“You were a stripper,” Hazard said. “And a prostitute.”

  “We prefer to be called sex workers,” she said, and her eyes were running that same old, scratched film, like this was a movie she’d played a hundred times. “I was going to school, and you know what? They made every student at the junior college take the same damn course. Civilization 1100: Ancient World through the Renaissance. That’s a damn long time, don’t you think? What are you going to tell me about that much time?” She eyed them, cocking her hips again, as though waiting for a response.

  Somewhere behind Hazard, children’s voices rose in laughter, calling out baseball positions to each other, and somehow that was worse than anything else he’d seen here, worse than the burned wall and the fraying tarps, worse than the women up to their ankles in horseshit, worse than those Star Trek boxer shorts drip-drying, worse, even, than Sister Naomi sleeping here. They were just kids. They hadn’t asked for any of this craziness.

  Sapphira was speaking again, and Hazard forced himself to listen. “We read a book at the end of that class. It was letters. Some of them real, I think, but most of them were made up. I never really understood that part. Why would you read a book with made-up letters when you were taking a history class? Don’t they have any of the real letters? And if they don’t, why wouldn’t you just say so and move on?” She considered her own questions for a moment and then tossed her head, as though dismissing the vagaries of academia. “It was about a man named Galileo. They burned him, right?”

  “No,” Hazard said, “they didn’t.”

  “Damn. I thought they did. Well, they did something to him.”

  “He was under house arrest,” Hazard said, “and I don’t see what this—”

  “They didn’t want to know,” Somers said. “The church, the religious authorities of the time, they didn’t want to know the truth. The earth moves around the sun. That’s what they didn’t want to know. That’s what you’re telling us: Sister Naomi, the rest of them, they don’t want to know either. They don’t want to know who killed Brother Jeshua because it was one of your congregation. They don’t want to know that he’s dead, that he’s never coming back, and that he was a liar.”

  Whatever old movie was playing in Sapphira’s eyes, it flickered, like celluloid ready to snap. “That’s what everybody thinks, don’t they? That’s history. That’s the way they told it to us in the Reno Junior College, and that’s the way I studied for it between lap dances. It’s a simple story: religious people are old-fashioned, stubborn, ignorant. They don’t want to know the truth.”

  Somers had gone silent. Hazard felt that silence, felt it weighing on him, and his heart thumped wildly against his chest, and his pulse hammered in his neck, and he didn’t know why terror was whipping him into a frenzy because of this woman, this silence, this place.

  And then Somers nodded, and that was worse because Hazard knew something had slipped past him, that he had once again been left behind, and that this thing, this true thing that had passed between this blowsy blonde and his partner had escaped him, and it was important. It was a kind of hinge on which something huge was turning.

  “What?” he said. “What are you saying?”

  Sapphira shrugged, her face lined and weary, her posture suddenly that of a woman thirty years older as she clutched the robe to her throat. “Sister Naomi went to see Sirkaa Hastback. I don’t know why. I just heard her asking Brother Paul to drop her off. You’re not doing her any kindness. It’s your job, and I know that, but you should at least realize you’re not doing any kindnesses here.”

  “We’re after justice,” Hazard said, and he didn’t know why he was speaking except that he knew he had missed something, and it left him unsettled, grappling for solid ground. “And truth.”

  “Justice and truth.” Sapphira shuffled into the house. “They’re about as much good as tits on a bull.”

  And then the door shut.

  Somers led the way to the Interceptor, but it wasn’t until they were pulling away from the farm, away from Sister Anna and Sister Claudia and Sister Sapphira, away from boys playing stickball on a diamond they had marked with fieldstones, away from the dripping line of Star Trek boxer shorts, that Hazard said, “What was that all about?”

  “We got what we wanted.” But the words were a little sharp, and Somers looked peaked, his color high, his eyes glassy.

