Reapers (11 page)

Most didn't know jack shit, but several were happy to cast shade on their fellow employees. She wrapped up the first round of interviews with four names to attack with a second round of questions. Along with the man who still hadn't come in to work, that gave her five leads.

Kerry announced it was time for dinner. They ate at a picnic bench beside a netted driving range aimed out at the water. She finished fast and plunged into her second interviews, starting with a weatherbeaten man named Rolando Quiroz.

She tapped her notes. "Rumor has it you went to the bathroom right before the riders arrived, Rolando. Why is that?"

"Rumor has it I had to shit." He took such a big bite of oatmeal he had to chew for ten seconds before answering her next question.

The next name on her list was Zoe Goodwin, a round-faced woman who kept her iron-gray hair clipped an inch from the skin. She ate at a round glass bistro table.

Lucy straddled the chair across from her. "When the raiders rode in, I hear you laughed. Something funny about your friends getting shot?"

The woman picked her teeth with a fish bone. "I was relieved."

"Relieved?"

"That I was about to be freed from this hell."

Lucy smiled and got out her bag, which Kerry had allowed her to grab out of storage (though he'd refused her the umbrella). In the waning sunlight at Zoe's table, Lucy got out a baggie of shredded leaf and jogged it up and down.

"You like to smoke?"

Zoe moved her hand beneath the table. "Got any cigars?"

"Seems a bit greedy, Zoe."

She poked at Zoe's apparent lack of satisfaction with her job, but the woman provided bland non-answers about long days, a stiff back, and a limp husband.

Sunset painted the towers red and gold. When night took the island, Kerry locked Lucy in a windowless pantry off the restaurant kitchen. His footsteps receded on the linoleum, then returned. Fabric shuffled. Ten minutes later, his snores cut through the door. He was sleeping right in front of it.

Lucy wadded her blanket under her back and swore. Nerve's challenge had felt like a lock. She'd accepted it with the steel-firm certainty she could outwit these trunk-headed stevedores, gain Nerve's trust, and use his knowledge of the Distro organization to track down Tilly. But as the limits of her investigation clarified like islands in the mist, Lucy saw just how little she had to work with. These piers were just one wing of the Distro organization. What if the mole worked at another dock? Or their headquarters?

Even if there
were
a mole, and he was here at Chelsea, all he had to do was lie to her. She didn't know these men. She didn't have the chance to bide her time and trip them in a contradiction. Would Nerve allow her to torture them? Unlikely. Not that he seemed squeamish about the ol' ultraviolence. But if he really thought that would get results, he'd skip this game with her and unleash Kerry on the dock workers instead.

Nope. Lying in the darkness, it became very clear. Nerve had nothing to lose in sending her on this fool's quest. He didn't care if she failed and he had to kill her. She'd been the walking dead from the moment Jimmy marched her up to the rotunda.

She hadn't found a mole, but she'd found an answer of another kind. The game was rigged. In 48 hours, she would lose it and her life.

8

Ellie eyeballed her daughter. "How do you know it was stolen?"

"Because two of George's bins have been replaced with empty spaces," Dee said. "It
could
be that one of us is a sleep-eater. But if nobody here passes a five-hundred-pound bolus of grain, there's only one other answer."

She sighed and set the blankets by the door. "We'd better get over there before Quinn murders Sam Chase."

Dee helped transfer the contents of the bicycle trailer inside. Ellie locked up and they jogged down the trail together. She had spent hours contemplating a way to strengthen or even pave the trail, but between the leaves, the pine needles, the mud, the washouts, and constant freezing and thawing of the ice, anything she was capable of building was unlikely to last longer than the average pair of shoes.

And until the last couple weeks, Ellie had never had much need to sprint across the woods. There had been no major accidents or mysterious gunshots or unmotivated acts of violence. A few raiders, years ago, but that had been settled. Ever since, the lakes had been lulled to sleep.

She jogged on, listening for shots. She could smell the coming frost. The sun vanished. The air in the woods was perfectly still and their breath hung behind them like judgmental ghosts.

"When did this happen?" Ellie asked.

