On Harrow Hill

“That’s when she started with the weird shit. She knows that Tate’s alive. But she seems to believe he actually died and came back from the other side. The way she was looking at me, the way she sounded, gave me the shivers.”

“Any evidence that she was high on something?”

“Not really. Selena’s always been strange. Harmless-strange. But today she was scary-strange. The look in her eyes almost made me think she was right.”

“Right?”

“About Billy being dead and coming back to life. I know that’s nuts, but . . . that look, like she knew something no one else did.”

“Does she have any family?”

Slovak shook his head. “Her parents and sister died in a fire about ten years ago. The family house burned to the ground in the middle of the night. The fire marshal never came up with the reason. He suspected arson, but couldn’t prove it. Selena was the only one of the Cursens who didn’t die in the fire—because she was sleeping in a tent in the woods that night, or that’s what she said. There were whispers going around, but no solid facts, just a feeling people had that Selena might be capable of anything. And there was the fact that she ended up with a huge inheritance. And went to live by herself in that haunted house out by the swamp.”

“How old is she?”

“Around my age, I guess. Late twenties?”

“Was she in high school with you?”

“Her parents sent her to a school near Albany. For kids with emotional problems. Right after she came home, the family house burned down.”

“And her relationship with Billy Tate began when?”

“Right after he got out of prison. At least that’s when Darlene went batshit over it.”

“Okay. Let’s move ahead to the night Tate fell off the roof. You got a good look at the body. Was it your impression that he was dead?”

“My impression?” Slovak ran his hand back over his bristly scalp. “I’m not sure. His head was twisted to the side, and there was a burn line on the side of his face. Jimmy Clapper, one of our patrol guys, tried doing CPR, but that just seemed to increase the bleeding. They used the defib unit, too. Multiple times. Nothing worked. And Fallow making the official pronouncement kind of sealed the deal.”

Gurney decided it was time to talk to Tate’s stepmother.

Following the directions he got from Slovak, he took the two-lane state road up the long hill from the lush Larchfield valley and down into dreary Bastenburg. At the town’s single traffic light, he turned onto Stickle Road and was soon driving through a scruffy area where abandoned pastures, overrun with thorn bushes, alternated with dilapidated trailers and collapsed barns.

Gurney was keeping an eye on his odometer, since Slovak’s directions were based on distances rather than on the often illegible addresses on the tilting mailboxes. At 2.4 miles from the commercial center of Bastenburg, he arrived at the incongruously named Paradise Inn—Darlene Tate’s place of business, as well as her residence—a ramshackle two-story structure with a tavern on the ground floor and an apartment upstairs. According to Slovak, access to her apartment was through the barroom.

Gurney parked in the weedy lot at the side of the building. Two other vehicles were present, both pickup trucks. Inside the rear window of one was a Confederate flag decal. A rifle was on display inside the other.

He got out and walked around to the front entrance. Above the sagging overhang, the words PARADISE INN were stenciled in red letters on a yellow background. A looping garland of blinking Christmas lights hung from the overhang. Rather than adding an element of cheer, the effect in the glare of the midday sun was repellent. He opened the glass-paneled door and stepped inside.

It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the low light level. There were no windows. Apart from the glass door, the only sources of illumination were a wide-screen TV on the wall at the end of the bar and a few low-wattage light fixtures in the ceiling.

Only one of the barstools was occupied—by a shapeless woman in an oversized flannel shirt and a John Deere cap on backward. Straggly gray hair reached her shoulders. She was leaning forward, elbows on the bar, hands wrapped around an empty glass. She glanced over at Gurney, then up at the TV, where colorfully dressed contestants were shrieking and dashing back and forth in a frenetic game show.

A young man with a shaved head and a bodybuilder’s physique was perched on a stool behind the bar, cleaning his nails with the tip of a narrow-bladed hunting knife. He eyed Gurney with the quiet calculation common to ex-cons.

Gurney spoke with the steely politeness common to cops. “Good afternoon, sir. I’d like to speak to Darlene Tate.”

“And you are . . . ?”

“Detective Gurney, Larchfield Police.”

The young man slipped his knife slowly into a sheath on the side of his belt, picked up a phone from under the bar, and tapped a few icons. He put the phone to his ear and turned away. When he spoke, it was in a low voice.

All Gurney could make out was the word “police.”