  “What was that about, back there, when she said that’s what everybody thinks? That’s true, Somers. That’s some honest-to-God truth, what she said. Galileo? They didn’t burn him, but they burned plenty of other scientists. Giordano Bruno.” Hazard grimaced, trying to remember more names, but they slipped away from him. “That’s the kind of crazy we’re dealing with now. Today. In the twenty-first century. It hasn’t gone away. It’s still here, it’s still strong, it’s still just as goddamn crazy. All those people think Walden is alive again. Back from the dead. That’s crazy as hell.”

  “Nobody’s saying it isn’t.”

  “What’s with you?”

  “Nothing, all right? Will you drop it?”

  Hazard squinted, as though trying to make out something in the distance. It didn’t help; he still saw John-Henry Somerset clutching at the wheel, bent slightly, his face looking like that time they’d gotten Ethiopian takeout and it had given him the shits.

  “You’re sick.”

  “I’m not sick.”

  “You’re angry.”

  “God, you’re helpless. You’re like a newborn.”

  “Will you tell me what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “Will you tell me what she meant, then?”

  “She meant nobody wants to know the truth.” The words exploded out of Somers, exploded like they had a stick of TNT behind them, and then his hands flexed around the wheel, and his forehead dipped, and he brought himself upright and it looked like it cost him a lot of effort not to keep yelling. “It means we’re all lying to ourselves. About something. Maybe about a lot of things. And we don’t want to know the truth because—” He drew a shuddering breath. “Because the truth is shit, Ree. All right? That’s all she meant.”

  “John—”

  “I need to think. Can we just drive for a while?”

  And Hazard stared at Somers, the man he loved, and suddenly knew his own truth: hard, inescapable, like he’d come face to face with a few metric tons of granite. Somers didn’t love him back. Somers had finally realized it, had finally admitted it, and now—now all Somers had to do was work up the courage to tell Hazard. He’d tell Hazard, and he’d go back to Evie and Cora, back to a safe life, back to his family. That was the word he’d used, wasn’t it? His family. And that word didn’t include Emery Hazard. There wasn’t a line in the dictionary for family about your gay cop buddy that you fucked when things went bad at home.

  Hazard slumped in his seat, watching the miles tick past as they drove toward Sirkaa Hastback and St. Elizabeth, and he realized Sister Sapphira had been right. The truth was worth just about as much as tits on a bull.

  SOMERS WAS DRIVING. THAT'S ALL. That’s all. Just driving, just focusing on the road, channeling every ounce of himself into the task: muscle and tendon shifting minutely, adjusting the steering wheel, adjusting his field of vision, adjusting his posture, adjusting his breathing. It was his breathing that needed the most adjusting. He could feel it. Clipped. Like someone had snipped off the end of every breath and so each lungful left him dizzy.

  But it wasn’t asphyxia. It wasn’t physiological. It was mental. Like everything that Somers had to deal with involving Hazard, it was beyond mental: it was so cerebral that Somers felt like he needed a doctorate just to get started.

  Nobody wanted to know the truth. They were just words. For all that it mattered, Sister Sapphira hadn’t even said them out loud. She hadn’t needed to. Somers had been able to fill them in. He’d listened to that story about Galileo. He’d listened, and his brain had processed the story, and that deeper, subconscious part of his mind had seen the pieces of the real puzzle. Nobody wanted to know the truth. That ugly fact about humanity wasn’t exclusive to the religious types. It wasn’t their private domain. Humans, as a whole, were a weaselly, cowardly, sniveling race, and all they wanted to do was stick their heads up their asses until they needed to take a dump.

  The rumble strip thudded under the Interceptor’s wheels, and Somers jerked the car across the yellow line.

  Hazard didn’t say anything, didn’t ask anything, but he looked at Somers, and that look clipped a few more inches off every one of Somers’s breaths.

  “I’m fine.”

  Hazard’s dark brows threaded together.

  “I was just thinking.”

