 
### DIEYES

### By Paul Hennrich

Copyright 2017 Paul Hennrich

Smashwords Edition

Thank you for downloading this book. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

Other titles by Paul Hennrich at Smashwords:

The Kent Baker Mystery / Suspense Series:

Definitions

Scavengers

Entertainment

Kinfolk

Also, a Civil War Era Historical / Fiction Novel:

The Reach

Blurbs and the information concerning the availability of these novels can be found at the end of this Kent Baker Adventure.

* * ~ ~ ~ ~ * *

### DIEYES

The human face is the masterpiece of God.

The eyes reveal the soul...

Elbert Hubbard

Little Journeys: Leonard

Prologue

(Soaked Cow-pies intermixed with Random Last Thoughts)

On the rainy morning that was to be the last day of my life, I found myself pondering the old TV westerns.

That reflection came to me as I sat at the top end of a washout in a pasture that was once owned by the grandparents who raised me, a pasture I knew as well as I knew my name, that day maybe even better.

A downpour of an early summer rain had started soon after parking my pintsized, well-bruised car in the driveway of the farm house wherein I was raised. It would have been hard to drag me into a much deeper state of depression than I already was in, but the condition of the place gave it a good try.

The gentry who had bought the property had abandoned it to the slow death of zero upkeep. They had built themselves a fine, bricked home on a distant field and had decided, I suppose, that allowing the old house and red barn across the way to fall in upon themselves was the cheapest means to be rid of them. After all, who would care, as the previous owners were long gone? No one, not any one, they must have figured, not a single, solitary soul.

Except for me. But, in their defense, I could most assuredly be tallied as soulless.

So, there it was the whole of it. I had been down in the dumps as deeply as one could go and the disrepair and overgrowth about my childhood Eden, the place I had spent my happiest years, didn't help matters at all. In fact, it had made it a simpler task to do the thing I had come to do, which was to put the ancient .38 caliber Smith and Wesson revolver to the side of my head and blow my brains away, along and with any warm memories.

Yeah, this lone traveler had had enough.

I traipsed away from the dilapidated farmstead and slung myself over a fence and into the pasture I had romped through as a kid, only to end up for some stupid reason in the last place one would want to be during a pouring rain, that being a washout gully where my butt cheeks left an impression at least four inches deep, thereby putting my boned head six inches below the rim.

Revolver in hand, I killed time watching the soaked dirt roil its way down the slope of the gulley, heading wherever it was it needed to go. It was while stuck in that glazy gaze that, for some unknown reason, thoughts came to me pertaining to old boob-tube westerns.

Maybe it was because I have always been fond of the sixties and early seventies − the music, the hair, the peace signs, the love that was never really love − the whole damn sloppy mess, including the westerns I had watched on Saturday mornings that were a ready-made, cheap broadcast fodder for an upstart TV station.

The one that came to me in what was to be my final moments was the one where a father and son living alone on a farm had a weekly run-in with some nasty desperadoes. I was so far gone I couldn't even come up with the name of the show, only that by the end of it Dad had maybe gunned down a multiple number of the bad guys. What you generally got was twenty, twenty-five minutes of danger and death and then, at the very end, a gathering of the two of them and the local sheriff where they shared an episode-ending laugh about one thing or another.

I had often wondered how calloused to violence that kid must have been, to sit and have a chuckle or two with those grownups while the bad guys' blood was still soaking into the dusty, cow-pied street. Tough kid or, maybe better yet, a cold one, long past having become immune to all the carnage he had been raised to see.

Thing was, this guy with his butt deeply implanted in the mud had at long last had all he could stand of spilled blood, along with being a cold lump of skin.

Had it with the memories of the blood of those I had put down, deserving or not, and also with the buried blood that was draining from within my deepest reaches, draining away any heartfelt feeling I had towards seeing any more sunrises. Yep, there was the great quantity of death I had dealt out, and witnessed other folks dealing out, but even bigger gut-wrenches besides.

Like finding out a short while back that the father, mother and sister I had never known until it was too late were gone forever.

A humongous wrenching, indeed, was that.

Having plopped into the vulgar reaches of my wasted past, it finally came to the point where no amount of beer and bourbon could keep me from making the decision to lug the heavy pistol to the last place I needed to visit before dousing the light.

And then it had to rain.

That damnable rain.

But if you think about it, maybe it was a perfect day for what I had in mind. After all, who wants to see the sun sparkling off of robust green grass just before you kill yourself. There's something blasphemous about that vision.

It was while I was looking down at the Smith and Wesson and thinking about TV oaters that the white-faced, brown Hereford heifer strolled up to the edge of trench.

She was all by herself, following a sunken cow path that was maybe three feet from the drop off to my gulley. Her hair was matted by the cold rain and her head was bowed to the downpour. Her ears were drooping and her steps through the muddied path were plodding, taxing.

She stopped and gazed at me with a mild curiosity. Her eyes were large, dark, and fathomless as they took me in. They gave away nothing, as if things mattered and yet did not matter.

I wondered about what was going on within her.

Did she know she was miserable? Or was she just existing?

Was I just existing?

The heifer held me in her gaze a few more seconds then turned her head forward and continued sloshing her way along the cow path.

For some strange reason, I was glad she went on her way. Maybe it was because I didn't want her to be upset for life by what was coming next. Doubt there are many cow psychiatrists putting out their shingles.

People head-shrinks were unneeded also, as I would be leaving no one behind to mourn me. No offspring, no wife, no lover, no nobody. The only one who would miss me would be my landlord, and only because he'd be short a rent check.

Enough of this self-pitying silliness, I finally thought.

Cows, farmhouse, family, westerns, a solitary existence, blooded eyes staring into a deep eternity. Yeah, to hell with all that inanity and onward to hades for one Kent Baker.

I raised the gun. I rocked a skittish grin as I cocked it, put all emotions out of my mind and started lifting the barrel towards my temple.

My cell phone bleated its intensely irritating ringtone.

Oh, hells bells!

I grimaced and cursed it. I have no idea why I kept the thing. I have no one who wants to talk to me on a regular basis, or anyone I want to gossip with ever. The number of calls I'd received the preceding months could be counted on both hands and half a foot, the better part of them having come from cheery folks wanting to peddle something to me.

That's who you need to be using your gun on, I thought, and couldn't help but laugh in spite of all else.

My electronic wonder was on the third ring when for some inane reason I made up my mind to lug it out and answer, a grim smile still canting across my face. Don't know why I decided that, but I did it.

"'Lo-o-o!" I yelped out way too loud.

A pause, then,

"Kent, how you doing?"

I immediately knew the voice and I didn't feel like being silly anymore.

Wade Phillips. The Sheriff who was involved with the mess wherein I had lost family members. He'd let me tag along during the investigation and, in the process, had a moronic scoundrel put a bullet into his chest, after which I returned the favor.

It had been nip and tuck at the hospital, but − thank God − in the end he had survived. Having been told that a while back, I had called him at the hospital, leaving him with the promise that I would come see him in person real soon.

Of course, that trip had not been made, because I'm nothing if not a highflying idiot. And now he was asking me how 'I' was doing.

"Fine, Wade. Sorry I haven't been in touch."

"No problem, son, I know you young bucks got lots of things going."

"No that much, Wade. I really did mean to come around."

"Hey, I'll be here whenever you make it. Got to ask you, though, what's all that racket? You outside in the rain?"

I wipe the water off my face.

"It's just sprinkling."

"Still, you outside in it?"

"Okay, if you say so. But your voice sounds off. You sure you're alright?"

Cleared my throat.

"Positive, Wade, just took a walk at the wrong time."

"I see."

Lowered the revolver to my thigh.

"How you doing, how's your chest?" I asked him.

"Puffed out like a gobbler in a turkey harem. Holding a chunk of lead in it, you might remember. Put an x-ray machine in my bedroom so I could take a peek at it now and again. It's my badge of honor nowadays."

I kind of laughed. Couldn't help it.

"So, everything's alright?'

"Well, I cough now and again but other than that I feel fine. Lost a lot of weight there for a while, which gave the little woman a chance to fatten me up. Best cooking I've had our whole marriage, getting fatter than a pregnant sow. Times are I think it's the best thing happened to me."

I wondered how many animal puns he held.

"Wasn't a bit of fun for the rest of us."

"Still, it happens. Anyway, Kent, why I called is I'm wondering how you're doing, seeing as how you went through a lot more than me."

"I'm here. Doing fine."

"I'd believe that if I didn't know you're so full of shit, along with the fact you're puttering around in the damn rain. Listen son, nobody in your shoes could be doing fine. So how are you for sure doing?"

My brain was struggling through a molasses current. I was finding it hard to make small talk, much less answer a question.

Wade didn't wait on me.

"What happened to you, Kent, was tough, no sugarcoating it. No question about it, you've lost a lot. But none of it was your doing, and that makes for a huge difference between feeling guilty and being sad."

"Wade, I...a..."

Again, no way to form words.

"Want me to ask you if you done the best you could?" Wade asked.

Blew a gust of air into the rainfall.

"No."

"Cause the answer is you did. Everything that came down was outside anybody's control. If it's got you down, it understandable. Given that, what have you been doing these last few months?"

"I've been busy."

"That's not what I asked you. Listen, Kent, you're not the type to sit around festering, you're too sharp a knife for that."

"I've been busy," I said again

I felt like a first grader staring up at Sister Theresa's disappointed face.

Wade was silent for a while. I could see him in his office, squinting his eyes and biting his lower lip. He must have finally bit hard enough.

"I got this idea," he said. "You heard about the bad goings-on around Scott City?"

I cleared my throat so I would sound a little more humanoid.

"The murders?"

"Yeah. A woman found by the road a month and half ago and a second floating in the river a couple of weeks back."

"Think I heard about that. I gather people think they're connected."

"Right. Between me and you both ladies were treated badly, then killed. That's all I can tell you and more than I should have, but I know I can trust you. Something else for just between us, not a lot of effort was made to hide the first body by the road. The second one in the Mississippi took someone who knew a good secluded way to get up close to the river. The only care taken in both cases was to pick out an of the way route with little traffic."

"Which probably means it's a person from around there."

"Now you're waking up. Thing is, Kent, another woman has come up missing. Hasn't been seen since yesterday afternoon. Young gal in her twenties. Seems she's a little slow, a mild retardation. Don't know if she's wandered off or if she's a third victim of some sicko."

"Wasn't aware of that."

"Got to get out, watch TV, turn on a radio or read a newspaper if you're gonna keep up on things."

"Suppose so."

I looked up into the tumbling rain. It was starting to really piss me off.

"Here's what I think you should do," Wade was saying. "First thing tomorrow morning they're fixing to bring in as many volunteers as they can and put together a search for this young lady. I know the Sheriff down there, he's a friend of mine. Charley Weeks. He's not a withered old goat like me, he's young and a little wet behind the ears, but he's got gumption and he's sharp as a tack. He's got some good deputies, and the state folks are getting involved. Still, he could use a man like you."

"Well...I guess I could help search."

"You could do more than that. You could kind of help Charley along, maybe let him pick up something from your experience. Maybe teach him a few things."

"The state cops would be better for that. I'm not much of tutor, Wade."

"Well, maybe not. I guess what I'm trying to say is you could drop some ideas on him like you done me. Join with the search tomorrow and put your mind to what you're hearing and seeing. You got, how do I say this, an instinct, Kent, a feel for seeing what others can't. Don't try to tell me you don't, I've seen it and don't have time to argue, and am too damn old to want to. Thing is, where others look at the skin, you focus through to the innards."

I would have liked to have told him he was full of crap, but he wasn't.

My life had so far been a belly crawl through the netherworld of human nature, from my years as an undercover agent with the DEA and with some bloody undertakings since leaving the agency. I had seen ogres laugh as they killed, grin as they tortured, yawn as the bodies mounded. I still see their fanged ogre smirks in my deepest sleep. Been tortured once or twice myself, with knife scars on my chest, and several pocked bullet holes on my body, as proof.

This thing that I'd become has encountered way too many evils way too many times but, in the end, because luck has been winking, I've managed to put them down like the rabid beasts they were, and felt no little delight in doing so.

You learn from all that, walking that raggedy knife edge. You concentrate and stay one careful step ahead, or you lie bone-cold one step behind. It's not a gift I have, it's a means for a scruffy survival.

And there I sat, plopped down in the chilled mud, ready to give up on surviving. Hadn't let all the miscellaneous monsters defeat me, but rather had fought them to the end, be it for justice or revenge.

And yet there I sat, surrendering to a different monster.

Myself, the wimpiest beast of all.

Two young women were dead, one missing, and here was a self-centered doofus feeling pity for one Kent Baker.

After waiting on me, Wade took up the conversation himself.

"I've already called Charley," he said. "Told him you'd be coming, told him to give some thought to anything you come up."

"Wade ─"

"He said he'd be glad for any input he could get. Like I said, he's a smart one. This thing is eating him up and anybody, civilian or a body with experience like you, will get his ear."

"How'd you know I'd agree?"

"I'm experienced too."

I moved my finger away from the trigger and held pistol against my leg, holding it by the butt.

"I'll be there tomorrow, Wade," I said.

"He'll be expecting you. When things slow down, come see me, son."

"Believe me, I will."

We signed off.

I lifted my head and looked at the green, green grass glistening through the tumbling raindrops. Wade had to of had a gut feeling something was wrong with me, and there's no having that feeling unless there's really something wrong. Ask most any mother.

It meant a lot that he would make the call, trying to get me off my self-pitying butt to do something that rightfully needed doing. It warmed me to have such a buddy, especially one with such impeccable timing.

It was then, while I was running my thoughts through that bottleneck, that the rain stopped.

Chapter 1

(Pokin' around)

Scott City, Missouri, is a pleasant and pleased town that's roughly one hundred and twenty miles south of St. Louis. It's not far from the city I live in, and holds around-about five thousand closely-knit folks. It sits on some high ground that's about a large river-bottom cornfield away from the Mississippi. The greatest part of the individuals who live there are good people, who make it their duty to populate the church pews on Sunday mornings. Others there are that don't see it as their thing to sing hymns, but the majority of them are good too, only a little confused.

But it in seems that in every piece of sun-drenched countryside that holds tall, green grass − along with deer, rabbits, grasshoppers and innumerable spring flowers − there is almost sure to be a snake. All snakes can pop you out of your skin at first glance, but the majority are harmless. Still and yet, some are deadly as hell.

That's how it is in the world and the cities, along with the pastoral fields. The snakes hide amongst the beauty and get most of the attention. And for those self-same slithery cretins who walk upright in gory shoes, it's the very thing they want most.

Attention.

Hey! Hey! Look at me! I can torture and kill the innocents and you can't catch me. I be smarter than you. Nanna-nanna boo-boo!

Serial killers are beastly mongrels, undeserving of oxygen, and now Scott City, Missouri, looked to all intents and purposes to have one of its own. They damn sure didn't deserve it.

Interstate 55 skirts the west side of the city so that if you take the one and only exit and go east on what is Route K, you don't have to go far until you find the police station on the left next to the fire station, not too far down the road from a quick shop, a fast-food place, a grocery store and a restaurant.

Holy crap, that's America.

After returning to my apartment following my frivolous excursion into the flooded pasture, I clicked on the local evening news report and found out that anyone interested in joining the search for the latest missing young woman was to meet at the Scott City police station at seven the next morning. So, per Wade's timely suggestion, I made plans to be there.

Upon arrival, it was clear I was far from the only person interested in volunteering. Parking spaces were at a premium, and there weren't a whole lot of them to begin with. A large number of volunteers had pulled off the road across from the station and parked next to the railroads tracks that had barged through the town so many years before. I snuggled into a tight spot among those parked cars, in as much as my bruised and aged Mazda was so short and squatty.

I then noticed that, to go along with the volunteers who had found their way there, were several media vans replete with satellite dished embedded in their roofs. Reporters with their camera operators were working their way through the crowd. Other news folks were also there, pad and pen in hand, a newspaper deadline to make.

One death makes the local paper. Two makes it the leading news of the nearest TV stations whose doppler weather radar includes the place involved. But add onto that a third lady suddenly missing, and now you have the makings of runaway news cycle. And rightfully so. The reporting boosts the heartfelt number of prayers, and you can never have enough of those. This coming from a guy who hasn't been in a church for a long, long time. It's not that I don't believe in a God, it's just that I'm embarrassed to face him.

Sat in my car a short while and reviewed some of the in-depth details I had taken the time to understand the night before.

A month and a half earlier, during the second week of May, nineteen-year old Misty Dane was found dumped like garbage into a deep ditch beside a blacktopped county road just a few miles outside the city limits of Scott City. She had left her home on Cherry Street on the south side of town to go for a walk with another girl from her school, a close friend who said Misty had come into her house for a while after the walk and then had left to make her way home. The friend had also stated she had not noticed anything unusual. Neither had anybody else. Misty was set to graduate from high school later that May. No mention was made of how she was killed, or if she was sexually assaulted.

Two weeks before my early morning trip to Scott City twenty-four-year old Janice Thompson's remains were found four days after she disappeared several miles south of the town in the Mississippi river, intermeshed in a jumbled pile of driftwood on the upstream side of a rock dike. Her bloated body was discovered by the fisherman who had arrived at the dike with a spinning rod and a bucketful of crawdads. He was, it looked like, a man who had a hankering for a full stringer of yellow-bellied catfish, though I'm sure channel cats would have served the purpose. But after finding what he had found he told a friend he was never going fishing again, a news tidbit that had to be delivered by the friend as the fisherman himself was reported as being extremely upset, and not wanting anything to do with talking to the media.

Janice had exited her home on Laura Street, late in the afternoon, located on the far north side of town, to take advantage of a rare warm day to do some jogging, never to be seen again. Janice was the mother of two boys, ages three and one, both of whom were said to be unable to comprehend why Mommy would not just come on home.

As with Misty's case, no mention of how Janice was killed or if she was sexually assaulted. There was, of course, a reason for that. There are certain unreleased details you want to hear from the fouled mouth of the killer after you catch him, or her.

If you catch him, or her.

And now, as the fallen angels would have it, twenty-year old Myla Stevens was missing. She was a mildly retarded young woman, a tiny thing very small for her age, who seldom strayed from her immediate neighborhood in a south section of Scott City, several streets away from where Misty Dane had resided. She lived with her parents and was their only child. Not long after sunset her parents had gone to a church service, leaving her behind locked doors to watch TV. They had done that for short periods before and, anyway, she often got restless at church. She knew how and why to dial 911 and loved the popcorn her mother always fixed for her before her parents went on their way. Being only mildly retarded they felt it was good for her to now and again be on her own.

When they came home the house looked fine, except that there was no Myla. Her parents were now scared to death, heartbroken and guilt-ridden.

Could she have wandered off on her own? No, they told the cops, she would never do that. Had they locked the door before leaving? Yes, but it was unlocked upon their return. Would she open the door to a stranger? No, absolutely not...well...no, we really don't think so.

Two already murdered. What were people to think?

The Stephens, it bears saying again, were beyond consoling.

The municipality of Scott City was shocked into almost a numb state, with the residents' eyes being wide, darting about, their minds enveloped with disbelief, their hearts broken.

Now, after my timely talk with Wade, I was ready to join their search for Myla, and was glad to have arrived. And, after sitting beside Main Street to reconsider it all, I was also deep-down enraged.

When will it all end? When God determines He'd seen enough?

Took a deep breath, got out of my vehicle and walked across the street to join the crowd gathered there.

And a mixed crowd it was. I would have to say there were at least fifty people in the police station's parking lot, of all shapes and sizes. People with white hair or no hair, teenagers who must have skipped school, a pretty young woman carrying her baby in a front pack, middle-aged folks, others in their twenties, some in their thirties and on and on. All of them compassionate, all of them in shock. I crossed the road and nudged my way in amongst them.

A man I took to be Sheriff Charley Weeks was getting into position at the front of the crowd. The bodies had been found outside the city limits and so fell within his jurisdiction. Beside him stood a city law enforcement officer, the Chief of Police I assumed. On the other side of the Sheriff was a fellow in a state trooper's uniform. All hands were on deck.

Charley Weeks was an average looking guy: standard height, no bulging midsection, dark hair with a tinge of gray around the ears. A mid-America Joe who had suddenly been given a heart-wrenching task to complete. You could see the effect of it riding over the dark bags under his eyes. He began explain what was to happen with the searching to be done that day.

The gathered crowd would be placed into three separate groups, with each be put under of the watchful eyes of several police officers, both state and local. Several large areas were to be searched and as soon as any one of them was covered the hunt for that group would be move to a different location. The police officers would explain the method of covering ground and be available to answer any questions. If anyone found something of interest, do not touch.

And on, and on...

When the Sheriff had said all he wanted to say, he pointed out three separate sections of the parking lot where guide officers were waiting and we were told to go to the one closest to us.

I had started on my way when I heard someone coming up quickly up behind me.

"Kent?" I heard.

I stopped and turned about. It was Sheriff Charley Weeks. I waited as he quickly worked his way up to me.

"You are Kent Baker, right?" he asked after he closed in.

"Yes. How'd you know?"

"Wade is good at giving descriptions."

"He must be."

Then he gave off a weary half-smile.

"He also told me what kind of car I should look for. It was kind of hard to miss."

My turn for a half-smile.

"It does have character. I'd get rid of it except every dent holds a strong place in my heart."

"I know what you mean. When I was considerably younger, I had a sixty-five Mustang that wasn't in the best of shape, that I just couldn't bear letting loose of."

"At least yours could lay a patch."

"Nah, it was an automatic."

He paused, then,

"Kent, if you would, I'd like to talk with you in my office after we're done searching today. That alright with you?"

I shrugged.

"Sure, I guess so. Wade said he would tell you I would be here. Thing is, Sheriff, as much as I would like to help, I really don't know what I could offer that would be worth anything. I was in the DEA, and that puts this nowhere near my expertise. And on top of that, I don't want to step on any toes."

"We're all wearing steel-toed boots during this ordeal. Believe me, Kent, every officer here would be happy for any kind of input from anybody who's been in law enforcement."

"Still."

He studied me a few seconds. I could pick up some of the folks closest to us looking our way with interest.

"I just got two words for you, Kent. Wade Phillips."

I nodded.

"Those are definitely some powerful two words, Sheriff. Okay, I'll be there."

He put hand on my shoulder.

"See you then," he said, before turning to head to where he needed to be.

I did the same, heading for the nearest section of the parking lot where two police officers were waiting.

I felt no excitement about going to talk with the Sheriff, for the reason I had expressed. Professionals of all types, big and small, can have thin skins. Not that their egotistic, it's just that we all hold a bit of that squishy sentiment known as pride. You work your ass off digging into something important from dawn to dusk, and then an unknown galoot wanders in and gets the special treatment, even when he's nowhere near special. Some there are that would take offence at that. That 'some' includes me, you, and them, chum.

I had promised to go and go I would, but my plans were to place cotton-feet on the eggshells.

It was just as I was coming to a stop among the crowd gathering around the two cops, still mulling the upcoming meeting with Charley Weeks, that I noticed her standing ten feet to my side, eyeing me. The pretty young lady with the baby facing forward in the front-side backpack. I gave her an oversimplified grin. She shot back a big, sweet one.

You assess, you surely do, you assess fast. Blonde, a for real blonde. Pretty face to go along with jeans and a t-shirt holding all the right bumps, roundness and slenderness in all the right places. The appraisal zeros in on the fact that she wears no wedding ring. You take it all in and then you look away because...well, because that's what you do.

Ten seconds later, and I catch the movement of her coming up beside me. She was very cute and she knew it.

"Goodness," she said through a smile, "how tall are you?"

I shrugged.

"Tall enough to rest my chin on the top of your head," I answered.

I can be cute too.

She took my remark in with nary a reaction, pausing maybe three seconds before reaching forth with a tiny, tender hand.

"Lacy Brewer," she said.

"Kent Baker," I replied as we shook.

I nodded at the baby.

"And who is this?"

"Addie Brewer. Addie with an i and e, not y."

"Pretty name."

"Pretty girl. And sweet."

And so little Addie seemed to be. Tiny face, a mound of floating light-brown hair, bluish eyes that went on forever, and a toothless mouth that was yearning to smile.

"How old is she?'

"Three months going on a year."

"I bet."

