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and whats-his-name "
"Brian."
" to dinner at, oh, Goodfellows or something."
She shook her head. "You can't solve every problem with money, Torrie. That'd
just make her suspicious. We're doing her the favor, not the other way
around." On the back porch stood a small red plastic bucket, holding paint
brushes soaking in turpentine.
She stooped to pick up the glass bottle of turpentine next to the bucket.
"I'll sprinkle a little bit of this around her room, and if she decides to
show up, she'll get sick and go away."
Thorian Thorsen smiled like he had invented her. "Very good, Maggie." He
slapped his gloved hands together. "We have an errand to run, have we not?"
It was getting cold standing around outside, and with Maggie dispatched to
pick up some modeling cement, Thorian Thorsen in tow, Jeff followed Torrie up
the stairs to Maggie's apartment. A pot of coffee was just finishing dripping
down into the Melitta, and after most of a night of road coffee Karin Thorsen
surely would have packed them a thermos if Thorian hadn't insisted on rushing
off the smell was tantalizing beyond belief.
"Does Maggie get the paper?"
The question clearly caught Torrie by surprise. "You want her to advertise for
a new roommate or something?''
"No." Jeff tried to keep his expression neutral as he met Torrie's gaze, and
he held it that way until Torrie looked away.
Torrie was going to be a hard case. That was the trouble with growing up
around the people you had to watch out for. The ones
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Hidden Ways 3.htm who were older could never quite get the image of you as a
little kid out of their heads, and the ones who were your age, or even a few
years younger like Torrie, weren't used to taking direction even when it was
needed from a peer.
He'd probably have to get that clear sooner than later. But maybe it could
wait until he looked at the newspaper that Torrie was unfolding on the spool
table.
Well, the mayor's driver had tried to shoot out some poor fool's tire, and all
of the sports teams remaining wanted some money in return for not moving away.
There had been a shooting in Phillips, and the homeless shelters were all
full, but...
"What are you looking for?" Torrie asked.
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Jeff tapped at the paper. "This." He smiled. As a kid, like a lot of other
kids, he'd wanted to be Sherlock Holmes. You didn't get a lot of chances to do
that. The strange thing that the dog did during the night.
"The shooting in Phillips?"
"No, it's the story that's not there. The dead men that the Son killed. Or the
stories from surrounding farms about animals being taken by a wolf." The Sons
had stalked the Thorsens for at least a week before the Night of the Sons and
they'd killed a fair number of farm animals to feed on.
But that had drawn a lot of attention, and it would draw even more attention
this far south, where wolves hadn't been spotted in, what? A hundred years? It
wouldn't take many kills to have the public all up in arms. One would probably
do it. Two, for sure.
Torrie nodded. "I've got it. So either he just got into town or..."
"Or he's taking his time, and trying to keep a very low profile."
Torrie's brow furrowed. "But if he just came through a Hidden Way, how did he
find Maggie's apartment? Do you think there's a
Hidden Way out in her backyard?"
"No." That wouldn't make sense.
Or, at least, it didn't make sense.
Hosea said there were lots of them, but Jeff had the impression that meant
maybe hundreds or thousands, but surely not enough that there would be one in
every backyard. No matter how hard it was to make yourself notice a Hidden Way
for the first time, somebody would have stumbled across it, or stumbled into
it like Benjamin Bathurst probably had.
Occam's razor: "What I think the only thing I can think of that makes sense is
that this is one of the group who captured your mother and Maggie, and who
knows what all of you smell like."
Assuming he was right, and it wasn't a terribly difficult assumption to make,
the Son was looking for the Thorsens, and probably would return, sooner than
later, to check for another familiar smell. It was a matter of luck that the
Son had found Maggie first
and was a matter of more luck that he hadn't followed her to Torrie.
Quiet footsteps sounded outside the apartment, in the hallway.
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Hidden Ways 3.htm
Jeff was out of his chair, with his hand on the butt of his pistol as the door
creaked open. It was a silly thing, but he actually regularly practiced a fast
draw, even though he'd never heard of a case where a small-town type like
himself really needed to do anything of the sort, legends about Bill Jordan to
the contrary.
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