Grave Sight Page 0,12

not.

"I met Monteen when she was thirteen. I picked her up from outside a juke joint way out in the county, while I was on patrol. It was so obvious she was underage and had no business being there. She made a pass at me in the police car. She was totally out of hand. I met Sally when I took Monteen home to her mom's house that night." He was silent for a moment, remembering. "I liked Sally a lot, the first time I laid eyes on her. She was a regular girl, with a lot of sweetness in her. Teenie was wild as a razorback."

"So the Teagues couldn't have been that happy about their son dating her."

"You could say that. Teenie got it from her mom. At that time, Helen was drinking a lot, and not too particular about who she brought home. But Helen managed to change, finally quit drinking. When Teenie's mom settled down, Teenie did, too."

That wasn't how Sybil had tried to make it appear, at our second meeting. I filed that fact for future reference.

"How do you get hired?" he asked.

I sucked hard on the straw, thinking over the abrupt change in subject. It was a good milk shake, but it had been a mistake to get a cold drink on a brisk day when I was barefoot. I shivered.

"Lots of word of mouth. That's how I got hired here; Terry Vale heard something about me at a city government conference. Law enforcement people talk to each other, at conventions and by email. And there've been stories in a professional magazine or two."

He nodded. "I guess you couldn't advertise."

"Sometimes, we do. Hard to get the wording right."

"I can see that." He smiled reluctantly. Then he reverted to just being intense. "You just... feel them?"

I nodded. "I see the last moments. Like a tiny clip of a video. Can you please turn on the heater?"

"Yes, we'll ride." A minute later, we'd left Sonic and were cruising what there was of Sarne.

"How big is the police force here?" I was trying to be polite. There was an undercurrent here, and the water in it was moving faster and faster.

"Full-time, besides me? The sheriff, two other deputies right now."

"Stretched pretty thin."

"Not during this season. Now, we've just got leaf people. Come to see the colors change. They're pretty peaceable." Hollis shook his head over people taking time off from life to look at a bunch of leaves. "Summer tourist season, we take on six part-time people. Traffic control and so on."

Hollis Boxleitner's income would be small. He was a youngish man, and he seemed both capable and intelligent. What was he doing, stuck in Sarne? Okay, not my business: but I was curious.

"I inherited my parents' house here," he said, as if he were answering my unspoken question. "They got killed when a logging truck hit their car." He nodded in acknowledgment when I told him I was sorry. He didn't want to talk about their deaths, and that was a good thing. "I like the hunting and the fishing, and the people. In the summer, I get some hours in helping my brother-in-law; he's got a rafting business, rents 'em out to the tourists. I pretty much work around the clock for three months, but it helps me build up my bank account. What does your brother do, when he's not helping you?"

"He's always with me."

Hollis looked as if he were politely swallowing scorn. "That's all he does?"

"It's enough." The thought of managing by myself made me shiver.

"So, how much do you charge for your services?" he asked, his eyes on the road ahead of him.

I hoped there wasn't an implication there. I kept silent.

It took a while to make Hollis uncomfortable, longer than it took for most people.

"I want to hire you," he said, by way of explanation.

I hadn't expected that. "I charge five thousand dollars," I told him. "Payable on a positive identification of the body."

"What if the location of the body is known? You can tell the cause of death, too, right?"

"Yes. Of course I charge less if I don't have to find the body." Sometimes the family wants an independent suggestion about the cause of death.

"You ever been wrong?"

"Not that I know of." I looked out the window at the passing town. "When I can locate the body, that is. I don't always find it. Sometimes, there's just not enough information available to tell me where to search. Like the Morgenstern girl."