“Well, don’t worry. I’ll find out. You get a report started. Send Hank over to pick up the body.”

“Will do.” She stood with the tape measure in one hand and the ledger in the other. “Doyle?”

He looked at her. She was just standing there in the wind.

“I got a bad feelin’ ’bout this,” she said.

“I believe that’s called for.”

“Do we have a plan?”

Doyle nodded. “We find Jack Dahl.”

When he got to his truck, he took off his gloves. He reached into his jacket for his pillbox and dropped two heart pills into his palm. He put them in his mouth and swallowed.

Jack woke before sunrise. He lay in the makeshift fort and watched the gray dawn break. Leaden shadows moving in the cold and the dark of the house. Slow and pallid. Like the coming of some dull anemia. He coughed and reached out and touched Matty sleeping beside him. The thin ribs. Jack watched him sleeping. Oh, his chest. It hurt. He gathered the blankets about Matty and covered him good, and in the noiseless gloom he rose and pulled on his shoes and walked out to the yard. He stopped at the woodpile, and there he crouched over coughing. His lip throbbed. Blood misted the snow at his feet.

He stacked dry wood in his arms and then he just stood at the woodpile, his face to the chafing wind, and looked out over the yard. Darkened poles of trees. The road in the clearing and, beyond that, the dim white fields. Heavy sky. Farther along, he could make out houses here and there. Not close but not very far either. Wan light in the windows. There could be someone out there, watching. Eyes to see. See the smoke, the tire tracks in the snow. He turned and carried the wood inside.

Stale dust of ash in the kitchen. The sooty taste on his lips. Blackened walls. Look around you, he thought. Look at this place. You brought him here.

He passed through the dark house to where Matty slept curled up against the piano, and he stifled a cough so as not to wake him. Quiet as he could, he piled the split logs in the cold hearth and then crouched and unfolded the hunting knife and scraped off wood shavings. With a little effort, he got a tuft of fire going. The small flame licked the dry wood and flared in the paltry light. Matty turned over in the blankets. He opened his eyes and whispered, “Hi.”

“I’m right here.”

“I know.”

He lay watching Jack. He rubbed his eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Something is.”

“I had a bad dream.”

“What about?”

Matty shrugged. He looked almost ready to cry. Jack crawled to him and got under the blankets and held him. “Hey,” he said. “Shhh, it’s okay.”

“It was a sad dream.”

“You could tell me about it if you want.”