Page 5 of Confessions of the Dead

Maro:

With her, right? When she first showed up?

Sordello:

[Subject muted—Audible to technician only] Can you check his heart rate monitor? He dropped off for thirty seconds, then came back.

[Audible click—Subject unmuted]

Sordello:

Yes. Start with her.

2

Matt

Earlier

BEING SUNDAY MORNING, SHORTLYafter the last of the crisp night fog burnt away, Hollows Bend, New Hampshire, had a buzz to it. Streets deserted twenty minutes earlier were now bustling with vehicles. Most were tourists heading home after a weekend in the mountains or behind the business end of some expensive camera taking photographs of the New England leaves—leaves that by the second week of October were well on their way to deep shades of red and gold and thick enough on the grass of the commons to blot out the green.

The Stairway Diner on Main was the final stop for those tourists. It was also the starting point for many of the Bend’s locals, who enjoyed watching them depart, and by ten there wasn’t an empty chair in the place.

Deputy Matt Maro sat on his favorite stool at the far end of the counter, his back against the wall, watching Gabby Sanchez zip from table to table in comfortable shoes. With steaming breakfastplates balanced precariously down the length of her slender arm, she moved with this practiced elegance, twisting and bending like a dancer. Even when a customer complained, the smile never left her face. Matt envied her that she never let her anger slip. It was just one of the many reasons he’d fallen for her.

Gabby caught him watching, gave him a quick wink, twisted with a flirty cock of her hip, and turned to the corner booth holding the sizable Lockwood family, all eight of them, paying extra attention to Libby Lockwood, who recently turned four and insisted on placing her own order.

A grunt came from Matt’s left, followed by a phlegm-filled cough, and Matt swiveled back around on his stool. The man slouched on the stool beside him would have passed for dead if not for the way he was shoveling in his eggs.

Roy Buxton (Buck to everyone but bill collectors and the nuns back at Saint Mary’s) might have weighed 140 on a good day, and for Buck, today was far from one of those. His hair was greased back and smelled like a wet cellar. The filth on his skin and clothing was thick enough to flake off, if not for the layer of sweat holding it in place.

To the amusement of several out-of-towners, Matt had found him last night on Main Street at a little after eleven, bottle of Jack in one hand, shoes in the other, shuffling along barefoot two sheets deep into an argument with himself that might have been about politics or might have been aboutGame of Thrones. Matt’d walked Buck back to the small sheriff’s office and set him up in the single cell with a blanket, a pillow, and two bottles of water. It was not his first time in that bunk, and Matt was certain it wouldn’t be his last. That particular dance had become ritual, as had breakfast on the county at the Stairway the morning after.

“Pass the ketchup?” Buck held his hand out but didn’t look Matt in the eye. He rarely did.

Matt slid the bottle toward him.

Buck worked the cap and held the bottle wobbly over his plate, dribbling his eggs, home fries, even the bacon. When he set the bottle off the edge of the counter—Matt snagged it mid-drop and replaced it safely. “When was the last time you saw a doctor, Buck? Got yourself checked out?”

He dug back into the eggs. “How ’bout we postpone the banter for another thirty? Bacon and lecture don’t mix well, tends to give me gas.”

“I’m just worried about you.”

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