Hate to speak ill of the dead, but gotta admit, Sean changed over the three years or so I knew him. Not saying he was doing anything wrong. Just that he was different. Sometimes was kind of dopey and forgetful. Wore his shirts inside out, flaked on meetings. Nothing serious. Odd. The flip side of the coin was his rougher personality. He acted secretive. His ideas were different. Flower power. Pagan! Yeah, pagan. Hippie-dippie with a black metal edge. A laborer got smooshed in a trench collapse and Sean laughed. He said, Finally! Somebody’s giving back! And then he high-fived Danny, who was straight-up fucking morbid. Maybe Danny helped Sean come outta his shell. Except for Danny’s love of hunting and excessive boozing, they wound up having a lot in common.

What could he tell me about Buckhalter? My information on the man indicated he was a carpenter by trade, although he’d hired on with Diogenes as a security technician. Similar to Sean Pruitt, he’d spent the vast majority of his shift monitoring cameras and, for a real dose of excitement, cruising the perimeter of the Jeffers site in a jeep, shining a flashlight into the adjacent woods.

Danny’s a Horseheads boy. Big-time jock in school back when mullets were popular. Chummy with Sean and Linda. Danny went to their house for dinner a time or two. The Pruitts probably felt pity for him. No family of his own.

Was it possible that the Pruitts’ marital problems stemmed from an affair between Linda and Danny?

Shit, never thought of that. Whoa. There was a lot of opportunity. Hate to think they would do Sean that way.

Anything else?

Danny hunted on his days off. Sometimes he took Sean along to “butch him up.” Sean bragged he’d eaten raw liver and drank heart’s blood as a rite of bad-assedness. Stupid, if you ask me. Everybody says you don’t eat wild game north of Horseheads without charbroiling that shit. It’s all diseased. Then there was the hard-core partying. Raves and underground stuff. Sean wanted in on some fraternity deal with some of Danny’s high school buddies. Danny wouldn’t talk about the club or whatever in front of me. Valley citizens only.

I pressed him on that. He hadn’t heard of the Mares of Thrace.

Guess it all affected Danny’s work. He was in and out of the apartment at bizarre hours; got written up for being late and hungover. Common affliction on a construction crew. Single guys, even older guys, are particularly vulnerable. Wife and kids and a mortgage keep me honest or might’ve been right in there with him, partying hearty. I figured he’d get canned, but it never happened. We teased him that somebody upstairs had his back. Dude was untouchable. The units at the colony were reserved for out-of-town employees, but he scored a room anyhow. Probably because he lived in a tent or under a bridge before the job came along. Yeah, he was a favored son. Can’t say where he is today. Still in Horseheads, I suppose. Might be worth checking with the rednecks. His people, you know?