Just then, without warning, a young boy came bounding out of the crowd, coming so suddenly to a halt that his torso was still moving forward as his legs stopped. I took him to be ten to twelve years old, and later was to find out eleven was the right call. The ten side of it probably came to me because he was small for his age, both in height and weight. Boney kid, dark disheveled hair, unkept and worn t-shirt and jeans, all to go with dirty tennis shoes.

"Were you really a DEA agent?" he asked with a breathless voice.

"Say what?"

"I heard you talking to the Sheriff."

"I see. Well, yes, I worked for DEA."

"Undercover, where it was really dangerous, right?"

"Say what?"

"I heard the Sheriff talking to one of the state police as he was walking over to you."

His eyes were jolted wide to go along with a gaped mouth. Obviously, he carried the disjointed notion to be impressed with me. I didn't like that because it was, in all ways, an erroneous idea. The only creature who should be impressed with me has been a long time burning in hell, plotting a coup.

"Tell you what," I said, "let's just leave it with me working with the agency."

"His name is Troy Jaden," Lacy Brewer said. "He rode here with me. We're next door neighbors."

Held out my hand and Troy took it gingerly, as if it were too remarkable to touch.

"Nice to meet you, Troy. I'm Kent."

He must not have heard me.

"Was it really, really dangerous undercover?"

"No, not very often."

"Ever get into a gunfight?"

"Not to speak of."

"Wrestle a lot of people to the ground and handcuff them?"

"Nice day, isn't it?"

"Huh?"

Lacy was grinning.

"Troy's a very smart young man, and that makes him a little curious."

"I can tell."

About this time one of the two officers we'd migrated towards began speaking and so we turned out attention to him.

Our group, he was saying, were going to search for Myla Stevens by covering some bottom ground just off the Mississippi that laid a couple of miles east of Scott City. We were all to follow his car as it moved away from the City Hall's parking lot. Upon arrival, we were to pull over and park behind him along the county road that paralleled the bottom ground. We were also asked, if possible, to share rides so as to ease congestion leaving town and in the parking along the road.

The crowd began drifting towards their vehicles. Lacy Brewer and Troy moved along next to me

"Where are you parked?" I asked Lacy.

"A block or so down from City Hall. I was scared to park next to the gulley by the railroad tracks."

"I didn't have enough sense to be scared. You can ride with me if you want."

"And me too!" Troy yelped.

"Sure."

"Great!"

"I'll need to get the baby's car seat," Lacy said.

"We'll stop for it on the way."

Troy was floating two and a half inches off the ground as we crossed the road to get to my ancient, bruised blue Mazda. Poor, misguided kid.

I am so used to my vehicle's battered condition that I sometimes can't foresee the reactions of people who view it for the first time. As we walked up to the poor thing Lacy's pace slowed to stutter steps, and her pretty face looked as if a burst of cold air had hit it.

To begin with, my ride is old, so old as to have a surface that is unable to absorb a waxing, and so I gave up trying to apply one a long-time past. I do wash it though, I'm not that damn lazy.

But beyond that, the front driver-side hood was dented from me having tossed a guy backwards onto it. His intention had been to beat me into a bloody pulp, along with the help of a friend but, at the conclusion of things, all that happened was he acquired possibly one or two herniated discs in his rickety back.

There was also the crinkled metal around my front driver-side tire where I had purposely driven that part of the Mazda off a concrete, country-lane, high-water bridge in order to shut it off as an escape route for one cruel, vicious dude, since deceased.

And then there's the weirdest visual of all. Scattered about the body were four of these fake, stick-on bullet hole decals you can find at some truck stops or in a novelty store. Most people get and apply them as a joke but, in my case, they serve a purpose.

They hide real bullet holes.

It's a long story.

Okay, okay, here goes.

A guy who considered himself a talented sniper hid in a wooded area and, as I drove up and got out of my little buddy, took some potshots at me that, in the end, did nothing but pock my reliable little means of transportation.

Suffice it to say, I saw to it that he'll never come a-sniping again.

I could have had to bullet holes patched and painted but, let's face it, bullet holes require an explanation and an explanation could have, in the end, landed me in the penitentiary shower.

Like I said, a long story.

Thing is, so guilty did I feel about all these injuries that I simply could not bring myself to be rid of my damaged, dedicated little gas guzzler. We meant way too much to each other.

Still, it stops people in their tracks.

"Co-o-o-l!" Troy declared.

"My goodness, man, what have you done to this poor thing?" Lacy asked.

"You got to admit, she does have character, doesn't she?"

"Have you considered putting it out of its misery?'

"Come on, now, the wheels turn and the seats aren't torn. At least not a lot."

"Okay, let's go."

We walked and gathered up the baby seat from her car ─ a well-kept five-year-old Ford Taurus, red, of course ─ put it in place and fell in line behind the police car. It was a short drive, maybe ten minutes and, when we pulled off in line to park, we were next to a heavily overgrown field that had not yet been plowed up. Several copses of trees spotted the field, the grasses and weeds in around them taller and denser than in the open ground. Along the river at the far side of the field were more scrubby trees and briars and brush.

As Troy and I got out Lacy stayed seated.

"Going to feed Addie quick-like and then catch up with you."

"You sure?"

"We're both big girls."

Me and my newly gotten young admirer headed towards the police officers.

"Think we'll find her?' Troy asked

"No way to know."

"Do you have your gun on you?"

"No."

"Do you ever carry it?"

"Not often, because I'm not with the agency anymore."

"Why not?"

"Nice day, isn't it?"

"Huh?"

He fell silent a minute or so, then,

"I knew Myla. I hope she hasn't been hurt and can be gotten home. She lived a few houses down from me. She's kind of weird and I don't think she had many friends. Sometimes I feel like people think I'm weird, so I know how she feels, but she would always talk to me even though we never got to be real friends cause she's a girl, and I don't know how to talk to girls yet."

"She may show up yet, Troy. Right now, we got to think that."

"I know. It's just that she's a good person and it's really sad that she's missing."

"And you must be able to talk to girls because Lacy is your friend and she's a girl."

"She's really nice, but she's older than me and it's the girls my age I have trouble with."

"Talk to them like you talk to her. Girls are girls."

"I guess you're right. I guess."

Don't bank on that 'right' business, young 'un, I thought.

The policeman put us in a straight line reaching from near the road across the field to near the Mississippi. That left a space of maybe ten-twelve feet between searchers and put Troy and I close to the river end of it, the reason being we were two of the last to get in line.

After everyone was in place we began moving in unison across the field, making an easy pace that allowed everyone a good opportunity to looking over their segment. It was a harvested corn field that had not yet been plowed over and replanted, which made the walking a little tricky, but not so much so that it slowed anybody to any extent.

We hadn't gone very far before Lacy caught up with us, a satisfied Addie facing forward in her front-row, hanging-from-Mom's-neck, position.

It had started out as a pleasant spring day, and was then even getting better, the sun holding a crisp, easily absorbed warmth. It belied the tragic seriousness of our task. It wasn't long before Troy closed in the gap between me and him in order to be near enough to talk.

"Wouldn't it be better to zig back and forth a little between the searchers so everything gets a closer look?"

"Hard to do in a corn field."

"Yeah, but the corn is cut pretty short."

"Still a lot of stalk debris though."

"I'm kind of short but I got no problem. Did you search this way when you were looking for bodies in the DEA?"

"Nice day, isn't it?"

"Huh?"

Lacy spoke up after a quick laugh.

"Troy's a bright kid, always thinking."

"I can see that."

She sighed before she next spoke.

"I don't know what I'll do if we come across that sweet girl."

"Knew her?" I asked, keeping my eyes to the ground.

"Yes. Her home is a block or so down from Troy and I. She lived ─ I mean lives ─ with her parents. She had a few problems, but she always smiled and would love to talk to you. Shy-like, but still she always had something to say. Little, harmless comments that didn't really mean much, but meant something in her life. She just so enjoyed somebody paying attention to her. Being how she was, and being the way kids are at that age, I don't think she had many friends. And now this. It's just that...that..."

In spite of the twelve feet between us, I could the tears building in her eyes. She turned her head away from me.

I am not good at consoling. Maybe it's because I'm a stone-cold cretin, hardened due to my multiple memories of blood and mangled humanity, some of which I fashioned. Maybe witnessing horrors by the gross belittles what they should do to you. Keep tight the blinders and in doing so keep ahold of sanity, I suppose it could be.

Or maybe I'm just a tongue-tied drifter, a man plodding onward day after day without a family, and thus no one awaiting a hug and soft words when the heart-breaking times come a-knocking at the kitchen door.

Or perhaps I'm just more than a bit inept.

I walked on a few more steps, looking straight ahead, before I finally came up with something to say to her.

"We have to hope for the best."

Lacy was good enough to nod her head.

"Yes," she said, "yes we do."

Let's go with inept.

Onward the line went, forward, heads down, some of those who brought walking sticks poking at the clumps of high weeds and briar patches.

We were probably two-thirds of the way across that long field when a harsh, angry voice broke into what, up to then, had been a hushed trek.

"What the god-damned hell you doing here, you bastard!"

Everyone turned to the river side of the line and gawked, including me.

Two men were at the end of the line where the relatively cleared aspect of the harvested cornfield gave way to the weeds and trees riding the top of the riverbank. One was a hulking middle-aged man, tall, heavyset, with a disheveled thatch of dark hair. He was the one who had shouted out the incensed query. He was bearing down on a bent over man who was a good bit smaller, a pot-bellied fellow with a round face below a salt and pepper head of hair that was missing a big part of the salt and pepper. You could see by his squeezed face that he wanted nothing to do with the brute hovering over him.

"Let me be," he was pleading, "let me be!"

"I want to know what the hell you're doing here," the big man shouted out again. "Where do you get the guts to show your face around here!"

He had his fists clenched and looked more than ready to use them.

I started to walk towards them, gauging the irate man as I closed in.

He was big and knew it. His bluster was as much to put on a show as it was for any other reason, as he kept taking quick glances about himself to see who was paying attention. And yet he seemed to have a true dislike of the other guy, a solidly fixed anger, making him a textbook bully holding what he thought to be a valid reason for kicking some butt, and the disposition to be glad to do it.

I knew he was big, but also knew he would be slow with any move, having what was a ponderous body that probably stored the overindulged remnants of too much beer and hot wings.

Still, he was big.

He continued berating the slighter man, pointing at him with his right hand while clenching his left.

I moved in behind him and stooped to gaze down at the weeds growing along the field's edge.

"Looky there," I said in a normal voice. "Would you look at that?"

The big dude came up straight and turned to face the river to look at whoever it was that interrupted his show, which put his left shoulder towards me. He threw a hard look my way.

"What the hell did you say?" he asked, throwing his right arm across his chest in order to jab a finger at me.

He obviously had a thing about hell.

I didn't answer or look directly at him, just pointed down at a tuft of weeds hugging the to the side of the field."

"Wow, that's bloodroot. Who'd a thought?"

"Huh?"

"Bloodroot. See, it's got those long leaves and those pathetic little flowers on top, but notice how the stems looks a little red."

I leaned over to jerk one plant out by the root, broke said root open and held it in his face.

"See the red juice coming out of it?"

I rubbed some onto the back of my left hand.

"Looks like blood, don't it? Thing is, it's supposed to be good for warts and other skin stuff, but I don't know about any of that. I do know the Indians used it for rituals and dying stuff and war paint, and for coughs and sore throats. Did you know that?"

The man didn't answer, only looked at me as if I was really, really irritating him, me having interrupted his big show.

"Thing is, friend," I went on, "don't you think this weed is as close as we need to come to seeing any blood today, considering what we're all here for."

He narrowed his eyes.

"You being a smart ass?" he asked.

I shrugged my shoulders.

"Just trying to make some useless conversation with an idiot."

I knew that would do it.

He was clenching his right fist for a possible strike and, earlier, with his left shoulder towards me, he had reached all the way across his body to fling a finger at me with is right arm, all of which made him righthanded.

He untensed a little to throw me off then threw a long armed, righthanded, roundhouse punch that I knew was coming. Leaned back just enough to let it fly by, caught his fist back-handed in my right palm just as it went by my face and flung it back the opposite way, throwing my entire body into the effort. His wobbly lunge, along with the counter motion I'd put against his effort, caused him to stagger over his own feet and make a rumpled landing into the weeds.

It happened fast, caught him completely by surprise, rocked the sneer off his face. He sat up and looked about at the gathering crowd.

The air went out of his hot-air sails.

He grunted and slowly stood up, before giving me the once over by way of an extended, jerky stare. I waited, eyeing him in return. I had him by a couple of inches, and now he knew I had a dose of the quick on my side. Finally, his eyes turned down, he shuffled off across the field, heading to where the vehicles were parked.

Troy was the first to speak.

"Wow!" he said

"S-h-h-h."

"But..."

"S-h-h-h."

I went to the man who had been threatened and helped him up.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I guess," he said with a gravelly voice.

"What was that all about?"

"I don't know, the bastard just started hollering at me. I don't think I've ever seen him before. He's just nuts, out of his damn mind! All I wanna do now is go home."

"Might not be a good idea, you could run into him. Why don't you just stay through the search and I'll follow you home."

"Well. Well, okay, I guess. But I'm staying in my car, no way I'm staying out here."

He seemed done with having a discussion. I didn't in any way want nor need a thank-you, though I was surprised when one wasn't offered. I noticed some of the other searchers giving him contemptuous glances, though none seemed inclined to say anything. On top of that, the man took time to glare at Troy as he walked away.

Seems glowering gawks were a dime a dozen in the cornfield that day.

Strolled back to my place in the line, next to Troy and Lacy, both of whom were closely watching me.

"Let's go," I said.

A police officer was making a hasty approach. He'd been nearby when I had my earlier chat with the Sheriff.

"What's going on?"

"Nothing," I said, "just a little disagreement."

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

He nodded and turned to walk away, leaving us to start the search again.

Chapter 2

Chicken pens and Ditches

It was a long, wide field, along with a lot of rock-and-tree jumbled Mississippi River coastline, so that it was late in the day before everything got covered. We had not found Myla Stevens and had not heard from any of the other parties that they had either. It all led to an odd feeling of relief, feathered with an aura of disappointment. Closure is a demanding emotion.

Even Troy had little to say as the three of us made our way back to the car.

The police officer who had been directed our group got everyone together and thanked one and all for their effort, then announced that the search for Myla would begin again first thing the next morning. Anyone interested in joining the search should show up at the county offices at eight After he was finished, I scoped out the vehicles as we got closer to the road and noticed one with a man sitting alone in one of them.

"I wonder if that's the man who got threatened?"

"Yeah, that's Mr. Kregal" Troy said. "He lives across the street from me. I used to mow his grass. He's got a pretty big yard and only paid me a couple of bucks, but I did it anyway. He don't like working or doing much else, and his brother is kinda retarded."

"Brother?"

"This is Clyde," Lacy put in, "and his brother is Clovis. They live alone by themselves. Parents have been gone for years now. I was probably Troy's age when they died right after each other. I think they got some out of town relatives, but no one around here. They stay to themselves and really don't have much to do with people. I mean, they'll wave at you when they see you, but that's about it."

"Noticed people giving this guy the evil eye. Anything to that?"

"Probably the dead dog," Troy said.

Came to a dead stop.

"Whoa. Dead dog?"

"Yeah, you see I was standing up by the street in front of their lawn and there was this dead dog and ─"

"Hold on, wait a sec. Let me talk with Clyde and then we can finish this conversation while we're on our way."

Gave them the keys to the Mazda before heading towards where Mr. Kregal sat waiting. Stopped outside of the car and gave him time to lower the window.

"Clyde, we're all supposed to meet back at the police station. You going to join us?"

He gave me an edgy look.

"Who told you my name?"

"I'm with Lacy Brewer and Troy Jaden."

"Oh, them."

That was the extent of it.

"Anyway, Clyde, how about going to the meeting with us?"

"No. No, I'm going home. Nobody else over there where you're going wants me around either, I can see that much. Don't know why the hell I thought it was a good idea to try and help out."

"Why was that man threatening you?"

"I just want to go home, don't feel like talking."

"Fair enough. I'll pull up and follow you to your place."

"Thought it over, and I figure I don't need to be followed. I can take care of myself. I'll get myself home, close the door and that'll be that."

All that said, he turned his head forward and rolled up the window. Yeah, the car was that old, and it looked like Clyde was covering the dents with dirt.

Made my way back to slide into the Mazda, where Lacy, Troy and Addie were waiting.

"That fellow's a bundle of joy. Have to invite him to my next afternoon tea."

"I think he's a good person," Lacy said. "He just has a coarse way about him."

We headed off behind the line of cars going to the police station.

"Okay, what about this dog business?"

Troy leaned forward in the back seat.

"Well, they got this old house that's looks pretty bad."

"Clyde and Clovis?"

"Yeah. There's a yard in front that I used to mow, but the sides and back have a bunch of trees and weeds and brushy stuff because there aren't any houses there. On the side of the house there's a small wooden shed with a tall, kinda square fenced-in place that goes up to the shed. There's a little door on that side and someone told me it was an old chicken pen that's not been used for a long time. For chickens, I mean. Sometimes Clyde goes out to the shed to sit and drink beer. He listens to music, you can hear it sometimes at night, and I think there's a TV in there too. Guess he wants to be by himself, what with Clovis being kind of weird. I think his yakking at the TV in the house drives Clyde crazy. Anyway, it all looks kind of old and scary, the old messed-up house and wood shed and ─"

"All right., Troy, I understand. But what about this dog business?"

I don't think he'd taken one breath up till then.

"So, I was going down the sidewalk by the street in front of the house and saw some hair or something in that pen. It's not that close to the sidewalk but I could see something, so I got closer. Had to go all the way to the fence. There was this dog in there and he was dead and all bloody and stuff, but the worse part was his head was close to the wire and when I got to looking I could see that his eyes were gone."

"Gone?"

"Yeah, his head was all torn up and his eyeballs were gone, just holes where they used to be. I almost puked!"

"I bet."

"Don't even like to think about it. That poor dog was just there and all messed up and...and ─"

"That's okay, Troy, you don't have to talk about it anymore."

"I'd heard that the first lady who was killed had her eyes jabbed out with a knife. That's sickening. Who would do it that way!"

"Who told you about the first lady?"

"I don't remember. Everybody was talking about it though."

Looked into the rearview mirror and saw him lean back into his seat, his young mind still working, his face wormed up and sad. Lacy sat next to little Addie, who was resting contentedly in her car seat.

"The thing with the dog was the talk of the town for a while," Lacy said. "Don't know that they ever figured out what it was all about, what with these women going missing."

"When was the deal with the dog?"

"Just maybe a day after Myla disappeared."

"Ever figure out who it belonged to?"

"No, must have been a stray."

"They got mad at me," Troy said.

"Who?" I asked.

"Clyde and Clovis, but mostly Clyde. I saw the dog and told the police and he got real mad at me."

"Did he say something to you?"

"No, not really. But he's been giving me looks ever since. I just don't go down his side of the street anymore."

"Good idea."

"Even if he wasn't mad at you Troy," Lacy said, "I don't think you should ever go near his house or into his yard. Everything's all run down and junked up, and neither one of them even try to keep it up. Their garage door has been open for I don't know how long, because it's broken, and there's a lot of junk in the garage and in the yard. You could get hurt just messing around there, and all that's not taking into account that Clyde is angry."

"The junk made the yard hard to mow,' Troy said, "which is why I stopped mowing it. I mean, he didn't pay me hardly nothing, which I guess is why it made him mad when I quit and he had to hire somebody who he had to pay more. That's twice he's been mad at me, though the dog deal made him maddest."

"Right," Lacy added, "which is why you just need to stay away."

"I really don't go around there too much, I just notice stuff."

We were getting back to the main drive where her car was parked. I pulled in behind it, turned off the motor and looked over the seat back at them.

"Quite a day, huh?" I said.

"Yes, it was," Lacy said. "Thanks for letting us tag along."

"No problem. Let me carry the baby to your car."

"Okay," she said, even though I knew she didn't need any help.

Picking Addie up was a pleasure. Miracles are always feather-weight.

Lacy belted the base down and I leaned in and locked Addie in place. Troy stood to the side and watched.

"Are you coming back tomorrow to join the search again?" Lacy asked me.

"Yeah, believe so."

"Can you pick me up again?" Troy asked Lacy.

"Sure, if it's alright with your Mom."

"Oh, she won't care."

"Well, I'll give her a call tonight just the same."

Seemed to be my turn to say something, but I hesitated. Why, I don't know, but then again, maybe I did.

"Well, okay," finally came out of me. "Guess I best be going. Promised the Sheriff I stop by his office. You two take care."

Lacy paused, then,

"Kent, that was wonderful what you did by the river, helping Clyde."

"Sure was," Troy said in a breathless voice.

"No, it wasn't. That big guy was all bluff."

"You had no way of knowing that, even if it was true," Lacy said. "And I really don't think he was bluffing. You stepped into something bad that was none of your business, and probably saved someone from being hurt."

"No, I ─"

"Oh, my God, man, what you did was wonderful and amazing and no one else made the effort, so just shut up and accept the fact!"

I was stunned at first, and then I had to smile. She had the sweetest, deep-blue eyes.

"A-a-a, sure, all right, thank you."

Now it was her turn to chuckle, before holding my face in a long, assessing gaze.

"Kent," she said after a while, "it's been a long day and you must be hungry. I would love for you to come to my place for supper, if you don't have anything else planned."

"Oh, I don't want to inconvenience you."

"I wouldn't have asked if it was going to be inconvenient. Believe me, everything's already been planned, easy as spaghetti and a salad."

"Well, I don't want to barge in on everybody."

"It's only me and Addie."

"Oh, I see. But, are you sure?"

"Do I have to say, oh, my God man, again?"

"No, please don't."

"Good."

She gave me her address and directions.

"Thank you, Lacy. I'll be there after I see the Sheriff."

"I'll get things ready."

I noticed Troy taking in both Lacy and me with a wide-eyed gawk.

"You see me again?" Troy finally asked.

"I'm sure I will, Troy, probably tomorrow. And if something comes up and I don't make it, maybe I'll just come down again sometime anyway."

"Great! We could talk some more about your working undercover, or maybe we can go for a hike, I like to hike, or you could see my fossil rock collection. Maybe we could ─"

"Nice day, isn't it?"

"Huh?"

"Promise I'll be back, okay?"

"Okay."

I watched the three of them ride off in the little Ford, then started across the street towards the county office building, my thoughts strangely diverse.

Had arrived in Scott City that day as far down in the dumps as yawning dumps would allow, just hours after pondering the notion of depositing a jacketed projectile into my addlebrained head, only to be saved at the last moment by a miracle call from a friend.

The task he had eventually convinced me to take on that day, searching for a missing young woman, looked to have nothing to it in the way of brightening my demeanor, so sad was the task.

But, surprise of pleasant surprises, a pretty young lady, small yet formidable, had asked me to keep her company that evening for what would no doubt be for merely a short respite, yet a needed time of companionship just the same. And along with that, a young boy had entertained me with his youthful gumption, another unexpected, grin-worthy occurrence.

And so, in spite of the tragedy buried within my reason for being in Scott City, I felt a warmth, a tenuous elation, ragged and hanging by a thread, but there just the same.

One must always remain grateful for the teensy bright moments.

Sheriff Charley Weeks was a busy man when I entered the large meeting room inside just outside his office. County cops, city cops, state cops and a myriad group of suited folks, federal cops most likely, were buzzing around the room, the Sheriff being trapped in the middle. Worked my way to a section of wall just inside the entry door.

It took a while for things to settle down and the group to start breaking up, close to an hour, I figured. It was then that Weeks motioned for me to come over.

"Let's go into my office," he said.

He started to close the door behind us.

"Whew, I'm not used to all this," he said after he did. "I'm used to drunks threatening their wife, or visa-versa. Or maybe a farmer complaining his neighbor plowed two feet across the boundary line, or a neighbor cranking up his rock-and-roll. That's what I'm used to."

"It looks to me like you're doing a hell of a job, and I'm not blowing smoke."

He plopped down in a chair behind his desk and began rubbing his eyes.

"Maybe. Still, anyway Kent, thanks for coming back."

After he finished his eyes-rub, he leaned forward onto the desk.

