Page 16 (1/2)
Manfred and his grando back to their home in Tennessee Sometime in the next few in his own career of providing psychic insights to the ignorant and the educated Sometimes he’d be sincere, and soht about Tolliver’s surprising paranoia concerning Manfred I s, if he wasn’t exactly my inner pinup poster His confidence that he could please me, and his conviction that I was desirablewell, oman doesn’t enjoy that? That’s pretty potent But as far as actually following through on itit was probably more fun to flirt with Manfred than actually carry the attraction to the next level Though I wasn’t much older than him in years, in other ways I felt I ay too et up to visit the bathrooh, I worked ood for suchquiet, but I wanted to let Tolliver sleep as long as he could He’d had the harder row to hoe the day before, having to take care ofto the bathroom That necessary task done, I brushed my hair one-handed, with a very lopsided result, and brushed my teeth a bit more efficiently I felt better immediately When I opened the door as quietly as possible, I saw that Tolliver wasn’t , so I padded over to the fireplace and eyed the re to keep the arrangeratification, the fire picked right up Hah!
"Good job," said Tolliver, his voice heavy with sleep I eased into one of the two ancient wooden chairs he’d arranged in front of the fire Its faded cushion s Of course the fa special furniture for a place where they ca Also, the cabin was pretty vulnerable to theft, and ants to terateful I was to Twyla for letting us stay here, for free and away from the reporters But at the same time, I admitted to myself that I’d much rather be in the motel, at least froed in and charging, and now it rang
"Crap," he said, and I agreed with the senti I wanted to do was talk to anyone
"Hello," he said, and after that all I heard was, "I guess we can," and "Okay," very noncoent, Klavin He wants us to come into the station in an hour"
"I have to have coffee before I face any cops," I said
"Yeah, no shit" He got out of bed and stretched "You sleep okay?"
"Yeah, I don’t think I o shower What are you going to do about that?"
"I’ll have to take a sort of sponge bath, I guess I can’t get these bandages wet" That was another thing that was going to grow old very quickly
"Okay, I’ll hurry" Tolliver can take the quickest showers of anyone I know, and he was out and toweling his hair while I was still trying to asseet ed to cleandressed was a real ordeal I was trying to balance modesty with need, and it wasn’t an easy achieve on my underwear turned out to be literally a pain in the butt, and I had to et my boobs in the cups so Tolliver could hook it
"Geez, I’rumbled "Why don’t they fasten in front? That would make more sense"
"There are soive et you so in Victoria’s Secret"
He grinned
We had a few extra ed pancakes I pay lip service to hating McDonald’s, but the pancakes were good and so was the coffee And God, it was so warm in there The ere steamed up The place was full of burly men in bulky jackets,boots and had freshly shaved faces So to work out at the cri about their usual business Even the presence of death wouldn’t stop life as usual in Doraville That was a coht, if one I’d had about a"river of life" person
I hated to leave the houess it’s pretty bad if you think McDonald’s is homey - for the unpleasant interview ahead But anted to be on time, and we hoped they would let us leave town after Tolliver had left our stuff at the cabin, though He said it wouldn’t take long to swing back by and throw our stuff into the suitcases if ere allowed to leave And we’d have to straighten up the cabin a little and return the key
We ran the gauntlet of the press since we had to park in front that day There wasn’t a friendly officer at the gate to the rear parking lot to let us through, and we hadn’t thought about calling ahead The ranks of the fourth estate seemed a little thin today, and I wondered if the forensic people were still digging at the barn I got through the reht croith a few "No comment" s, and they didn’t dare follow us into the station
When ere settled at the table in a conference rooht with us, we had quite a little wait Spread out on the table was a bigwas liberallythe print, but I gave hirave is marked ’Jeff McGraw,’ and all the others are marked with the nahtin a very low voice, as if I could disturb the dead "The two graves where the boys weren’t local, they have names on them, too Maybe there was ID on the bodies The northernmost one reads ’Chad Turner,’ and the other one is ’James Ray Pettijean’" I scooted uess they’re all being autopsied now," I said It really didn’t make any difference what happened to the body after the soul was gone; it was dross Sorue
"There wasn’t anything rerave site?" Tolliver asked, careful of the fact that ears
"No," I said, just as carefully No souls, no ghosts; and there’s a big difference I’ve seen souls lingering around fairly fresh bodies every now and then I’ve only seen one ghost
Pell Klavin and Max Stuart caents looked very tired I wondered if there were ed out chairs and sluht across from us; between us lay the map
"What can you tell us that we don’t already know?" Stuart said
I was irritated that he didn’t even try to observe a co over the dead boys’ biographies all night, and I excused the two agents I wouldn’t have been inclined to offer ," I said "All I do is find bodies I’ood at that, but I’ them like this"
"That’s all of them, I think That’s surely all the dead on that piece of property"
"How do you know he hasn’t buried a few somewhere else?"