficient evidence, but double jeopardy didn’t apply because he hadn’t actually been found not guilty in a trial. Shorty didn’t know, in light of that, what was safe to say and what wasn’t.

“Do you really want me on your case, Shorty?” I demanded. “If you do, keep on like you’re doing. Keep your mouth shut and don’t tell me what you know.”

“I already told you what I know,” he said sullenly. “Jack shit.”

I got off my bar stool and walked to the door, not looking back to see if he was watching me or not.

Outside the bar I made an illegal U-turn and headed out of town. It wasn’t long before I pulled over on the side of the road. I was there so long, trying to think, that I finally switched off the Nova’s idling engine.

Shorty would not tell me what I wanted to know. There was no reason for it. Neither would he let me look inside his home, which was what I wanted to do next.

While I thought, I was trying to chew on the nail of my middle finger; biting my nails was a bad habit I fell back on at difficult times. I also realized that I couldn’t really get any purchase under the edge of the nail, because they’d still been too recently clipped. Not by me, but by Shiloh, who’d sat on the edge of our bed and held my hands in his and pared my nails for me.

Prewitt had cautioned me that he expected me, in the course of my investigation of Shiloh’s disappearance, to consider myself a representative of the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Department. By that he certainly did not mean breaking and entering.

All my thinking on the roadside wasn’t really thinking. I was justifying a decision I’d already made.

The darkened road that the Nova ate up so greedily was the same highway that Shorty walked to get home from the bar. It wasn’t terribly far from town to his house, but it wasn’t what most people meant by “walking distance.” Surely it wasn’t just the alcohol that led Shorty to walk it late at night, even in wintertime and early spring. He could have drunk more cheaply and conveniently at home. But it wouldn’t have been the same. Shorty would probably have gone without groceries before giving up the cost of tap-drawn Budweiser with his buddies.

Shorty’s “house” was nothing more than a garden shed behind a two-story farmhouse. I cut off my headlights, gliding past with only parking lights on. The lights in the front house were off, the windows dark as sightless eyes. Even so, I rolled gently into the yard as though my Nova could tiptoe if I were light enough on the gas.

Following the rutted dirt, I drove all the way around the back of the shed, where my car wouldn’t be visible from the road. I killed the lights, then the ignition. When I got out, I left the door cracked so it would make no sound in closing, switching off the dome light first so it wouldn’t drain the battery.

I held the flashlight under my armpit while I laid out the tools I’d need for the lock. The door actually looked flimsy enough that it would have come down under a couple of kicks, if I had the luxury of being so obvious.

As soon as I touched the knob, I knew I wasn’t going to have to pick the lock. The door was already unlocked.

Something about that struck me as wrong. But I told myself, Come on, relax. What does a guy like Shorty have that’s worth stealing anyway? Everything’s fine. What are you waiting for?

Then I stepped inside and switched on the flashlight.

A figure rose up in the beam, close and fast. I went for my.40.

“Sarah, wait, it’s me!” The shadow before me was already dropping to the ground.

“Gen?” I pointed the flashlight down. She squinted up against its glare, one hand coming up against the flashlight’s beam. “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you,” she said. “I had a head start. Don’t shine that thing in my eyes.”

Later I would realize how changed she was at that moment, how revived in comparison to the zombie of weeks past.

My heart started slamming belatedly. “Are you crazy? I almost shot you!”

“Could you get the light off me?” she said again. “There’s something you should see.”