Cypress Grove by James Sallis Page A

THE NIGHT OF MAY 14 . Then, following a two-line space: AS AVERRED BY SARAH PERKINS . Below that, her address, phone number, two e-mail addresses and a signature.
    Inside, with approximate times, was a step-by-step listing of her and Seth McEvoy’s arrival at the subdivision, their pulling into the driveway, her first sight of what she believed to be movement, their investigation of same and subsequent call to the police. She had fixed the times by checking her memory of the music being played against the radio station’s log.
    “I have a good ear for music, and excellent recall,” she said.
    Oh?
    The second page of her report recounted what she and Seth had said to one another, beginning with “Seth, what is that?” and ending only with them saying good-bye when her parents (her mother, actually) picked her up at the police station. The third and fourth pages held computer-generated diagrams of relative positions: car, body, moonlight, the man’s belongings, the stake.
    “Thank you,” I said.
    “You’re welcome, Mr. Turner. Is there anything else?”
    “Tell you the truth, I don’t know. I’m kind of overwhelmed here.” I had another look. “This is great.” After a moment I said, “Seth told me you and he aren’t dating.”
    “Seth and I are friends.”
    “Friends. That’s one of those words that can mean different things to different people.”
    “Words are like that.” She smiled at me. “Aren’t they?”
    “He also told me his girlfriend—what’s her name, again?”
    “Emily.”
    “That Emily isn’t too happy about you and Seth spending so much time together.”
    “Imagine that.” A couple of bells sounded somewhere in her instrument panel. She glanced briefly down. “Do you know what a truffle is, Mr. Turner?”
    “More or less, I think.”
    “They’re tubers. They grow underground, on the roots of trees that have spent years earning their place, struggling for it, working their way up into the light. The tuber lives off the tree and gives nothing back.”
    “Okay.”
    “Emily is a truffle.”

    “DOC OLDHAM takes care of most ever’thing medical ’round here.”
    “Even had a look at Danny Bartlett’s cows last year when they came up frothing at the mouth,” Don Lee said. “Been known to pull a tooth or two, need be.”
    “He had a few choice words to say about my bothering him, but he’s on his way.”
    “I could have gone to see him.”
    “I offered. Said he had to come into goddamn town anyway, he just hadn’t goddamn it planned on it being so goddamn early.”
    “Barks a lot, does he?”
    The sheriff nodded as the door opened and, borne on a flood of badinage, Doc Oldham entered. “Goddamn it, Bates, what’s the matter with you, you can’t handle a simple thing like this without hollering for help. This here your city boy?”
    Boy —though we were much of an age. I nodded, which seemed the safest way to go at the time.
    The sheriff introduced us.
    “Don’t talk much, does he?”
    “You looked like you had more to say. I figured I’d best just wait till you wound down.”
    “I don’t wind dowm. I ain’t wound down in sixty-some years now and I don’t aim to start. What the hell, you got coffee here to offer a man or not?” Don Lee was already pouring one, and handed it over. “Worked up to Memphis, I’m told.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “You like it?”
    “The city, or the work?”
    “Both.”
    “I liked the work. The city, I got to liking less and less.”
    “’Spect you did. Saw things from the other side for a spell too, I hear.”
    “Didn’t much like that either.”
    “Make the city look right tame?”
    “Most ways it was the city—just a smaller version. Same tedium, same hierarchies, same violence and rage.”
    “Goddamn it, Bates, I will say one thing for you. You send for help, at least you got the decent good sense to bring in someone able to find his own head in the dark.”
    The sheriff nodded.
    “And he ain’t talkin’ all the