Rescue

the kind. You come to me with a story about helping some folks who are broken down along the Interstate. You tell me there’s a corpse in the Boston morgue that might be one of them, account of some resemblance and Oz Finn’s car being near the scene. You’re not licensed here, so I take you around to the people who might know. Oz can’t tell us this Melinda’s last name, and he doesn’t want to go official over his car. The Haldons believe their son is where they know he’s safe, and they say he’s getting religious in struction they approve of. Around here, that’s as far as official inquiry’s supposed to go.“
    “Chief, I know what I saw.“
    “And I’m not doubting that. But until the prints on Oz’s kitchen glasses match up with the unidentified body in Bos ton, we don’t even know the dead girl’s this Melinda.“
    “Chief—“
    “It isn’t what you saw that’s the problem, Cuddy, it’s all these... inferences you’re stacking, one on top of the other. And I’m sure not going to dial up a prosecutor and tell him a family that says they sent their boy away for religious school ought to be hounded by us until they tell you where and why.“
    I took the turn that led back to Elton’s downtown. “That mean you want to be dropped off at your office?“
    “Stop by the car wash first, see if they got that puke smell out of my cruiser.“
    “Guide me.“
    He outlined it, and for a mile or so we were both quiet.
    Then, “Cuddy, if there was anything I could do for you, I would.“
    “How about directions to Lonnie Severn’s trailer?“
    Pettengill shifted in his seat. “I haven’t seen Lonnie in town for a few days.“
    “I’d still like to talk with him.“
    Rubbing of chin. “If you thought Thomas Haldon was standoffish, you’re not going to get any farther with Lonnie.“
    “I’d still like to try.“
    Pettengill nodded. “This road back northwest out of town. Be a big, weathered chicken barn on the right, all falling down. Biggest building you’ll have seen since the Interstate. Take that right, and after a couple houses half a mile in, you’ll see Lonnie’s trailer on the left It’s shrouded some, so if you hit the turnout for a little stream on the right, you’ll know you’ve gone too far.“
    “And if nobody’s home?“
    “Then I wouldn’t know where he’d be.“ Pettengill shaved some of the sharpness off the next sentence. “Might try Reverend Vann Tucker. His church is this one here on the right“
    We went by it too fast for me to see much.
    “And that’s Severn’s church, too?“
    “Don’t know for sure. But when Lonnie found Jesus, Rev Tucker might have been the one showed him the way.“

9

    A fter dropping Pettengill off at the car wash, I found the falling-down barn without much trouble, the old beams and posts looking like the bleached bones of a long-beached whale. I took the right and passed a couple of houses, somebody’s dog running toward the Prelude, baying at me as I outdistanced it.
    I clocked half a mile; without the odometer, I would have blown by the trailer on the left. Sliding by slowly instead, I picked up just the color and the fact that there was no vehicle in the rutted, sand-and-gravel driveway. I continued on to the turnout Kyle Pettengill had mentioned, maybe two hun dred feet down and in sight, using it to reverse direction and come back to the place.
    Parking on the side of the drive to avoid bottoming out on the crests of the ruts, I sat in the car. No one, animal or human, came out to greet me, though I could hear the closest neighbor’s dog from back up the road, still howling once in a while.
    The trailer was raised on cement blocks placed every five feet or so around its perimeter. It had a front door off-center to the right, and its metal siding had been painted a dull green that I didn’t think came from the factory. There were two windows on my side, both small and neither open. The trailer seemed almost shuttered, like a lake house closed up for the winter.
    After a few minutes, I got out of the Prelude and started* walking toward the front door before noticing that the tire marks continued around to the back. I wondered why somebody with a driveway, even a rutted one, would park behind) the place, but I decided still to begin with the front door. Its sill was a few inches above the stoop, which consisted of eight or ten uneven concrete blocks that held a rusting bucket and a couple of brushes, the kind you’d