  Thinking was a light way of putting it. Thinking was like skipping rocks across a river. This, this kind of cerebral chaos, this was like dropping a boulder to the bottom. This was where all the mud, all the old tires and sneakers and barbed wire wormed together, this place down here at the bottom of the mind. This place, where Somers was trapped now. Trapped because he had that old barbed wire looped around his legs, and no matter how hard he kicked, it just cut deeper. So he was stuck down here, stuck with his thoughts, stuck with the truth. And nobody wanted to know the truth. Nobody wanted to face the fact that the man he—

  —loved—

  —was dating could never forgive him for the past. Nobody wanted to face the fact that the man he—

  —loved—

  —was dating cared about someone else. But Somers was trapped, trapped down there with the truth, with the fact—

  —the truth—

  —of those four outgoing calls to Nico, of the half-heard conversation, of the lies.

  The SUV wasn’t moving anymore. Somers blinked. April sunlight washed into his eyes, and for a moment he thought he really had been underwater, and he sucked in air. And then he blinked through the sunlight and he could see the moldering Victorian ruin of Sirkaa Hastback’s home, its gingerbread woodwork bristling with green mold while that forgotten angel still tried to work all the muck out of his trumpet. Brush and trees clustered around the house, drawing a thick curtain between the highway and this outpost of civilization. For all Somers knew, these woods might be miles deeps. Tens of miles. Hundreds, maybe, Christ, and this one house like something in a fairy tale.

  “Are you coming?” Hazard already stood on the ground, his back to the sun; shadow hooded his eyes.

  They climbed the steps together, and Sirkaa Hastback answered the door, her sunken shoulders looking even more stooped than the last time Somers had seen her, her wispy hair in disarray.

  “It’s you,” she said. “Thank God. I thought they were sending someone else. To be honest, I didn’t think they were sending anyone at all.”

  “What do you mean?” Somers said.

  “I called the Wahredua station. I had to look up the number, and that took time. Don’t tell me I was stupid. Please don’t tell me that. If this is my fault because I couldn’t find the phonebook, I might die. I really might.”

  “If what is your fault?” Somers said, peering over her shoulder into the cluttered sitting room. The enormous clock ticked back at him; brass hands glinted in the gloom. “What happened?”

  “They didn’t tell you? He was here again. Brother Jesse. He was different. Agitated.” She was crying now, but she seemed not to notice the tears, and her voice held smooth. “I thought it was a bad day for visitors, and I told him that. He said he didn’t care.”

  “This was yesterday?”

  “No, no, no. Today! For God’s sake, are you dense?”

  “Miss Hastback.”

  “I’m sorry.” The tears flowed faster. “He wanted money. I could tell that much, and normally I don’t mind. That’s happened before with him. Donations. I understand. I’m old. I’ll pay for conversation. But I didn’t like his tone, and he became rude, and he insisted on tea. I told him my back was aching, I told him it was the humidity, and he didn’t care. He went on and on about it. And I should have said no, I should have told him to leave. But I’m so lonely, and I’m such a fool.”

  The last word twisted in her mouth, stuck like a fishbone, and she choked on it. Then she was crying in earnest, and Hazard was the one who moved first, laying an arm the size of a tree branch over her shoulders. She turned into him, sobbing now, and he patted her on the back. His face looked like that of a man trapped in a burning building, but his hand was steady and gentle, and the big, dumb oaf probably didn’t even know that he was doing everything right.

  “Let’s go inside,” Somers said. “You should sit, and you can tell us the rest of it.”

  “No.” Sirkaa’s leathery, spotted hands flapped like bat wings. “He has her. He took her.”

  “Who?”

  “Sister Naomi.” Sirkaa drew a breath. “I went to get the tea. Brother Jesse was admiring the clock—he loves clocks, you see, absolutely bonkers for them, and I told him he could have this one when I died. My parents brought it from Finland, all the way, and it’s the only one I’ll use. The only one I keep in the house, for that matter. We talked about that, about the clock, the first day I met him. He pretended he didn’t like me talking about death, but he liked it plenty, at least as far as it concerned him.” Sirkaa sniffed, and a trace of her old tone came into her voice. “Not that he was any good at telling time. Do you know what time he came yesterday? Eleven in the morning. I told him to come at nine, but he didn’t knock on the door until eleven.”

