Chapter 34: Silas Asks About Owen

The truck was empty. The doors were unlocked and the seat was cold and the engine was cold and there was nothing in the cab but a coil of rope and a tin cup and a map folded on the dash.

The map was a county map with the mill road drawn on it in pencil and a mark at the end of the road that was not on any map I had ever seen.

“It is the orchard,” Elias said. “Look at the mark. It is in the trees behind the miller’s house, and there is a line drawn from the orchard to the field.”

“Whoever drives this truck has been mapping the territory,” I said. “Orchard, field, mill. It is the same ground the founders used.”

We did not touch anything. We went back through the trees the long way round and down the ridge to Maeve’s, and we came in through the back door with the snow on our boots.

Silas was in the kitchen with his arm in a sling that Maeve had made out of a dish towel and his gray eyes tired and his face still gray. He had the founders’ record open on the table in front of him and a pencil in his good hand and a sheet of paper covered in notes.

“The truck,” he said when we told him. “What color was it?”

“Green,” I said. “Dark green, with a mark on the door.”

“There was a green truck on the mill road on Tuesday night,” Silas said. “I saw it when I was walking in. It passed me on the road and it went toward town and it did not have its lights on.” He wrote something down. “I have been going through the record while you were gone. There is a thing in it that I have not been able to make fit.”

“What thing?”

He turned the record around and put his finger on a line.

“The founders’ record lists the wolves of the original pack,” he said. “Every wolf who came with the founders in 1891. There are eleven names. Four are Renns. Two are Kesslers. One is a woman named Margaret Hale. And there are four names that are not in the pack records at all and have never been in any pack record I can find in Boise.”

“What names?”

He read them out. I did not know three of them. The fourth name was Silas.

I looked up.

“That is your name,” I said.

“It is my name,” Silas said. “There has been a Silas in the Council records every generation since 1891. Silas the clerk, Silas the archivist, Silas the investigator. My father was Silas and his father was Silas and the first Silas came here with the founders in 1891 and then went back to Boise and took a job with the Council.” He put his pencil down. “I am not a Renn. I am the other one. The one who has been signing the Council’s paper for eighty-five years and never once looked at where it came from.”

Maeve came and sat down at the table.

“You did not know,” she said.

“I knew my family had been in the Council for a long time,” Silas said. “Every family in Boise has been in the Council for a long time. I did not know my family came here with the founders and helped them take a Luna.” He looked at the record. “There is a line in the margin next to my great-grandfather’s name. It says he wrote the boundary deed.”

“So your family forged the map,” I said.

“My family forged the map and my family filed it and my family has been collecting the Council’s grain money for eighty-five years.” Silas closed the record. “I have been telling you for two weeks that I am not like the rest of the Council. I have been telling myself that for nineteen years. It appears I was wrong about both of us.”

Nobody said anything for a while. The stove ticked. Upstairs June was asleep and Clara Renn was asleep in Maeve’s bed and the snow had started again outside the window.

“Silas,” I said. “I need to ask you about my brother.”

He looked up.

“I have read the coroner’s report and the sheriff’s report and the church record,” he said. “I have told you what is in them.”

“I know what is in them. I want to know what is not in them.” I pulled my chair in closer. “Owen died on the twenty-second of June. He went out at seven to see to the north fence. He was found at six the next morning. Nobody in this pack saw him after seven and nobody in this county has ever asked a single question about the eight hours between.” I put my hands flat on the table. “You have been a Council investigator for nineteen years. You have read reports your whole life. What is missing from that report?”

Silas was quiet for a moment.

“The farmhand,” he said. “The one who found the body. His name is in the sheriff’s report as Erik and there is no surname and there is no statement from him on file. The sheriff wrote that he spoke to the man and the man said he found the body at six, and that is all. There is no interview, no signature, no address.” He tapped the table. “In nineteen years of reading reports I have never once seen a witness statement with no signature. It is not how it is done. Even a farmhand who cannot write makes a mark and the sheriff writes his name beside it.”

“Erik,” I said. “Is he still in the county?”

“I asked. There is no Erik on the co-op rolls and no Erik on the pack rolls and no Erik in the county register. He was a farmhand who found a body and then he was gone.” Silas looked at me. “There is one more thing. The coroner’s report is signed by Haskins and countersigned by the sheriff, and the countersignature is dated the twenty-fourth of June. But the coroner’s examination was done on the twenty-third and the body was released for burial on the twenty-third, and the casket was closed on the twenty-third. So the report was countersigned after the burial. After the casket was closed.”

I sat very still.

“Somebody wanted that casket shut before anyone looked at the body twice,” I said.

“Somebody did,” Silas said. “And there is a name on the countersignature that is not the sheriff’s. The sheriff signed the bottom and then there is a second signature above it, small and neat, in a hand I have seen on Council documents for nineteen years. It is a Council countersignature. It means the Council reviewed the report before it was filed.”

“Whose signature?”

“It is my father’s,” Silas said. “Silas, the Council clerk, the same as his father before him. He countersigned the report on your brother’s death and he did it after the burial, and then he filed it and sealed it and nobody in this territory ever saw it again.” He put his pencil down. “I have been trying to decide all morning whether to tell you that.”

I got up and walked to the window.

“The Council knew,” I said. “The Council knew about my brother before the pack did. The Council countersigned a report on a rogue attack after the body was already in a closed casket, and the Council has been sitting on that report for four months.”

“Yes.”

“And your father is the one who did it.”

“Yes.”

I turned around.

“Then I am going to ask you a thing that I have no right to ask,” I said. “When this is over and we are standing in front of the Council of Alphas, are you going to be able to say that out loud? That your father signed a false report and sealed it, and that the Council has been covering up a murder in this territory for four months?”

Silas stood up. His face was gray and his arm was in the sling and he did not look like a Council investigator anymore.

“I have spent nineteen years signing the Council’s paper,” he said. “I have signed land deeds and trial claims and cull orders and I have never once read them the way I have read the paper in this territory. I do not know what I am going to say in front of the Alphas. But I know what I am going to do tomorrow, and that is write down everything my father ever signed on this territory and give it to you and your sister and the healer, and then let the Alphas decide.” He picked up his pencil. “I am not going to be the fourth Silas to cover for the founders. I am going to be the one who ends it.”

I looked at him for a long moment. Then I nodded.

“Good,” I said.

The kitchen door opened and June came in with her hair down and her coat over her nightgown.

“Wren,” she said. “There is a man at the door.”

“What man?”

“I do not know. He is old and he has a green truck and he says he wants to talk to the woman who has been hiding in the trees.”