Grave Sight Page 0,47

a cop, either." I wished immediately that I hadn't added the last phrase.

Tolliver got to his feet, suddenly in a hurry. "I'm going to go wash the car. I'm pretty sure there's an Easy Klean right off Main Street. But I'll stop by the office to ask the McCluskey guy for the location. It'll give me an excuse to talk to him. I'll be gone about an hour, more or less."

"Sure, that sounds good. You don't want me to talk to McCluskey?"

"No. He thinks you're the great Satan, remember? I'm just Satan's assistant."

I smiled at him. "Okay, thanks. You want me to tell Hollis you're coming with us, tonight?"

"No, Harper. You go enjoy being a girl for a while."

He didn't sound like he meant it. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Did you ever stop to think we could settle down in a town like this? We could quit what we're doing? We could get regular jobs?"

Of course I'd thought of it. "No," I said. "It's never crossed my mind."

"Liar. You could date some guy like Hollis for real. You could work in a department store, or in an office. Somewhere with live people."

I looked away from his face. "You could date a hundred Janines, or even wait for Mary Nell Teague to grow up," I countered. "You could get a job at a Home Depot. You'd be manager in no time."

"Could we do that?" he asked. He didn't mean, could we do it if we had the option; we had the option, all right. He meant, was it possible for us to settle down to being regular citizens.

"It would be pretty hard," I said, after a pause, in a noncommittal voice.

"Getting a house might be the first step," he said.

I shrugged. "Could be."

He shut the door behind him very quietly.

We didn't talk much about the future.

Of course, I'd had plenty of opportunities to think about it. We spent a lot of time driving. Though we listened to audiobooks and the radio, inevitably there were long periods of silence.

Though I didn't want to tell Tolliver this, I thought way too much about our past. I tried not to dwell on the squalor of daily life in that house in Texarkana. Maybe if I hadn't been raised so gently to start with, it wouldn't have bothered me quite so much. But the descent from pampered princess to virgin pussy peddled for drug money had been too shocking, too abrupt. I hadn't seasoned slowly enough. I'd acquired a hard brittle shell instead of toughening all the way through.

"Bullshit," I said out loud. "To hell with this." I pushed introspection right out of my brain and turned on the television. My nails were beautiful by the time I finished with them.

Tolliver returned about four o'clock, a lot later than I'd expected. When he came in, I smelled a whiff of beer and sex. Okay, I told myself. Steady. Tolliver almost never drank much, and he wasn't drunk now. But the fact that he'd had a beer during the day, and the fact that he'd stayed away to have sex when he knew I'd be anxious - those were significant facts.

"Well, the car is clean," he said, "and I talked to former police officer McCluskey, who is without a doubt one of the most repellent people I've ever had a conversation with."

"That's good, about the car," I said. I was pleased with how level my voice was. "What did McCluskey have to say? Anything interesting?"

"It took me forever to get him soothed down and to the point," Tolliver said.

"This is part of your build-up, to let me know what a tedious job I gave you?"

"Damn straight. I worked for this information."

"Um-hmmm."

"And I expect you to appreciate that."

"Oh, believe me, I do."

"Do I hear some sarcasm in your voice?"

"God forbid."

"Then I'll finish what I was saying."

"Please do."

Tolliver sprawled on my bed, lying on his back with his arms flung out on either side.

"McCluskey - did I mention how nasty the man is? McCluskey's decided I'm your bodyguard, and he wanted to know how I managed to stay around you, since surely you were marked by the devil."

"Oh, yeah? And I thought I'd showered real well."

"You probably missed some Satan behind the ears."

"Sorry about that."

"Well, he thinks anything to do with contacting the dead, or seeing the dead, is a big church no-no, and anyone who claims to be able to do that is - "

"Let me guess - Evil?"

"How'd you know? Amazing! You're right!"

"Just lucky."

"Anyway." Tolliver yawned.