When we got to David Bass’s home, I could see some of the same effort at home improvement: the shutters had crisp white paint, and two potted mums sat on the deck. The lattice closing off the crawlspace looked new, and a raised bed for a vegetable garden was covered by a thick plastic sheet. He had a corner lot, so I drove to the end of the street and turned, wanting to see as much as I could before we approached the trailer.

  Then I stopped.

  “What’s wrong with his door?” Elien asked.

  My first thought was that a bear had gone at the screen door on the back of the mobile home. That was the only explanation for the long rents in the screen, for the way the aluminum frame had crumpled along one edge. My mind was already trying to come up with explanations: this was the last street of the trailer park, and it backed up to a stretch of woods that ran all the way to Bayou Pere Rigaud. A bear could have come out of the forest. Sure, I thought. And that same bear just wandered up to David Bass’s back door and clawed his way inside.

  I put the car in park and left the engine running. “Stay here.”

  “No way.”

  “Elien, it’s not a conversation. Stay here. Get behind the wheel, and if you see anybody besides me come out of there, you drive away as fast as you can. Come on, slide over.”

  “Yeah,” Elien said, his eyes softening. “Thank you. Of course.”

  As I got out of the car, Elien reached over, turned off the car, and pocketed the keys.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered.

  “Going with you.”

  “You don’t have a gun.”

  “Neither do you.”

  “You could be in danger.”

  “So could you.”

  “Yes, but I’m—”

  “What? Butch?”

  “What? No, a deputy.”

  Sliding out of the car, Elien turned his attention to the mobile home. I came around and grabbed his arm.

  “I appreciate what you’re doing,” Elien said. “But I can take care of myself.”

  I could smell that peppery, prickly heat of him; it filled my lungs like gas waiting for a match.

  “I’m going first,” I said.

  “You might have to let go of my arm.”

  I gave him a little shake because the other option was growling.

  “It’ll be ok,” he said, and he squeezed my fingers before pulling my hand loose.

  The treads of the steps groaned as I went up them. The wind picked up, stirring the chimes that hung from the end of the trailer. Then the breeze snapped the screen door open, and I froze, my knuckles white where I gripped the rail. Sweat broke out across my chest, my back, stinging drops under my arms. After ten seconds, I eased myself up another step, and then the door banged shut. Pennants of torn screen drifted, stirred by the breeze.

  When I got my hand on the door, I counted another ten seconds, and then I pulled it open and slipped inside. I smelled death immediately: loose bowels, blood. I was in a small kitchen. A bag of microwaveable wild rice sat on the counter, and the microwave door was open. 0:02 flashed on the timer.

  Keeping my steps as quiet as I could, I moved along the trailer, checking rooms as I went: the living room, with a console TV and a plaster Jesus nailed to a six-inch cross; a room filled with banker’s boxes; an office with an ancient laptop and a Cheshire cat mural on the resin paneling; a bathroom with a soap dish shaped to look like a rubber ducky. A closet, its door open, dozens of pairs of winter gloves clothespinned to hangers.

  In the last room, David Bass lay on a futon. He had been sliced open: three huge gashes that ran diagonally from shoulder to hip. The smell of ruptured bowels made me gag. Elien poked his head past me, winced, and hurried away.

  I lingered a moment, trying to figure it out.

  David Bass hadn’t killed himself. The hashok had murdered him.

  ELIEN (13)

  I stood in the small office in David’s trailer. The Cheshire cat was staring at me.

  In the hallway behind me, Dag’s footsteps moved closer.

  “We need to go.”

  I nodded.

  “Right now, Elien.”

  I nodded again. And then I disconnected the laptop, wrapped up the power supply’s cables, and grabbed both.

  “What are you doing?” Dag asked. “Put that back.”

  I shouldered past him into the hall and made my way to the room with the banker’s boxes. With my elbow, I popped the lid off the closest one; it was only half full.

  “Hold this,” I said, passing the laptop to Dag.

  “Absolutely not,” he said as he took it. “Elien, David is dead.”

  “I’m not stupid. I know he’s dead.”

  “We need to leave, and then we need to make an anonymous call to the sheriff’s department, and then we need to figure out what the hell is going on.”

  “What’s going on,” I said as I rummaged through the documents, “is the hashok killed David.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  I looked over my shoulder at him, and Dag’s eyes cut away.

  “Let’s take this box too,” I said. “It looks like every piece of mail he’s gotten in the last month.”

  “Absolutely not,” Dag said again.

  I put the lid back on the box and picked it up. “Ok. Just one more thing.”

  Standing in the doorway, Dag set his jaw. “Elien, we cannot take this stuff. This is going to be a crime scene.”

  “Do you think the hashok left fingerprints? And they’re going to run them through a database and then find his driver’s license and get his home address?”

  “We’re leaving fingerprints, do you understand? We’re taking things. If we get caught, we won’t just get in trouble for disturbing a crime scene. They’ll have an unsolvable murder, and they’ll have two people with a weird connection to the victim. Even if they don’t want to believe we did this, it’ll look so strange they won’t have a choice.”

