Free Revenant by Allan Leverone Page A

now?”
    Anger flashed in the woman’s eyes and she gazed at Sharon with contempt. “That’s right, missy. I’m just reporting it now. You’re quite the sharp detective, ain’t you? Sometimes Earl goes away for a few days; stays with friends and such. Better he stay put if he’s on a bender than to be driving around this God-forsaken town trying to get home, don’t you think?”
    Sharon mentally kicked herself again. She hoped her brain didn’t start to bruise inside her head from all the kicking going on. “I wasn’t passing judgment, Mrs. Manning, just trying to pin down exactly how long Earl has been gone. When was the last time you saw him, exactly?”
    “Guess it woulda been a week ago yesterday. Friday night, I believe, before he went down to the Ridge Runner like normal.”
    “And he didn’t come home last Friday night?”
    “Already told ya that. I ain’t seen him since.” The woman started to cry, one large teardrop rolling down her face, zig-zagging from one crevasse to another until it arrived at her chin and dropped onto the kitchen table where she angrily wiped it away with the sleeve of her housedress. “Earl’s stayed away a few days every now and then, but never for this long. Something’s happened to him, I’m sure of it.”
    “Did Earl seem upset or preoccupied at all before he disappeared?”
    “No more’n usual,” his mother replied. “Earl ain’t never been what you’d call a fountain of optimism, even on his best days. What would he have to be happy about? No job, no money, alcohol problems, always getting harassed by you people.” She gestured vaguely in Sharon’s direction.
    She felt the woman’s attention wandering and tried to refocus her. “So in the days before his disappearance, Earl seemed to be acting normally.”
    “You catch right on, don’t ya?”
    “Mrs. Manning, I’m trying to help here. Is it possible Earl took a trip without telling you?”
    “A trip. And how would he get where he was going on this ‘trip’ when his truck is right out front? What’d he do, walk? No,” she said, finally answering the question. “Earl didn’t go on any trip. He don’t know anyone outside this town, anyway. He ain’t got no reason to go nowhere.”
    “You said he went to the Ridge Runner last Friday night. How did he get there if his truck is parked here?”
    Mrs. Manning nodded and a smile tugged at the edges of her mouth. She pulled it down before continuing. “Maybe you ain’t quite as hopeless as you look, little missy. Good question. The answer is, I went and picked up Earl’s truck. When Monday come around and it was still sitting in the Ridge Runner lot, Ol’ Bo Pellerin called me and told me he ain’t seen Earl in a few days and if he didn’t want his truck towed, he better come get it. So I called my sister and she come and took me down there and I picked it up and drove it home. That was Monday afternoon. The truck ain’t moved from here since.”
    “We’ll get right on this, Mrs. Manning, I promise,” Sharon said, closing her notebook and ignoring the woman’s snort of derision. “If you think of anything else that might be helpful, anything at all, please call.”
    “Yeah, call, right. Sure.
    Sharon retreated out the front door of the trailer and struggled to close it behind her. The sagging structure had pulled the aluminum door frame out of square and the damned thing didn’t want to click shut. Finally she heard it catch and she hurried to her cruiser, glad to be out of there. She backed out of the dirt driveway in a cloud of dust and turned toward Paskagankee proper.
     

 
    10
    Max Acton stared at Earl Manning’s heart, severed from Manning’s dead body and sealed inside a plastic bag next to the mystical Navajo stone. The heart was beating softly, throbbing roughly once per second, steadily regaining color as Max watched despite the fact it was connected to nothing—no blood supply, no oxygen, nothing. The detached veins and