“Mitchell listed you as a reference when he applied for the job at the factory,” she said.
He stopped working, standing up as straight and tall as he could in the gloaming light, the misty rain falling outside. She could see the pouches around his eyes, the tiredness that came from never feeling quite well.
“Why not?” he asked. “I’m not such a meanie I’d say no.”
“Did you give a reference?”
“Sure. He seemed like an all right kid.”
“That flyer in your window. What’s that all about?”
“Going to clear out those wild pigs,” he said, turning his head sideways to look at her. “The local historical society wants to exhume those graves. Give those poor folks a proper resting place.”
She felt cold, standing there.
“Who gave them that idea?”
“Me, probably. They’ve been talking about it for a time. Thought we might as well go ahead.”
“What’s the plan?”
“We’re going to cremate what we find, then make a nice plaque somewhere, to honor the dead.”
Ruby was watching the back of his head.
The sheriff had just said they would effectively destroy any evidence, a week before a man was slated to die. She wondered if he knew that.
His pale eyes rose in the shadows of the garage and told her he did. If not to protect himself then to shed this undying weight around his neck, this feeling of disconnection to a past he could not own, could not control, he would kill it and put a plaque on it.
“When is this pig hunt?”
“In a few days.”
“And the exhumation?”
“Soon as we get rid of the pigs.”
“And this historical society?”
“Main street. Brick building.”
The rain was really coming down now, sheets of cold.
“What makes you so curious about all this? Charise and the dead?” he asked, and he sounded genuinely curious. He wiped the blade of the screwdriver on his pants leg again. “I thought your job was exonerating innocent men.”
“It is my job. But I’ve been finding missing women just as long.”
“Why not make that your real job?”
“It is a real job, too. It just doesn’t pay.”
“So you find innocent men for money, missing women for no pay.”
“Yes.”
“That’s the way of the world, I guess,” he said, turning back to his car. “Men will pay to get each other out of prison; women will pray to get out of hell.”
She gazed at him, surprised.