"One of the deputies told me you had a little excitement during the search."

"Wasn't much. Things have a tendency to get tense with something like this."

"You did well though. The guy doing the bullying is Frankie Stone. He's been in trouble before for, well shit, bullying. Deep down, I feel he's harmless for the most part, but he has been in several fights we had to look into, bar fights, that kind of thing, though in each case the person he whipped up on never pressed charges. Thing is, folks usually back down from him."

I shrugged. He went on.

"The guy he was after, Clyde Kregal, has kind of been looked at with suspicion lately and, in a small city like this, that makes for a red-hot spotlight."

"The dead dog on his property?"

"You know about that?"

"Heard it from Troy Jaden and Lacy Brewer. They rode with me to the search."

"Lacy's a sweetie, just don't make the mistake of underestimating her. And Troy's a good kid, sharp as hell."

"I'd say you're right on both counts."

He got up and walked to the front of his desk.

"Kent, let me fill you in on things. Here we had Misty Dane murdered and found on the side of the road, and then a month later Janice Thompson shows up dead in the river. Then Myla comes up missing. Needless to say, things are tense, people are scared to death and who could blame them. Then Troy comes riding in on his bike and tells us about the dead dog next to that rotten shed. Says it looks like it had been mutilated. Said it was all beat up. Checked it out and, yes, it had been tortured, all cut up with a knife or something. Eyes had been jerked clean out, neat as can be, and were nowhere to be found. Damnedest thing I ever saw. And of course, in a place like this, word can't help but get around. Things got tense real fast."

I nodded.

"Everybody's watched TV, learned all about serial killers, and by now know the bit about how they often start out by torturing animals."

"Right. Add to that the fact that Clyde Kregal is a little coarse and hardcore, and the dog is on the property where he and his brother live, all of it leading to people to come to unfounded conclusions. In the end, both of them denied doing anything to the dog. I had to have proof one of them did it, and the proof just wasn't there. Of course, that hasn't stopped a lot of people to come to the conclusion that Clovis did in the dog, so why couldn't he also be killing people, with Clyde letting him get away with it? Like you said, there's a lot of serial killer stuff on television."

"Troy said Misty's eyes were slashed out."

"Right. Somebody let that information get out somehow, and it obviously added to people's suspicions about Clovis. Like I said earlier, in a small town like this."

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Just exactly what is it about Clovis that would make people think that?" I asked.

"Clovis. Well, strange is as good a word as any. No, maybe that's not the politically correct was to say it. Let's just leave it with he's slow on the uptake. Medium height and chubby, like Clyde, easy to see they're brothers. Dresses in baggy clothes and doesn't do much more than watch TV and walk up and down the sidewalks. Probably has the mindset of somebody Troy's age, only not near as smart as Troy. Walks down the sidewalk, mumbles to himself, sings gibberish, makes folks queasy. A couple of times he's stopped and stared too long at young girls, made them so uneasy that their parents reported it. Didn't hurt anybody, mind you, never even talked to any of them, just stared. I think he's harmless but, who knows? Still, since it was reported, I had to go talk to him. I don't even think he even remembered doing it. But put that with the butchered dog, along with two of the victims living close to him, and people are giving him and his brother some hard-assed looks. Frankie probably thought he would be looked up to by kicking Clyde's butt."

"Talk to either one of them about Misty and Janice's murders?"

"Had a short conversation with Clyde about Clovis over the phone. Figured I needed to see what he had to say before I tried Clovis, seeing as how Clovis is. When I informed Clyde I had some questions concerning his brother he got all worked up as you'd expect he would, said it was all about that fucking dog that they didn't know nothing about. You got to realize, he's spent his life taking care of Clovis, calls him Little Bro. Got him calmed down by telling him he wasn't the only person who was being asked questions and that I was just following procedure. He claimed that Clovis never left the house the day Misty was murdered, which meant nothing to me. But the kicker was he said Clovis was out of town from the day before Janice Thompson was killed through the three days after. Seems they have an aunt who lives in the St. Louis area, Crestwood to be exact, and that she feels sorry for Clovis and would have him up to her house a couple of times a year just to give him a change of scenery. I called the aunt and she verified he was there in that timeframe. That kind of blew Clovis out as a serial killer out the window. Still, when Myla came up missing, I wanted nothing more than to search their place, but no way could I get a warrant on the dog deal by itself."

"Don't know if it means anything, but did you know that Clyde is real pissed off at Troy? Troy says he's been giving him the evil eye, for ratting about the dog, I guess."

"Didn't know that, though it doesn't surprise me. Clyde can be a hateful sort. Doesn't have many friends that I know of, on disability from a factory injury. Doesn't do much but hole himself at this place and drink beer, and every other day or so he goes to the Bottoms Up, just down the road on the west of the interstate, to have more beer. Think I ought to look into things?"

"You know him better than me."

"Well, if he hasn't actually yelled at Troy or threatened him, I might let it be a while. Clyde's a brooder and touchy about his little brother, even though he's been heard giving him hell himself sometimes, but as far as I know he's never physically attacked anybody. Still, Troy needs to tell me if things get worse."

"I'll see he gets the message. Anybody else you got in your mind as maybe someone to look at?"

He shook his head.

"No, at least no one in town. Could be it's an outsider. All I know is it's frustrating as hell. Got all kinds of experts here and they're working their asses off but, so far, nothing much to speak of. That's why I thought maybe you'd give a little input."

"You got folks who know more about this kind of case that I ever will. I'm ex-DEA."

"No killings?"

"A few, yes."

"Then you got experience too, and remember, you got Wade Phillips vouching for your smarts."

I had to shake my head and smile.

"Good old Wade."

"I got two women dead and one missing and I'm not fool enough to believe she's not tied into the other two, though I hope to God she shows up alive tomorrow. So, what I'm looking for, Kent, is anybody who's had experience to give me input. You can never have too much."

"Okay, where do you want to start?"

He reached into a drawer, pulled out a folder and put it on top of his desk.

"At the beginning. Here's some photos of Misty Danes crime scene. You can spread them on the table over there if you like."

I still wasn't feeling comfortable about being the new guy on the block, but there was no way to could turn him down, though I was sure nothing would ever come of my looking. Took the photos over to spread them out in neat rows on the table.

First shot: a long view of the county road where she was found. Whoever had pulled over had put the driver's side tires maybe two feet over onto the tall grass, which was laid over by the run of the vehicle. The runs were straight at first but moved more erratically side to side as the they moved away and back onto the road. Held the shot up for Charley to see, he being still behind his desk.

"This taken from the rear of the vehicle, where he pulled over and then back onto the road?"

"Yes."

"Not wet enough for a tread mold?"

"Sad to say, no."

The shot also showed that the bank dropped away just a few inches away from where the tire run was.

Next shot: a downward view of the bank from above, from the road's edge, at the point of the tire run where it went from straight to curvy. It was easy to pick out the bent over tall grass on the downward incline where someone had made their way down to the bottom of the ditch. It was a steep bank that dropped maybe twelve, thirteen feet to the ditch's narrow bottom, where it leveled off before rising again to meet the edge of a woods.

A body was laying at the low point of the ditch. The run of mashed-down grass and weeds went down to the body.

The next four shots: pictures of the body, from different angles. She was clothed, dressed in shorts, along with a sleeveless white top that was heavily tainted by blood. Her tennis shoes were blue. One of the shots was from directly above, looking down onto her torso and face.

She was lying face-up with blood on the side and top of her head. The area in and about her eyes was a mess, slashed and mangled, fragments and liquid of the eyeballs mixed in with the blood.

Couldn't help but to swallow hard, grind my teeth. She looked to be a petite little thing, nineteen and soft and unblemished, except for her mangled face and head.

Except.

Gazed intently at the picture a long while before I could find my voice.

"Clothes on. Wasn't sexually assaulted, I'm guessing?"

"No."

"How about Janice Thompson?"

"Her time in the water made it a tough job for the pathologist, but in the end his decision was she wasn't."

"Said earlier you had nothing, which I'm guessing means no fingerprints or anything else."

"No prints, but Misty's hands and arms were swabbed for DNA, along with taking samples from under her fingernails. Be a while before we get the results. With Janice, the time in the water again."

"Cause of death?"

"Both women were struck on the head. Something round. Bat, pipe, something like that. Misty hit multiple times on the back and side of the head, died from blunt force trauma. Janice was hit once on the forehead, no doubt knocked unconscious, then dumped in the river. Lungs full of water, succumbed to drowning."

"Her eyes?"

"Slashed out, like Misty's. The sick son of a bitch."

"Suppose he doing that because he couldn't stand the eyes open and staring at him after they were dead?"

"That's what the behavior profilers are saying."

"Any idea where she was dumped in at?"

"Searched the shore for miles and found nothing. She was out jogging on the north side of town and Misty was walking home on the south side. Nobody saw anything."

"I'm figuring you haven't released the cause of death, or the business with the eyes."

"Right. As far as I know, how they died still hasn't got out there, but someone let the eyes' business get away from them, which started all the rumors about Clovis Kregal. Pisses me off, but I guess some things are too terrible to hold in. If I found out who did it I'd chew their ass out, but don't know that I'd fire them."

Ran my eyes back over to the picture of the tire tracks moving away along the edge of the road to the point where the vehicle climbed back up onto the road. Switched my gaze to the laid over grass and weeds from someone making their way down the bank. Heaved a sigh.

Experts from the state and national level scurrying like ants all over the place, carrying toes to be respected, not stepped on. Especially by someone like me, a fired ex-DEA agent without the sense the good Lord gave green apples. Once again, my inclination was to confess ignorance, apologize for wasting the Sheriff's time, and drag my worn butt out the door. Came to the conclusion to do it, then ─

What had Sheriff weeks said earlier in the day?

'I just got two words for you, Kent. Wade Phillips.'

Holy crap.

"What you thinking?" Charley said from behind me.

"I don't know, a couple of things."

He walked on over.

"Show me."

"Heard that one of your officers found the body."

"Yes. He was studying things enough that he picked up where somebody had pulled off the road and thought to take a look. Stood on the road to look down to see the body, and had the foresight to walk roundabout to get to her without fouling any of the tire tracks or the evidence of someone going down the hill. Course, he found her dead. Young guy, and I'm proud of him, he did well."

"That he did."

I picked up the picture of the trail going down the hill.

"County road, right? Maybe not too well-travelled but you never know when somebody might show up. Still, he took the time to carry her to the bottom of the ditch which, given how steep it was, couldn't have been an easy thing to do. I'm wondering. Did he know her? Have feelings for her? Felt too guilty about what he did to her to just toss her into the ditch like garbage."

"One of the FBI profilers wondered about that."

"That could maybe make our guy local."

"That's what he figured too. Not many serial killers snatching up random victims have that kind of sympathy for them, that's a fact. But you said a couple of things."

Put down the first photograph and grabbed the one with the long shot of where the tires mashed down the vegetation as the driver pulled back onto the road.

"Whoever it was pulled off easy enough, I guess, but you can tell he went a longways before he managed to get back on the road, given that the starting point for driving away would be from where he had walked down the bank."

"Okay, so?"

"Look at the tire trail in the tall grass as he went on his way. He swerved towards the road and then back four times, the way it looks. It's an asphalt road, no curb, and there was no rain to make things tricky. Why did it take him so long, with so many tries, to get himself where he wanted?"

"I don't know. Maybe he was nervous."

"Could be nervous, I guess, but wouldn't a nervous person with experience driving maybe have trouble because he was trying to gun it to get away fast? Which would be more likely to have caused the tires to dig in and rut up the grass and ground. But that didn't happen here, the grass is laid over as if he was moving away slow. It's almost like he wasn't so much in a hurry to get up onto the road, but more so like he wasn't sure about doing it."

He scrutinized the photograph a long while before speaking.

"You know what, I see what you mean. Makes sense. So where are you going with that?"

"Sounds crazy, but the fact is you have no real suspects at all, but what you do have is this deal with the dead dog at the Kregal place, to go along with Clovis Kregal's quirk about staring at the girls, neither thing being something to be ignored. And even though they're the only factors we have, and flimsy as hell, I got to wonder about what you said about Clovis Kregal. The way to put it would maybe be would be that his mental and emotional development is limited, right? Would that be a good way to describe him?"

"Sure, that sounds about right."

"So, I'm wondering. Does Clovis have a driver's license?"

He creased his forehead and turned to me.

"You know, I can't say for sure, but I doubt it. All I've ever seen Clovis do is walk around with no real place to go. Never seen him driving that old car they have, only Clyde."

"Maybe he's never had a reason before."

"Damn," he said.

"Another thing, going back to the killer taking the time to carry Misty down into the ditch, an action that would take a while. It had to have left plenty of time for someone else to drive up out of nowhere and see the whole thing. What person who thinks logically would do that, take that big of a chance? It makes no sense, unless you're just not thinking it out, or don't have the mentality to think it out."

"Damn," he said again.

"I mean, Charley, it's all a longshot, but it's a thought, and maybe something worth checking into."

"I can talk to both of them, though I have no doubt what kind of reaction I'd get from Clyde. I also doubt he'd let me talk to Clovis one on one. I'd love to get permission to look through that old junker they have, but I doubt I'd get permission to do that either, even if Clovis is innocent. Clyde wouldn't go for it and, like I said, I'm a mile away from a search warrant."

"Probably two. I mean, this is pretty far-fetched speculation. Question. The first two women were out and about when they were abducted, am I right about that?"

"Yes. Misty Dane was walking home from a friend's house, late in the afternoon. Janice was out jogging, again in the afternoon. You'd think somebody would have saw something but, in a small place like this, it's not unusual for the streets and sidewalks to be empty, especially that time of day before folks get off work."

"Myla Stevens was taken after dark."

"Yeah, and there's the puzzle. Parents had left her in a locked house while they went to church, something they'd done lots of time in the past. She's mildly retarded, but was more than capable to stay by herself for a short time. No evidence of a brake-in, looked like she'd just opened the door. No sign of struggle, half eaten bowl of popcorn in front of a turned-on TV."

"Must have known whoever it was."

"Looked like it to us."

"She knows the Kregals?"

"Probably so. Everybody knows everybody and they live close together, that small-town thing again."

"Think she would she open her door for Clovis?"

He brought a hand up to his lower lip and tugged on it.

"Who knows. But you would have to think that after the deal about parents reporting his propensity to gawk at young girls, and that other thing with the dog, her parents would have told her in no uncertain terms to have nothing to do with Clovis. They're very protective of her."

"Could you ask them?"

"I think I could and I think I should, though I'd be leaning to tell them to keep the conversation between us, for now at least. No idea if they would, but we don't need any more bullies crawling out of the bushes like that jerk today."

"This is hard to make sense of. Two women murdered. No iron-clad suspects, but it looks worth the time to at least take a look at Clovis, even though he seems to be out of the picture because he was out of town when the second lady was killed. Now a third woman is missing, maybe another victim, maybe not, but one thing seems sure, there doesn't seem to be a chance in hell she would have opened the door for Clovis, another something that seems to eliminate him.'

I had to stop and shake my head.

"Maybe all we've been talking about is just a waste of time," I said then, "and in the end we're dealing with an unknown sicko we have no idea about. Sorry if I muddied the waters, Charley."

"You've muddied nothing, Kent, you've given me more to think about than anyone has so far. Wade was right about your seeing things others don't."

"Just don't put too much into those things."

"As a favor, will you hang around a while?"

"Be back tomorrow for the search."

"Great. Thanks for the input, and we'll be talking again, believe me. Got any plans tonight?"

I nodded.

"A leisurely sit-down meal."

Chapter 3

(Conversations and a Smile)

Following Lacy's directions I went south on Route K probably less than a mile to where a County Road N turned left onto an overpass that crossed over the railroad tracks. Went past a post office, a hardware store, four streets and up a short rise until I came to the fourth street, East Beech. Turned left and started counting houses. The second last house on the left was Lacy's, the last was where Troy lived. Went past Lacy's home and stopped in front of Troy's in order to take in the place across the street, the last house on that side. Slowed to give it a long once over.

It was the Kregal place, of the man-boy with limited mental development, his grouchy brother, and the mangled dog.

It sat farther back from the street than the neighbor's house, considerably more, the front of the house being several feet back of the house closest to it. Since the Kregal home was the last on the block on that side, the areas behind and to the left of it broke out into open countryside. The sections nearest their place had been allowed to grow into a ragtag wooded expanse, the trees stunted and closely grouped, the in-between parts a mixture of weeds and scrubby vegetation.

It was also lower than the neighbors' house as the ground in front of it sloped way from the city sidewalk. I had to crane my neck to get a view of things.

The garage door was open and somehow the old, sad and dented vehicle Clyde had been driving was half-pulled into a just big enough space, the lack of room due to mish-mash piles of stuff: boards and cardboard boxes, a barrel or two, buckets upon buckets, long-handled digging tools, what looked to be piles of newspapers and other miscellaneous papers, all covered with a heavy sprinkling of good old fashion garbage. A small push mower had been forced into a tight spot amidst all of it, looking to be, for all extent and purposes, cowering with fear.

The front yard was more weeds than grass and, due to Troy's firing no doubt, all the green stuff was just short of knee high. Maybe twenty feet to the left of the house sat the ageless chicken pen. The wood planking that made up the exterior was unpainted and hanging by a thread, with the longstanding wooden door canted downward from the hinges. The building was probably twelve feet long and it took two steps to get up into it as if there was a narrow open area between floor and ground. The 'as if' was needed due to the fact that the ground growth was too tall for one to be sure. A tall, ragged fence ran out from the right side of the chicken house and made a square of about the same size as the building. There was an opening on the side of the shed where a small chicken-sized hinged door had been, but said door was long gone. Scrubby trees and weeds overran the entire perimeter of the fence.

Even though the pitiable door to the henhouse was as closed as far as it could be made to close, and it was still not yet dark, I could pick up what looked to be a light coming from around the edges of it.

Maybe a few brews being drained, along with a little old-time rock and roll, to help get past what had been an unpleasant day?

Put the Mazda into reverse and nudged the gas pedal, backing up to stop in front of Lacy and Addie's home. As I did, I saw young Mr. Troy Jaden was exiting the front door of the small one-story house wherein he lived. His eyes widened when he saw that it was really me, and he jumped past the steps of the porch to land on the sidewalk.

I exited old reliable and began making my way across the street. Troy caught up with me at the hallway point.

"Kent, you're here!"

"It's me, alright."

I continued walking with him bouncing along beside me.

"Here for supper with Lacy, huh?" he asked before biting his bottom lip.

"Yes."

"I bet she's a good cook."

"I wouldn't doubt it."

"Course it's only spaghetti. I can even fix spaghetti."

"I bet."

"You got to be careful how long you boil it. You want it soft but not mushy soft."

"Nice day, isn't it?'

"Huh?"

We were at the head of Lacy's sidewalk. He stopped there as if an invisible barrier had materialized in front of him.

"Well, okay, guess I'll be going," he said.

"Maybe see you tomorrow, buddy."

"Yeah, my mom said I could go help the search again!"

He turned and made his way back to his house, while I stepped up to Lacy's front door. Neat little place, flower beds in front that contrasted well with the clean white siding. The front door opened before I got to it.

"You made it," she said.

"That I did."

"Come on in, I'm heating up the spaghetti sauce. You do eat meat, don't you?"

"As long as it's not quivering."

"That's gross."

"Sorry."

She had thrown off the jeans and light top she'd worn during the search and replaced it with a wispy, flowered summer dress and some cute, blue slip-on tennis shoes. She was freshly showered, hair freshly curled, and had the pure scent of pretty. Gotta admit, I might have gawked a little.

"I think I'm a little underdressed," I said, "if that's the right word."

"You mean you didn't run home and change? Shame on you."

Addie was laying in the middle of the living room on a little cushion thing that had some rounded pieces of plastic coming out of it that held several tiny animals that dangled over her. She seemed most interested in the little, gray elephant.

"That's a cute baby."

"I know. Come on in the kitchen if you want. She'll be fine and, if she isn't, she'll let us know."

The kitchen was small and full of clean, brushed-aluminum appliances. Lacy went to the stove and stirred her sauce. She nodded towards a bottle of red wine on the counter top with an empty glass next to it. Her glass was already filled and by the stove.

"Help yourself," she said. "You do drink, don't you?"

"Only whenever I can."

She smiled.

"You're a weird funny."

I poured some of the wine and gave it a try. Good stuff, sweet, yet a trifle dry.

"I saw Troy escorting you to my sidewalk."

"Yep. Good kid. He has a thing for you, you know."

"I'm a woman, of course I know. How did you know?"

"I'm a man."

"I see. Thing is, I think it's a light crush. He'll move past it once a girl in his class starts eyeing him enough that he'd notice."

She finished her stirring and took the spaghetti sauce off the burner.

"Troy's a good kid and I like his gumption. I have no idea what his IQ is, but it's way up there. I mean, he comes up with stuff I've never even heard of. I try to help him out and give him a ride whenever I can. His Mom works at a quick shop and she never knows what hours she'll be working. Nights sometimes, sometimes day, sometimes double shifts. She's a good enough person and I know she loves Troy, but she's not that interested in what he does or where he goes. Could be, being a mother, she has no idea how to relate to a boy, but I think it's more she just doesn't want to be bothered with it. Or maybe, what with her work, she's just tired. Troy acts like it doesn't bother him, and with him it's hard to tell if it's an act or not. He just goes and does."

"The father?"

"Left years ago, when Troy was probably three or so. Nice enough guy but a lot like Jean, that's his mother's name. He was there but kind of into himself."

"Maybe that's why they separated, they being just too much alike. That can be worse than being nothing alike."

"Too true. Let's have our salad into the living room. We'll sit at that small table next to Addie."

We munched our salads and talked and sipped wine. The conversation came easy.

We went over the search, talked about her work.

She was office secretary for a real estate firm. An older lady at the front end of East Beech Street looked after Addie. She'd once ran a small daycare business, but had eventually quit it, though she was more than happy now to take pay to watch this one little girl. And in watching her, spoiled the baby, so said the baby's Mom.

Lacy then talked about how she liked living in Scott City and was brokenhearted about what was going on in her town. It was enough to make you cry she said. Then she turned the subject to me.

"You said you worked for the DEA. Undercover, I heard. That sounds dangerous."

"Most times not."

"Do you always downplay the bold things you do?"

I shrugged.

"What I did was no different than the cop who pulls over speeders on the interstate, or the brainy officer who runs the numbers that catch up with whosever embezzled the bank. It all gets hairy sometimes, but your training lets you handle whatever comes your way. I'm not downplaying it, I just don't see it as something special."

"Where did you work undercover?"

"All over the country. Last few years we were working in a joint task force with Mexican authorities on both sides of the Texas, Mexican border."

"Undercover?"

"Yes."

"Oh my, that sounds dangerous. And don't tell me it wasn't."

"Okay, yes, it did get scary at times."

"Can you tell me anything about it?"

"No, I'd rather not."

"I knew that was coming so, okay Mr. Baker, I won't push it. But you're not with the DEA anymore, did I understand that right?"

I nodded.

"Why did you leave?"

"Oh, the time had come. And, let's just say it was a mutually agreed upon separation."

"How so?"

"We agreed to disagree."

I didn't want to tell her that my bosses considered me a loose cannon ─ too quick to lower the boom, too quick to make dead meat of the dead meat makers. In my mind, I was being too quick to try and save my life.

Or, well, that's how I saw it.

I could tell she wanted to delve deeper into the conversation, but could also see she was decent enough to realize it was time to ease off.

"The traveling must have been hard on your family."

"All I had were my grandparents, who raised me. They understood why I wasn't around, and I got back to visit them as often as I could."

"Mom, dad, wife?"

"My mother had me while she was in high school, and ran off when I was a baby, without saying who my father was. I was raised by my grandparents. Never got to know my mother and father."

That part of the story was a bald-ass lie. I had just recently been emmeshed in some deadly incidents concerning my parents who, up until then, I really had not known. A downer to the extreme. Hence my forlorn visit to the cow pasture with the idea of jerking a trigger one last time.

Lacy had put down her fork and leaned back in her chair to study me.

"That's so sad."

"My grandparents were great. I grew up on farm and had a blast, nothing wrong with that."

"Wife?"

I shook my head.

"Never?"

