“Bones not on correctly,” Henry said, scratching the gray stubble along his jaw. “Alright. So what the hell does that mean?” He tried to keep a straight face, but a crooked smile crept betwixt his lips besides. Not mocking exactly: more the weary amusement of a man who’d spent too many years staring at the same desert horizon and expecting something new to appear.

  “I… well,” I muttered, rubbing a thumb across my brow. “Shit, I don’t know.” The confession burned like acid on my tongue. “Come to think of it,” I added, “the statement did come from a mentally unstable man soaked head-to-toe in gasoline.”

  Henry let out a short bark of laughter. “Exactly.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Exactly.”

  Outside the cracked window, the wind pushed thin curtains of dust across the empty street. New Haven had a way of looking abandoned even when people were still living in it. Henry’s office wasn’t much better. In the middle of it all sat Henry, the lone sheriff of a town too small for its own problems.

  “He seemed sincere though,” I meekly muttered. Henry looked up. “I believe him.”

  His eyebrow rose slowly. “Believe what?”

  “That he saw something wrong.” I paused, feeling the shape of the words before I let them go.

  “Even if I don’t know what it means yet.” Disgust flooded his face, but my words weren’t for him. I was promising the rogue specters justice, hoping it would bay them, if only for a moment.

  “And that,” I finished quietly, “is heavy on the yet.”

  Henry leaned back in his chair. The wood creaked under him like an old saddle remembering better days. “Son,” he said, voice dropping into that patient tone older men adopt when they’re about to explain how the world works, “we investigate hard evidence.” Two thick fingers tapped against the desk, then his bursting beer belly. “Not gut feelings.” The fatherly tone scraped against my ears like chalk against slate.

  “What you’re doing,” he continued, “is a good way to get yourself, or somebody else, killed.”

  If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  As the words slid under my skin, I felt something cold coil in my chest. “What you’re doing,” I said quietly, “has gotten five women killed, Henry.” The syllables slipped from my tongue sickly, slick and serpentine. The room went still. Even the wind outside seemed to pause.

  Henry blinked slowly. “That’s not fair,” The softness had left his voice. “And I think you miscount.” He leaned forward slightly. “Remind this old chunk of coal,” he said, “who exactly it was that extinguished dear Miss Cobb?” The words landed as a heavy blow.

  Fair enough, asshole. I lowered myself into the lonely black office chair across from his desk. The thing groaned like a ship’s hull in rough water and released a puff of dust that made me suspect the upholstery had been stuffed with asbestos sometime around the invention of radio. A widow skittered along the armrest and I flicked her gently onto the floor. She deserved better than this office.

  “Fine, maybe it doesn’t justify a full investigation.” Henry nodded once. “Maybe it’s not much to go on.” Another nod. “But it’s something.” I leaned forward, elbows on the desk. “And right now, Henry, something is a hell of a lot better than nothing.” The desert wind scraped along the building outside, rattling the loose siding like bones in a wooden box. “Any port in a storm,” I concluded.

  Henry sighed. The fight drained out of him like water from a cracked bucket. “Well then,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck, “go ask around town for strange men.” He gestured vaguely toward the door. “You’ve only got about two hundred and eighty people to talk to.” A crooked grin tugged at his mouth. “Should be simple.”

  For a moment I’d forgotten who I was dealing with. Henry wasn’t a bad man, just a tired one, and tired men rarely chase monsters. He watched me with the quiet patience of a man who’d seen younger investigators chase ghosts.

  “Pharmacy’s probably a good place to start,” I said.

  Henry shrugged. “Town’s small enough, if some strange bastard’s wandering around, somebody’ll notice.” Perhaps he was right, but small towns have a funny relationship with strangers. They notice you once, then they decide whether you’re worth remembering.

  I stood and the chair creaked in relief. “Well,”

  Henry looked up.

  “Where you headed?”

  “The pharmacy.”

  He gave a slow nod and a yawn, showing with all of god's grace how much he cared.

  “Good luck.”

  As I returned to the atmosphere of mother nature, desert sunlight slammed me from all sides. New Haven lay stretched across the plain in despondent grandeur; low buildings, empty sidewalks, the occasional truck parked like it had simply given up moving. Why did I even care? The answer pounded my skull as a revenant. Five.

  A witness babbling about a man whose bones didn’t sit right in his body. Above it all, that goddamned church. The spire pierced the sky like a blade. Noon was creeping closer, and my innards all spilt the future; today was sure to get a hell of a lot worse.