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Back The Unfamiliar Garden Save as PDF
Chapters (33)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Prologue
  5. 1
  6. 2
  7. 3
  8. 4
  9. 5
  10. 6
  11. 7
  12. 8
  13. 9
  14. 10
  15. 11
  16. 12
  17. 13
  18. 14
  19. 15
  20. 16
  21. 17
  22. 18
  23. 19
  24. 20
  25. 21
  26. 22
  27. 23
  28. 24
  29. Acknowledgments
  30. About the Author
  31. Praise for The Ninth Metal
  32. Also by Benjamin Percy
  33. About the Publisher

And that was the last time he saw her. He told the story over and over, but no matter how many questions he faced—from Nora, the rangers, the police, his colleagues and neighbors—he could not recall anything more. No, he hadn’t seen any cars on the drive up the logging road. No, he hadn’t fought with his daughter. No, he’d never struck her in anger, never, not even so much as a spanking. No, he hadn’t thought it was a bad idea to bring her up there—in the dark—and leave her unsupervised. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea, but it wasn’t a bad idea, was it? No, there was no cry for help. No snapping branches. No sign of a cougar or a bear or anything. Nothing. There was nothing, nothing, nothing but the hush of the wind and the buzz of his UV torch and then his own voice calling out, “Finished!”

But there was no response. Because there was no Mia. Only the candy wrapper snagged in a fern, the water bottle balanced neatly on the stump, and the phone caught between the roots of a nearby tree.

2

Five Years Later

After the Drought

For Nora, it has already been a long day. Twenty calls to follow up on from the sarge, from the coroner, the family of a victim, reporting officers, and on and on. Case files to close and open. Reports to write. Five witness interviews. A visit to an attorney’s office. A court appearance delayed by a fire alarm. And then there was the mandatory demonstration down at the station.

This took place in the basement firing range, a dim concrete-walled space that smelled like mildew and sulfur. Sarge stood before the dozen detectives selected for this beta program. Nosler—the bullet manufacturer based out of Oregon—had developed an omnimetal cartridge that required no gunpowder. The strike of the hammer transferred enough kinetic energy to send the bullet out of the barrel at 2,500 feet per second.

Sarge was an old white guy with hair sparely salted onto an otherwise bald head. He could never button his shirts around his beefy neck, and his face turned red when he spoke at a yell, his voice clapping back and forth through the corridors of the range. He held up the seamless bullet, the size of a pinkie finger, that seemed to give off its own silvery light. He loaded it into his pistol. He aimed at the paper silhouette at the end of the range. “Shouldn’t you pop in some earplugs, Sarge?” one of the detectives said, and he said, “No need.”