Shook my head again.

"Seems to me your making a valiant stab at being a loner," she said.

Had to smile.

"I was busy, travelling. Makes the possibility of a married life a tough go, but I chose to put my life into my profession, so I got no regrets there. You?"

"You mean have I ever been married?"

"Yes."

"No, Kent, in that respect we've both been valiant."

"Well, one thing, you got a beautiful little girl. That puts you a mile ahead of me."

"She's my life. All things revolve around Addie."

"I imagine her dad feels the same way."

"Yeah, he thinks she's really cute too, but he's only seen her a couple of times. It works better that way."

"How so?"

"Addie was had through in vitro fertilization. Her dad is an old high school friend of mine who I felt was a good choice for a donor, and we both agreed he needs to be anonymous for now. Surprised?"

"Not really surprised, more in the way of curious."

She took a few seconds to mull things over.

"I guess I'd have to call myself an imperfect perfectionist. I've had a few relationships, but none that were close enough to be just right, and I desperately need just right. I can't really explain why, but I do, and I've no problem taking my time getting there. Heck, thing is I may never get there. If that happens, though, it's like you said, there'd be no regrets. But the end result is, I had to have my Addie, and so I did. Goodness, Mr. Baker, you're easy to talk to."

"Call me Kent, and let me say I understand where you're coming from. I also think you've done well in having Addie, and in raising her. Nothing wrong with two special ladies by themselves in a beautiful house like this."

"Thank you. So, tell me, are you also in a quest to find just right?"

"I suppose maybe I am, just never thought of it that way before. But, know what, what say we talk about something really, really meaningful?"

She laughed.

"Why, yes, let's do, since we've known each other for such a long time."

And so, we did. We verbally flipped through the mind-pictures of our childhoods, a pleasant jaunt indeed. Then we talked politics a while, until we decided that it was nothing worthwhile to talk about. We fell into discussing our favorite movies. My pick was anything directed by David Lean. Hers was anything sappy enough to make her cry, to which I asked, did she really find pleasure in crying? She was going into a detailed critique about how fulfilling it was to shed tears during movies when Addie started fussing.

"Whoops," she said, "somebody's hungry."

"She's had a long day too."

"Make yourself at home, there's a remote on the end table by the couch. This'll only take a few minutes and she'll be asleep."

"I don't want to be in the way ─"

"Go sit down."

"Righto."

She, of course, was right. In only a couple of minutes she was back.

"She's snoring like a drunken sailor."

"Really?"

"No."

"Oh, okay."

"You really don't know much about babies, do you?"

"I know that their short and cute, that they leave nasty deposits in their diapers, and that their innocence is to be greatly admired. That's about it."

I hadn't even turned the TV on. She sat down in a cushioned chair at the end of the coach and we continued making conversation over a couple of refilled glasses of wine.

Before we realized it, it was after ten o'clock.

"Guess I need to be going," I said.

She walked me to the door.

"Thanks a lot for the delicious meal, and the company."

"Seemed like the thing to do for a valiant loner."

I put my hand on the doorknob, then stopped and turned to her.

"You know, if you want, I could drop by and pick you and Troy up tomorrow and we could go to the search together. Parking was at a premium today."

"That would be fine, thank you."

We settled on a time, after which I began twisting the knob again, but did not get to the point of opening the door.

Myla Stevens had disappeared from a home but a few blocks away, disappeared and was, as yet, unfound.

Along with that, there was my conversation with Sheriff Charley Weeks about how grisly were the deaths of Misty Dane and Janice Thompson, something Lacy did not know. And although she was aware of the dead dog, and Clyde's burning anger towards Troy, she also did not know about the deeper suspicions Charley and I had come around to concerning the Kregals, the top of whose house I could easily have seen, one house down Beech Street and across the road, had I opened the door and tried.

But though she knew nothing, I was well aware about said suspicions, along with the grisly deaths.

And my stomach rolled thinking about them.

"Got your phone on you?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Take it out."

She did.

"Put this number in your contacts. It's my number."

Then, after she had,

"Lacy, you keeping your doors locked?"

"Yes, always have, and especially now."

"Double check that you do it tonight, and from now on until this thing's settled."

"I will."

"Dial nine-eleven at the first hint of anything that doesn't look right. But if you need anything else, feel scared about anything, fell uneasy about anything, call me, day or night."

Her face softened.

"That's kind of you, Kent. But I don't want to be a bother."

"Just do it."

"Is there something you've found out?"

"Just do it."

She studied me, then nodded.

"Alright, yes, I promise I will."

"Great...see you tomorrow."

This time I did open the door to step out. Waited on her porch until I heard the door being locked. Walked to my car and looked back to see her standing at a window with the shade opened enough to gaze through it. I waved and she waved back, before putting the shade back into place.

I turned around in her driveway and headed back down East Chestnut Street towards the main drag. Glanced over at the Kregal property as I did so.

The windows of the house held a hazy, thrusting glow from the dim lamps beyond the curtains that covered them, as if a hovering unknown floated within.

A stronger light bored its way into the remorseless night from around the tattered perimeter of the door on the frontside of the timeworn chicken house, as if it was frantic to breakout.

The Kregal boys weren't together, but were ensconced within a dismal proximity, two lots down from Lacy Brewer and her tiny Addie.

Chapter 4

Floating frogs & a little wine...

That night I sprawled upon the bed within my duplex, staring into the pitch-black darkness that hid my ceiling from view, trying to figure out just what the hell was happening.

A day before I had been in a pasture, plunking my mind onto the fact that it was past time to meet the hot pitchfork that awaited me. Had no idea other than ending it all was the thing I most needed to do. Rid my skull of my brain, purge the cruel world of me.

Then came a timely call from an exceptional old fart, who in calling had set me to what was a most depressive task, all with the notion of using it to drag me out of the doldrums. Tongue in cheek logic there, don't you think?

And yet, it worked.

Two women dead and one sweet girl missing. I could not change what had happened to the first two women and, as part of the search, had had no luck in finding the third.

Yet, though I had been practically dragged screaming into Sheriff Charley Weeks' office, once there I had mustered up a need, a shadowed fulfillment, while looking at the crime scene photos. The pondering of what they meant, the digging into them in an effort to help out, if only a little, into also digging a deep, deep hole in which to bury the bastard behind the carnage.

To once again have that rush, the thrill in once again having a hand in putting down another blood-spattered, sicko beast that our land is so easily capable of spawning.

Did that make me strange? Morbid?

Maybe. But it also made me come back to life, in the context of finding a worthwhile purpose that would set me to walking on two legs again.

And beyond that, there was still more to the day, more to the turnaround.

There was the absolutely lovely and bright young lady, lugging around her absolutely gorgeous little daughter.

Then there was also the lonely, bouncy young boy who I felt, given enough time, would drive me crazy, leaving me to also feel I had a strong need to give him the time.

So, what in the world was going on? Mr. Ceiling, whom I can't see, tell me! What the hell good are you?

Something else I couldn't see, was my face. But I didn't need to see it to know I was smiling again.

Why?

You can't blot out the dark past, nor should one want to. You can only do your utmost to improve the yet to come, something I had grudgingly come to realize.

Luck of the ignorant, Kent Baker was back.

Early the next morning I was back on East Beech Street. I pulled into the Brewer driveway and waited. It didn't take long. Troy came running out of the house next door, once more hopping completely over the porch steps. He was almost to my vehicle when I saw someone else exit his home.

It was a lady who really wasn't very tall, but whose extreme slenderness made her look taller. She followed Troy's trail, but made use of the steps in doing so.

Troy made it up to me just as I closed the car door.

"Kent, I'm ready! Do you think we'll find Myla today?'

"No way of knowing, but I hope so."

The lady made it up to us.

"Oh, this is my mom," Troy said.

"Mrs. Jaden," I said, holding out a hand.

Her hand felt like a several traces of nothing, being as meatless as the rest of her. Her hair was cut short, a trifle rigid, and held a weary version of black trying to hold off the white. Her slimness kept her almost flat, for the most part, front and back. Her face was sharp-cornered and held no makeup. She didn't look sick or anything like that, she mostly looked just plain worn, or maybe just plain morose.

"Mr. Baker, I've heard a lot about you."

"Call me Kent. And I can't hardly believe Troy has been talking."

She let forth a chinking little laugh.

"Oh, yes, I'm sure you find that hard to believe. But thank you for taking him along today. It's good for him to be doing something like this. It's just terrible that Myra is missing and I do so hope she's found. I'd love to go myself, but I have to work two shifts today."

"Well, we'll keep an eye on him, Jean."

Troy hadn't even looked at his mother as we chatted, and never said anything to her as she turned and strode away. It seemed to me that he was, in the worse way, just wanting her to leave. Seemed, that is. Could have been wrong, it was just that I had, up until then, never seen him quietly frozen in place. It wasn't until she entered her house that he talked again.

"She works all the time," he stated.

He had a pair of binoculars hanging from his neck. I nodded towards them.

"Troy, I see you've come prepared for anything. Wish I'd thought of bringing mine."

"You never know what you might need to solve a crime, right?"

"Right."

It was then that I heard a sound from across the street.

A stocky man, probably five-ten or so in height, was traipsing down the sidewalk. He looked to be in his forties, maybe, though it was hard to tell because he was so...so...I don't know. Strange wouldn't be quite the right word. Maybe enigmatic would be a better fit.

After all, his hair was mish-mashed across and about his head. He had several days growth of an uneven beard twisting about his face. He carried a belly bulge, and was dressed in loose fitting and rumpled slacks with half rolled cuffs. His leather belt was latched into a hole but the excess was left flapping. He had on a tarnished white t-shirt that was tucked in on one side only. His formerly white tennis shoes were half untied, and he walked with an exaggerated pigeon-toed stride.

Then there was the sound he was making. It was a cross between humming and singing, humming as it was on a low, even pitch, singing as somewhere within the droning there seemed to be garbled words of one sort or another. It's hard to explain.

Troy gave him a wide-eyed stare.

"That's Clovis," he whispered.

Clovis acted as if we weren't there until he was directly across the street from us, whereupon he went silent, looked straight ahead for a few seconds, and finally turned his head our way. He stared at us without blinking for a while then, leaving his right arm to trail down his side, he lifted his palm just enough to wiggle a few rolls of his fingers at us.

"Hi, hi you doing," he mumbled, "Hi Tray, you doing."

Then he faced forward and made his way down the sidewalk again, once more putting forth his hum-songs.

"See what I mean, he's creepy," Troy said.

"There's a lot of people like that, Troy. That doesn't make them a bad person."

"But he stares at the girls."

"True, that's not good. But it could be harmless in his mind."

"Do...do you think he could be the one who ─"

"Don't go there. And I think it's be best if you didn't say that to other people. Let's let the police take care of things, okay?"

He didn't look convinced.

"I guess. If you say so."

I put hand on his shoulder.

"But if something happens with him or his brother, or if anyone at all bothers you, don't hesitate to call the Sheriff's office. I'll get the number and you can put it by your phone."

"I got the number. But can I call you?"

"Sure, anytime, I'll give you my number. But if you're scared about anybody, for any reason, call the police first."

"Sure."

"What say we see if Lacy is ready to go."

She was, coming out in her well-fitting jeans and a light blue shirt. The baby was with her, being carried in her mother's arms, looking about as if she felt a strong need to check things out.

"Good morning," Lacy said, "I'm going to leave Addie with her babysitter today. She lives a couple of houses down, right on the corner. You can pick me up there, if you would."

"Sounds good."

Troy and I got to the babysitter's house first, and a pleasant-looking whitehaired lady, medium build, was standing at the head of the sidewalk that ran down from the house, wearing a dapper dress and a wide smile. She watched us pull over and glanced at Lacy drawing near, before leaning down towards the passenger window that Troy was lowering.

"On your way to search for that young girl again, Troy?"

"Yes."

"The poor dear, I hope she's okay."

She bent a trifle lower to look at me. She had no makeup on, and needed none, so pleasantly pleasant was her demeanor.

"Hello, my name is Elaine."

"Hello, I'm Kent. Are you the lady who gets the privilege of spoiling Addie?"

"You bet I am. It's a tough job but somebody has to do it."

"I envy you."

Lacy walked up.

"I see you two have met."

"Yes, we have," Elaine said. "Now give me that baby and make my day complete."

"I told you she spoils her," Lacy said to me.

"We were discussing that," I replied.

Lacy grinned and handed Addie over.

"I don't know how long this will take today."

"Take your time. Addie and I have a lot of things to catch up on."

The crowd standing about in the police parking lot was as large as the day before, if not more so. Once more we were briefed by Sheriff Charley Weeks on what was to transpire.

The search that day was to take place along the river again, a little south of the earlier search, bringing it nearer to Scott City. We would not break up into separate groups as was done the previous day but would stay together to comb the ground in a line that stretched farther away from the Mississippi, which lead me to think they were moving away from the idea that Myla might have been disposed of in the river like Janice Thompson had been.

After all, no corpse had bobbed up.

Driving down a county road it wasn't long before our long line of cars began pulling over. By chance, the Mazda had ended up at near the front end of the line. Troy was prepared to get things started ready, geared up and rocket ready.

"Do you think we'll search like we did yesterday, in a straight line?" he asked as he tumbled out of the car.

"Don't know," I said. "We'll let the Sheriff tell us what we're going to do."

"I still think we should walk in a back and forth zig-zag line. Won't miss nothing that way, even small stuff."

"The law enforcement folks know what they're doing."

"But do you see how things would be covered better my way?"

"I don't know. I guess."

"Maybe we should say something to Sheriff Weeks."

"That's a beautiful blue sky, isn't it?"

"Huh?"

Lacy could only shake her head.

Being that we were at the front of the line of cars, we were put into position as the part of the search line that would be closest to the river.

It took a while for everyone to work their way across the field and line up. It was while Lacy and I were killing the time with idle chatter that Troy tugged at my elbow and pointed northward.

"Who's that?" he asked.

Round-about three football fields away a man was working his way around the top of the river bank that laid at the end of a field road. He had to know our large group was there, yet did not turn to look our way to check things out.

I shrugged at Troy's question.

"Who knows? Might be a farmer."

"I guess. Or maybe he's going fishing. I'll see if he's got a pole."

He put the binoculars to his eyes and focused them in. He grunted, then jerked his neck forward as if moving just those few inches would help him see things better. Funny thing is, we all do that.

"Oh gosh," he blurted out.

"What is it?" Lacy asked.

"It's the man who tried to beat up Clyde yesterday!"

I squinted my eyes.

"You sure?"

"Yes. Here."

He handed me the binoculars.

The guy was kind of, and yet not kind of, moseying from one place to another, looking around and about the river bank. He didn't seem very interested in turning our way, but after a half a minute he did take a quick glance over his shoulder.

Troy was right. It was Frankie Stone, the little-big man who had put on show about needing to thump Clyde Kregal.

"Is it him?" Lacy asked.

"Yes."

"What's he doing?"

"Just sort of looking around. Doesn't seem to like us being here."

"Think he wants to be part of the search again?"

"Funny way to go about it."

"Weird."

Lowered the binoculars.

"He would have to know about the search being continued today. With what happened yesterday it could be he doesn't want to join in with the crowd, and maybe decided he would just look around on his own."

"I guess," Lacy said.

A few minutes later the line had been set up and as one started moving south, parts of it progressing over the remnants of another harvested corn field. Some of the other folks, like the three of us, who were covering untilled ground, had to make their way through tall weeds and growths of scrubby trees and briars. The places where trees were denser were given special attention, especially where some trees were laid over and so offering numerous places where a body could have been crammed. The willows, oaks and other miscellaneous trees along the Mississippi, some of which had been undercut and dropped by high river crests, were prime search spots, to go along with the numerous tree limbs and trunks that had floated downstream and come to rest as the water level fell.

Prime locations, yes, and exhausting locations. Exhausting due to the hopping, grunting and poking that was required to thoroughly go through them.

Any spots in the fields and along the river, where it looked as if the ground had been disturbed, were dug through by men carrying shovels.

Through it all, few voices were heard. No one talked unless they had to. It was only look and concentrate, each person carrying a tattered and shadowed mindset of wanting, and yet not wanting, to find a young Miss Myla Stevens disposed of amongst the hodge-podge of nature.

There was no wind, and the only sounds came from our tramping and a train now and again crossing over the river on the huge railroad bridge at Thebes, Illinois, maybe a half a mile or so south of us, the pounding of the metal axles on the metal rail emitting a somber rhythm that melded well with the day's gloomy purpose.

It was after six o'clock when the search was called off and everyone was thanked and told to go home.

Myla had not been found. The Sheriff said he would inform the media if and when another search would be organized.

Charley Weeks looked subdued and totally worn-out as he spoke.

Lacy and Troy looked the same as we got back into the car after the searchers dispersed.

"What say, we go get something to eat," I said before starting the Mazda.

"Good idea," Lacy said. "I think I got something I could cook up pretty quick."

"No way, this one's on me. Hungry, Troy?"

"Sure!"

"That settles it."

"Let's go," Lacy said. "See, I don't argue with you about an invite."

There was a small restaurant on the south side of the railroad tracks not far from the Sheriff's office. It was one of those places that advertised home cooked meals. Although the building didn't have a single bedroom in it, the food did end up being very good. Lacy and I settled for a salad to complement our meat. Troy went with fries to supplement his hamburger. Everybody pepped up as the food started going down, and soon began finding it easier to push up weary smiles as the meal progressed.

Oh, yeah, we had apple pie topped with cream for dessert. That put the finishing touches on our recovery from the doldrums.

Then it was back to East Beech Street, where we pulled up in front of Lacy's place at quarter to eight.

Troy leaned forward so as to be closer to me.

"Kent, would you like to see my room? I got some neat stuff I wanna show you."

"Well., I guess."

Lacy gave me tidy grin.

"Go ahead. I need to go down and get Addie and put her down for the night. But I'd like for you to stop by after you and Troy are done. I think we both can use at least one glass of wine."

"If you're sure, because I don't want to ─"

"Oh, my lord, are you doing that to pester me?"

"Yes."

"Then hush, and make sure you show up."

"Yes, mam."

Troy might have been a little unhappy by not also getting an invite, were it not for the fact I was going to accompany him to see his room. After we exited my automobile, I think he hopped as much as walked up the sidewalk that led to his front door.

The living room just inside that front door was clean, but cluttered: a few plates, some glasses and napkins on the coffee table. A few socks and shoes were upturned upon the floor, along with other items of clothing. Through an open doorway leading into the kitchen I could see a fairly good pile of dishes in the sink, along with more plates and miscellaneous cups on the kitchen table.

It looked to all extent and purposes like a place wherein a single mother who worked double shifts resided, alone with her young son. A harmless appearance of messy, within a warm and comfortable genuineness.

"This way," Troy said, heading down a hallway that exited to the living room's right.

He went through the first door on the left and flicked on the lights.

I gazed about and was more than somewhat surprised. Where the rest of the house held the look of an easy clutter, this room had a square-cornered tidiness about it, in that it was picture-perfect neat. The bed was tightly made, you could have bounced a dime off of it. Nothing was on the floor other than the polished wooden floor itself and a clean throw rug next to the bed. The closet door was closed. There were no pictures of some professional sports athletes on his wall, rather only three framed photographs of, in perfectly placed order: a star-filled night sky, Albert Einstein ─ (that fantastic one that showed him sticking his tongue out) ─ and, lastly, a headshot of Ted Bundy.

Across the way from the door was a curtained window along with a long, narrow wooden table sitting under it. A rather large, at least for a kid, swivel desk chair sat at the table near a laptop. Along with the computer the tabletop held notebooks, pencils, and several books. One was a thick tome that presented itself as the Human Body Book. A poster on a wall next to the doorway had the human body without skin, one of those that showed tendons and muscles. A chest of drawers sat butted up into the corner next to the table. On top of it was a quart glass jar with a frog floating inside.

"Tell you what, Troy," I said, "I got to say your room is not what I figured for an eleven-year old. I'm proud of you."

"Why?"

"It's so neat. I'm three times your age and my bedroom looks like a junkyard compared to this."

"I don't know, I just like things put away. Helps me think."

"Nothing wrong with that."

"When I'm not out walking or riding my bike, other things I like to do, I spend most of my time in here. Mom doesn't keep the rest of the house clean."

"Maybe you could straighten things up for her. She works long hours, you know."

"It wouldn't stay that way if I did."

"Well just think about it, okay?

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Maybe. Thing is, keeping my room clean keeps Mom out of here, and not messing with my things."

I nodded towards the glass jar.

"Nice looking frog you got there."

His face took on a wide-eyed mien of excitement.

"Isn't that neat! My cousin is in high school and he told me about dissecting a frog in biology class. It sounded like what I wanted to do so I got one and dissected it myself!"

"Got one?"

"Yeah, from the creek. It was really fun. I got a book at the library and learned all about the muscles and stuff and how they worked."

"You prepared the frog yourself?"

He nodded.

"I followed the instructions. What you do it, you put the frog in the freezer and it goes into hibernation mode and then you put it in the chemicals. They don't feel a thing."

"Formaldehyde?"

"Yes, you mix it up yourself. Ten percent formalin and seventy percent alcohol."

"I don't even want to know about the other twenty percent."

"You can help me dissect this one if you want. It'll be my third one."

"Moving on. Did your Mom know about the frog in the freezer?"

"Nah, it was in a bread bag."

"I see. By the way, I like your picture of the stars and the one of Mr. Einstein. But Ted Bundy?"

"Someday I'm going to be a forensic scientist. I've been reading up on it all I can on the computer and in books, and there's all these shows on TV. It's really exciting. They do so many things to help solve crimes. I think about it all the time, it's really what I want to do."

I wandered over to the swivel chair and twirled it around to where it faced Troy and took a seat.

"I tell you what, Troy, I've worked with some really excellent forensic scientists over the years and, your right, they are some very smart and dedicated people. If that's what you want to do, I think it's great. There would be a lot of horrible people out and about today if it wasn't for forensic science."

"I hope I'm smart enough," he said.

I laughed.

"I don't think there's any doubt about that. One thing though, Troy. When you're called to a crime scene, you're going to see some terrible things. You have to have the ability to take it in, you got to have the ability to compartmentalize."

He gave me a puzzled look.

"What I'm saying is," I said, "you have to put out of your mind how terrible what has happened to the victim is, you have to make your work a business. Compartmentalize. Dealing with murders can drive you crazy if you don't have the frame of mind for it. Does that make any sense?"

"Sure. I mean, I've thought about all the terrible things murderers do, how hard it's going to be to look at it. I finally decided you just can't think about the pain."

I leaned back in the swivel chair.

"Go on."

"I got to thinking about worms."

"Worms?"

"Do you fish with worms?"

"I have."

"Did you know worms feel pain?"

"I..a..I suppose."

"They do, I looked it up. We know they feel things because they act differently depending on how they're stimulated. They react differently when you just touch them, where they might barely move, to when you put them on the hook. They squirm like crazy then, wriggle all over the place. That's because of the pain. They have central nervous system comparable to humans, so being pushed onto a hook has to be very, very painful. But because we like to fish, we figure it's just a worm and it doesn't matter. And that's how I figured I could get past the pain that any murder victims might have gone through. I'm just going to have to not think about it, like you don't let yourself think about the pain of the worm when you bait a hook. That sounds terrible, I guess, but that's how I think. You just can't let thinking about the pain they went through stop you."

I have to admit, I was at a loss for words. No way could this kid be eleven. No, he was a well-disguised university scientist, looking to get a Nobel prize in physiology by causing dufuses like me to tumble into a dumbfounded silence because of their twirling logic.

Finally, I found my voice.

"I don't know that it would be good for someone working a murder investigation to go completely cold. You have to have sympathy, for the victim and their family. It's just that it can't interfere with your work."

"I know that. Sure, I know that. But I do plan on doing everything just right, and nothing is going to stop me. And that's why I have Ted Bundy's picture. It reminds me about how important forensic science is. Did you know that one of the biggest pieces of evidence against him was bite wounds on one of the ladies he killed that they matched to his teeth?"

"Yes, I knew that."

"It's like it was such a simple thing to do, but somebody had to figure it out. That'd been great to be the person who did it. And now with the DNA and all the other stuff that you can find on the bodies, you can figure out almost anything."