"George just noticed," Dee said.

"Was it there yesterday?"

"I dunno. We were in town."

"We've got to work on your powers of observation."

They ran in silence from there, feet swishing through the damp leaves. The limbs were growing bare and Ellie was growing sick of all this rushing back and forth. It had reached the point where it made sense to invite George and Quinn to live with her and Dee. At least that way, when trouble came calling, Ellie wouldn't have to put on her shoes.

"What's so funny?" Dee said.

"Family."

The run took as long as always. As they jogged toward the Tolbert house, two silhouettes emerged onto the front porch, guns glinting in the moonlight of the cloud-patched sky.

"It's us," Ellie called.

"Hell." George lowered his gun. "I thought the bandits were back for the rest."

"Wasn't bandits," Quinn muttered. "It was Sam Chase."

Ellie stopped in front of the stoop, pressing her hand to the stitch in her side. "You didn't confront him, did you?"

"Dee wouldn't let me."

"That's because I raised her to use her brain. Sam isn't stupid enough to steal two bins of wheat from his own neighbor."

Quinn laughed harshly. "Sam is stupid enough to eat the plate when he runs out of dinner."

"We'll see who's right in the morning. When men are 85% less likely to answer a knock with a shotgun blast." Ellie climbed the first step and leaned on her knee. "Now how about you two Southern gentlemen get out of the way so I can get a drink of water?"

The Tolbert men shot up their eyebrows and fell over each other to vacate the stairs and bring her some water. George had a fire going in the living room, and after the five-mile run, the home felt stiflingly warm. Ellie glugged down a full glass of water, refilled it herself, and went out back to cool down. The others followed, settling into the lawn chairs.

"Have you seen anyone around here lately?" she said.

George shook his head. "Just your midnight skulker."

"When was the last time you saw the wheat?"

"Yesterday. Morning." He leaned forward with a frown. "Do you mean to lead this investigation?"

"Do you have a problem with that?"

"It's my farm. My business."

Ellie took a long drink to stop herself from saying something stupid. "No offense, George, but you and your son keep running into trouble. I think a third party is the best chance to put a stop to it."

"Just like you did with the Chase boy?"

"Has there been another incident? Then don't question my work."

She'd spoken with more vehemence than she'd meant to and for a moment the night was so quiet they could hear the lake lapping the dark shore.

"I'll go with her, Dad," Quinn said.

Ellie raised a brow. "Not to see Sam."

"If it isn't him, I mean."

George rubbed his jaw. He normally kept it clean shaven but white bristles showed in the candlelight. "It would be nice to have a Tolbert represented in the field."

"You're kind of young, aren't you?" Ellie said.

Quinn laughed in a careless way that did not bode well for a long and happy life. "I'm nineteen. In the old days, nineteen-year-olds were sent to war."

"The old days? You mean like 2007?"

"Before the plague. When everything was safe and kids had to be sealed away from anything that could hurt them."

Ellie glared into her water glass. "The army knew it's best to train killers from an early age."

"It's a new world," George declared. "Time for my boy to learn how to navigate it. Think you're the best person for the job, Ellie? Then you're the best one to show Quinn the ropes."

Ellie bristled, but she forced herself to take a mental step back. Quinn meant to marry her daughter. Some day—a day that would come much sooner than Ellie had grown up to expect—she wouldn't be there for them. Maybe it was time to introduce them to the darker shades of adult life.

"George, I want a list of everyone you talked to in town yesterday," she said. "At first light I'll take a look at the barn and talk to Sam." She raised her eyebrows at Quinn. "I want you ready by the time I get back."

"Yes ma'am," he said. "Suppose we ought to sleep in shifts?"

She doubted the thieves would come back tonight, but it couldn't hurt. She took one of the middle shifts. While the others slept, she gazed through the front window at the dark fields. The dew had frozen to the shorn stalks and the frost gleamed in the moonshine like lost treasure.

It hadn't melted at dawn when she walked to the barn. She unlocked the padlock. The hinges squeaked. The dust and straw had been stirred every which way. She was mostly interested in the stray grains of wheat that had been crushed into a homogenous powder. And the pair of ruts leading northeast from the barn toward the road to town.

