Grave Sight Page 0,29

ones have that confidence.

He shrugged. "In a way. I'm just a part-time cop, it's true."

"She was your mother-in-law."

"Yes," he said heavily. "They're waiting for you."

For a second, since I was standing on a grave, I was sure he meant all the dead people; and I already knew they were. Then I realized his meaning was much more mundane. The lawyer, Paul Edwards, and a uniformed man I'd never seen, were standing by the car talking to Tolliver. I was glad I'd left my shoes on. I took a breath and began walking toward the men.

"Good luck," said Hollis, and I nodded. I knew he was watching, and he would see.

W E had a dismal time at the police station. The state police thought I was a blood-sucking leech. I'd anticipated their attitude as we drove into town, but it wore me out anyway. The male faces followed each other in slow succession. Thin, heavy, white, black, intelligent, dense; they all shared an opinion of me they didn't take any pains to hide. I guess they thought Tolliver was the enabler of the blood-sucking leech.

I don't like being treated like a confidence trickster, and I'm sure Tolliver likes it even less. I retreat inside myself, and I don't let them touch my quick. Tolliver tries to do that, too, but he is less successful. He gets very upset when people impugn our honor.

"We looked into your file," said a thin man with a greyhound face and cold, narrow eyes. The interrogation room was small and beige. They'd taken Tolliver into the one next door.

I breathed in, breathed out, looked at the wall behind his ear.

"You and your 'brother' have been questioned lots of times," he said. His name tag read, Green. He waited to make sure I'd heard he'd put "brother" in quotes.

Since there was nothing to respond to, I did some of my own waiting.

"No one's ever put you behind bars," he said.

This was another indisputable fact, and I did some more waiting.

"Of course, they should've."

Opinion. Didn't call for a response. My parents hadn't been lawyers for nothing.

"You know what they say about people from this neck of the woods," Green said. "The kind of people who go to family reunions to get a date?"

Green was from somewhere else, I assumed. I slid lower in the plastic chair.

"I figure you and your brother are people like that," he said, with a most unpleasant smile.

Another opinion, and one he knew was based on incorrect information.

"He's not really your brother, is he?"

"Stepbrother," I said.

He was taken aback. "But you introduce him as your brother."

"Simplification," I said. I crossed my legs the other way, just to have a change. I was ready to eat lunch. Tolliver and I would go to a restaurant, or we'd get something at the grocery store to heat up in the little microwave we carried with us and plugged in at motel rooms. We'd talked about buying a little house outside of Dallas. We would have a bigger microwave there, or maybe I'd learn to cook. I liked to clean; that is, I didn't exactly love the process, but I did love the result. I might subscribe to a magazine, something it had never been practical for me to do. Maybe National Geographic. The December after we moved into the house, Tolliver and I would buy a Christmas tree. I hadn't had a Christmas tree in ten years.

"... hearing a word I say?" Greyhound Green's face was drawn with anger.

"No, I haven't. I'm ready to go now. You know I didn't kill that poor woman. You know Tolliver didn't, either. There's not a reason in the world we'd want to do anything to her. You just don't like me. But you can't put me in jail because you don't like me."

"You prey on the grief of others."

"How?"

He glared at me. "They're grieving, wanting closure, and you and your brother turn up like crows to pick at the carcass."

"Not so," I said briskly. I was on sure ground, here. "I find the body. Then they have closure. They're happier." I got to my feet, feeling my legs prickle after sitting so long in the same chair. "We'll stay in town as long as you want. But we didn't hurt Helen Hopkins. You know it."

He stood, too, and tried to think of something to say that would stop me from leaving, convict me of some crime. But there was nothing, and he had to watch me leave. I knocked on