I looked at him and wondered how it was I had come to lose his eagerness, his unbridled desire to make a difference.

Maybe the deal is he was obsessed with finding out who might have done the killing, whereas my only contribution up to then was providing the corpses. Don't get me wrong, the ones I was forced to contend with were pure evil, each and every one, each more than deserving of the darkness. Still, could I have done something better, something more consequential?"

I studied Troy, studied the bright eyes, the way he was waving his hands when he spoke, how he couldn't get the words out fast enough. I found I admired the kid. Found I truly liked the kid. Found I envied the kid.

But in the end, I had no desire to be eleven again. I'm just too damn old to be young.

"Anyway," Troy was saying, "I was thinking about putting a serial killer's picture up there and I thought of Bundy and of how they matched fibers in his van to the clothing of a girl he killed. Still I wasn't real sure, then I premembered the bite marks too, and that made two finds of really great forensics, even that long ago. That's why I picked him."

"Premembered?"

"Yeah, that's something I like to do too, try to come up with new words. It means that if you remember something, then later on remember something else that happened before the first thing you remembered, that means you premembered it."

"I see what you mean. Here's a new word for you. How about outrance?"

"Huh?"

"When you go into a house you go through the entrance so, when you leave, it has to be the outrance."

That got him going, you could see it in his eyes.

"Did you make that up?" he asked.

"No, I'm not as good as you, Troy. I read that on the internet. But even though I'm not too good at made-up words, I do have a thing about words that aren't made up but make no sense. Like rest room. Have you ever rested in a rest room?"

"Well, one time I was really, really tired while I was on the pot and kind of feel to sleep and I ─"

"Don't go there," I said, even though I was laughing.

"But...but, I know what you mean about stupid words. How about when a guy says he's going to take a pee? You don't take a pee, you leave it, right? Or when they say they're going to take a bath. Huh? You don't take a bath anywhere, you give yourself a bath.

"You're something else, Troy," I said.

After we used up our chuckles, I looked at my watch and pushed myself up out of the chair.

"I guess I better be going. I told Lacy I'd drop by before I went home."

His demeanor changed in a short moment.

"Do you have to go?"

"Well, yes I do. When will your Mom be home?"

"Probably about midnight."

"You be alright?"

"Sure, I'm used to being alone."

That was hard to take.

"Listen, Troy, it looks like the Sheriff's not planning another search any time soon, but if Myla isn't found, I'm sure he'll arrange for another. And even if he doesn't, you and Lacy are my friends now, and I'll drop by every chance I get to visit both of you."

"Promise?"

"From an ex-DEA agent to a future forensic scientist, I promise you that."

He wasn't exactly happy, but neither was he completely dejected.

"Okay," he said, "as long as you promise."

It was after seven when I arrived at Lacy's front door.

She came to that front door freshly showered, her blonde hair lustrous and curled. She was wearing a pair of some nice-fitting, cuffed blue jean shorts, and a sleeveless, summertime-yellow blouse.

Oh, yeah, you bet, she got my attention.

"Well, Mam," I said with fake drawl, "I believe you have put me at a distinct disadvantage here. You're all cleaned up and, dare I say, very nicely, and yet here I am still dirty and odorous."

She showed me some white teeth to go along with the rest of it.

"Them's some mighty big words there, Mister. But thank you for noticing and come on in."

"Where's the little one?" I asked as I did.

"Asleep. Her and Elaine must have had a very busy day. Have a seat while I go get the wine. How about some cheese and sesame crackers to go with it?"

"Well, I'd say not to go to the trouble, but I know better than to do that."

"At last," she said.

The cheese and crackers were good, the wine even better. The conversation that went with both items rode upon that jagged ridge of conversational snooping, where each of us was trying to uncover things within the life of the other person, without being obvious about it. Trying to be politely nosy, if such a thing can be done.

At some point Lacy obviously decided that she was tired of messing around. It took two long-stemmed glasses of wine to get her there

"Yesterday, when we were talking," she said, "you mentioned you had never been married. But I'm wondering, have you ever been in a relationship with someone that you felt you could have spent your life with, married or not?"

Her query kicked me back a bit, and I found myself biting a lip and hesitating.

"Well, a..."

"I'm sorry, that was very rude of me to ask."

"No, no that's fine. I was thinking about asking you the same question, except I remembered your telling me you were looking for Mr. 'just right', which kind of answered the question, and so I didn't ask."

I replayed it through my mind, what I had just said, and then thought, you're a droning, spittle-spewing moron, Mr. Kent Baker. So, I just went ahead and decided to crawl out of my shell just a bit and give her an answer.

"Yes, yes, I have met such a lady. A few years back."

"Did you have a long relationship?"

"No, truth of the matter I only knew her for a very short time. Still, she just seemed like someone I could have been glad to have my life with."

"What happened?"

I should have stopped it there, but for some convoluting reason, I couldn't.

"She died," I said.

Lacy leaned back into the couch.

"Oh, I'm so sorry. What happened?"

"She was murdered."

She froze. She placed her glass on the coffee table before speaking.

"If you don't want to talk about it, I understand."

"No, that's alright. What happened was some very malicious people blamed her for something that happened to them, something that she had nothing to do with."

"Oh, my god. And they killed her?"

I nodded.

"What did they think she had done?"

I was at the point where I wanted to put the snake back into the box.

"It's a long story, Lacy. I shouldn't have bothered you with it."

"I understand. It's just that...were they caught?"

"Yes."

She came forward, paused, and put her elbows on her legs.

"You had a part in catching them, didn't you?"

"How ─"

"I haven't known you for very long, Kent, but I can see you as a man who would not have stood to the side."

She was right, of course, I had gotten involved with bringing the bastards down. Fact of the matter is, I killed them.

No way I could tell her that.

No way I could have told anyone that.

"I kept close contact with the investigation," I lied. "As an ex law enforcement person, I offered some input into the case, for what that was worth."

She shook her head.

"That's all so sad. You dedicate yourself to a job, a dangerous one at that, and then you finally find someone and lose her."

I began regretting opening up to her, something I rarely do. It was just that she had such an engaging way of bringing stuff out, stuff that, maybe deep-down, a person might actually want out. Still and all, my blathering had doused our easy banter.

"Thing is," I said with a half-smile, "it's not that I've been completely chaste my whole life."

She laughed. I appreciated her laughing.

"I would guess not," she said.

It was then that I realized that it was going on ten o'clock.

"Good grief," I said, "I can't believe it's so late. I best be going. I must say, you're an easy person to talk to, Lacy. I've really enjoyed this evening."

I stood up. She hesitated standing, but instead took the time to narrow her eyes a bit, as if she were gauging something. Then she got up.

"Okay."

I nodded and headed for the front door. It was just as I was grabbing ahold of the knob that I felt her hand softly grip my shoulder. I turned about.

"Why don't you stay," she said. "After all, the baby is asleep for the night."

Chapter 5

(My oh my...)

Sometimes you just have to wonder. Sometimes there is no definite answer to an abrupt shift within your life, a sharp turn of fate, and your only choice is to wonder.

I rested on my back in Lacy's bed and stared upward.

Wondering.

How could a call to my cell phone, during a drenching downpour, lead me to the tragedies enveloping Scott City, Missouri, and from them carry me into an unexpected relationship with one exceptional young woman?

How is it possible to be seconds away from blowing asunder all of your tomorrows, to within days finding a person who held an unfathomable beauty and goodness, someone you most certainly did not deserve to even be near, must less love. One who you felt had an innate ability to fathom some things good in you, a hugely difficult task at best when the you just happen to be me.

So, you wonder.

Smile, that is, and also wonder.

"What you thinking about?" she asked in a cottony voice.

"Thinking about how lucky I am."

"It's a shared luck."

"You may change your mind about that."

"I don't think so."

She nuzzled closer into my side."

"Who sent you to me?" she asked.

"That's the luck I was thinking about. It seems unreal. Billions of people in the world and here we are."

"Seven billion and some change, last I heard."

"Oh great, an intelligent person hooks up with the village idiot. Proves opposites surely attract."

"Haven't you ever wanted to look that up?"

"A-a, no. Anyway, seems to me you've been breathing shallowly since we've been here, and I think it has something to do with my odorous state that was brought up earlier, as compared to your freshly showered fragrance. I'd hate for this relationship to end because your gagging."

"Why are you always down on yourself?"

"This time it's because I stink. What I'm trying to do, beautiful, is to borrow a shower from you. It might come in handy later."

"Okay, enough. Towels and washcloths are in the bathroom closet and my flowery scented soap in is in the tray in the shower. Hurry back and, please, don't wake the baby."

The only light coming into the bedroom was coming from a slightly cracked hallway door, a hallway that held the bathroom.

"Turn on the lamp on your side," she said. "If I remember right, there's several clumps of wadded clothes on the floor. I'd hate to see you fall and, anyway, seems to me we don't have any secrets anymore."

I did as I was told and made my way across the room and down the hallway.

A short while later I was back in the bedroom and crawling into bed.

"Oh, my goodness, I've never smelled like roses before."

"You'll live."

She wriggled back up against me. She was quiet, and I could all but hear the wheels turning. Finally, they stopped.

"Kent, I ─ I noticed that round indention on the back of you left thigh."

Those dang wheels, I thought.

"It's nothing."

"Tell me."

I sighed.

"I took a bullet there."

"While you were working undercover?"

"No. Long story."

"What about all those small pock marks on the same thigh?"

"Shotgun."

"Shotgun! And that spot below your left shoulder?"

"Another bullet. But it was a small caliber."

She raised up enough to be even with my face.

"And...and all these wounds over your chest?"

I paused.

"I need to know," she said.

I didn't look at her as I answered. I said it quickly to get it over with.

"Working undercover with a Mexican-American task force across the border. Got tied up in a room with a drug boss and his flunky. They wanted some information from me, threatened several times to cut my throat if I didn't talk. In between threatening that, they gouged at me with the knife tip. That's the wounds."

"But they're all over your chest."

I said nothing. What could I say? She moved even closer to my face.

"You never told them what they wanted, did you, you fool?"

I still said nothing, just kept my eyes on a ceiling I couldn't really see.

And then I felt them. Felt their warmth as they slowly dropped onto my chest.

Tears.

"My dear," she said with a crackling voice. "My sweet dear. What have you done to yourself?"

Morning came too soon. There had been very little sleep. Yes, morning came much too soon.

We got up early, Lacy had to go to work, and so we ate a quick, light breakfast of eggs and toast at her kitchen table. About the time we were finishing up, little Addie woke up and demanded attention. Lacy fetched her and brought her to the kitchen. She was quiet then, satisfied, it seemed, to be in her mother's arms. She was all full-body jammies, feet and all, to go along with her tiny, round face and fine, fluffy hair.

"She's a cutie," I said.

"Like her mother, right?"

"Of course."

"Would you like to change her diaper while I clean up the kitchen?"

"How's about I do the kitchen."

"I don't believe it! All the dangers you've face, and you're uneasy about changing a diaper.'

"Is it a number one, a number two, or both."

"One."

"Where's the dish detergent?"

"Just put everything in the dishwasher."

After we'd completed our chores we met back in the living room.

"Guess I'll be going. You need to attend to Addie and go to work, and I need to get to my apartment and fed a cat."

"You have a cat?"

"Yep."

"I wouldn't have guessed you as a pet person. What's its name?"

"Ferd."

"What?"

"Another long story."

She put Addie down long enough for us to have a pleasantly extended goodbye embrace at the front door.

"You're coming back, right?' she said in kind of a teasing voice.

"As Mick said, wild horses couldn't keep me away. Call me when you get off work and we'll make plans."

Turned out Ferd could care less about me returning to the apartment, except for the fact he was in dire need of food. Right after his bulbous stomach was filled, my fat orange tabby didn't even bother to take the time to thank me by purring and rubbing up against my leg, but only turned to make his way to the bedroom and partake of his daily, hard-earned morning nap. A nap during which he would most likely dream about his upcoming afternoon nap.

My feelings weren't hurt. You can't own an arrogant feline and have feelings easily damaged.

Lacy called me at three minutes and forty-five seconds after twelve. We made plans to meet at her place at six that evening.

Around two my cell phone buzzed again. I recognized the voice immediately.

Troy.

"Hey, Troy, how you doing?"

"I'm fine, I just got something to tell you."

"Okay, tell me."

"I'd rather tell you in person. Are you in Scott City?"

"No, but I'll be there later on today. I'm going to visit Lacy."

"Oh."

She's too old for you dude, I thought. Then he went on.

"Well, Kent, it's just that I've been researching something and I really want to tell you about it."

"What is it?"

"It'd be easier if you could come to my house."

"Sure. I don't get to Lacy's place until six. Will four-thirty give you enough time?"

"I guess so."

"See you then."

When I arrived at his house he was sitting on the top step of his front porch. Yes, he jumped up and cleared all the rest of the steps to land with moving feet on the sidewalk.

"You made it!" he said as he got up to my vehicle.

"Me or somebody unlucky enough to look a lot like me."

"Huh?"

"Just kidding. What have you got for me, Troy?"

"Come to my room and I'll tell you."

"Is your Mom home?"

"No, she's working, but she said she didn't care if you came."

So, we made our way through his lived-in living room to his perfectly kept bedroom. He led me to his desk where upon his laptop was kept.

"I've been researching some stuff about the Mississippi."

"Alright, give it to me."

He picked up a yellow paper pad with a bunch of stuff scribbled on it.

"Okay, okay, the Mississippi is roundabout two thousand three hundred and fifty-miles long. Lake Itasca, where it starts, is one thousand and seventy-five feet about sea level, and the Gulf of Mexico is zero feet above sea level, obviously. So, the river flows a longways downhill, which makes the current."

"I understand that."

"But the speed of the current can vary due to width and depths of any certain section of the river, and the surface speed can vary from the riverbed sped. The surface speed at the beginning at Lake Itaska averages a little over one mile an hour and at New Orleans three miles per hour. But around the part for the river that goes by Cape Girardeau and Thebes this time of a normal summer, it's five miles per hour surface speed. And, right now, the river's level is about what it usually is in June, so five miles an hour would be a pretty good guess."

I don't know that he took a breath during the whole thing.

"Now," he went on, "what do you know about bodies floating in water?"

"I know it's sickening."

"I don't want to be an investigator stuck in lab. I want to be a crime scene investigator. I love dealing with dead bodies."

"It's a very important job."

"Anyway, I got to figuring something. Janice Thompson left her house a couple of weeks ago to go jogging after work. She got off at four so they figure she left the house around four-thirty or so, and was probably murdered not too long after that, and put in the river. A corpse that falls face down in water might never sink, because of air in the lungs, but, the deal is, almost every corpse falls beneath the surface eventually when water fills up the lungs and pushes out the air. Our guts hold a bunch of bacteria and when decomposition begins the bacteria causes gas to develop. That's what makes the body float and, since most of the bacteria is in the guts, most of the bodies end up floating face down. See what I mean?"

"Sure."

"Okay, okay, think about this. Warm water will probably cause a body to rise in a day or so, but when it's cold the bacterial action is slower. But since Janice was thrown in the water in the first of June when the water wasn't as warm as now, but still kinda warm, let's say she floated up about noon or so the next day. I looked up other bodies in the river from the last several years in this part of the country and found out it took about that long for them to float up. The man who saw her in the debris pile found her around three o'clock. Well, she probably didn't go very far while she was on the bottom because of the drag of the mud so we can figure she wasn't very far downstream when she came up at around noon, like we said. The average surface current sped for this time of the year is around five miles per hour, but the river was down a little, which might have put the miles per hour closer to four. So, she's on top at noon and moving at for miles per hour. That would put her twelve miles downstream in three hours. But what with the rock levees, and the possibility she might have been close enough to shore where shallow water might have slowed her, I think we could say she probably might have travelled closer to ten miles. Do you think so?'

"Going by what you said, I could see that, yes."

He was waving his arms as if that would speed up his talking.

"What I did was, I went to my computer and brought up one of those 3D images sites that use satellites and found the debris pile where Janice was found, and then I went upriver ten miles, fifty-two thousand and eight hundred feet. Guess what I found just a little over five hundred feet north of where ten miles was?"

"No idea."

"The farm road that went to the river where we saw the man who was going to beat up Clyde!"

That threw me. I looked at his glowing face, at the top teeth that were now nibbling at his lower lip. Felt like I needed to cool his jets, because of what he was thinking, that being that Frankie Stone had dumped Janice Thompson into the river, a mighty serious accusation to say the very least.

And yet, dammit, he had placed all his waddling ducks in a row, enough so that I had to admit he had my mind roiling. Still.

"Are you saying that Mr. Stone dumped Janice Thompson into the river?"

"I think he was nervous and went back to look around where he'd been, just to make sure he hadn't dropped anything or maybe left some other kind of evidence. I mean, why else would he be there?"

"There could be any number of reasons. Listen, Troy, you did a great job of researching, and I'm not saying you're wrong, but we need to be careful about this. Have you told anyone else about what you found out?"

"Nope."

"Well, let's keep it between us for now, because we don't want to start any rumors. But I tell you what, tomorrow I'll take it up with the Sheriff, and we'll let him decide where he wants to go with it."

He looked a little disappointed, yet also looked like he was giving some thought to what I'd said. He sighed.

"Okay," he said, "I agree. But will you come back right away and tell me what he's going to do?"

"Promise. And, Troy, I'm really impressed with all your hard work."

The sigh gave way to a big grin

"Really?"

Lacy was waiting for me at her front door. We fell into a long embrace just inside the door, her tight body pulled into mine as we kissed.

"I saw you coming from Troy's house," she said after we came up for air.

"You were standing here waiting for me?"

"Maybe, maybe not."

"Wow, that's quite an honor."

"Don't get a big head. I was actually looking at the sunset."

"Your house faces south."

"Don't be a nitpicker. What were you doing with Troy?"

"He wants to be a forensic scientist and I talked to him about it."

I didn't want her getting involved with any particulars concerning the horrid things going on in her town, any more than she already was, so did not go into Troy's research and theory. Maybe there was a deep need within me to protect her from the blood and gore of it.

Maybe there was no maybe about that.

"Hopefully he'll come to his senses," she said.

"Heck you say. What do you have against law enforcement people?"

"I just don't want him dealing with death. He's a great kid, and I don't want him to become hard-edged."

I shot her a semi-easygoing grin.

"Like me?"

"I don't think you're hard-edged, I just think you have a soft heart, but for some reason you don't want people to know it. Why, I have no idea. In time, I intend to find out."

"In time?"

"Yes."

My hands were on her middle back. She released her hold on my neck and moved my palms to where they were underneath of her loose blouse, and then moved them farther down to just below the top of the pretty shorts she was wearing.

"My exploration into what makes you tick continues tonight, my dear," she said.

Addy woke up once in the middle of the night. Lacy and I had just gotten to the point of wanting to go to sleep.

"Want me to take care of her?" I asked.

"What could you do?"

"Sing her a lullaby?"

"Right. I'll handle this."

The next morning the little lady made sure we were up with the early dawn. After all, she was very young of age, and babies have a calloused eye concerning that early to bed and early to rise business. Of course, had I been enfolded in a well-dampened diaper, I might have wanted to crawl out of bed early too.

Anyhow, having her as a rather vocal alarm clock was no big deal. Lacy had to get her up and turned out in one of the tiny little outfits which added cuter to already cute, in preparation of handing her over to babysitter Elaine. Lacy and I barely had time for a cup of coffee.

"I'm sorry about breakfast," she said as we rushed towards the front door.

"I'll survive. Maybe we can make a go for dinner tonight. Addy can join us."

"That would be nice."

She kissed me at the doorway, one arm around my neck while the other held Addy.

She moved her face back and gazed up at me with soft eyes.

"Remember when I told you I needed just right. You, Kent Baker, are just right."

"That goes both ways, Lacy."

A moment of silence.

"I love you, Kent," she said then.

And then it happened. Kent Baker did something he had never done before, not once.

A time or two in the murky past a lady had expressed those self-same words to me, those bewildering words that, so deep were their implications, each time had caused me to stiffen and hesitate, if only for just the merest of seconds. I had always managed to eventually reply in kind but, in the pause, the damage had been permanently inserted into our relationships. Point of fact, ruining them.

Catching the three seconds of dithering, the ladies' eyes had immediately lost their warmth, and the ladies' lips had quivered, all due to the realization that Mr. Kent was not one hundred percent positive sure about that love thing.

Why not one hundred percent, when those ladies were wonderful creatures indeed, each and every one?

Baker has yet to figure that out.

The thing is I am miles from being a great catch, rather would describe myself as being a doleful wanderer whose cold heart felt no remorse for his many malicious misdeeds, a soulless entity who felt the possibility of hell was not worth being upset about.

I'm not being dramatic there, it's just that that's who I am, what I have become because of who I am.

And being so perhaps the deal was I had been stunned those previous lovers would say such a thing to this guy, for all the above reasons.

But that day, with Lacy Brewer clasped tightly in my arms, it finally happened.

"I love you too," I replied, without one moment's hesitancy.

Know what? Saying it felt damn good.

The mindset that was behind the self-pitying, woeful trek into the cow pasture had cascaded away in shimmering pieces.

Chapter 6

─ a short ride, a long walk ─

The parking lot in front of Sheriff Charley Weeks office was once again a busy place.

Along with official vehicles, local, state and federal, there were vehicles belonging to miscellaneous news media folks who were mulling about with the hope of coming across a new kick-butt story relating to two dead ladies, and another who was missing. One of their vehicles was a van from a TV station with the big signal dish on top.

Don't get me wrong, I did not begrudge then being there, I only wished they didn't have to be there.

As it was, when you also added in the vehicles owned by the other county employees housed in the same building, I ended up having to put my Mazda at the outer limits of the parking lot.

I sat in the driver's seat a long while, taking in all the news folks milling about, all the law enforcement people going in and out of the entrance door, and began thinking I had no right to be thinking about squeezing into part of Charley Weeks' hectic day. Especially since the only reason for wanting to do so was my promise to one young Troy Jaden.

But my thoughts ran back to Troy's wide-eyed, beaming face the moment after I'd made the promise.

'But will you come back right away and tell me what he's going to do?'

You're losing your hard-edged core, I thought to myself as I hauled myself out of the car.

"Just gaze at his face when Charley sees you, and decide then," I mumbled to me.

Having come up with that extremely well thought out plan, I trundled to the building. Once inside you would have thought someone would have immediately asked what in the hell do you want? But no one took the time to do so, so the trundling continued up to Charley's open office door. The Sheriff was at his desk talking on the phone. He raised a hand and motioned me to come in, all the while dragging up a weary smile as he did.

He motioned for me to close the door and began working his way off the call, and in a short while hung up the phone. But in doing so he didn't look any less dog-tired.

"Kent, glad to see you again. Hoped you'd drop by."

"Don't want to waste your time if you're busy."

"I'd a whole lot more rather talk to you than any of the last half-dozen who've been in here the last few hours. Plus I've been wanting to tell you about conversations I had with the Kregal brothers."

"Okay."

"Me and an FBI guy went to their place while you guys were on the search yesterday, figuring that enough people would be at work or involved in the search so that maybe we wouldn't be seen there. Got enough bullshit rumors making their way around without stoking more. Found both brothers there and took them one at time into our car to talk. Took Clovis first."

He took the time to shake his head.

"I'd never really had anything to do with him before, just knew he had problems. When people started complaining about him staring at girls and freaking them out, and I dropped by to talk about it, Clyde was there and kinda took things over, so I never really got a feel for Clovis. But finally talking with him alone was something else altogether. I mean, there was nothing there. It was like making conversation with a shadow. There was the shape of a body, but nothing inside, pretty well no comprehension at all."

"Could he have been faking it?"

"No. It was obvious everything we were saying never landed anywhere. We just got mumbles and some weird laughing at all the inappropriate times. When he did talk, or I guess you'd say mumble, it was more like he was doing it to himself, not us. Asking himself questions, answering them himself. It was frustrating."

"Any of your experts have a theory?"

"One of the FBI shrinks said he couldn't say for sure without talking to Clovis himself, but by what we told him he felt his level of retardation sounded to be moderate level. Here, I took notes."

He dug through the pile of papers on his desk and drug out the one he wanted.