  “So far,” I said, I’ve only touched the laptop and the cords and this box. I haven’t left fingerprints anywhere else.”

  Dag was taking deep breaths.

  “Have you?” I asked.

  “The door. We’ll wipe it down when we leave.”

  “So let’s take this stuff and go. After I check one more thing.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, Dag, the hashok murdered him. It wasn’t willing to wait for the cycle of violence to catch up with him. It needed him out of the way. And I want to know why. If we’re going to stop this thing, we need to understand it.”

  For a moment, those dark eyes were very steady on me.

  “Please,” I said.

  “This is a bad idea,” he said.

  “Then it’s my bad idea. You can go. I know this is crossing over into your professional life; I don’t want to make you choose.”

  With a snort, Dag shook his head and stepped back from the doorway. “It invaded my personal life the minute Mason pulled a gun on you. Now we’re just watching the shit fly. Let’s go before someone sees us.”

  “One more thing,” I said, turning back to where David lay.

  “What?”

  “His hands.”

  When I got to the bedroom at the end of the mobile home, I set the banker’s box on the ground. I inched closer to David. His skin was waxy; blood soaked the carpet around him, and the room smelled like shit. I leaned over as close as I dared, and then I used the hem of my t-shirt to tug the winter gloves off one by one. His hands looked shockingly small without them, the skin pale and smooth. Using the gloves, I rotated his hands palm up. Neither showed any sign of a wound or mark.

  “Feet,” Dag whispered.

  I lucked out because David was wearing house slippers without socks; I knocked them off using the back of my hand and studied his feet. Then I shook my head and crept back toward the hallway.

  “Anything?” Dag asked.

  “He didn’t own a toenail clipper, apparently. Nothing that looked like a thorn in his foot or hand. No scars.”

  Dag grunted. “I guess that makes sense; the hashok wouldn’t kill him if he was an evil henchman.”

  “Let’s find a way to talk about this that doesn’t sound like we’re participants at Medieval Times.”

  We left through the back door, hurried down the creaking steps, and got in the Escort as fast as we could. Dag drove back to the state road at a leisurely pace; little puffs of gravel chased us, the smell of the dust mixing with the Big Mac aroma from the back seat. When we were on the highway, Dag shot up to sixty, and the end-of-day autumn warmth whipped through the car.

  “Could you drop me off?” I asked. “Otherwise I have to ask Muriel for a ride, and she’d just absolutely love that.”

  “Yeah,” Dag said. “Do I cut off up here?”

  I nodded.

  “Who’s Muriel?” he asked.

  “She’s a nurse practitioner at Richard’s office.”

  “Like, she sees patients too, that kind of thing?”

  “Right. She’s licensed to work under a psychiatrist, so she can do a lot of the same work, she just can’t go out and have her own practice. Does that make sense?”

  Dag nodded. “Why does she drive you around?”

  “Well, most of the time Richard does. But she lives out our direction, past us actually, closer to Pere Rigaud, and when Richard isn’t going into Bragg or when he’s got to change his normal schedule, she’ll help out.”

  “Why don’t you drive?”

  I smiled and leaned my head back. “I was in a terrible car accident. I have a fear of driving.”

  “Oh, God. I’m so sorry.”

  “No, that’s bullshit.”

  I couldn’t see it, but I could sense Dag rolling his eyes.

  “Ok,” he finally said. “So what’s the real reason?”

  “I like it. It’s empowering, you know. Making people do what you want them to do? It’s kind of like a blowjob. People think giving a blowjob is submissive, but it doesn’t have to be. I’m the one giving pleasure. I’m the one with my teeth on his cock.”

  “Fine,” Dag said. “Don’t tell me.”

  “I never learned how to drive.”

  Dag glanced at me, and then his attention went back to the road as we turned.

  “My parents weren’t exactly pushing us to learn, and I didn’t move out for college, and I don’t know. I just never felt like I needed to.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s embarrassing.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “It is.”

  “No, not at all. I think that’s a lot more common now, actually.” Dag ran his hand over the short bristles of graying hair. “I could teach you. If you wanted to learn, I mean.”

  Closing my eyes, I groaned. “Oh my God.”

  “What?”

  I squeezed my eyes shut even tighter. “Are you even real? Are you a real person?”

  “What? What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. I just feel like shit now.”

  The Escort rumbled on for another thirty seconds before Dag said, “Oh.”

  We were passing through a portion of the same forest that ran alongside the mobile home community where David had lived, the same forest that stretched east and north along the Okhlili until it hit the bayou. Black oaks and sugar maples. A few cypresses. With the windows down, I could smell the cool, damp earth between the trees and motor oil and a mixture of sweat and talcum powder.

  “The truth,” I said. “The honest-to-God truth, I swear, is that Zahra put me on some really strong anti-psych meds when I first started seeing her. I was driving, lost control, and hit a mailbox and tore up a guy’s yard. They took my license. I’m not on the anti-psych meds anymore, just so you know, although maybe I need them. I think I can apply for my license again in a couple of months.”

