Divine Evil

repeated. “Are you going to let me come in?”
    Jane stepped back. Cam noted that she'd already startedon the living room. There was nothing left but the sofa, the TV, and a single table and lamp. There were dark squares on the faded wallpaper where pictures had hung, a faint outline on the floor where the rug had lain.
    He wanted to shout at her, to shake her and demand that she think. It was part of his life she was packing away. But he wasn't here as her son. She didn't want him to be.
    “Why don't you sit down?” He gestured to the sofa and waited. “I need to ask you some questions.”
    “I've already told you everything I know.”
    “Have you?” He didn't sit but studied her. “Why don't you tell me about Biff's interests.”
    “Interests?” Her face went blank. “I don't understand.”
    “What was he into, other than drinking?”
    Her mouth was a thin, straight line. “I won't have you speaking ill of him in his own house.”
    “This was never his house, but we'll leave that alone. What did he do with his time?”
    “He worked the farm.”
    Like hell, Cam thought, but left that, too, alone. “His free time.”
    “He liked to watch the TV.” She groped, fumbling to find a grip on a man she'd lived with for more than twenty years. “He liked to hunt. He'd never let a season go by without getting a deer.”
    Or two, Cam thought. He'd dressed them illegally in the woods, bypassed the check-in station at the market, and sold the meat.
    “Did he read?”
    Baffled, she blinked at Cam. “Some.”
    “What kind of things did he read?”
    She remembered the magazines she had found, and burned, in the shed. “The things men read, I suppose.”
    “What about religion?”
    “Religion? He didn't have one. He was raised Methodist, I think, but he always said church was a waste of a good hour every week.”
    “How many times a week did he go out?”
    “I don't know.” She began to huff. “I don't see what this has to do with his murder.”
    “Was there any particular night he always went out?”
    “I didn't keep track of the man. It wasn't my place.”
    “Then whose was it? Who'd he go out with?”
    “Different people.” Her heart was beating too loud, but she didn't know what she was afraid of. “Mostly he'd go out alone and meet Less Gladhill or Oscar Roody or Skunk Haggerty or one of the others. Sometimes they'd play poker or just go to Clyde's.” And sometimes he'd go into Frederick and visit a whore. But she left that unsaid. “A man's entitled to relax.”
    “Did he ever relax with drugs?”
    Her color fluctuated, white, then pink, then white again. “I wouldn't have those filthy things in my house.”
    “I need to look in his den.”
    Her color changed again, to a dull red. “I won't have it. I won't. You come here, after the man's dead and can't defend himself, and try to say he was some kind of drug fiend. Why aren't you out looking for whoever killed him instead of coming here and slinging dirt?”
    “I am looking for whoever killed him. Now, I need to look through his things. I can do it this way, or I can get a court order. It's up to you.”
    She rose, very slowly. “You'd do that?”
    “Yes.”
    “You're not the boy I raised.” Her voice shook.
    “No, I guess I'm not. I'd like you to come with me. If I find anything, I want you to see where and how it was found.”
    “You do what you have to do. Then I don't want you coming back here anymore.”
    “There's nothing to come back to.”
    He followed her stiff back up the stairs.
    He was relieved she hadn't started on Biff's den yet. It was exactly as Clare had described it. Cluttered, dusty, scented with stale beer.
    “I take it you didn't come in here much.”
    “This was Biff's room. A man's entitled to his privacy.” But the dust embarrassed her almost as much as the magazines piled on the floor.
    He started in one corner, working silently and systematically. In a drawer with shotgun shells and matches, he found a package of Drum, filled with about an ounce of grass.
    He looked at her.
    “That's just tobacco.”
    “No.” He held it out for her to look at. “It's marijuana.”
    There was a quick, dull pain in the center of her stomach. “It's Drum tobacco,” she insisted. “It says so right on the bag.”
    “You don't have to take my word for it. I'll send it to the lab.”
    “That won't prove anything.” She began to ball and un-ball the skirt of her apron. “Somebody gave it to him— like a joke.