"Moderate intellectual disability occurs when patients have IQs between 35 and 49. Persons with a moderate retardation have difficulty with communication, reading and writing, are unable to live alone. However, they are able to get around and are able to function in simple social activities. That right there is Clovis, dead-on."

"Think he could drive a car?"

"If he watched his brother do it enough, yeah. Can function in simple activities, our shrink said. Putting it in gear and giving it the gas would be easy enough if you'd seen it done enough. You might not be doing a great job of it at first, but I would guess you could get away with it. I'll ask the doc to be sure. You thinking about the trouble Misty's killer had getting back onto the road?'

"Just thinking."

"Lightly travelled county road, especially in the middle of the afternoon. Who knows? He could have got away with some sloppy driving."

"What about your chat with Clyde?"

"About what you'd expect. Pissed off, ranting about the damn dog again, about the a-holes around town telling lies about them, about how he was attacked during the search and no one gave a shit. It was about as nerve-racking and senseless as his brother's blather. As it was, I was about ready to jerk his head off, seeing as how the past few days haven't been the most pleasurable for me. Times were, I was wishing we still talking to Clovis."

"Did he vent any about Troy?"

"Started to. I told him not to go there. Told him he better damn well best leave the boy alone. Seemed to cool his jets a bit."

"Anything else?'

"Gave his brother an alibi, for what it was worth, for on the day Misty Dane went missing. Said he was home all day and so was Clovis. Also said it was his opinion that no way could his brother drive a car, and he knew for sure Clovis didn't because he had the keys in his pocket all day, every day, and so the car never left the property. Course, there was no way for me to prove different, other than maybe to put a couple of deputies to canvasing the neighborhood and asking the neighbors if they saw anyone driving the car. I gave the idea some thought but, hell, if someone had seen something as out of place as Clovis behind the wheel, they'd surely have come forward by now, jumpy as this town is right now. Figured sending out deputies to ask questions would only stir the fire against the brothers even more. Not that I'm convinced Clovis is innocent, mind you, it's just that things could get out of hand, and nobody needs that right now. I may come back to doing it later, it's just that I'm going to put in on hold for now, or at least until I can come up with more evidence."

"I understand. I'm guessing you don't have any other leads to follow."

"Nope. Everybody's working around the clock, and we got diddly-squat. I don't know, I got a feeling it's one guy, our very own serial killer, and the Feds think the same. I also think he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, grabbing women in broad daylight, dumping one along a county road. But I'll be damned if we can come up with anything. Sorry, I normally don't cuss this much."

"Planning any more searches for Myla?"

"Probably. Got to do something. You have any more thoughts about it?"

"Well, in a way."

"How so?"

"It's probably nothing, but I promised Troy Jaden I would run it by you. He's done some investigating on his own."

He cocked his eyebrows, looking as if he was really interested.

"Don't say? Tell me about it."

"He did some computing. Looked up floating bodies, looked up surface current speed on our part of the Mississippi this time of the year, did some calculating. Using that info, he backtracked from where Janice Thompson's body was found and came up with a spot just north of where the search party started. Thing was, the search actually went south from where the three of us were, so that area wasn't covered."

"And?"

"What he figured for footage actually came up within a few feet of a place where Lacy and I and him saw Frankie Stone milling around."

He wrinkled his forehead.

"Really? I'll be."

"Now, Charley, he made more assumptions than you a shake a stick at. Add to that the fact that no one knows when Janice's body floated into the debris pile. She could have been there a while, which would put the dumping site farther north. But what he said was food for thought, so I promised him I would mention it to you."

"That boy's sharp.'

"He wants to be a forensic scientist."

"Hope he follows through on that."

"Anyway, I promised him."

"No, Kent, I'm glad you did. I'm ready to listen to anything from anybody, regardless of age. And it is strange that Frankie would be out there by himself nosing around ahead of a search party, whether Troy's numbers are right or not. Frankie had to have known a search was planned and had no way of knowing whether we weren't going that way or not. We hadn't come to a decision which way we needed to go until a few minutes before we briefed everybody."

"You said Frankie was a bully, been in some bar fights. Can you see him as someone who could go way beyond that?"

"No, not really, but his being out there does look suspicious. And who knows, somebody with his streak of orneriness could mentally be one step away from crossing the line. It's like the deal with some serial killers starting out torturing animals and can't stop going beyond that. Maybe his bar fights took the place of the animals. And, we do happen to have a brutalized dog that we know about."

"Yeah, but in the Kregal brother's chicken pen."

He pinched up his face.

"What a mess. I'm on the verge of profanity again."

"Have at it."

I don't know if the face he made then held an undersized grin, or an oversized grimace.

"Nah," he said at last, "I'd rather just get the heck out of here and go for a short ride. Care to join me?"

We went in the Sheriff's official car. It took us a while to find the field road that took us to the river's edge where Frankie Stone had been nosing around. Charley stopped fifty yards from where Frankie's car has been, and we kept our eyes to the ground from there all the way to the river bank.

Once at the bank we split up and worked our way along the top of the river bank, one of us going north, the other south. The area from the field's edge to the drop-off was covered with short willows and chunks of washed-up debris. After searching that area, it was mutually agreed that there was nothing to be found in those sections. That being so, we both made our way to where the field road stopped at the top of the slope of the river bank.

It was obvious the folks who had come to the end of the road considered the location as a proper place to dump their junk. Beer cans, fast food sacks, paper towels etc., etc... The garbage was spread out from the top of the bank and on down a worn path that made it to the water, where several Y shaped sticks were sticking up out of the ground for the purpose of holding a fishing rod. You'd have to think that if they could carry their rod and reels down, they could surely have carried their refuse up.

Oh-h-h, golly gee, just too much trouble, I guessed.

"Shall we?" Sheriff Charley asked.

Down the bank we went. The search for any bits of evidence there took some intense goings-over. Black bottom ground soil, weeds, washed up pieces of wood, bent-over grass, uncovered tree roots, shoeprints galore. I eased to the left, Charley to the right. Glanced about for objects big, concentrated our vision for any tiny things. Bent over now and then to lift and look beneath some object, all of which took a few careful trips up and down the slope. After one last inspection we came to as top at the shoreline.

Charley put his hands on his hips.

"Well, what do you think?"

"Didn't see any evidence of drag lines. Was Janice a big woman?"

"I'd say average size."

"Any rain since she came up missing?"

"Couple of showers."

"That'd be enough to smooth out the dirt."

"Yep, and also enough to wash away any blood."

"Bunch of washed-up tree limbs with bark on them on or right next to the path. Rough bark would be a good place for blood to stick. Didn't see any though."

"Me neither."

I picked up one of the limbs that was a couple of inches around and longer than me, making it several inches over six-foot two. I thrust it end-first down into the water four feet out from the bank's edge. Almost the entire length of the limb disappeared into the muddy water, only to rise up again like a skinny submarine.

"One thing," I said, "the water's deep enough that a body would have had no trouble going with the current, something a killer would no doubt have been aware of."

Charley sighed.

"So, we got one more probably not, mixed in with a maybe. Going to have a talk with Mr. Stone just the same. See if he'll admit to being here, and if he doesn't, why the hell not? If he owns up to being here, then why the hell would he be? You sure it was him?"

"Used a pair of binoculars."

"Good enough. What I might also do is ask the farmer who works this ground if he happened to notice anyone here a couple of days ago. Land owners round about here tend to get frustrated by people without permission driving over their fields. They tend to have eagle eyes for trespassers. For the heck of it, will probably send a couple of forensic people down here to see it there's any hair or whatever on some of these limbs and grass. Rain wouldn't likely carry that away. Wouldn't hurt to spray a little Luminol around to check for blood."

"Good idea."

"Sharp as you are, I'd love to have you go with me to question Frankie but, given your run-in with him, you being there might upset him a mite from the get-go. I've always found you need to keep them from getting distressed, at least at the beginning of things."

"Understood."

Half an hour later I was crossing the railroad overpass heading for the street holding Mr. Troy and Mses. Lacy and Addie. Glanced north from the middle of the overpass and saw a short, familiar figure walking along the tracks. Since there was no one behind me I stopped for a closer look.

Sure enough, after a minute of hard focusing, I knew it to be Troy. U-turned on the other side of the overpass, made my way back to the main road and went north to another street that crossed the tracks, one carrying those fine, flashing red lights that warn you to be cautious when they're on. Parked at the bottom of the railroad fill and waited.

Sure enough, once again, young Troy made his was around a nearby curve in the tracks, walking along at the bottom of the ballast rock. Got out and met him at the crossing.

"Kent! How did you know I was here?"

"Saw you from the overpass. Where you going?"

"Going down to the bridge. It's a neat place and I go there all the time."

"I don't think walking along the tracks is a good idea. Train could come at any time."

"They make a lot of noise."

"Sometimes not, especially if there's curve with trees in between, and maybe there's some wind. The engineer might not see you until it's too late."

"Yeah, but he has to blow it when he crosses roads in town, and you can hear that."

"Still, it can be dangerous."

"I walk where I'm not close to the tracks. You wanna go with me?"

His question came packaged with wide eyes. I could see he was getting worried about my worrying, as if it hurt his feelings. Suppose, for some reason, he didn't expect it from me. Thought about continuing on with my lecturing but decided if I made him get in the car to take him home, he would just do it again some other day by himself.

Weighed the options and decided to err on the side of going with him.

"Tell you what, Troy, I'll take you up on going with you as long as you promise you will never walk along the tracks by yourself again. Deal?"

"Uh-huh."

I knew uh-huh was as good as I would get. Figured to make him promise a second time when we got done.

"Let me lock the car," I said.

There was a line of trees at the bottom of the railroad fill.

"We're not going to walk by the tracks," I said. "We're walking along the edge of the trees and it's going to be a tough hike. You up for it?"

"Sure, that's nothing."

So, we started off through nothing. It wasn't an easy jaunt, by any means, what with the weeds and the uneven ground, but Troy still had no problem jabbering non-stop as we made our way.

"I've been doing some investigating on a new theory I have about people's health. Do you want to hear it?"

"Sure."

"Okay. In nineteen-ten the average life span in America was around about fifty-years old, kind of an average number between men and women spans. In nineteen twenty it was around fifty-four, an increase of only four years. Then, radios came into their own in the mid nineteen twenties, but there wasn't a lot of them. In nineteen-thirty the average lifespan was fifty-eight. By the late thirties into nineteen-forty there was a bunch of radio stations which meant there was a lot of their electromagnetic waves in the air and the lifespan average went up to sixty-three, a jump of five years. Television came along in the late forties and everybody used antennas so you also had TV waves in the air and in nineteen-sixty, after both signals had been in the air together for ten years or so, the average life-span was sixty-nine, an improvement of six years. Now we have cellphones and wi-fi putting millions and billions of their signals in the air and average lifespan is eighty years old.

"Of course, I know there have been some medical advances in all those years, but what if the main reason people are living longer is all the electromagnetic waves and the other signal waves passing through our bodies all the time? Maybe they helped to kill off a lot of the things that make us sick! You see what I mean? Forty-seven years in nineteen-fifteen and eighty now. It makes sense doesn't it?"

"What planet are you from?"

"Huh?"

Had to grin and shake my head.

"You could be right, Troy, but let's not forget about penicillin, heart surgery, and a few other things."

"But it does kind of makes sense, doesn't it? I mean, we have all this invisible stuff just flying through our bodies all the time and it hasn't hurt us, so maybe it's helping us."

It may be hard to believe, or then again maybe not, but he had me thinking.

"I'll give it some thought," I said.

Then, just out of nowhere, he changed the subject.

"You know anything about the Thebes, Illinois, railroad bridge?" he asked me.

"I know it's old."

"Yeah, they built it in nineteen-o-five. It was one of the first cantilever truss bridges built in America. It has five main spans and is almost four thousand feet long, including the concrete approach spans."

"Sounds like you've done your homework."

"The concrete approach spans use arch technology, and they're some of earliest to do that."

"Technicolor, you say?"

"No! Technology!"

"Just kidding."

"Most cantilever truss bridges have to have pointy towers to help hold them up, but the guys who designed this bridge figured out how to do it without them. It's amazing, those long spans without any extra support, and big trains going over the spans! I mean, there's nothing much around here that's interesting, but the bridge sure is. It's great. That's why I like to come here and look at it."

"You've done this before?"

"Bunch of times"

"Just remember, you promised you won't do it by yourself again."

Finally, we rounded a corner, and there it was, all of the nearly four thousand feet of it. I had to admit it was a sight to behold. The elongated, arched concrete approaches had a graceful look about them, in spite of the enormous amount of concrete involved. The metal spans, that rode between the approaches, rested on concrete pillars that grew up out of the immense river. The spans looked as if they traversed way too far to be able carry an automobile, much less a long train. As it was, a train going across the thing would look like a tiny toy-train, and that's saying something when talking about a modern freight train.

We stood on a high spot at the edge of the tree line that was above the railroad trackage and took it all in. Troy hardly seemed to breath. When he spoke, I could tell his words weren't meant for me.

"If I could be on highest the part of one of those spans, it would be like being on the top of the world."

Ah-h-h, to be young again.

After about a half hour or so of Troy educating me concerning the Thebes bridge, we started retracing our tracks, heading back to the road crossing. I took advantage of our time together to fill him in about my meeting with Sheriff Weeks.

"The Sheriff was very impressed about your research and what you ended up coming up with. He felt that, because of you'd found out, we needed to go to the location and check it out."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Did you find anything?"

"No. There was no visible blood or other evidence there, but it had rained twice since Mrs. Thompson disappeared. But the water was deep enough for her to be carried off right away, so your footage figure could be very close to right-on. He said he was going to send a forensic unit up there to look for hair and other possible evidence."

"Wow! Maybe I should go to help them."

"For now, let's just leave it up to them. Your time will come. He also said he was going to have the unit look for blood with Luminal."

"If they go during the day, they'll have to use Blue star or Lumiscene. Luminal only shows up blood in total darkness. The other two glow where blood is in low light conditions, and so with them they'd have to go either early in the morning or just about sunset. You know what, maybe we better go tell the Sheriff they better just go at night and use the Luminol. Low light conditions can be kind of tricky to hit just right."

I wanted break into a bemused grin but fought off the urge. Having to fight off the chortle meant it took a couple of seconds before I could reply.

"Good thinking there, Troy, but I think they know that too," I finally managed to say. "Let's just have them do their work. I'm sure Sheriff Weeks will let us know what they find out."

"I guess, if you say so."

Soon after that we arrived back at where my car was parked.

He was quiet for the first part of the ride, looking out the windshield and obviously deep in thought. Then,

"Kent, can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"You ever heard about sometimes a school will let their students bring people to the class that they know, and those people will tell the class about their jobs and what they do."

"I've heard of that."

"Well, I've been thinking. I don't know if the teacher I'll have next year will do that or not., but if the teacher does ask us to bring somebody to speak in front of the class, would you do that for me?"

That request once more tied up my tongue. I thought about it while giving him a side-ways glance.

"Well, Troy, I think the teachers are thinking about parents or some other relatives when they do that."

"But I only got my Mom, and she works at a quick shop. And I don't even know who my dad is."

He was looking straight forward, never turned his head.

"There's nothing wrong with what your Mom does," I said. "She works hard and is providing a service to other people, the customers that come in. That's as special as any other type of job."

"But you were a police officer, kind of a hero," he said. "I saw how you handled that man who was going to beat up Clovis, how you never even thought about stopping him. You did that and you did a lot of dangerous stuff for the DEA and put a lot of bad people in jail."

And some in the grave, I thought to myself. An admirable thing that.

I decided to change the subject.

"You've never met your dad?"

He shook his head.

There it was. A bright young man, an amazingly smart boy. And there he sat, an eleven-year old on the verge of crying like a six-year old might. Where was the fairness in that?

I know better than most that none of us had any control over the circumstances in which we were born under. After all, I had never met my mother until quite recently, and it was a not pleasant reunion by any standard. In fact, it was devastating, had put me in the pasture with the hair-trigger gun.

I wanted nothing more just then than to put Troy's mind at peace, to tell him it would all work out for him, whether he ever met his dad or not. He deserved that much, and a lot more. But I couldn't do it, because of where I'd been, what I knew.

Felt so damn sorry for the kid. He deserved ever so much better. So, went ahead and did the only thing left to me to do, even though I thought it was not what should happen.

"Tell you what. When you go back to school, if they do say you can bring somebody in to speak to the class, let me know. I'll be there if you still want me to."

He perked up and swung his head to look up at me.

"Oh, gosh, I hope they let me do it!"

Chapter 7

Zip-Boom-Bang

Parked in front of Lacy's place and told Troy I would see him later. He hopped out and half ran and half skipped his way to his house, as if he wanted some wind to run over the smile on his face. And all because I had agreed to the big 'if 'about me possibly being allowed to show up at his school.

Had no idea what to say should I end up being invited, had no idea whether his classmates would be interested with anything I'd say, or totally shocked. Hoped the school nurse had some sort of trauma training on her resume.

My timing for coming to a stop on East Beech Street was perfect. No sooner had Troy disappeared through his front door than Lacy came to a stop in front of babysitter Elaine's house. To the door she went and a minute later she was back at the car with her precious bundle in a totable car seat. I met her in her driveway and volunteered to carry Addie, who was peacefully sawing her mini logs, into the house. Once inside, after putting Addy and her car seat on the floor, Lacy latched onto me with more strength than I ever imagined she had. It was an enjoyable latch-on.

"I had a feeling I wasn't going to have a chance to get back to my apartment today," I said, "so I brought along a change of clothes. Could I borrow another shower before we go eat?"

"Yes, but let me go first. It'll take me longer than you, of that I'm sure. She'll probably sleep until I'm done."

As Lacy headed off I took a seat on the couch and started perusing a home interior decoration magazine that was obviously tilted towards womenfolk. Getting the essence of the things they suggested was a tough go for a guy with: one sofa, one tv, one cushioned easy chair, an old sixties era covered kitchen table surrounded by two unmatched chairs, and a queen size bed with no headboard.

Since those items were the extent of my interior decorations, I had a continuing urge to rub my eyes as I turned the pages.

Finally gave up, and my eyes happened to glanced down to see that Addie was looking up at me. She'd made no sound upon waking up.

Her soft, blue eyes were innocently taking me in, not questioning whether I might be a good or bad fellow, only questioning me as a being.

It came to me that hers was a beautifully uninhibited mentality, blissfully unaware of a bulbous body floating down a river, or a disfigured one in a ditch, or another just plain missing. Nor was she cognizant of one type of people hating another, whether for color, nationality, or merely politics.

She was only mindful of having something to be aware of, to be discovered and figured out. The tiny face and wide eyes made for a wholly sweet innocence, sweet to the point of coming close to bringing a tear or two to a world-worn set of eyes.

Got up slowly and went to her and bent over to unlatch her from the car seat. She didn't seem to mind at all as I picked her up to hold her. I was warm, and she was warm, and that was good enough.

Don't know what happened to me then, any more than what had happened to me the last few days as I had grown fonder and fonder of Troy.

What was this feeling building within this callous, ripped vessel of a man? Was I going soft, or just flowing back to the life that existed before my amassing so many stark visions of mangled bodies?

Didn't know, and in the end, neither did I care.

All I knew was, as I cuddled Addie close enough to my chest to feel her soft breath and featherweight warmth, that whatever bitterness and harshness that had become solidly encased within me started to ebb away, as if shamed by having ever been kept there.

Life was a peaceful jaunt for babies, and maybe, just maybe, could turn back to being a peaceful one for us brutes too, given a little push from unsullied cornflower-blue eyes.

I took the two ladies a few miles up the interstate to the town where I lived, where there were many more restaurants to choose from, and where we had a very pleasant meal. Pleasant in that the food was excellent, and in that it was kind of fun watching people's reactions to the sight of a very cute baby.

As we walked back to the car Lacy spoke up.

"While we're here why don't you take me by your apartment, so I know where it's at?"

"A-a-a...well, it's a mess."

"And mine's not?"

"Yours is a mess as if a light breeze came through an open window and blew some papers on the floor. My place is more like a tornado hit and stayed."

"Take me."

"Okay."

Ten minutes later, after she walked in the front door, she looked about with her mouth gaped open.

"Goodness, it echoes in here. Can't you afford a little furniture? I mean, I'll help you pick some out."

"Don't go there. I'm still in shock from seeing your interior decoration magazine. It gives me cold chills thinking about it."

"Okay, okay. And, yeah, I have to admit it is clean."

Just then my blubber-ball orange tabby cat came strolling out of the back hallway as if it was a boring process for him to have to move about and find out what the heck all the noise was about.

She walked over to pet him.

"O-h-h-h, what a cute cat!" Lacy said. "What's its name again?"

"Ferd."

"Ferd? Where did you come up with that?'

"Long story."

A long story of where people who meant a lot to me had died.

A terribly long story.

"You with a cat," she said, shaking her head. "I wouldn't have dreamed it Maybe you're more softhearted that you let on"

"Thank you, I guess. Now, let's head back to your place."

"Why? What's there that's not here?"

"A bed for Addie."

She bit her bottom lip and gave me a sideways glance.

"And only a bed for Addie?"

I was shaken out of a deep sleep the next morning. It was Lacy who had shaken me. She leaned over and gave me a kiss.

"Morning," she said.

She was dressed and carrying her purse.

"Morning," I replied. "What time is it?"

"Time for me to go to work."

I shook my head and blinked my eyes.

"Why didn't you wake me when you got up?'

She grinned.

"I figured if the alarm couldn't do the job, I had no chance. Anyway, you looked so sweet there sleeping."

"Yeah, sure, mouth open and lips flapping."

"You've had some long tiring days. Why don't you hang out here and take it easy today?"

"Tempting, but I better go back to my pace and maybe at least read my mail."

"See you this evening?"

"If you like."

"Oh, I like."

As I was driving up to my apartment I began getting into some weighty thinking.

Where, just where, was this thing with Lacy heading? True, I'd said the 'I love you too' phrase, and really, truly meant it. But what now?

I was more than positive she was sincere in what she'd said too. But just how deeply did she mean it?

Sure, she'd informed me that 'I desperately need just right' in a companion, and that I had fit the bill. But where does 'just right' get you?

Married? Oh, good grief, too much to think about there.

Not that she wasn't worth the idea. It was just that I am moody, have a dark past, and own a tendency to ruin all good that sluggishly lumbers my way.

"Plus, you two only just met, so what the hell are you even thinking about this shit for, Kenyon?" Inner-ear Kenyon blurted out.

Inner-ear drives me crazy and, as info, is one of only two people who can use my real first name, a moniker I hate.

The radio was on my favorite golden-oldies station. I like the innocent old stuff, sixties, seventies. So dang good, so damn worth the time. But though a song that was ready-made to get my attention was playing, I could not tell you what it was.

My ears were occupied with Lacy's voice, my minds-eye entranced by her beauty, my fingers tingling with the idea of just touching her again.

Yet, once more, where was our love affair going?

Was Kent Baker, a man with a clumsy tendency to ruin all things good, going to somehow ruminate his way into wrecking a wonderous relationship?

"Probably," Inner-ear belched out.

"Shut up," I blurted out in reply.

Spent the day in my half of the duplex reading my mail, thinking about Lacy, doing a little straightening, thinking about Lacy.

I thought about her enough that she finally called me at quarter after three.

"Getting off in a little bit," she said.

"Heading that way."

"Elaine said she'd watch Addie. We can go out to eat if you want.'

"Sounds good."

"Elaine's dying to know about us."

"What have you told her?"

"I'm keeping her guessing."

Twenty minutes later, after showering and getting dressed, I was on my way south again. Before I knew it, I was turning to travel over the railroad overpass on the road that would very soon allow me to turn onto East Beech Street.

Two blocks before making the turnoff, a car that I had not had in my rearview mirror just moments before came up quickly upon me just as I clicked on my turn signal. The driver never slowed down and, before I could jerk myself out of the way, it sped up and wacked my already beat-up ride on the rear bumper.

Wasn't a hard blow, but a blow just the same.

Crap, I thought, some dufus on their phone. There needed to be a bunch of laws against all dufuses on their phone while driving.

I pulled over to the curb and so did the dufus. Just as I was dragging my insurance info out of the glove compartment and getting ready to get out of the Mazda, he walked up to my window.

He was carrying a snub-nosed revolver close to his side.