  “Sister Naomi. What happened?”

  “He was right there, right by the clock. And I only went to get the tea.”

  “What did he do?”

  “I heard the door. And then I heard voices. Shouting. I came, and they were standing in the middle of the room, right there.”

  Somers eyed the spot Sirkaa indicated. The sitting room was stuffed with sofas and wingback chairs and side tables and end tables and vases and urns and lamps and curio cabinets and, of course, the clock ticking away heartbeats. The center of the room, where Sirkaa was pointing, was occupied by a large, round table topped with lace tatting. On their last visit, the day before, Somers remembered something in the center of the table—a statuette? A sculpture?

  “Where’s the grapewood carving?” Hazard said.

  “He shoved her,” Sirkaa said, touching the corner of her eye. “She was saying something, trying to tell me something, and he shoved her. She hit the table. I heard her head hit the wood. It sounded—oh God, it sounded so awful.”

  “Where is she?” Somers said.

  Hazard didn’t wait for the answer; turning on his heel, he stormed out of the house.

  “Brother Jesse—he wasn’t himself. He was different. He kept apologizing. He kept saying he hadn’t meant it. But he had meant it. And he was glad. I went to call the ambulance, but he said he would drive her. He said if they waited for an ambulance she would die, and it would be faster if he drove her himself. And I thought—I don’t know what I thought. I thought it would just be better if he left. Oh my God, a coward at my age! I should have stopped him. I should have done anything but let him leave.”

  “If you’d tried,” Somers said, “he would have hurt you too.”

  “Killed me, you mean.” Sirkaa’s eyes were wet, but her gaze was still sharp enough. “He wasn’t taking her to a hospital, was he?”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “Oh God, I’m such a fool.”

  “We don’t know anything yet. We’re going to do what we can. You did the right thing calling the police.” And Somers cursed whoever had fielded the call at the Wahredua station. Most likely they had heard the name St. Elizabeth and had passed it to the sheriff’s office, and somewhere along the line the call had been bungled or dropped or forgotten. “Stay here. Lock the door. If he comes back, don’t let him in.” Somers found one of his cards and passed it to her. “Call me directly, all right? Anything happens, call.”

  Somers made sure the old woman followed him to the door, and he made sure she closed it and locked it, and then he took the steps down to join Hazard on the gravel drive. Hazard stood still, immobile with tension but full of more potential energy than a goddamn grenade. All it was going to take was something small, one final, tiny change, and all that energy was going to explode outward. And grenades only work once, Somers thought, the words barbed and hooking in the back of his mind. Grenades only explode once because after that they’re just fucking shrapnel, and he’s going to explode, and he can’t because he’s mine, he’s mine, he’s mine.

  Wordlessly, Hazard pointed at the chunks of granite at his feet. Blood darkened the stones, a sticky puddle surrounded by wild arcs. She had struggled, Somers thought. She had twisted, pulled away, and the blood had followed.

  He forced his voice to calm. One of them, for God’s sake, had to be calm. “You think she cut her head on the table? I didn’t see blood on the carpet.”

  “I think that bastard dragged her out here while she was stunned. I think he got her this far and she started to fight. I think he stuck her with something. I think he didn’t plan on it, and I think he knew he’d screwed up.” Hazard gestured to the weedy strip of ground between the gravel drive and the trees. A few pale chunks of stone lay among the vegetation. “He realized he couldn’t risk putting her in the van, not when she was bleeding, so he dragged her that way.”

  “Those pieces of gravel could have been there for a long time.”

  “No. They couldn’t have. They weren’t there yesterday. And don’t argue with me, Somers, because I already checked the brush, and the wheatgrass is damn near pasted together with her blood. You can see where he trampled some of the blackberries too.”

  And Hazard was right. As always, he was right. He might have been furious. He might have been a grenade ready to pop. But he was still Emery Hazard, and he was still thinking clearly. Or mostly clearly.

  “If he’s still there, Ree, you should hang back.”