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She was dead. They burned her body and told me if I told anybody someone else would be harmed. Someone like my mother or my father.”
    “Slow down, Chris. Take a deep breath.”
    “I’m not making this up.”
    “Why didn’t you come in here right away?”
    “I don’t—I couldn’t. I tried. I mean—I was afraid. My mom—I didn’t know what to do.”
    “Did you tell your mother?”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because—because I was—did you just hear what I said?”
    He nods. I don’t see him strapping on a gun and getting a rifle and calling reinforcements.
    Does he even believe me?
    “I’m not making this up.”
    “So who did this? Who were these people you saw?”
    “I have some ideas.”
    “Like what?”
    “I don’t know—I just—I don’t know who around this place I can trust. People have told me not to trust anybody. Including you. So I just—I couldn’t contact anybody. Then the storm came and just shut down everything. Almost like—almost as if it was deliberately done. And I didn’t know what to do.”
    The sheriff gives me a serious look. “I’ve had a lot of strange stuff come through these doors in my time here, Chris.”
    “It’s Staunch. I know it. It’s gotta be. And—and a whole bunch of other people, too.”
    He nods and waves his hand. “Look, Chris. Let’s do this, okay? Let’s go take a drive.”
    “Where?”
    “To this place you’re talking about.”
    “But I—I’m sure it’s gone. I mean, the snow. I’m sure she’s not there.”
    “So what do you want me to do, then? Go chase down men in robes?”
    “I’m not making this up,” I say.
    “I’m just suggesting we go for a drive and you show me. I can take a look around.”
    “Should you call anybody?”
    He shakes his head without even thinking about it. The look he gives me is unsettling.
    You know something, but you can’t tell me, right?
    I suddenly wish I hadn’t come in here.
    Just like I wish I hadn’t waited until it was too late to save Jocelyn.
    “Come on. I’ll take you home afterward.”
    I’m about to say something like You just don’t get it or This is serious, this isn’t some funny game, but instead I just stand and follow him outside.
    The door shuts, and I watch the sheriff lock it.
    As if he’s hiding something.
    As if he’s about ready to bury something.
    Something, or someone.

11. Stories and Troubles
     
    The evening swallows the squad car. We drive slowly toward Jocelyn’s home. Toward the place she used to live. The place where she used to breathe and eat and sleep.
    The sheriff has sports radio on in the old car that smells like cigarettes and old man’s aftershave. The lights cut into the dark woods we pass as we drive in silence for a few minutes.
    “And you’ve had no contact with Jocelyn since when?” He obviously is not buying what I have to sell.
    “Since—since I don’t know when. Right after Christmas.”
    “When you came in to report her missing.”
    “I found her. I know what happened to her.”
    “Yeah, okay, but let me just ask you this, Chris. You come to a new town and you fall for the pretty girl. In a span of just over a month, let’s recount what happens. They find a revolver in your locker.”
    “Didn’t belong to me.”
    “You have numerous run-ins with Gus Staunch. A reason not to like the Staunch family, who lives right next to you. Someone attacks your mother—chloroforms her, for cripes’ sake. Could be anybody. Could be people just scaring off the newcomers. Then I come to find out that you’ve turned into some vigilante with another gun that you’ve fired to save the pretty little girl from her wicked step-uncle, or whatever that greasy little Wade was.”
    What are you saying, Sheriff?
    I keep quiet with my face hidden in the darkness, looking at him.
    “A lot of others, people like Ross, people who don’t have patience like I do—a lot of them would’ve already handled this situation.”
    “What situation?”
    “You,