Chapter 36

IT HAD BEEN a wet summer. Outside my office window, it was raining again. I was watching it. Pearl was resting on her couch. Later, when the excitement died down, I might read the paper. My phone rang. Pearl had no reaction. She didn't care about phones. I didn't, either, but somebody had to answer, so I picked it up.

AN HOUR LATER, Pearl and I pulled up in front of the Dowling village market. The rain was steady but not abusive.

Through the steady sweep of the wipers, I saw him in front of the market, the red-haired kid from the Rocks. He was pressed against the front of the building, trying to stay dry. He was wearing the zippered top of a warm-up suit, his cap on backward, and sucking on a cigarette. His jeans were baggy, and his sneakers were black Keds high-tops. Retro. When he got in the front seat, Pearl growled at him from the back.

"What's wrong with him?" the kid said.

"Her," I said. "She doesn't like you."

"She bite?"

"Not today," I said.

I reached back and patted her. He hunched forward and a little sideways in the passenger seat, away from Pearl.

"Where we going," I said.

"How much is the reward?" he said.

"Depends on what you show me," I said.

"I'm going to take you where they did a lot of shooting,"

"So you said. Let's go there and see what we see."

"But there's some reward."

"Absolutely," I said.

I couldn't figure out what I was going to get from this, but Spenser's Crime Buster Rule #8 is Always look.

We drove past the park that backed up to the Rocks, and down a narrow road that skirted the west end of the lake, and parked in a dirt turnaround next to a rutted dirt road.

"It's down this road," he said.

I nodded. We got out of the car. Pearl didn't like the rain much, but she loved the woods. She struggled with her ambivalence for a moment and then committed to the woods. I took my gun out from under my raincoat and put it in my raincoat pocket. Then I started back up the paved road we'd just driven down.

"Hey," the red-haired kid said, "where you going. It's in here."

"We'll come on it," I said, "from a different direction."

"Man, in this rain? Through the woods? We'll get soaked, everything's all wet in there."

"Different direction," I said.

Spenser's crime buster rule #8a: Don't blunder into something while you're looking.

Pearl was bred to be a hunting dog, before she made a career change and became a lap dog. And sometimes her instincts resurfaced. She ranged far ahead of us, snuffling everything, and circled back to check with me before she ranged out again. She'd probably let me know if there was somebody in the woods.

The kid was right, the bushes and low branches were wet and pressed their wetness against us as we moved through them. But I had no way to know this wasn't a setup, and until I did, I'd have to act as if it was. But it wasn't. We came into a clearing in the woods and saw Pearl sniffing something carefully. There was no one there, no sound of anyone anywhere, nor did Pearl act as if there was anyone. I took my hand off my gun, though I left it there in my pocket. I took a look at what Pearl had found. It was the desiccated body of a dead cat.

"This is the place, man," the kid said. "I'm freakin' soaked."

The cat had been shot. I could see the shattered skull where the dry skin had receded. I could tell Pearl was considering picking it up. I told her not to. As I circled the clearing, there were other dead cats, and a shiny scatter of brass. I picked up one of the casings. It was nine-millimeter. I scuffed through the leaf meal bed of the clearing. There was more brass. Probably a couple of hundred rounds. Pearl nosed out several more cat remnants, and I had to admonish her again. There were a couple of squirrels, too. And a raccoon and some empty catfood cans, the labels peeling off, the inside cleaned by all the squirrels and birds and bugs that had fed from them since the cans were opened.

"They come up here and shot a lot," the kid said.

He looked miserable. His sweatsuit jacket was soaked through. He was trying to smoke a damp cigarette. Because his hat was on backward, the rain drove straight into his face. But he was too fashion-conscious to turn the hat around.

"That would be Grant and Animal?"

"Yeah, and Jared, too, the other guy."

"He come with Animal and Dell?"

"I guess. I don't remember. I just know I seen him up here, too, when there was shooting."

"You watch them shoot?" I said.

"Jesus, no," he said. "You think I'm going to hang around Animal when he got a gun?"

"When did they start?"

"Last winter. They'd come up here in the freakin' snow."

I stood with my coat collar up and my hands in my pockets and looked at the clearing. Pearl, deprived of cat carcass, had gotten under the low branches of a big evergreen at the edge of the clearing and was sheltering there.

"So I get some reward?" the kid said.

I nodded.

"How much?"

"Shhhh," I said.

I kept looking. The empty cans probably meant that the cats had been lured here with cat food. The shell casings meant they had fired a lot. Some of the trees along the far edge of the clearing showed bullet scars, and a big cardboard box, now limp in the rain, looked as if it had been used as a target. I went and looked closer. It had; the crude figure of a man had been drawn on it. It was full of bullet holes. There were cardboard ammunition boxes around, faded and misshapen by long exposure. The foam interior case, where the bullets had sat, each in its own hole, was impervious to decay and would probably be there long after everyone had stopped remembering the Dowling School Massacre.

"So how much, mister? I showed you this place, huh? How much."

I got my wallet out and took five twenties and gave them to him.

"A hundred?" he said. "That's all? I thought there was a big reward."

"The big reward is for big help," I said. "I wouldn't have given you that much if it weren't raining."

"Shit, man, I'm risking my freakin' ass, Animal found out... "

"Animal's not a factor," I said. "What can you tell me about Jared Clark?"

"Nothing. I didn't know him. I didn't know Dell, neither, 'cept he hung with Animal."

"But Jared didn't."

The kid shook his head.

"I just seen him come up here to shoot sometimes."

The sound of rain was different in the woods. There was no other sound competing with it, and its passage among the trees and bushes made a larger rushing sound than you heard in the city.

"Let's get out of here," I said and turned down the dirt road.

Pearl saw me move and was on her feet and moving with me. She knew the car was in that direction, and that it was dry inside the car. Her lap-dog training had kicked in.

"I don't think it's right," the kid said. "You tole me there was a reward. It ain't freakin' right I get a hundred."

"Bring me something else," I said. "Maybe I'll give you more."

We left the clearing.