“I might have lied about that part,” Roof says.
Then Lynyrd is stepping out from behind his brother, his gun in his hand, shooting Carlton Fish high in the chest and then in the neck, knocking him back into his shack as blood spurts out of him, the Mossberg still in Fish’s hands when he hits the floor dead.
After that, they put on their latex gloves and quickly do everything they need to, putting Fish’s finger on the heavy trigger of the shotgun and firing two shots of HV load. They take care to put the first shot over the doorframe and the second into the wall next to the front door, as if Fish had been the one who’d fired on them, if wildly, before they shot back and put him down.
There is an old dresser against a back wall. Lynyrd, still wearing his gloves, pulls out the jewelry they’d taken off the girls out of his bag and puts each item in Fish’s dead hand before placing them all in the top drawer of the dresser.
When they’ve done all that, careful not to have touched anything else in there, the fire still going in the old man’s fireplace, they step back outside, and it’s then that Roof calls Helene Mayes.
When she answers on the first ring he says, “This here is Roof Crockett. Pretty sure my brother and me just solved the case of who took those missing girls.”
“Where are you?” she asks.
“Carlton Fish’s place in Old Mill,” he says. “Almost all the way up the mountain. Ask one of those deputies of yours who normally can’t find their ass with their elbows how to get here.”
He pauses then.
“One more thing,” Roof says. “Better send whatever it is you send to pick up a body, and maybe a janitor.”
EIGHTY
ONE THING FRIENDS and family have always said about Silas Tucker, from the time I was a little boy, is what a world-class sleeper I am.
Until now.
Until Taylor McCarter Webb, still without her eyesight three days after she first realized she’d lost it, is sleeping in the bedroom next to mine.
My buddy Vince loves to go on and on about wearing one of those rings that keeps track of his sleeping and just about everything else except maybe his credit rating. He’s also always bragging about his sleep score, like he’s still getting a good grade in school.
But if I’d been wearing one of those rings the past few nights, there’s no doubt in my mind that I’d be flunking that particular class.
I keep worrying that Tay is going to wake up in the dark and forget where she is, maybe even trip and fall down the stairs that are just a few feet from her door and mine.
Not that I’ve mentioned any of that to her.
After that first night at her house, she went back to Dr. Frazier for a CT scan and an EEG. But he made it clear he was just going through his doctor motions, that he didn’t expect to find anything wrong with that amazing brain of hers, or structurally wrong with her eyes.
They just continue to not work.
Something else I’d never admit to Taylor?
I like taking care of her, despite my lack of sleep.
I take her along with me when I walk Bumper, and when I do, she allows me to hold her hand as a way of guiding her. She’s accepting of that, the way she’s accepting of either EJ or me cutting up her food for her. But she’s Taylor. She doesn’t complain, even now. In the afternoons she likes to sit on the porch by herself and listen to audiobooks. When it’s time to go to bed, EJ helps her upstairs, and then into her pajamas.
When she is finally tucked in, I go in and say good night.
Tonight, there’s even a flash of her normal sense of humor when I do.
“See you in the morning,” she says. Then she smiles and adds, “Well, in my best-case scenario.”
Then I go into my own room and try to sleep and only occasionally do. It’s funny, I keep telling myself. After the way I’d dreaded the quiet in my hospital room in the night, now I want that quiet to lastallnight in the room next to me.
I’m somehow asleep again, not even knowing what time it is, when I hear her call out.
“Silas!”
I’m instantly wide awake and out of bed and nearly tripping over Bumper on my way to her room.
