Hold the Dark: A Novel by William Giraldi Page B

body. You ever see anything like this?”
    “Not quite like this, no. Please find the casings.”
    Marium stood smoking a cigarette in the cold as men continued this work. The ambulance sat silent and without use, its lights pointlessly in twirl. His dreams in the night had offered him no sign of what this day held.
    The morgue’s waxed hallways squeaked beneath a racket of wet boots. A half-moon of cops stood at the cusp of the coroner’s blood. He lay facedown and Marium could see the stab wound was in the side of his head, through the ear and out the other side.
    “You boys waiting for Frank to sit up and tell you who did it? Mop right up to him, please, and look for boot marks as you go.”
    “What about forensics, Don?”
    “About what?”
    “The guys from the city.”
    “You photograph this room?”
    “Took a hundred shots.”
    “Then you and a mop are as forensic as it’ll get right now. Look for a goddamn boot mark, please, and stop if you see it.”
    “I thought the city guys were coming. Or troopers, something. How in the hell we supposed to handle this?”
    Marium smiled at him. “Troopers. That’s a good one. I didn’t realize troopers even knew we were here, this town. Let’s think of this as our own mess for now. Stop touching things, please.”
    His salmon-and-eggs breakfast sat half eaten on his kitchen table. He thought of coffee, Susan, his wife, in her bathrobe and nothing underneath, toenails the pink he liked. Twelve years younger, redheaded and lithe, she was a former dancer of ballet. Her breath stayed sweet even at waking. She was his promise of thaw in this place. She wanted children and kept Marium engaged in the task, early-hours coupling with an erotic unclean scent on her. He was prepared for kids, willing now at forty-eight.
    At the rear of the hall he stepped into the break room. He could smell the cigarette smoke stuck on curtains and patted a jacket pocket for his own pack. He saw dents in the sofa cushions where heavy men had sat. Other rooms, offices down a second hallway, and the metallic coldroom at the end. He’d been to this morgue dozens of times over the years—to sign papers for old people dead from sickness, or young people dead from being dumb—but he’d never entered this coldroom. Never wanted to.
    He grabbed the handle with a latex glove, pulled to open the door, then entered in the kind of caution born of superstition. The extended corpse drawer was empty, the sheet thrown aside. On the floor beneath it lay a toe tag in blue ink. He crouched to get it and read the name, read the numbers telling all of Bailey Slone.
    Looks like your daddy’s home, boy.
    * * *
    Cheeon answered the knock, opened his front door and kept it open, a cigarette glowing to its stub, the heat from a cast-iron stove pushing at the cold. Marium’s coat was unzipped to show no weapon in his underarm holster. When he saw Cheeon’s cigarette he retrieved one of his own from a coat pocket. The men leaned against the doorframe smoking, looking fifty yards out in front of Cheeon’s two-level cabin where police vehicles sat arranged on the snow front to back, four of them. The men behind wore flak jackets and helmets, their rifles lowered, some sipping from cups of coffee hastily got.
    “Was wondering when you’d show up here.”
    “I told them I’d try talking to you, Cheeon. See if I could get you to come without any goddamn mess here. I’m not claiming to be a friend. I wouldn’t claim that.”
    “If you say.”
    “But we’ve talked over the years, when you were in town. Had coffee a few times, if memory serves. We’ve been friendly, anyway. Our fathers knew each other, I think. Your wife and girl were friendly with me. With Susan too, my wife. Would you agree with that?”
    “If you say.”
    “And that has to mean something.”
    Cheeon spat, half in the snow, half on his boot.
    “If you say. But I don’t think it means what you want it to mean right now, guy. Not even