his own tiretracks going in and the tracks of his boots coming out and he followed these to the back of the building, a one-time machine shop, according to the faded signage, and pulled up alongside his sedan and parked the truck and killed the engine.
He turned to Radner, but Radner was looking out the ragged hole Sutter had scraped, and Sutter looked too: the flat, undisturbed snow of the lot, the dark old building. The snow that fell on everything with no prejudice and no sound whatsoever.
Sutter got out of the truck and walked around with his eyes on Radner and opened the passenger door. “Get out.”
Radner stared at him. The smirk gone from his lips. His face shining. Then he looked away. As if not seeing Sutter was the same as Sutter not being there.
Sutter took him by the arm and pulled him stumbling from the cab. He walked him a few steps and turned him around again.
“Get on your knees.”
Radner did not. He said, “Sheriff, I’m not putting up any kind of resistance here.”
Sutter stepped behind him and put his boot to the backs of Radner’s knees, and down he went. He swatted the billcap from Radner’s head and took the cuffs in his hands and jerked up on them and leaned over until his face was near Radner’s right ear.
“Do you remember where you were three nights ago?”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Three nights ago—?”
“Tuesday night.”
Radner shook his head. “I got no idea. I swear. I coulda been anywhere.”
“You weren’t anywhere, you were at the Shell station on County Road F24 and you were assaulting two young women with your buddy.”
“Hell I was.”
“How’d you get those scratches on your face?”
“At work. A tire blew up in my face.”
“You are full of shit.”
Radner shook his head again. “Swear to God, Sheriff. Ask any of them at work. Ask Toby, he was standing right there.”
Sutter’s heart was banging. He saw his own ragged breaths bursting white into the air. The empty lot, the old machine shop, the falling snow, all seemed to be turning in some sickly way. You can still drop this. Right now. You can get into that sedan and just drive away. Go talk to Toby . . .
“You watch the news?” he said.
“What?”
“Do you watch the news.”
“Yeah, sometimes.” Radner groaned. “Please, Sheriff, you are breakin my arms.”
“Do you know what happened to those two girls, after you ran them off the road down the riverbank?”
“I never did. I never ran nobody down no riverbank.”
“One died, Ryan, and the other one almost did. So guess where that leaves you and your buddy.”
“You got the wrong man, Sheriff. You got the wrong man.”
“Assault, attempted rape, attempted murder on two counts, murder on one count.”
“All right,” Radner said, “so take me in. Haul me in, man. Let me talk to a real sheriff. Let me talk to a—” He howled. Sutter had raised the cuffs.
“Where is it?”
“Where’s what?”
“You know what.”
He shook his head. “I swear I don’t.”
“The backscratcher, Radner. Where is it?”
Radner craned his neck to look at him. Fear and pain in those dark eyes.
“You’re crazy,” Radner said. “You’re just plain crazy. You better let me go before this gets any worse. I won’t say nothin. People make mistakes, I get that. I won’t go to the sheriff or nothin. You just go your way and I’ll go mine, how about that, huh? What’ve you got to lose?”
Sutter was silent. His breaths smoking. His heart slamming. He looked up at the sky. Slow tumble of flakes, landing cold on his face and melting. Faintly there was the fishy, muddy smell of a river . . . but any river would be frozen and you wouldn’t smell it, and then he understood that the smell came from Holly Burke—from her wet hair, from the air trapped in the white bag and escaping like breath when they unzipped it, and—
Tom, she said. Sutter . . .
Something buzzed at his side, and he heard the muted tune, and with his free hand he reached into his jacket pocket and fetched up the phone and along with it a louder rendition of the same tune that sounded in the emptiness of the lot like some tiny and maniacal bugler.
“Let me answer it,” Radner said. “Let me talk to someone.”
Sutter read the name on the screen, mary anne, and with his thumb ended the tune, and with another press of his thumb shut the phone down. He returned it to his pocket, then raised