“He came down here, Chad,” said Hinzelmann. “He threatened me.”
“No,” said Chad Mulligan. “He didn’t. I’ve been here for the last ten minutes, Hinzelmann. I heard everything you said. About my old man. About the lake.” He walked farther into the den. He did not raise the gun. “Jesus, Hinzelmann. You can’t drive through this town without seeing that goddamned lake. It’s at the center of everything. So what the hell am I supposed to do?”
“You got to arrest him. He said he was going to kill
me,” said Hinzelmann, a scared old man in a dusty den. “Chad, I’m pleased you’re here.”
“No,” said Chad Mulligan. “You’re not.”
Hinzelmann sighed. He bent down, as if resigned, and he pulled the poker out from the fire. The tip of it was burning bright orange.
“Put that down, Hinzelmann. Just put it down slowly, keep your hands in the air where I can see them, and turn and face the wall.”
There was an expression of pure fear on the old man’s face, and Shadow would have felt sorry for him, but he remembered the frozen tears on the cheeks of Alison McGovern. Hinzelmann did not move. He did not put down the poker. He did not turn to the wall. Shadow was about to reach for Hinzelmann, to try to take the poker away from him, when the old man threw the burning poker at Mulligan.
Hinzelmann threw it awkwardly—lobbing it across the room as if for form’s sake—and as he threw it he was already hurrying for the door.
The poker glanced off Mulligan’s left arm.
The noise of the shot, in the close quarters of the old man’s room, was deafening.
One shot to the head, and that was all.
Mulligan said, “Better get your clothes on.” His voice was dull and dead.
Shadow nodded. He walked to the room next door, opened the door of the clothes drier and pulled out his clothes. The jeans were still damp, but he put them on anyway. By the time he got back to the den, fully dressed—except for his coat, which was somewhere deep in the freezing mud of the lake, and his boots, which he could not find—Mulligan had already hauled several smoldering logs out from the fireplace.
Mulligan said, “It’s a bad day for a cop when he has to commit arson, just to cover up a murder.” Then he looked up at Shadow. “You need boots,” he said.
“I don’t know where he put them,” said Shadow.
“Hell,” said Mulligan. Then he said, “Sorry about this, Hinzelmann,” and he picked the old man up by the collar and by the belt buckle, and he swung him forward, dropped the body with its head resting in the open fireplace. The white hair crackled and flared, and the room began to fill with the smell of charring flesh.
“It wasn’t murder. It was self-defense,” said Shadow.
“I know what it was,” said Mulligan, flatly. He had already turned his attention to the smoking logs he had scattered about the room. He pushed one of them to the edge of the sofa, picked up an old copy of the Lakeside News and pulled it into its component pages, which he crumpled up and dropped onto the log. The newspaper pages browned and then burst into flame.
“Get outside,” said Chad Mulligan.
He opened the windows as they walked out of the house, and he sprang the lock on the front door to lock it before he closed it.
Shadow followed him out to the police car in his bare feet. Mulligan opened the front passenger door for him, and Shadow got in and wiped his feet off on the mat. Then he put on his socks, which were pretty much dry by now.
“We can get you some boots at Hennings Farm and Home,” said Chad Mulligan.
“How much did you hear in there?” asked Shadow.
“Enough,” said Mulligan. Then he said, “Too much.”
They drove to Hennings Farm and Home in silence. When they got there the police chief said, “What size feet?”
Shadow told him.
Mulligan walked into the store. He returned with a pair of thick woolen socks, and a pair of leather farm-boots. “All they had left in your size,” he said. “Unless you wanted gumboots. I figured you didn’t.”
Shadow pulled on the socks and the boots. They fitted fine. “Thanks,” he said.
“You got a car?” asked Mulligan.