6

"So you three found them," Hardesty said. "You look pretty shook up, too." Sears and Ricky were seated on a couch in John Jaffrey's house, Don in a chair immediately beside them. The sheriff, still wearing his coat and hat, was leaning against the mantel, trying to disguise the fact that he was very angry. The wet traces of his footprints on the carpet, a source of evident irritation to Milly Sheehan until Hardesty had sent her out of the room, showed a circling path of firm heelprints and squared-off toes.

"So do you," Sears said.

"Yeah. Suppose I do. I never saw bodies like those two, exactly. Even Freddy Robinson wasn't that bad. You ever seen bodies like that, Sears James? Hey?"

Sears shook his head.

"No. You're damn right. Nobody ever did. And I'm gonna have to store 'em up in the jail until the meat wagon can get in here. And I'm the poor son of a bitch who has to take Mrs. Hardie and Mr. Barnes along to see those goddamned things to identify them. Unless you'd like to do that for me, Mr. James?"

"It's your job, Walt," Sears said.

"Shit. My job, is it? My job is finding out who did what to those people-and you two old buzzards just sit there, don't you? You found 'em by accident I suppose. Just happened to break into that particular house, just happened to be taking a walk on a goddamned day like this, I suppose, and just thought you'd try a little housebreaking-Jesus, I oughta lock all three of you in the same cell with them. Along with torn-up Lewis Benedikt and that nigger de Souza and the Griffen boy who froze to death because his hippy mommy and daddy were too cheap to put a heater in his room. God damn. That's what I ought to do, all right." Hardesty, now entirely unable to hide his anger, spat into the fireplace and kicked at the fender. "Jesus, I live in that fucking jail, I really oughta haul you three assholes along and see how you like it."

"Walt," Sears said. "Cool down."

"Sure. By God, if you two weren't nothin' but a couple of hundred-year-old lawyers with teeth in the palms of your hands, I'd do it."

"I mean, Walt," Sears calmly said, "if you will stop insulting us for a moment, that we'll tell you who killed Jim Hardie and Mrs. Barnes. And Lewis."

"You will. Hot damn. Guess I don't have to get out the rubber hoses after all."

Silence for a moment: then Hardesty said, "Well? I'm still here."

"It was the woman who calls herself Anna Mostyn."

"Swell. Just dandy. Okay. Anna Mostyn. Okay. It was her house, so she's the one. Good work. Now. What did she do, suck 'em dry, like a hound'll do to an egg? And who held 'em down, because I know no woman could have taken that crazy Hardie kid by herself. Huh?"

"She did have help," Sears said. "It was a man who calls himself Gregory Bate or Benton. Now hold on to yourself, Walt, because here comes the difficult part. Bate has been dead for almost fifty years. And Anna Mostyn-"

He stopped. Hardesty had clamped both eyes shut.

Ricky took it up. "Sheriff, in a way you were right about all this from the beginning. Remember when we looked at Elmer Scales's sheep? And you told us about other incidents, lots of them, that happened in the sixties?"

Hardesty's bloodshot eyes flew open.

"It's the same thing," Ricky said. "That is, we think it's probably the same thing. But here, they're out to kill people."

"So what's this Anna Mostyn?" Hardesty asked, his body rigid. "A ghost? A vampire?"

"Something like that," Sears said. "A shapeshifter, but those words will do."

"Where is she now?"

"That's why we went to her house. To see if we could find anything."

"And that's what you're gonna tell me. Nothing more."

"There is no more," Sears said.

"I wonder if anyone can lie like a hundred-year-old lawyer," Hardesty said, and spat once more into the fire. "Okay. Now let me tell you something. I'm going to put out a bulletin on this Anna Mostyn, and that's all she wrote. That's all I'm gonna do. You two old buzzards and this kid here can spend the rest of the winter ghost-hunting, for all I'm concerned. You're screwball-as far as I'm concerned, you're plumb outta your heads. And if I get some goddamned killer who drinks beer and eats hamburgers and takes his kid out for a drive on Sundays, then I'm gonna call you up and laugh in your faces. And I'll see that people around here never stop laughing when they hear your names. You understand me?"

"Don't shout at us, Walt," Sears said. "I'm sure we all understand what you said. And we understand one thing more."

"Just what the hell is that?"

"That you're frightened, Sheriff. But you have a lot of company."