Trey takes it as a warning. The day is starting to gain momentum; sooner or later, someone will come along this path. Trey is well aware that other people aren’t going to see the body as something that can be left to the mountain’s slow processes, and that once she leaves this spot, neither will she. She has no problem with that. She, no less than the mountain, is well able to turn the body to good account.
The liberation it’s brought with it is only starting to sink in. In the changed landscape this has created, she doesn’t need to hang off her father any more. She doesn’t have to twist herself around what he does and thinks and wants. He’s meaningless; he’ll be gone soon enough, and for her purposes, he’s as good as gone already. She’s on her own now, to do things her way.
She gets up, snaps her fingers for Banjo, and heads down the road, not at a run, but at a fast steady lope that she can keep up all the way. Behind her, Rushborough’s phone rings again.
—
Cal wakes early and can’t get back to sleep. He doesn’t like the way nothing at all happened yesterday. He hung around the house waiting for Lena, who didn’t come, and Mart, who didn’t come either, and Trey, who he knew wouldn’t come. He went down to the shop, where Noreen gave him a new kind of cheddar and Senan’s wife gave them both a blow-by-blow account of her oldest kid’s wisdom-tooth removal. He watered his damn tomato plants. No one had even messed with the scarecrow. Cal knows good and well there was plenty happening somewhere. He doesn’t like the skill and thoroughness with which it stayed out of sight.
And it’s Monday morning. This is the deadline he gave Johnny to skip town. Regardless of what’s been going on beyond his line of vision, sometime today he needs to go up the mountain and see if Johnny is still there, which he will be, and then decide what to do about him. Cal has never killed anyone and has no desire to start with Trey’s daddy, but doing nothing isn’t an option. His inclination is to haul Johnny’s worthless ass into his car, drive him to the airport, buy him a ticket to wherever will have him, and watch him through security, using whatever measures are necessary to make him cooperate. He considers it possible that Johnny, spineless wimp that he is, will be relieved to have matters taken out of his hands, especially if Cal throws in a little extra cash. If that doesn’t work out, he’ll have to move on to methods with less room for disagreement. Either way, it promises to be a long day.
In the end Cal gives up on trying to sleep and starts making bacon and eggs, with the iPod speaker playing the Highwaymen good and loud, trying to distract his mind. The breakfast is just about ready when Rip jumps up and bounds to the door. Trey and Banjo are up early, too.
“Hey,” Cal says, aiming to keep the rush of glad astonishment out of his voice. He wasn’t expecting to see the kid again till after her dad left town, if ever. “You got good timing. Fetch another plate.”
Trey doesn’t move from the doorway. “Your man Rushborough’s dead,” she says. “Up on the mountain.”
Cal feels everything inside him go still. He turns from the stove.
He says, “Dead how?”
“Someone kilt him.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. His head’s bashed in, and I reckon he was stabbed as well.”
“OK,” Cal says. “OK.” He goes to the iPod and turns it off. The things speeding in his mind don’t include surprise; he feels like some part of him has been taking this moment for granted, just waiting to get word. “Where?”
“Below ours, where the road splits. He’s there on the road.”
“The Guards there yet?”
“Nah. No one knows, only me. I found him. Came straight here.”
“Right,” Cal says. “Good call.” He turns off the stove. He’s breathless with relief that the kid came to him with this, but he can’t gauge from her face how much she’s not telling him, whether she came to him for refuge from the shock or for defense against something much bigger. She’s had a shock, regardless, but that’s going to have to wait. He feels a spurt of anger at the fact that, all Trey’s life, any gentleness to her has had to wait till other business is dealt with.
“OK,” he says, dumping the bacon and eggs into Rip’s dish, where the two dogs dive on them joyfully. “We’ll let these boys handle this here.” He opens the cupboard under the sink and pulls out a fresh pair of the latex gloves he uses occasionally for gardening or carpentry. “Let’s go see what we’ve got.”
In Cal’s rickety red Pajero, Trey fishes a paper-towel bundle out of her back pocket, unwraps it to reveal several squashed slices of bread and butter, and gets to work. She seems surprisingly OK: not shaky, not white, shoveling food into her face. Cal doesn’t entirely trust this, but he welcomes it anyway.
“How you doing?” he asks.
“Grand,” Trey says. She offers him a slice of bread and butter.
“No thanks,” Cal says. Apparently he and Trey are back to normal: all the complications between them appear to have been wiped away, like they never existed or like they’re no longer relevant.
