The grave had been filled in, the humped dirt partly covered by a roll of artificial grass. A tall man in black, his hair hanging over his ears, read from the Book of Psalms. Then the service was over, and the mourners drifted off to a table loaded with food in the shade of the church. Clete’s head was cold, and he wished he had brought his hat. He caught up with the man in black. “Sir?”
The man kept walking. On the far side of the lake, Clete thought he saw a white boxlike truck pull into a grove of pine trees.
“Reverend?” Clete said.
The man in black turned around. His face was chiseled, shrunken in the coldness of the wind. One wing of his starched collar was bent up in a point, like a shark’s tooth. “People here’bouts call me Preacher.”
“My name is Clete Purcel. I’d like to ask you a question about Mr. Tillinger. I’m a private investigator. My question is rather direct and maybe offensive.”
“Go ahead and ask it.”
“Did Mr. Tillinger kill his wife and daughter?”
“No, I do not think that. Hugo would never harm his family. But he had associates who are another matter. Men who do the devil’s work.”
“Sir?” Clete said.
“They sell arms in Africa. I visited Hugo before his escape. He wanted to come clean on his life and get shut of the wrongful things he did.”
“Do you know the names of these guys selling weapons?”
“No, sir.”
“Would anybody else here know?”
“We have nothing to do with those kinds of people. Would you like to have something to eat with us?”
“Yes, I would,” Clete replied. “Thank you.”
He walked with Preacher to the picnic tables in the shade. The white truck was still parked among the pines on the far side of the lake; the folding door on the passenger side was open. Clete thought he saw the sun glint on a pair of binoculars. A jolly fat woman handed him a ham-and-onion sandwich. “You look like you’re fixing to fall down, you poor little thing. You better eat up.”
“Y’all have ice cream trucks hereabouts?” he asked.
“Like anywhere else, I guess,” she said “You don’t want my sandwich?”
“Yes, ma’am, I want it,” he said, biting into the bread.
“Hang around. I got more,” she said. She smiled broadly.
“Got to go to work.”
“I bet you were a deep-sea diver in the service,” she said, still beaming.
He tried to smile at her with his eyes and say nothing, but his energies were used up. “I always liked ham-and-onion sandwiches. Dinner on the ground and that sort of thing.”
The woman continued to smile at him. She looked massive, her skin windburned, her eyes playful. He gazed at the white truck. It couldn’t be Wimple, could it? Was he losing it? The woman was laughing at a joke someone had told, then looking at Clete. She squeezed his shoulder. “Don’t be so solemn. We all get to the same place. I call it the Gingerbread House.”
Had she just said that? Her mouth was moving, but no sound was coming out. The preacher was looking at him, too, his hand like a claw around his Bible. Clete left the table and walked toward his Caddy. It seemed too early for the sun to be setting, as though nature had conspired to steal part of the day from him. The white truck was still in the trees. He found a musty sweater in the Caddy’s trunk and put it on under his suit coat; his skin felt dry and cold and raw when he touched it. He drove away from the graveyard, the mourners shrinking inside his rearview mirror.
• • •
HE TURNED ONTO a dirt road and tried to access the far side of the lake but ended up on a cattle guard in front of a locked gate. He got out on the shoulder and scanned the trees with his binoculars. The truck was nowhere in sight. He threw his binoculars onto the passenger seat and drove five miles on a county road, then turned east on the interstate. Just as he crossed the Louisiana line, he thought he saw the white truck behind him.
The heater in the Caddy wasn’t working. He couldn’t remember when he had felt so cold or when his hands had felt so dry and chapped on the wheel. He pulled into a truck stop and had a waitress fill his thermos with black coffee.
“You got some aspirin?” he said.
She glanced at the counters that were stocked with snacks and over-the-counter curatives. “Right behind you.”