Boy Who Shoots Crows (9781101552797) Read Online Free Page B

creative. Music, poetry, everything. The whole process has always been a mystery to me.”
    Charlotte said, “Cindy at the post office told me about your family. I’m very, very sorry.”
    He gazed out the window. Two small, black shadows sat side by side on a tree’s highest branch. Then one of them shot up and out of the bare branches, became a pair of black wings. The other crow soon followed.
    He said, “I like how the trees look this time of year, don’t you? Just before the leaf buds burst open. You can always tell then that spring is here because the treetops all look red.”
    â€œYou sound a little bit like an artist yourself.”
    â€œNot me,” he said. “I’m about as imaginative as a stone.” Before she could reply, he said, “Listen, I just need a little more information. I’m sorry. You probably want to get in there and get to work.”
    â€œNot this morning,” she said. “My head’s not where it needs to be.”
    He nodded. “So, anyway. Do you recall seeing anybody else around in the last day or so? Anybody who doesn’t come around normally? A strange vehicle? Anything like that?”
    She thought for a few moments. “The mailman usually comes by around noon every day. But what you’re asking is . . . somebody unfamiliar. So, no. Nobody.”
    â€œDo you know what Jesse’s father looks like? Denny Rankin?”
    â€œAs far as I know, I’ve never seen him. Nor the boy’s mother, for that matter.”
    â€œDenny’s maybe five-nine, fairly thin. Wiry, I guess you’d call it. He’s got black hair like Jesse’s, but he keeps it cut short most times. You didn’t happen to see him out in the woods, or in the field, or just walking by, or anything like that?”
    â€œI saw a man and a boy out at the pond late last summer. They were on the far side, fishing. That might have been them?”
    â€œProbably not. Denny’s more of the jittery type, not good for fishing. Anyway, I meant like yesterday or today. You didn’t see him around here then?”
    â€œNo. Not a soul.”
    â€œHow about Dylan Hayes?” he asked. “Have you seen him around?”
    â€œThe boy who works for Mike Verner?”
    Gatesman smiled, said nothing, and waited. Having already spoken to Verner, he knew where Dylan Hayes had been yesterday, knew that Dylan and Charlotte Dunleavy were acquainted.
    Perhaps ten seconds later, she said, “You know what? I think I did see him.”
    She thought for a moment, then told him, “I think he was out there on the tractor for a while yesterday. Most of the afternoon, in fact.”
    The sheriff nodded. “That’s what Mike said too. Said the boy put in three hours spreading lime.”
    â€œThat sounds about right.”
    â€œAnd as far as you know, he was out in the field that whole time? On the tractor, I mean?”
    She became aware then of a subtle anxiety building inside her, a vague heaviness in her chest. Coming out of a migraine episode had always seemed to her similar to coming out of a period of intense fever marked by intermittent flashes of pain. She had no desire to dig around inside those dark hours for moments of lucidity, pieces to the sheriff ’s puzzle. In New York, during the settlement period with the lawyers, when the migraines were at their worst, she had talked about migraines with a female pharmacist, a mother of two who equated her own migraines with childbirth. “All I remember about being in labor was how unpleasant it was and how it seemed like it was never going to end. I have no desire to watch a video of it. You do it, you get through it, you forget it and get on with the good things again.”
    Charlotte wanted this conversation with the sheriff to be over. She did not dislike him; in fact, he seemed an easy man to like. She liked that he resembled James Dickey, that he seemed trustworthy