She closed up the barn and walked down the shore to the Chase's. After the third time she knocked, she heard the old man bellowing.

Sam's eyes were red, his face creased and swollen from insufficient sleep. "Man, I am so sick of your face."

"I hope this is the last you have to see it."

"Great. What would you like to accuse me of now?"

She felt herself flush. "Night before last, some of George's grain went missing."

Sam gritted his teeth and hooked his finger in his cheek like a snagged fish. "Want to check my pouches?"

"I don't think you did it," Ellie said. "But if I can check your sheds, we can stave off the drama before it starts."

He sighed and bladed his hand against the dawn to peer at the trees separating his home from the Tolberts'. "Let me grab a shirt. For you, I'll even put on shoes."

The attached garage housed two Mustangs, a powder blue '65 and a late model as bright as first blood. Ellie walked past, confirming there were no tubs of wheat concealed at the back of the garage.

"These things run?"

"You looking to buy?" Sam said.

"Just want to know what to steal if the zombies roll in."

He snorted and led her to two sheds: one filled with tools, the other stacked with wood. As he opened the door to the second, a black widow scrambled up its shredded webbing. Sam cursed and yanked off his shoe and smashed the widow into yellow goo.

Last, he took her to the little boathouse. The only thing that smelled fishy was the air.

"Sorry to wake you, Sam," she said. "I owe you one."

"This early in the morning, the price goes up to three."

He closed the door on her. She walked through the pines to George's. The others sat in the kitchen eating eggs and bread toasted in the skillet on the wood stove.

"It wasn't Sam," Ellie said. "Not unless he's working with someone else."

"How do you figure?" Quinn said.

"Wagon ruts outside the barn. Anyway, he's more tired of us than he is mad." She grabbed a slice of toast from the plate and beckoned at George. "Where are my names?"

He handed her a sheet of paper. It included fourteen people, mostly by name, though there were a couple vague descriptors like "man in the black hat." She scanned it twice, then tapped one of the names, letting her memory do its work.

"Mort Franklin. Quinn, you said he'd had trouble with your dad."

"Sure enough," Quinn said.

"Who is he?"

"A religious nutbag is who he is."

"Quinn," George reproached.

"Well, ain't he?" Quinn said through a mouthful of eggs cooked in saved fat. "He's got like three wives and ten kids."

"Mormon?" Ellie said.

George shook his head. "The gentleman is simply taking advantage of the lax enforcement of polygamy laws. We really ought to have requirements for citizenship. We can't go on allowing freaks and madmen to attach themselves to our town."

"Why's he mad at you?"

George shrugged. Quinn rolled his eyes. "Because Dad sold him a fake piano."

George pitched up his voice. "It's got 'Steinway' printed right on it. He inspected it himself."

Ellie glanced between the men. "You knew him before the plague?"

"Heavens no. Last year."

"We're digging latrines and watching the skies for a second wave and Mort Franklin is up in arms over a fraudulent
piano
?"

"Nutbag," Quinn muttered.

"Sounds promising," Ellie said. "Now take that pistol off your hip and let's go."

He glanced at the bulge on the side of his untucked shirt but did as he was told.

"He's a crazy person," Dee said, "and that makes you think it's a
good
idea to confront him?"

"Enemies are like family," Ellie said. "You don't get to choose them. And you can only avoid them for so long."

Quinn had wheeled the bikes out of the garage while she was at Sam's. Dee and George watched from the porch as Ellie and Quinn walked them across the field toward the road north of the property.

"Were you some kind of detective?" Quinn said.

"Of patterns. Predictions. I never ran investigations like this."

"Then how come you're so good at it?"

"We'll see what the results have to say," she said. "Actually, that's dead wrong. In evaluating success, we don't care about the results. We care about the process."

Quinn gave her a dubious look. "
I
care about results. But I'm one of those weirdos who prefers not to starve to death."

"When things are in flux, you can't guarantee a good outcome." She frowned vaguely. "If you do things the right way, and things turn out wrong, that's not failure. That's bad luck."