Free The Hour Before Dark by Douglas Clegg Page B

QuickMart, where I knew no one.) The reporters from the mainland seemed a little scared of us—or were ashamed to have to circle around us. Brooke hated having her picture taken, so when she went outside, she always gave the photographers and cameramen the finger just to keep her picture out of the paper.
    Harry Withers, running the Burnley Gazette , was not among them, despite my brother’s promise that he had been camping out somewhere nearby. I guess I should add a word or two about Harry here. Harry Withers, my best friend when I was growing up, was a bit of a nut case. As a lad, he’d been into being a complete geek, which was cool in its own way—he read books on improving brain power, and he knew what NASA was working on, and he was completely convinced that Earth would eventually be contacted by aliens. He used to even try to hypnotize my brother, sister, and me as kids after seeing a guy on television make a bunch of people quack like a duck. He was the son of the owner of the Burnley Gazette , an island rag that tended toward gossip and tourist promotions and the odd story about how pennies were getting scarce on the island. When we had been kids, he was like my brother— more so than Bruno in some respects, because Harry and I were the same age, and got into nearly the same trouble. He slept over at Hawthorn a lot as a kid, too, so my family knew him well—his parents had troubles that I won’t get into here other than to say they were mismatched. His father died of emphysema when he was fourteen, and then he turned bad in a way that was destructive.
    I was nearly thankful that Harry hadn’t come by Hawthorn yet. I just didn’t want to see him if I could help it. Not with all the other crap going on. Not with the shroud of gloom and confusion that hung over the house.
    He did call once, though. He wouldn’t say much other than that we needed to get together soon, and that he knew “something about the smokehouse.”
    “You calling as a reporter or a friend?” I asked.
    “Both, I guess,” he said, and added, “But I’m a friend first.”
    “It’s hell here,” I whispered into the phone.
    “Yeah,” he said.
    A pause on the line.
    “I guess I can’t say anything pleasant in the face of this,” he said.
    “Nope.”
    “I’m just sorry it happened. The way I used to hang out over there with you, I always felt like one of the family.”
    “You were,” I said. “I know Dad considered you an honorary Raglan.”
    “sorry we’ve been out of touch.”
    “Feels like I just left the place yesterday,” I told him. “Like I just saw you the day before yesterday.”
    But despite the warmth of this last part of our conversation, I felt distant from Harry and distant from everyone I’d grown up with.
    I still wasn’t sure why I’d created that distance.

     
    3
     
    I didn’t see Harry that first week at all, but Joe Grogan came by Hawthorn more than once.
    He was the only policeman of note on the island in the winter. During high tourist season, from Memorial Day to Labor Day, this increased to ten, most of whom were at The Oaks rather than in Burnleyside. Joe and his gang of three were eager to take part in this most interesting of local crimes, even though the police from the mainland flocked, briefly, to Burnley once the story got out. Like seagulls to a trash heap.
    Joe Grogan had aged quite a bit—my guess was he was about forty-eight, but he looked a lot older with wrinkles and white hair and a general hangdog expression.
    He had the look of a man whose life had worn him down to the nub.
    “It goes like this,” he said. “First, we secured the area around the crime scene. Not difficult for this time of year, but you never know who will decide to tromp through there. We’re keeping the smokehouse locked up, though. Investigators have been going through, trying to examine everything they can.”
    Brooke turned cold, briefly. “How many men went through there?” she asked.
    “Six or