They did not call the police at first.
That was the shame Bobby carried for the rest of his life.
He and Ray ran three blocks through alleys, over fences, and behind the closed bowling alley where winter weeds grew through the cracked parking lot. Bobby fell twice. Ray kept moving. By the time they reached the abandoned feed store near the railroad tracks, Bobby’s jacket was smeared with the woman’s blood, his hands were shaking, and his lungs burned from the cold.
“She was breathing,” Bobby said.
Ray grabbed him by the shirt. “No, she wasn’t.”
“She talked.”
“She did not.”
“She said the clock—”
Ray slapped him hard enough to make his ear ring.
“Listen to me. We were breaking into a house. A woman falls out dead. You got her blood all over you. You want to explain that to Sheriff Danner?”
Bobby said nothing.
Everybody in Cedar Falls knew Sheriff Harold Danner. Big man, silver hair, church voice, hunting photos in the courthouse hallway. He had been sheriff for eleven years and liked to say there were two kinds of criminals in his county: the ones who confessed and the ones who wasted his time. Bobby had already been arrested twice for burglary. Ray had done county time.
If they walked into the station covered in blood, no one would believe they had found her.
Ray knew that.
Bobby knew it too.
But Bobby could still feel the woman’s weight on his chest.
He reached into his coat pocket because something was pressing against his ribs. His fingers closed around a small brass key tied to a torn piece of blue ribbon. He pulled it out and stared.
Ray saw it.
“What is that?”
“She put it there.”
Ray’s eyes widened. “Throw it away.”
“No.”
“Throw it away, Bobby.”
“No.”
Ray stepped toward him, but sirens far away made both men freeze.
Not near Orchard Lane.
Somewhere across town.
Bobby looked toward the darkness. “We have to call.”
Ray’s jaw tightened.
“If you call, you leave my name out.”
Bobby walked to a payphone outside the feed store with a cracked plastic shield and a receiver that smelled like cigarettes. He dropped a dime in with shaking fingers and dialed the operator. When the dispatcher answered, Bobby lowered his voice so far he barely sounded human.
“There’s a woman at 39 Orchard Lane,” he said. “Back door. She’s hurt bad.”
“Who is this?”
Bobby looked at Ray.
Ray shook his head violently.
Bobby hung up.
They waited behind the feed store for twenty minutes, expecting sirens to rush toward Orchard Lane.
None came.
At 12:18 a.m., a single sheriff’s cruiser finally rolled past the far end of the street, moving slowly, not urgently.
Ray whispered, “See? They’ll handle it.”
But Bobby had a terrible feeling.
Because the woman had been alive when they left.
And by morning, Sheriff Danner would announce that no woman had been found at all.