He stood again slapping the grit from his knee. He doused the MagLite and restored it to its place on his belt and then stood looking at the bullet hole.
“I guess the deer don’t have much to worry about from this feller, do they,” he said.
Danny said nothing.
“Else he’s a crack shot and was just trying to tell you something. That’s a possibility too. Pretty good one, maybe, right about now.”
“Right about now?” said Danny.
Moran turned to him. “You think I’m up here on a social visit?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“You wouldn’t, huh.”
“No, sir.”
“You wouldn’t know about Sheriff Sutter’s daughter going into the river with that other girl?”
“I heard about it.”
“You and everyone else. That’s my investigation, buddy. My witness. I got no other reason to be up here.”
Danny was silent. Moran staring at him.
“But then a man told me you were in town and I thought, now there’s a curious piece of timing, all things considered.”
He stared at Danny. Danny said, “I’m just here to see my family.”
“Yeah, you said that.” Moran turned to look at the house and Danny did too. Light in the downstairs windows and in one upstairs window. Marky’s room. Getting ready for bed. Moran sucked at something in his teeth and said, “Question is, are you doing them any favors.”
Danny stared at his profile. “Not sure I follow you, Officer.”
Moran looked at him. Then he turned back to the truck and he seemed to study the bullet hole once more. “No, sir,” he said. “I expect this was just some gomer out in the park with one too many beers under the belt, thinking he could poach him a deer maybe, and instead decided to put one in your fender just for shits and giggles.”
He turned then and walked back to the road, back toward his cruiser, and Danny followed, watching Moran’s back, the smooth patch of neck above the collar and Just keep your mouth shut, Danny-boy, don’t say another word, just get in the truck and get your ass into the house.
But Moran stopped in front of the truck door and Danny stopped too. Stood looking down at his own boots. The fraying laces. The scuffed and scarred-up toes.
“Folks talk,” Moran said. “They love to talk. But I’ll tell you one thing.”
When Moran didn’t go on, Danny looked up. The other man was looking up at the sky, the night clouds. No other cars were out, no headlights as far as you could see. Somewhere in the night a dog was barking but not at them.
“I hope,” Moran said, “I truly hope the next thing I hear about you is nothing, buddy. Just nothing at all.”
Later that night a wind came up to rattle the window in his room, and the rattling was the sound of the sheriff’s Zippo lighter rapping the metal table, and he could smell the smoke and he sat up suddenly in the dark room looking all around him, his heart pounding and a drop of sweat running down his chest. He’d just been here—the sheriff. The Zippo lighter rapping lightly on the tabletop. The cigarette smoke. The two of them caught in the mirrored glass . . . And with his heart still drumming he switched on the lamp and swung his legs out and sat on the edge of the bed, his bare feet flat on the old thin rug. It was not his old room but his new room in the farmhouse; she’d brought his things and arranged them as they’d been: his desk, his desk lamp, his chair, his bookcase. Going so far as to put the books back out because the empty shelves were just too much, she’d said, just too much.
He sat staring at his reflection in the rattling window. Awake now but that Zippo still rapping on the tabletop, the sheriff’s voice continuing on as it had in the dream, a voice he’d spent so many years pushing from his mind: And Holly Burke was at the bar too, at Smithy’s, when you were there with Jeff Goss?
Yes, sir.
Did you see her leave?
No, sir.
You didn’t see her leave.
No, sir.
You didn’t give her a ride?
No, sir. I had my dog with me.
So? The sheriff waiting, turning the Zippo slowly on the tabletop now, like he was trying to tune in a station. Up in the corner above the door a red dot of light glowed on the little camera.