“Agent Rigo works for the Institute. His only concern is to make sure nothing happens here that would let anyone shut this place down.” Cooper walks back around the bar. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a lot of nervous residents with a lot of pressing questions, and I’ve got to think of something to tell them.”
“I’m going to stick around here,” she says. “Maybe have another beer.”
“You barely touched the first one.”
“I want to look over my notes.”
“I’ll see you at the town meeting then. When you hear the chapel bells, head over to the main street.” Cooper pushes the door open, letting in a rush of sunlight.
Dawes calls to him from the bar. “One more question, Sheriff.”
“What’s that?”
“Agent Rigo said”—she checks her notebook—“he said, ‘Does he have a funny name, too?’ About the child in town.”
“So?”
“So how did Agent Rigo know the child in the town was a boy?”
Cooper shrugs. “He works for the Institute. I’m sure he knew about Isaac already.”
“So why’s he asking us then?”
“Another mystery to ponder.”
“I guess so. One more thing, sir.”
Cooper grimaces. “What is it?”
“Happy birthday.”
He looks at her, his hand still propping open the door. “How in the hell do you know that it’s my birthday?”
Dawes raises her barely touched bottle. “I guess it must be all that time spent wearing my deerstalker hat.”
Alone now at the bar, Dawes sets her beer at a distance. She’s a lightweight, even after a few sips. And it’s not like she doesn’t have plenty of cautionary tales in her background when it comes to the consumption of alcohol.
She looks at her watch. Nearly one. Many hours left yet in the workday. And a crime scene, all to herself. She stands up and decides to question Greta, then scouts around until she spots her in back, standing in the cramped, dirty kitchen behind the bar, washing glasses. She wonders if Greta heard any of what they were talking about.
The kitchen’s barely bigger than a phone booth. Greta looks up at Dawes leaning in the doorway.
“So can I replace that blood-soaked plywood now?” Greta says, with the edge of irritation of someone whose life has been upended through no doing of her own.
“I believe so, ma’am,” says Dawes. “I’ll arrange to take it to the station as evidence. We can certainly replace—”
“I’m good,” says Greta. “I’ll replace it. And fuck ‘ma’am.’ That’s not a title I aspire to.”
“May I ask you something? How long have you lived here in Caesura?”
Greta laughs, her hands in sudsy rubber gloves, poised over the basin. “Me? I’m an original sinner, dear. One of the original eight.”
“And you didn’t notice anyone else at the bar last night? With Gable?”
“No, but I like to turn in early.”
“Cooper said Hubert always drank alone.”
“Not always. Just last night. He closed the place down, like usual. But he used to drink a lot with Gerald Dean—you know him? Short fellow. Not the prettiest. Lives on the north side of town, over by the old Colfax home.”
“I don’t know him,” says Dawes, inching into the room. “And I—and please forgive me, I’m new here—but: How exactly does this bar work?”
“I sling, you drink,” says Greta. “It’s a bar.”
“I mean to say—the provisions. The liquor. Where does it all come from?”
“It comes in with the weekly shipment, on Wednesdays, same as anything, from Amarillo. Clothes and boots and toothpaste and booze, everything a growing town needs.”
“I’d like to come by on Wednesday morning. Meet the driver, if that’s all right. Come to a better understanding of how things work around here. You mind?”
“He’s not cute, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
Dawes laughs. “No, that’s not what I’m wondering.”
Now fully wedged into the cramped kitchen with Greta, Dawes grabs a towel and starts to dry.
6.
THE CHAPEL BELLS RING.
The town assembles.
They come quickly, in a rush, like they’ve been waiting all day.
The crowd is bigger than Cooper expected, maybe thirty, maybe forty, which is nearly the entire population of the town. Only the usual introverts and invalids don’t show up, people like William Wayne—the shut-ins and loners who you might not lay eyes on for an entire calendar year. Everyone else, though, is gathered in a jumpy mob in what passes for the town square just outside the commissary. As the crowd gathers, it’s reflected in the ripples of the store’s huge plate-glass window, people’s faces wide and anxious, waiting for Cooper to start his address.
He steps up on an overturned apple crate to be better seen by all, then immediately regrets it—now he feels like a target, like some clown at the fair you throw balls at to dump into a barrel of water.
He waves his hands to get their attention.
“I’m sorry to report we’ve had an unfortunate incident,” he says.
The crowd pulsates in the heat, murmuring, fluid and combustible.
“Call it what it is, a fucking murder!” someone yells. A male voice. Well, that didn’t take long to escalate, Cooper thinks. He tries to place the voice; it sounded like Lyndon Lancaster, though Cooper can’t quite make out faces as he squints against the sun-glare.
“That’s right. A murder. A fucking murder,” says Cooper. “Hubert Gable was shot dead last night.”
The crowd ripples again, roiling, the nervous chatter of a rumor confirmed.
“Okay, settle down,” says Cooper, pointlessly. He’s trying hard not to slip into vice principal mode. He’s got eight years of hard-won collateral on the table here, eight years of cultivating trust, house by house, handshake by handshake. In the Blinds, he’s learned, people run hot and skittish, their anxiety fueled by mistrust. That’s what happens when you wipe out a big chunk of a person’s memories: Fear breeds in the empty space that’s left behind.
“Call in the real police!” someone else yells, a woman’s voice this time, followed by an angry counterpoint from another man: “Yeah, that’s a fucking great idea—more police!” The crowd falls into angry factions, bickering. Cooper calms them again, or tries.
“We’re going to handle this in-house,” he says. “The way we always do.”
“There is no ‘always’ when it comes to a killing,” someone says loudly enough to settle the crowd. The man steps forward. It’s Buster Ford. He wears denim overalls with a paperback stuck in the front pocket, his white hair ranging wildly, letting the world know he has more important things on his mind than combing his hair. He’s one of the original eight as well, got to be near seventy by now, and as such, he commands respect in the town. “There’s never ever been a killing here, Calvin. Not once. Not inside the gates.”
“Yes, I know, Buster,” Cooper says. “I’ve been here since day one, same as you.” Then, to the crowd: “Longer than most of you. We’ve never had a murder and I don’t plan on having another.”
A woman’s voice now. This one he knows very well. It’s Fran Adams. “So who was that man here this morning?” she calls out. Cooper spots her in the crowd, her hand cupped over her eyes to shield them from the sun.
“That was a, uh, liaison. From the Institute. Visiting from Amarillo,” says Cooper.
This news pleases no one.