He was Frankie Stone.

"I'm getting in the back seat," he said.

And he did.

"Comfortable?" I asked after he got there.

"Shut the fuck up."

I obeyed.

"Drive straight ahead," he growled.

"And if I don't?"

He pushed the barrel of the gun to the back of my head. It hurt.

"Drive!"

His voice sounded as if he'd been lapping up sand.

"What about your car?"

"We're not going that far. Drive, now!"

Not far is how far we travelled. Weren't but a half mile down the county road and into open country that he had me turn onto a farm road that very soon disappeared into a thick stand of trees, not too deep into which he told me to stop.

"Turn it off," he barked.

"Might need the air conditioning, it's kind of hot."

"Going to be a lot hotter where you're going, smart-ass."

Thing was, there happened to be a good reason for my being a smart-ass.

If I could keep him blathering away, I could maybe buy time to, number one, figure out what his final plan was and, number two, find a way to stop it.

So, it was to buy time and try to stay cool, calm, collected. Not an easy task, as Mr. Stone's voice told me he was one pissed-off chap, maybe enough so to do something that had a distinct finality to it.

But panic leaves you helpless and, what the hell, this fella had always figured he'd be taking a fatal bullet someday, to go along with all the ones that had only pestered me. So, it was to keep him talking and maybe buy a few more minutes of whatever life had to offer.

"Tell me, Frankie, what seems to be the problem?"

He started sucking in some heavy breaths. You could tell he was just dying for his chance to rant.

"What's wrong? I'll tell you what's wrong, I've had it with your shit. First off, you try to make me look like a fool during the search. You just got lucky there, Baker, a lucky damn move that just happened to go your way. I should have just got up and kicked your ass, except I didn't want to mess up the search for Myla."

"You knew her?"

"Everybody knows everybody around here."

"So, then you also knew Clyde. What good would it do to pound on him?"

"His goddamned brother is the one doing the killing! That's something everybody knows, they know about the dog with its eyes gouged out, just like misty Danes' were. They know he likes to stare at the girls, the sick bastard. He's a dumb-ass pervert and his brother lets him get away with it. And you're ignorant to think he didn't need his ass kicked!"

"You ever heard of the police?"

"Screw them. They couldn't find their asses with both hands, and you come along and had to make me look bad in front of everybody. I have to live here, you son of a bitch."

"You telling me you're going to get yourself in a world of hurt because of doing something to me because you're embarrassed? Sounds like you haven't thought his out much, Frankie."

"You really think that's all I'm pissed about? If that was all there was, I'd just drag you out in front of the whole town and beat you to a pulp, show them all I was just sucker punched the first time. No, that's not all. You think I'm so stupid that I don't know who sicced the cops on my ass?"

He seemed to have a special affinity for the human posterior.

"I don't know what to think, Frankie."

He jammed the revolver into the back of my head again. I was beginning to get more angry than scared.

"You know you did it!" he shouted. "I saw you there with that Jaden kid checking me out like I was some kind of criminal or something. I saw you. And then the next thing I know the Sheriff is at my door asking me all these questions, like he figured I had something to hide, like he maybe thought I was involved with what was going on. Me! Like I said, I got to live here, and now everybody is looking at me, wondering why the hell he was talking to me. I went to the store right after it happened and people were moving away from me because they already knew. Went to have a beer and they all acted like I was poison or something, all because of you. You know you caused it all, damnit, you have to know. And now, now I'm going to take care of you, you rotten bastard."

He was long past long-gone. I could feel his spittle spraying the back of my head. He went quiet and I wondered if he was going to pull the trigger, wondered if I should make an attempt to stop him from doing it even though there was none to be made that would work, none at all, not just then. Finally, and at long last, dumb luck wasn't shining.

At long last.

He shuffled about, I tensed, and then half an eternity later there came the feeling of the knife blade against my throat. Gripping the gun with his left, he used his right hand to hold the knife, a hunting knife if my stiff, downward glance was correct. He leaned forward into my ear.

"The way I figure it," he said in a raspy whisper, "a bullet in the head would be too easy, too quick. I'm gonna cut you deep so you can feel your hot blood, feel yourself bleeding out. I want the light to go out slow-like, with a lot of pain. You ain't so damn tough now, Baker, are you?"

I knew I needed to say something, anything, but it all had me frozen. Gun to the back of my head, a knife in the front.

When I didn't speak, he did.

"Surprised I know your name? I figure you are, cause you think I'm stupid, think you're so damn smart, but I found it out. Also found out you were laying that Brewer woman. Lacy, I think it is. Is she as good in bed as her looks make me think? Hell, maybe I'll make a move on her myself when this is over. Give her a feel of a real man.

"No, Baker, I'm not as dumb as you think. Found out about you and Lacy, it's small town like I said, and so I sat on a side street and knew sooner or later you'd drive by, horny as you must be. Got behind you and dinged the ass-end of this piece of shit car you drive and like a good citizen you pulled over and let me walk up to your door, easy as could be. Got you here just out of town so all I have to do is just walk on back and drive away. And as I figure it, you'll sit here a while before they find your stinking body. The field at the end of this farm road has winter wheat in it, just starting to green up, no reason at all for the farmer to come anywhere near it. Be nothing for them to find then but what little the maggots have left of you. Who's the dumbass now, huh? Ready to pump out a little blood, Baker?"

It was during this babbling tirade that I suddenly unfroze. It was something he'd said that brought me back, something about Lacy.

'Hell, maybe I'll make a move on her myself when this is over. Give her a feel of a real man.'

I knew then I would probably yet die, but it couldn't be without a fight.

Went former undercover-narc cold. Icy, no fear, no nothing.

Three things needed done.

Thing one, had to get my head away from the gun. Two, the knife away from my throat. Three, Mr. Stone disarmed and incapacitated.

Had a vague plan, most likely a suicide plan, but a plan just the same. Fact was, I'd already put part of it in motion, with his help.

Since he was yelling into my right ear, he gave me the opportunity to gently slide my left hand onto my door handle. And to go with that, earlier, all his shuffling around had been to quickly pass the revolver to his left hand so that he could handle the hunting knife with his right. Our little tiff during the search for Myla Stevens proved to me that he was right-handed, which meant we now a lefthanded finger on the trigger, a less favored digit that could possibly give me a second more to do what needed done.

Time to go, ready or not. And for the razor-slim chance to have everything work, I needed him thinking.

When a person hears something they really need to think about, contemplate, they momentarily untense, go limp, no matter the situation, because your comprehending what was said needs all of your body and brain's immediate attention. You may not want to pause, but you do, it happening with or without your permission. The untensing may only happen a second or two, depending on the importance of what is you heard, but it happens, and all I needed right then was a second or two. A second or two that could separate living from dying.

Yeah, he needed to be thinking, so I began speaking through a bone-dry throat.

"Bad news, big boy, but you really are as dumb as a rock. With all the bad stuff going on now, even weeks later any number of people will remember seeing a car alongside of the street on the day I disappeared, a day Lacy and I had agreed to meet, and will no doubt remember it as your car. They might even remember seeing you walking out of these trees or back down the road. They would also probably know you don't live around there. You said it, you live in a small town. The next time Sheriff Weeks comes to your place it will be with some open handcuffs. Hell, Frankie, he's going to show up there even if the impossible happens and no one recognizes your car. Me and him went to the river bank where you were nosing around, that's how suspicious he is of you, making you one of his first stops after I come up missing, since he already thinks there's a chance you killed Janice Thompson. You would break under questioning before they even have time to really get started, dense as you are. Eighteen years looking out of a pea-sized window and then they'll put a needle in your arm and inject you with a potion that will suffocate your heart slow and painfully. Eighteen years, at least, to think about how really dumb you were to think you were so really smart.

"And that's not even to think about you could be wrong about the farmer not finding me here. He's seen this lane from a distance a thousand times, and don't think he wouldn't see a windshield or a bumper reflecting some sunlight through the trees. That happens, I guarantee you they'll find enough DNA evidence left in the car to fill page after page of evidence files, especially because you're sweating like broke horse. No way you're gonna clean up this mess. Yep, big boy, your goose is as good as cooked, in spite of all your brilliant planning."

He'd been listening. Felt the gun ease slightly off the back of my head, knife a little off my throat.

Threw the door open, flung head and body to the left and at same time used right arm to whack his arm with the knife away from my throat even as the revolver went off next to my right ear, felt pain from a cut on my throat and at the last moment before I tumbled completely out of the vehicle I slammed my right fist into his throat and then I was on the ground outside the car. Saw him grab his throat, heard him make a retching sound as he dropped both gun and knife, knife onto the front seat, gun to the rear floorboard.

Hastily forced myself up to open rear door to grab the gun as Stone writhed about on the seat, hands on his neck

Then I laid back onto the ground.

It'd been a hectic few seconds.

My ear was clanging bells due to the gun blast. Blood was coming from a gash just above my Adam's apple.

Took off my shirt and held pressure on the cut.

Holy crap, I thought, holy, holy crap.

Took a few hefty breaths then drug the cell phone out of my pocket. Went through the phone numbers and found the one for Sheriff Charley Weeks.

He answered on the fourth ring.

"Hey, Kent."

I described the farm lane and what I figured its distance to be from Scott City's city limits.

"Turns off to the west," I said in finishing up.

"I know the road."

"That's what I figured. Thought maybe it'd be easier for you to tell some medical people how to get here. Could you call an ambulance? I've got a gash on my throat and there's a guy here who's having trouble breathing."

"What?"

"It's Frankie Stone."

"What? You hurt bad?"

"Don't think so."

"Don't think?"

"You might want to come too."

"On my way."

After ending the call, I took a look at my shirt. It held a good amount of blood but not near enough for it to be arterial blood. My ear was going from ringing to a loud buzzing. Maybe, just maybe, my eardrum hadn't imploded. Dumb luck for a dumb dummy.

Burrowed the back of my head into the cool dirt and decided to take it easy for a while. Then I heard the gasping breaths and kicking-about noises coming from inside the Mazda. I sighed and licked my lips.

"My advice, big boy, would be to quit bouncing around and take small, even breaths. Course, that's just my recommendation. Oh, and, since I have the gun now, I'd also advice you not to pick up the knife or try to get out of the car."

He didn't answer me and that was just fine. I'd only said what I'd said out of a vague respect for common decency. Bottomline was, could care less if he lived or died.

Chapter 8

Wrapped around little Fingers

The Sheriff got there first, but not by a whole lot. I told him he might want to get the knife out of the car. Frankie's breathing was easier, but not by a lot. Charley then came over to me.

"Damn, Kent, you alright?"

"Yeah, it's just a cut. I don't think it's anything major."

"Him?"

"I fisted him in the throat. He sounds better than earlier."

I hadn't bothered to open my eyes. Just felt better not to.

"Do you feel good enough to talk about it?"

"Sure."

Told him about how'd I'd been stupid enough to fall for his bumper-bump trick. About how he thought the farm road was a good place to finish me off. About his rant as to why he was going to doing it. About how I had nothing to lose so I tried something chancy and how, just somehow, it worked.

He said nothing for a while after I was done and, anyway, the ambulance was there.

"We can talk later," he said.

"I'm not so sure I need an ambulance."

"You're going."

And go I did.

On the way north to the nearest hospital the EMT told me the gash on my throat looked to have just made it through my skin. He put a large, gauze bandage on it. About the time he was done my cell phone screeched out it's dandy little jingle. I looked at who was calling and decided not answering would be worse than answering.

"Hi."

"Hi, darling," Lacy said. "Are you still going to make it?"

"Sorry, might be a while yet."

"Oh...okay...What's going on?"

"Nothing, just ran into a small problem. No big deal."

When her voice next came over the phone, after I didn't elaborate on my small problem, there was a slight uneasiness to it.

"Well, will you call me if you are coming?"

"Sure."

A little bit of a pause, then,

"Thing is," she said, her voice saying she was just talking to have something to say, "you're missing all the excitement here. Been all kind of police and ambulance sirens going down the main drag and out of town, and then coming back."

"Oh, really," I said in a truly stupid way.

Another pause.

"Oh my god," she blurted out, "you're involved in the sirens!"

"Alright, kinda, but ─"

"I hear noises. Are you in an ambulance?"

"Yeah, but ─"

"Where are they taking you?"

I gave her the name of the hospital and followed that up by saying,

"...But everything's okay."

"I'm on my way."

"No, you ─"

She'd already hung up.

I can't be sure about it but, by the way he quickly turned away, I think the paramedic was trying to stifle a laugh.

Just as the EMT had said, the cut on my throat wasn't that long and deep, so the doctor at the hospital emergency room applied some butterfly closures to put it together, and gave me the feel of an oversized needle with some juice in it that would ward off infection. He said I didn't need to be admitted into the hospital but that I needed to hang around a while to be sure I wasn't going to have any reaction to the shot. Must have been some kick-butt stuff but, considering Frankie's overall hygiene, I figured his knife had to be carrying a lot of squirming microorganisms on it, making the shot more than worth any oomph it had in it.

As soon as the doc left the room Charley Weeks entered.

"How you doing, cowboy?" he asked.

"Fine, couldn't be better."

"Looks like Mr. Frankie is going to live too. Doctor says he's going to have a sore throat for a while and will be hoarse for days, but he didn't figure there'd be any permanent damage. Said Frankie was lucky you didn't break the hyoid bone. You walloped him good."

"Not much choice. I needed him down and out."

"Understood. Since you've got the time, Kent, let's go into a little more detail about what happened. You say Frankie was pissed about you telling me he was nosing around down by the river, ahead of the search group. Anything else?"

"He said I had embarrassed him in front of all the good folks during the first day's search, when he was trying to whup up on Clyde Kregal."

"Thin skinned, isn't he?"

"A little unhinged on top of that. I was wondering, how did he know I was the one who told you about seeing him by the river?"

"I don't know, I didn't mention it."

"Wonder how he found out?"

"We only had a short conversation before I came to see you. The doctor said to give his throat a rest and to finish up later. But Frankie did talk long enough to claim twenty-twenty vision. Says he could see it was you and, as he put it, that damn Jaden kid, that was eyeing him. I guess he just had to figure the information came from you. But he said you ratting on him didn't make him mad enough to want to hurt you. In fact, he claimed it was you that attacked him. Got that out before the doctor stepped in and shut things down."

"Had a feeling that was what he would come up with. He's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he's smart enough to know that's his only out."

"We got him and the story he's running with now, and we got you. I might be a trifle biased, but I got to believe any thinking person would have to go with you. After all, evidence shows he rear-ended you. You had no weapon that we could find while he had the gun and the knife. You never a weapon, right?"

"Right."

"Good. Now, as far as him not having a grudge against you, I got no doubt I could go to any of the bars in town and find several people who would vouch for having heard him rant about you after he'd swallowed a few beers. He happens to be one of those aggravating, big-mouthed drunks. And that being the way he is, any number of those folks would be more than glad to repeat what he said, as long as we'd cuff him right after they spoke up."

I shook my head.

"Never a lack of excitement in your little town, Charley. What else did he say when you questioned him at his place?"

"Not a lot. Basically, it was just Frankie being Frankie. Yapping about how I was hurting his feelings, thinking he had anything to do with Janice Thompson's disappearance, even though my questions up till then hadn't gotten anywhere near that. Said all he was at the river for was to do some looking around on his own, since he was too embarrassed to search with everyone else after you had sucker-punched him."

"Poor guy, and to think I passed up the chance to actually hit him."

"His throat gets better, and I'm going to lower the boom on Frankie in my office, about attacking you and what he might know about Janice and the other two ladies."

He pulled at his chin.

"Thing is, Kent, I just deep down find it hard to register what he did to you, much less be involved in murder and kidnapping. I mean, the guy's a classic example of ten-year old bully, with low esteem, stuck in a man's body. Talks big, acts big, picks fight with guys he knows he can whip. I'm not saying he's harmless, I'm just saying I never would have thought he had it in him to go beyond putting on a show. Course, seems he did try to kill you."

"Maybe, in the end, he wouldn't have done it. Maybe it was just another show, and a way to make me beg."

"Or maybe he just somehow came to the point of crossing the line. Good thing you fought your way out of it, because I got the feeling you damn sure didn't beg. Anyway, I'll take what we got to the prosecuting attorney and see what he wants to do with it."

Just as he got those words out someone came rushing into the room. Someone breathless, someone with concern furrowing their face.

Lacy.

She threw her hand to her mouth when she saw the bandage on my throat. I don't think she even noticed the Sheriff.

"Oh my god, what happened to you!"

"It's nothing."

"What happened?"

"Okay, but just know that it's all over now and I'm fine. Frankie Stone came after me because I told the Sheriff about him snooping around down at the river just ahead of the last search. Sheriff Weeks followed procedure and went to ask him a few questions about what he was doing. Frankie was angry about that and about not being able to beat up on Clyde Kregal because of me, and so he decided to get even. We had a little bit of a tussle, and that's about it."

"What happened to your throat?"

"He had a knife."

"He stabbed you!"

"No, it's just a shallow cut."

"You're at the hospital."

"Sure, they had to check me out."

"You could have died."

"But I didn't."

I was glad the Sheriff didn't feel the need to mention the revolver at the back of my head. But he didn't, and it looked like the reason for that was because, contrary to what Frankie had said about all the folks in Scott City knowing about the depth of me and Lacy's relationship, he was becoming aware of it just then, and that revelation was all he had on his mind. Or so said the look on his face.

"Where is Frankie?" Lacy asked.

"He's here at the hospital."

"What happened to him?"

"Like I said, we had a tussle. He's okay, just a bit bruised."

She turned to Charley. There was the touch of a hard anger in her in the tone of her words.

"Are you going to lock him up, Sheriff?"

"I think we'll be bringing charges up against him, yes. But I still have to talk to the Prosecuting Attorney."

She turned back to me.

"So, all the sirens I heard really was about you."

I nodded.

"Are they going to keep you here tonight?" she asked.

"No, it's not much of a cut, just barely broke the skin."

"Then I want you come home with me, so I can make sure you'll be alright."

"I'll be fine. You got enough to do with taking care of the baby. I promise I'll come by tomorrow."

She said nothing for a few seconds, just stared at me with a face that had lost the hardness.

"Do you want me to sleep tonight? Do you want me to get any rest at all?"

"Yes, sure."

"Then you come home with me so I can look after you."

I took in her expression just then, and knew she was on the verge of crying, just as she had the night she made me tell her about my numerous scars.

I nodded again.

"I'll come home with you tonight."

Sheriff Charley Weeks couldn't see her face because he was off to the side and a little behind her, and probably wouldn't have known what her look meant, even if he could see it. What he was doing, though, was breaking into a little grin, just as the EMT in the ambulance had done when Lacy was on the phone.

He was thinking it was kind of funny how this little woman was able to reel me in and wrap me around her littler fingers. It was funny to him because he knew all about it. He was married, and dearly loved his wife, and realized how that affected a man, no matter how tough he thought he was. About how that made him so pliable in her nimble hands. Maybe the EMT was also in love with a sweet lady, bringing out his little grin as I acquiesced to this self-same woman then too, all because I couldn't bear to have her upset.

I could not begrudge them their chortles, even if they were at my expense.

Love does that to a man. Makes mush out of macho.

Chapter 9

Worrywarts

I did not get much rest that night, and not because Lacy and me made whoopee. Thing was, she wouldn't allow it, because it might affect my sutured throat.

No, the reason little rest was to be had was because she woke me every few hours to find out if I was okeydokey, and each time she woke me up I was. Okeydokey, that is.

The irony was she needed the sleep more than me, because she had to go to work.

And she was all worked up about that.

"I don't know if I should leave you by yourself," she moaned. "I just don't know. What if your wound breaks open?'

"It won't. I don't plan on doing anything strenuous, except maybe feed Ferd. But you could do me a favor."

"Sure."

"I'll call to make sure, but I imagine my car is at police headquarters. Maybe we could leave early so you can drop me off to pick it up."

"You think you should drive?"

"Lacy!"

"Oh, alright, I'll call Elaine and let her know I'll be a little earlier with Addie."

It wasn't long and we were dropping the little bundle of joy off and, following that, pulling into the parking area at the county offices.

Sure enough, old reliable was parked very close to the front door. Lacy pulled into a space next to it. I leaned over to give her a kiss but found that her face was frozen into some sort of a grimace, her eyes planted on my Mazda.

"Lacy? What's wrong?"

She moved her mouth in slow motion, as if her jaws needed oiling, which left spaces between her words.

"Is...that...a...bullet hole...in...the windshield.?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"He had a gun. We struggled and it went off."

"So, you had your throat cut, and also was almost shot."

"I'm still here, Lacy. Everything worked out."

She took her gaze from the Mazda and put it on me. You could tell she was searching for words.

"Kent, you're all covered with scars from cuts and bullets. How long before you're killed?"

"I'm not going to be ─"

"I googled you."

"What?"

"There were articles in the St. Louis paper. You were involved in stopping a man after he murdered some people in St. Louis and in the farm country in Illinois, and it said you were injured doing it. Your name also came up concerning some horrible murders around Prairie du Rocher. And separate from that, you were also wounded in a drive-by shooting where someone else was killed. Don't you understand? These were things that had nothing to do about when you were with the DEA, and I have to think you were in many dangerous situations in your work too. And now, right now, you've been shot at and stabbed! You keep putting yourself in risky situations. Why? Wasn't your police work enough?"

I said nothing, only waited for her to go on. When she did, her tone came across as barely more than a heart-felt whisper.

"All those injuries, all those scars. When will your luck finally run out, Kent? I feel so strongly about you, dear, I love you so much. But if we stay together, I wonder if I will have to bury you? Because if I do, I just wouldn't be able to go on."

You want to say so much, but there's simply too much to say, leaving you but one choice.

You keep it short and sweet.

"Frankie attacked me. Who could have foreseen that? Those other things that happened after I left the agency? It was just me taking the time to try to help some very good people out. It'll probably never happen again, though I can't promise it won't. But I need you to understand that I have to be able to live with myself, I have to try to do the right the thing because I've screwed up too many other things over the years to not do that. And, when you get down to it, life's not worth living any other way."

"What have you screwed up that was so terribly important?"

Just then I could not think of anything because, hell, there really wasn't anything. It's just the way I think about myself.

That left me with nothing to say, only to shrug.

She put her hand on mine. She gave me a warm little smile.

"You're a soft-hearted boy in a good man's body, Mr. Baker. Please stay that way and, promise me, in one piece. And please, also promise to stay with me."

I watched her drive away, watched her all the way through the parking lot and onto the main drag.

Some kind of gal, that one, I thought.

"Don't screw it up, nincompoop," Inner-ear Kenyon said.

Kenyon ignored him, as Kenyon was prone to do, and made my way into the office of Sheriff Charley Weeks to get my car keys.

He retrieved them out of a desk drawer and handed them to me.

"Been to the D.A.," he said. "He's giving what happened some deep thought, but never dropped a hint about what he might do. I've found that D.A.'s kinda lean that way."

"Rightfully so."

"I'll be in touch. Oh, so you know, Frankie Stone is back home. Talked to him on the phone. Sounded like a bullfrog, but claimed he was doing fine. Told him in no uncertain terms to behave himself and, if he didn't, I'd be on him like ugly on an ape. Said he would. Didn't sound like the old Frankie, seemed kind of meek. Still, I wanted you to know, just in case he gets his mojo back."

"Thanks for the info. Anything on Myla?"

"No. I don't know, seems like we're just going around in circles. Nothing on our two murdered ladies either. You'd think somebody, somewhere, would have seen something, heard something, stumbled over something. But no, and we've been unable to find any evidence on the bodies, anything at all. It's like whoever killed them was wrapped in plastic. Tell you, Kent, I don't even bother to go to bed anymore. It'd be a waste of time."

Five minutes later found me outside the building standing beside my buddy-car. I was feeling as down as Charley after speaking with him. And just then, looking at my aged means of transportation, I got bluer still.

What got to me was the hole in the windshield that lined up with the steering wheel, that had almost lined up with my head. Spider-webbed cracks radiated away from the hole.

"Sorry, girl," I whispered.

Bullet holes covered by fake bullet holes in her body, and now she was in dire need of some new glass.

No way I could trade this car off, (ignoring the fact no one would take it on a trade anyway). Nor could I just junk her, we had been through way too much together.

