The Truth of All Things by Kieran Shields Page A

a hefty dram and drain it.
    “Some short, dark mystery man with a room on Munjoy Hill.” The mayor poured himself another drink, but his agitation prevented his hand from closing the gap with his spittle-flecked lips. “Not exactlypromising. You need to find an Indian with blood on his clothes. And fast.”
    “We don’t think the killer would have had much on him, actually. Given she was lying down and the angle of the cuts. Though he likely had some blood on his face from where he was …” Lean trailed off when he caught sight of the mayor’s horrified face staring back at him. It took Lean a moment to realize that his own mouth was gaping open in duplication of the killer’s activities.
    “Enough with all these gruesome details and Grey’s theories,” said the mayor. “Horseshit. This dead whore and an Indian killer is all one great steaming pile. It’ll stink worse if it gets out we asked an Indian for help. Grey knows more than he’s saying? So find out what it is. Then he’s through with this business. Understood?”
    Lean nodded and headed for the door.

G rey sat in a stuffed chair in his dark study. He had never bothered to open the shades after returning from the postmortem that morning. Feeble sunlight crept in around the edges of the tall windows. He held the killer’s fourth cigarette, only half smoked, in a pair of pincers close to his face. Grey turned the hand-rolled bit of evidence, examining it from every angle. Two sets of sharp indentations were set at the base of the cigarette—teeth marks. The killer had clenched the cigarette with his teeth, perhaps while he hurried around the building toward the timekeeper’s shack. An inch farther up were two almost imperceptible impressions, one on each side of the stick, where the man had squeezed it between his knuckles.
    Grey went to the corner worktable where his microscope and racks of test tubes sat. He put the cigarette underneath an electric lamp. Next he placed a small pan over a standing gas jet on the table. He struck a match and lit the gas, turning the flame down to almostnothing. He held the first of the killer’s cigarette butts collected earlier that morning and set it in the pan. He pulled up a tall chair and sat before the burner. After fifteen seconds the paper began to brown and thin wisps of smoke curled upward. Grey closed his eyes and leaned forward, his hands gripping the edge of the table. The bitter odor was familiar, though he hadn’t smelled it in decades. He inhaled deeply and released a short bark of a cough. His eyes flickered, then closed again. He continued to draw slow, full breaths as the memories came.
    He feels the cold, but only in that distant way that doesn’t matter to a child at play. He’s kneeling in the snow, before a blanketed slope, with several other Indian boys. Each one holds a flat wooden board to be aimed down the thin, cleared tracks on the hillside in the game of snakes.
    The air is crisp, and his father’s voice carries clear across the snow, calling him home. His father is still alive, and coming closer in his old wool coat and hat. He makes a run for it, and the pleasant thrill of escape consumes him until a careless step sends him tail over head into the snow. His father’s arms raise him up, and they trudge along through a world of gray skies and white earth punctuated with dark tree trunks.
    “I have to be a hawk with you.” His father is speaking English, though he knows that was not the truth, not when they were alone. “You’re a clever boy. But you must always look ahead, always think what is next. The ground can shift under your very feet. You must always know where your next step will be. Your next three steps.” He cocks his head to see his father’s face. There’s a smile in the man’s eyes, no anger, and so he buries his face in the solid shoulder for warmth and draws in that unpleasant smell: wet wool with old tobacco lingering underneath.
    Back inside the winter