  He was still focused on the road.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Please don’t be mad at me. I do stupid stuff, which you already know, and now I feel really fucking awful.”

  “It’s ok,” Dag said, and he gave me a little smile. “I guess I sounded pretty stupid.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Kind of my curse. Same thing with that guy who took my debit card. I’m just gullible.”

  “No, that’s not true. I’m an asshole. I’m really sorry.”

  “You were just joking,” Dag said. “I can take a joke.”

  I fell back against the seat for the rest of the drive. I tried to think of what Richard would say, but all I got was a white hiss at the back of my brain and the desire to really fuck something up. Myself, first of all. I just wanted to fuck myself up badly.

  When we drove up to the house, dusk was coming down like a curtain, and the automatic lights were already on. Staring at the modern farmhouse aesthetic, the three-car garage, the St. Augustine grass, the Pottery Barn rocking chairs, I had a hard time remembering that monsters were real, and that one of them had nearly killed me just a hundred yards from where I was.

  “Please come inside,” I said.

  “I should get home.”

  “Please, Dag. Richard’s gone, and I don’t want to be alone, and I feel awful for lying to you, and I’m sick about Ray and Mason and Tamika and David.” I blew out a breath. “I’m trying really hard not to, you know, throw a fit like I normally would, so I’m just going to tell you I really want to fuck myself up, and it would mean a lot to me if you would overlook all the shitty things I’ve done to you and hang out until Richard gets home.”

  “Ok,” he said. He turned off the car, but he didn’t reach for the door. “One condition.”

  “I will apologize on my hands and knees.”

  “Nope. Let’s hear one thing that you like about Eli.”

  “I go by Elien now.”

  “I know,” he said. “But your name is Eli.”

  “What if there’s nothing I like about Eli?”

  “I guess I’m going home.”

  “Can I have a few minutes?”

  “Sure.”

  “Can we go inside?”

  “Is that a trick?”

  “No tricks,” I said, my mouth dry. “Can we please go inside?”

  Dag nodded. His eyes were very brown and very soft.

  He carried the laptop; I took the banker’s box. I let us in through the front door, and we set up a workstation in the breakfast nook.

  “Are you hungry?” I asked.

  “Pretty much always.”

  “You’re missing your mom’s bacon cheese knots for this,” I said. “I can’t compete with that. She’s going to kill me after she worked so hard on dinner.”

  “Honestly? I think they’re just happy I’m out of the house.”

  I opened the refrigerator and took out a chicken, a lemon, and a bundle of herbs. Then I grabbed potatoes and onions from the pantry. “One thing I like about Eli,” I said, and I knew I was barely loud enough to be heard over the clatter I was making with the food, “is that he is a pretty good cook. Or he was, anyway, before he got so weird about food.”

  Dag leaned against the counter; he was breathing normally, but for some reason, it sounded like the only noise in the universe. I imagined I could feel each breath ghosting over my skin. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

  “Go ahead and sit down,” I said. “Do you want a drink? This’ll take about an hour.”

  “A drink sounds nice.”

  “Bar’s over there.”

  “What do you want?”

  “God, I don’t know. Those rum and Cokes nearly destroyed me.”

  For a while, Dag was at the bar. He examined the bottles and said, “You’ve got good taste.”

  “Richard does. I couldn’t drink while I was still on my meds.”

  Dag hesitated, his hand stopping in the middle of reaching for a bottle of Bywater.

  “I guess I shouldn’t have said that,” I said.

  “Are you supposed to be off your medicine?”

  “No,” I said, stripping the packaging from the chicken. “But I was sick of feeling dead all the time. This is better.”

  “Eli—”

  “Please don’t make this a thing tonight.” I got a knife and began halving the lemon and onions. “I’ve got enough people in my life taking care of me, and I’m so fucking sick of it I could scream.”

  When Dag came back, he had a tumbler of Bywater; I could smell the bourbon. He slid past me to the fridge, and bottles clinked. He set a glass next to me.

  “Vodka tonic,” he said.

  “That’s so civilized.”

  “Why don’t we see how one goes?”

  “That’s very smart.”

  He sipped his bourbon.

  I brought the knife down hard through another onion. “Sometimes I get fucking sick of doing things the smart way.”

  “That kind of stuff, you’ve got to cut it out if I’m going to stay.”

  “Ok,” I said, bringing the knife down hard again. “Ok.”

  He took a seat at the breakfast table, opened the box, and began sorting the papers. “He kept everything,” Dag said. “Electric bills, water bills, rent payments for the lot in the mobile home community. Medical. DuPage Behavioral. Have you heard of them?”

  “Once or twice,” I said. “That’s Richard’s practice.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “Yeah. I mean, it’s not his exclusively. Him, Zahra, Rodney, Joe, Irene, Muriel. Um, they have some regular nurses, too, I mean, not NPs like Muriel. And they’ve got administrative assistants, people who handle the appointments, the billing. But the five doctors and Muriel.”

  “That seems lopsided. Wouldn’t it be cheaper to have one doctor and several nurse practitioners?”