'Darl Vanzandt and some others used to get fried on acid and angel dust out there. Roseanne went there with them once. She said Darl got crazy when he was on dust.'
'What's Darl have to do with Jimmy Cole?'
'Six or seven months back, a hobo died in a fire by the railway tracks. The paper said he was heating a tar paper shack with a little tin stove and a can of kerosene. I heard maybe Darl and some others done it.'
He looked at the expression on my face, then looked away.
'Why would he kill a hobo?' I asked.
'There's kids that's cruel here. They don't need no reason. Roseanne said maybe Darl's a Satanist.'
'We're talking about murdering people.'
'I seen stuff maybe older folks don't want to know about. That's the way this town's always been.'
'Jimmy Cole wasn't killed on the Hart Ranch. His body was moved there.'
'It wasn't Darl?'
'I doubt it.'
He wiped his palms on his jeans. 'I got to get to work… Mr Holland?'
'Yes?'
He scraped at a piece of rust on the truck door with his thumbnail.
'You doing all this 'cause you figure you owe me?' he said.
'No.'
He was silent while the question he couldn't ask burned in his face.
'Your mother and I were real close. If it had gone different, we might have gotten married. For that reason I've always felt mighty close to you. She was a fine person,' I said.
His throat was prickled and red, as though he had been in a cold wind. He got in the truck, looking through the back window while he started the engine so I would not see the wet glimmering in his eyes.
But the lie that shamed, that I could not set straight, was mine, not his.
I parked my car around the corner from the bank and walked back toward the entrance to my office. Emma Vanzandt sat in a white Porsche convertible by the curb, two of her tires in the yellow zone. She wore dark glasses and her black hair was tied up with a white silk scarf. When I said hello, she looked at the tops of her nails. I stepped off the sidewalk and approached her car anyway.
'Is Jack inside?' I asked.
'Why don't you go see?'
'Your son attacked me, Emma.'
The backs of her hands were wrinkled, like the surface of bad milk, networked with thick blue veins. She spread her fingers on the steering wheel and studied them.
'If you think you can solve your problems at our expense, you don't know Jack or me,' she said.
I went up the stairs and opened the frosted glass door into my outer office. My secretary was trying to busy herself with the mail, but the strain on her composure showed on her face like a fine crack across a china plate. Jack was staring at a picture on the wall, without seeing it, his hands on his hips. When he turned to face me, his vascular arms seemed pumped and swollen with energy, as though he had been curling a barbell.
'Come inside, Jack,' I said.
'That's very thoughtful of you,' he replied.
He closed the inner door behind him. He bit his bottom lip; his hands closed and opened at his sides.