Which meant it was off to find a car hospital.

The guy at the car hospital was kind of wide-eyed as he took in Miss Mazda and her multiple injuries, but he finally focused his attention onto the windshield. He could have a replacement the next day, was what he said.

Great, is what I said.

Just as I was leaving his business my cell phone went off.

"Hello."

"How you feeling?"

Lacy, not bothering to greet me.

"I'm fine, Lacy, couldn't be better."

"No, you could definitely be better. You need to stay with me again tonight."

"I'll be there because I know there's absolutely no need to argue. And, shoot, I like sharing a bed with you."

"Don't get any ideas, sweetie, not until your butterfly bandages are removed."

"You got to be kidding me!" I yelped.

I meant to yelp.

"No, I'm not kidding," she said. "At the present time I'm your nurse, doctor and recovery caregiver all rolled into one. Fun stuff will have to wait."

"U-u-u-g-g-g."

A little later my belt-held telephone went off again, a surprising thing as I am seldom dialed up. Thing is, few people know my number and fewer still have a desire to talk to me.

The caller was Kevin Ringle, childhood buddy, high school best friend ─ he played offensive tackle while I was a linebacker ─ and crooked rich people's lawyer deluxe. Well, maybe they all aren't crooked. Suppose even monied folks, every once in a while, could be innocent. But, crooked or not, most all of them come to him. He was smart, he was convincing, he was willing to burn the midnight oil, and he seldom lost. All of which had them begging for him to take a large wad of their money in order to stay out of a small, barred concrete room where people could walk by and see you on the crapper. Taking that large wad was a thing he was more than happy to do.

Worked in his white, long-sleeved dress shirt and black loafers, out of a strip mall office in the north county area of St. Louis. Had but one secretary and had a plan to retire by forty-five, just nine years away.

There was no doubt in anybody's mind that he would make it, since I was the only person for whom he periodically would do gratis work. Don't know if it was out of friendship or if he felt sorry for me, or if my predicaments were so darn stupid and attention-grabbing that he just couldn't resist.

Anyway, he was calling me.

"Hey, Kenyon."

He was that only other person besides Inner-ear Kenyon would could call me Kenyon.

"Hey, Kevin."

A moment of silence then,

"Tell me, what in the hell is this situation you're into now?"

"How did you find out?"

"Read some tea leaves, ESP, or maybe a lawyer friend had been down to Scott City to visit a client. No matter, you got to tell me, buddy, what kind of vibes are you putting out? Do they hypnotize turmoil and transport it your way?"

Then,

"Seriously, Kent, are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"I hear he drew blood."

"A little, but no big deal."

"To you, maybe. Tell me about the attack."

I did. He gave it some thought for a good while after I was done. I waited on him.

"Damn," he finally said, "you could have been killed."

"I wasn't."

"Cindy's right. Your guardian angel deserves overtime pay."

Cindy is his sweet wife who thinks I need, in the worse way, to be married.

"What about charges against this guy?" Kevin asked.

"Sheriff says the DA's giving it some deep thought. Thing is, this guy is saying I attacked him, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Course, that's no surprise."

"Well you know as well as I do that he can't be charged merely on your claims that a crime was committed. Your Sheriff is going to have to gather some evidence or information to recommend that charges be made. It being just you two involved, and no other witnesses, that could be a rough go. And what obviously happened means nothing in a trial. The word of a respected former government cop against a man with a bad reputation probably means even less. All it takes is one good-old-boy on the jury who doesn't like some bigshot ex-DEA agent picking on another good-old-boy. Lots of folks have hard-ons for what they consider an uppity government, which is inclusive of some people who worked for it. And one holdout is all that's needed. Yeah, I can see why the DEA is on the fence."

"Thanks for the good news."

"Nothing's more muddled than the democratic system of justice."

"Don't I know it."

"Tell me, Kent, is this all tied in with those two murdered women and the missing one down there?"

"In a way. The guy who came after me was making trouble during one of the searches for the third victim and I stopped him. Seems his pride couldn't abide that."

"One born every minute. Considering the investigation, I'm guessing the Sheriff is smart enough to have asked your opinion about things."

"We've talked."

"Anybody under suspicion?"

"There's one guy that's getting the hard eye, but there's nothing concrete on anybody, at least that I've been told."

"What about the guy who came after you?"

"He's known as a picky bully, picky meaning he starts fight with easy targets. Does he have enough of a cruel disposition to be a serial killer? Maybe, maybe not. I don't know enough about him to say."

I could almost hear him shaking his head.

"You drive me crazy, getting involved with all these nasty goings-on," he said. "But I know you can't be stopped getting into the middle of it, some kind of rare screwball virus in your blood. Just don't let this batch of blood be the one where your luck finally runs out. Take the time to grow some eyes in the back of your head, hear me. And if you need any legal advice give me a call, day or night. My price is still the same."

"Thanks, will do, buddy."

Finally made it back to Scott City and into my caregiver's bed, and early at that, seeing as how the self-same caregiver said I needed to get plenty of rest and recuperation in order for my wound to properly heal.

Deal was, I ended up not sleeping very well. Stretched out next to a warm, tempting body drew all the drowsiness out of my body. It was torture far worse than a slightly slit throat.

I voiced my disapproval about how things were playing out during the first light of dawn.

"You'll live," she said with a self-satisfied grin.

"I won't live if I explode."

"What are you doing today?"

"Having a new windshield installed."

"Just be careful, and remember the doctor wants to see you tomorrow. And I want to see you again tonight."

She was turning into the mother I never had. Funny, but I liked it.

Chapter 10

...a gut-load...

The windshield man had told me the windshield would be there the 'next day', but did not elaborate on what hour of the 'next day'. Turned out it would be in the afternoon, so I made my way to a restaurant for coffee and a newspaper.

Good coffee, regular newspaper that was chock-full of bad news. The funnies and the crossword were pretty good though.

Made my way back to have to finally get something to run my wipers across in the early afternoon, and afterwards was on my way south towards Scott City at nigh-on three-thirty, Lacy's quitting time from work. Had the radio blasting away on the golden oldies, sixties and seventies style, once more amazed there was music where the words were to make sense and also made to be understood.

For some strange reason began feeling things weren't so dreadfully bad after all.

Turned down East Beech while still nodding my head to the music. Was about halfway down the length of it when I noticed two people on the sidewalk in front of Lacy's home. Soon realized it was Lacy and Troy.

Something about their mannerisms and postures made me feel uneasy. Seeing their expressions upon getting closer settled it.

Lacy had her arm around Troy's shoulder. He wasn't crying but looked close to it. Lacy's face was furrowed with concern.

I parked the car and trotted across the road.

"What's going on?"

Troy pointed a trembling finger across the road.

"He came after me."

"Who came after you?"

"C-Clyde!"

Lacy took over.

"Clovis was walking along the sidewalk over there and Troy went over to talk to him. While they were talking Clyde came out of that little building by the house and started cursing and yelling and coming up the hill. I was just getting home from work."

"What was he saying?'

"It was terrible! He told Troy to get away from Clovis and quit bothering to him. He was cussing and yelling and said he was going to kick his ass if he didn't stay away, if he didn't quit talking about them to other people. I ran to Troy and brought him to this side of the street."

She went quiet and shook her head as if she didn't want to say any more. I wouldn't have it.

"And?" I asked harshly.

"That...that was about it."

"And!"

She shook her head.

"He was still cussing all the way to this side of the street, just one foul word after another. Told Troy he had started all the rumors about Clovis, about him. Said over and over again, I'm going to kick your ass, going to kick your ass. I was afraid he was going to hit him."

"What were you talking to Clovis about?" I asked Troy.

"Not...nothing really. I was just talking to him. I mean, you really can't have much of a talk because he doesn't say much that makes sense. You know, I was just asking who was mowing their lawn, stuff like that. Then Clyde came out, and I was really scared. After shouting at us he took Clovis back to their hose and that was all. I think he's been drinking. He smelled bad, like beer."

Could feel myself getting hot, could feel my jaws tensing up.

"Anything else said?"

"No, no, that was all," Lacy said.

"He said he might just kick her tight ass too if she didn't stay out of the way!" Troy cried out.

I'm sure my fists must have been clenched, but don't remember doing it.

All my life, through all my darkest escapades, during all the occasions where I was on the black side of upset and needed to take bloody action, my anger always rode into a callous, hard mode. Someone had pushed me into acting with a merciless heart, sometimes for life-saving motives, more than once for violent, deadly revenge. But always, always, I had forced myself to become a coldly focused, straight ahead with blinders-on, arbitrator of harsh\justice. No matter how upset, you had to weigh your actions by freezing your emotions.

But then, just then, it was not the stony, passionless Kent Baker, but rather one consumed by a white-hot anger. A blind desire to wreak havoc, not unlike a ferocious Frankie Stone holding a gun to a head and a knife to a throat, wanting in the worse way to have my vengeance.

Turned and headed across the street.

"No, Kent, no!" she said from behind me.

I kept moving.

"No!" she yelled.

Kept moving.

Then she ran up to be in front of me, half stumbled, came up and put her hands on my chest, tears in her eyes.

"No, Kent, no, stop! Stop! Please, do it for me, please."

I stopped. The rage was still there but ─ but...she was there.

I took three deep breaths before speaking.

"Alright. Alright. But I'm telling you here and now, no one will ever hurt you. No one!"

She pulled a tight smile across her quivering lips.

"I know, dear, I know."

We took Troy to his front door.

"You have a cell phone?" I asked.

"No."

"How late does you Mom work tonight?"

"I think eleven."

"Your regular phone, does it have a good battery in it? Does it last a long time?"

"Yes. I usually keep it in my room when she works nights. She wants me to."

"Good. Take it there tonight, and if you hear anything or see anything, call me. I'll be over at Lacy's house. Don't worry if you call me and it turns out to be nothing, because I don't care. Call me. Understand, Troy?"

"Yes."

"I don't really think Clyde will try anything. I think he's all talk. But just keep the phone close by, hear me?"

"Sure, Kent, I understand. But I'm not scared."

Put a hand on his shoulder and gave him a knowing smile.

"I know you're not. It's just that two of us are scarier than one." I said. "So, lock your door, turn on all your outside lights, and I'll drop over first thing tomorrow morning to check on you. What time doe your Mom get up?"

"Early. She doesn't sleep much."

Lacy and I walked over to her place.

"He's just a good kid," she said.

"Yes, he is."

She caught my mood.

"You're still upset. Kent, I think it's over with Clyde. Like Troy said, he looked to be drunk."

"That's when a lot of folks loose what good sense they have, and Clyde doesn't seem to have a boatload to begin with. I can see him getting upset about rumors being spread around, but the dog with his eyes taken out is ready-made for the rumor mill on its own. Why be pissed at Troy? Excuse my language."

"He's just a guy with a bad case of the nerves, always has been."

"Meaning his nerves made him threaten you?"

She didn't answer. We were at her door.

"Anyway," I went on, "sometime soon I'm going to have a talk with Clovis."

"You mean Clyde."

"No, I mean Clovis. I think I got Mr. Clyde pegged. I want to get a feel for Clovis."

We were in the house.

"There's no reason to even talk with him, nothing he says makes sense. It's sad, but I think he's completely harmless."

"But he doesn't seem to be completely senseless, if he ogles the girls. And then there's the dog and its eyes and the tie-in with Misty Dane."

She came to a sudden stop and put her hand to her mouth.

"Oh, my god, were her eyes gone too?"

Sheriff Charley had said that somehow the word had gotten out, and that the whole town knew. Obviously, he was wrong about one of the residents.

"Way to go, dumb-shit," Inner-ear bellowed.

"I'm sorry, Lacy. I shouldn't have blurted that out."

"Why would somebody do such a thing?"

"Don't think about it."

"No, why!"

I sighed.

"They're sick, demented. Could be they regret what they've done and they think the victim is staring at them. Or could be they get some kind of pleasure out of it. Thing is, there's no use even trying to figure it out."

She sat down on the end of the couch.

"How can this be happening. And of all places, here."

"Whoever's responsible will be caught. There's a great group of law enforcement people here, the Sheriff, state officers, the FBI. They'll find some evidence, they'll put this animal away."

"And you're helping out. You've talked to the Sheriff."

"I gave him my opinions, yes, but this kind of thing isn't exactly up my alley."

"You had to have experience with murders while dealing with drug crimes. Right?"

"Well, yes."

"How many?"

"I don't know. Made no sense to count."

"And you were almost murdered."

I said nothing.

She turned to look up at me.

"What am I to make of you, Kent? You've done dangerous things, things requiring bravery, I know you have. In fact, you've almost died here, but fought your way out and then made little of what you went through. You've also buried a lot of other horrible memories, but I know they have to burden you, I just know it. You've been a big help to the Sheriff, I'm also sure about that. Yet, for some reason, you downplay everything you've ever done, everything you've had happen to you. There's this desire inside you to stay within yourself, and not bother people with the fact that you're a courageous, caring man. And yet somehow, someway, I love you even more for all of that."

I tried to come up with some glib reply to what she'd said, as was my usual ploy, but none came to me.

Ours, so far, had been a short relationship and yet, in that limited amount of time, she had come to deciphering me so well, the many chinks in the tough-skinned armor I'd always used to deflect people from discovering the real me.

She had nimbly unearthed my night thoughts, my nightmares, and loved me because of them and not in spite of them. Hers was a touching, lovely perceptiveness, and it came from a truly caring person.

There could be no simplistic joke added to that.

It was around a half an hour later that, while sitting in an easy chair by a front window, waiting on Lacy to return from getting little Addie from Miss Elaine, that I happened to look out the window to see Clovis Kregal coming to the top of the slope in front of his house to put himself with his peculiar gait onto the city sidewalk. His clothing was, as the first time I saw him, disheveled. His belt was flopping about, his hair a topsy-turvy mess.

I hopped up and made my way outside. Met Lacy just as she was getting to her own front yard. She glanced across the street at Clovis then at me.

"Where you going?"

"Going to have a little chat with him."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"Can't see where it hurts anything."

"But what about Clyde?"

"He's probably passed out in the old chicken coop. And if he does come out, I'll have a talk with him too."

"Kent, I ─"

"It'll be alright, Lacy. I don't think either one of them would take a swing at me."

"You probably didn't think Frankie Stone would do what he did either."

"You can't figure out anything by ignoring it, and I promise I'll keep my cool. I'll be careful, trust me."

She semi-nodded her head.

"Do I have a choice?"

I put a hand on the side of her face and softly caressed it.

"No, but you have my promise that I'll behave myself. Take your cute little girl in the house and I'll be back in a bit."

"Do I have a choice," she said again, slightly smiling.

I watched her until she had made her way inside before making my way across the street and down the sidewalk towards Clovis, who was only just then getting to the main road. He turned right, which would take him to a small business district ─ post office, hardware store, funeral home, etc.

Caught up and stepped to the street side of him, pacing myself to match his steps.

He knew I was there, you could see in the way his eyes kept flicking my way over and over, but he kept on going as if doing so would make me disappear. Made it past the last two houses ahead of the business area before I decided to start the conversation.

"How you doing, Clovis?" I asked him.

"Hum," he said, "hum."

"Where you headed?"

"Huh," he said, "huh."

"I was just out for a walk when I saw you and thought maybe we could just walk together. Would that be alright with you?"

He didn't answer that time. I gave it a while to let things sink in to him. Then,

"Do you remember me, Clovis? I was across the street from your house with Troy. You know Troy, don't you, his house is just across the street?"

He shook his head.

"Don't like, like. Clyde mad."

"Don't like who? Troy? He's a good person, used to mow your lawn."

"Hot here."

"Yeah, a little bit, I guess."

His stride hadn't changed. He went no slower, went no faster. If that meant anything at all, it could mean he wasn't bothered by my presence. Or maybe it just meant he knew no other pace, same as he had the capacity to only speak in short sentences, with both his walking and speech as limited as his mind.

But was he too mentally limited to drive a car? To kill a young woman? To slash her eyes out?

Or was it all an act? Was he perhaps smart enough to playact being mindless?

The answer to that meant everything.

What had one of the FBI shrinks said?

'His level of retardation sounded to be moderate level...IQs between 35 and 49...a moderate retardation...have difficulty with communication, reading and writing...they are able to get around and are able to function in simple social activities.

Could it be that driving a car ─ when you've been in one and have seen it done many times ─ be considered a simple activity?

Was his staring at the girls in their shorts and flimsy tops bringing on, within his partially shuttered mind, a deeper desire. A desire to feel, to touch, even to kill, whether for the pleasure of it, or to eliminate someone from ever getting the chance to talk?

Or were there just enough neurons running rampant to let him know that all of those actions were a whopping no-no?

Or maybe a little extra more flowing that could take him to the idea that he could get away with it?

I wasn't enough of a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, psycho-anything to know, at least not just then. But I still had to do my best to get into his hesitant mind, and not let his problem stop me. Because, after all, aren't all those who have killed owners of a contaminated mind?

It's just that it's sad as hell that life or death can be decided by a few point differences in someone's IQ.

Just then, from the opposite direction and on the same side of the road, two ladies came walking up, one probably in her teens and the other probably her mother, going by her age and the similarities. Both were in shorts, very nicely dressed. Clovis caught sight of them and came to a dead stop. The women saw him came to a stunned stop, then averted their gazes away from him and instead put their eyes to the ground, turning to the right to begin crossing the road without even making an effort to check for traffic. Upon arriving at the opposite side walk they quickened their strides even more, eyes straight ahead, arms swinging.

Clovis ogled them all the way, across the road and until they were so far away shorts and tops blended together.

"Them," he mumbled then.

I moved about so as to block his being able to see them.

"What do you mean by them, Clovis?'

"Um-um-um-um. Them."

"Do you know those ladies?"

His reply was a lot of garbled nothing. Actually, it wasn't a reply. You could tell whatever he was saying was meant for his ears, the ears of someone who understood. I wasn't even there.

Eventually, after the ladies had moved off a good distance, his mangled syntax gave way to a half-humming, half-singing ditty, an unintelligible singalong ready made for a one-man audience. He even swayed his head back and forth a little bit while doing it, his eyes off of the women and instead planted onto the buildings across the street.

I'm not a guy easily moved to trepidation, not having seen and done what I'd seen and done, but I have to admit that the way he moved from gawking to singing gave me the chills. It was as if he was an automaton under the spell of another creature who was pushing all the buttons, if that makes any sense.

Moved into his line of sight.

"Can I ask you something, Clovis? Huh? Can you drive a car, Clovis?"

"Um-um-um-um."

"Have you ever driven a car, Clovis?"

He moved his head in an up and down in a jumpy circle, as if he was nodding yes and shaking it to mean no, all at the same time. He was looking away, not at me.

"Did you drive a car with a girl in it, Clovis?"

No answer.

"Clovis? Did you? Did you leave her in a ditch?"

Figured I might as well quite beating around the bush and go for the throat.

"House," he said. "Have to house, a house."

"Clovis?"

He turned and moved hurriedly up in the direction from where we'd come.

"Why are you going home, Clovis? Don't you want to talk to me?'

That brought on a return of his strangely disjointed warbling, only this time it was louder. Gave up trying to talk to him and fell in behind. Knowing I was behind him he quickened his stride. Sped up to try and catch up with him, which caused him to break into almost a run. But it was a sloppy run, ungainly, bouncy. I eased off. No good would come from him doing a face-flop on the concrete.

As it was, he was probably half a football field ahead of me and panting like there wasn't enough oxygen in the world by the time he abruptly turned down the sidewalk that went to his house.

I stood by the road and watched him stumble through his front door, my mind skipping along considerably slower than his feet had been.

Had I produced a Perry Mason moment through my mish-mashed conversation with Clovis Kregal?

Obviously not.

Was there anything at all to made of it?

Shoulder shrug...I dun no. His reaction to my question concerning a girl in a car had upset him immediately and in a powerful way, him being slow witted or not. And there's one thing this dude does know. Just being peculiar doesn't mean you've performed a criminal act, but getting wildly upset at a simple question might, so I had learned questioning suspects while working for the DEA.

To go with that, his eyes had definitely laser-gazed the two women. More so, it seemed to me, the younger one. No doubt they had heard the rumors concerning him, heard about the dog also, which had to have been some of the reason for their actions. But there seemed to be a lot beyond that, a far deeper form of uneasiness, like a lady might have when she feels a man is undressing her with his horny eyes.

I could see it. Hell, his unyielding gaze had even made me extremely uncomfortable.

Hmm.

Question was, did he even know what his rapacious gawking did to people?

Or did he have enough sense to know, but just didn't care?

Or had the urge to contemplate become too strong for his dim mind to hold back?

And if it had strong of a pull on him, could the yearning blur into taking violent action, an action that got completely out of hand?

Again, I'm no psychiatrist. I'm just a plodding what-if kind of guy.

All my ungainly brain discerned was that he was an extremely strange fella, maybe even verging on scary. And it's a fact that mating strange with scary can give birth to something wicked. Just think of Richard Speck and eight murdered nurses in Chicago. Or Dennis Rader and the ten dead innocents in Kansas.

Or Adolf Hitler.

And there's more of them, too many to mention or stomach.

Those were where my thoughts were running when a figure burst out of the Kregal house and, without a pause, began, ah, well, I don't know, maybe we'll call it lumbering up the grade towards me.

Clyde Kregal, a man on a mission.

At least he had the sense to come to a swaying stop ten feet from me.

"Who the hell do you think you are!" he blurted out.

His eyes were glazed, his hair was ruffled, and I could smell the beer in spite of the distance. Figured I needed to answer him

"I'm me," I said.

It never even registered with him.

"Why are you and that damn brat across the street pestering Clovis, stirring shit and causing us trouble?"

"I got a question for you. Why are you threatening Lacy and Troy?"

"Huh?"

"Don't tell me you're too drunk to remember."

He shook his head.

"I just talked to them, is all."

"And I just talked to your brother. Sounds like things are kinda even between us, don't it?"

"Huh?"

"Tell you what," I said. "Why don't you drag your ass back down to your house. Plop down in front of your chicken house TV and if you're lucky maybe you'll troll across a rerun of Captain Kangaroo, the kind of show you might enjoy at this point of your pathetic life."

He never even bothered with a huh, only gave me a look like I was out of focus. I said one last thing, just before turning to walk away.

"Just cool your jets, big boy. I'll only say it once"

Started on my way and never heard him say anything in answer to that, and it wouldn't have mattered if I had.

This Baker guy had amassed way more than a gut-load of the Kregal brothers for one day, and way more was well beyond enough.

Chapter 11

Zoned

Left Lacy's house early the next day, even before she left for work, having spent the majority of the night wide awake and trying to think of something, anything, other than she was laying soft and warm next to me, so near and yet so far.

First off, the anything I tried to figure out why there were any ants at all left in the world, seeing as how any rainfall should have been enough to drown every single one of them.

From that went to trying to understand why a duck's or goose's bare legs don't freeze while they paddle around in freezing cold water.

Then, I think it was about two a.m. or so, the greatest mystery of all human history squirmed its way into my bubbling gray matter, that being why do we call a sandwich made with beef a hamburger?

Sad part was, I never came up with a solution to any of those timeless enigmas. Good thing was it got me to sunrise, the time I jumped out of bed and hurriedly got dressed. I was a man on a mission.

I was going to have the butterfly closures removed from my throat, and we all knew what that meant.

Yea! Whoopee! Zow-wee!

What a wonderful term, butterfly closures.

Believe me, I wasn't overreacting.

Lacy took it all in with a head shake and a droll grin.

"Don't get your hopes up, Mr. Baker. Let's wait and see what the doctor says."

"I have selective hearing."

"Uh-huh."

She said nothing more, cutting me some slack. After all, I had made her happy the previous evening.

She had noticed me conversing with Clyde Kregal and had given a thought to going outside and over to us to keep things under control, if that were possible. But just as she started to move, I had turned and made my way to her house and found her opening the door and greeting me with a huge hug.

"Thank you, dear" she had said.

Headed north soon after the hug.

The emergency room Doc had told me to have my personal physician remove the butterfly closures closing the gash left by one Frankie Stone. Problem was, I had no personal doctor. The numerous fix-ups of my body over the years had taken place in random places, and I never saw any benefits to a yearly checkup. What would they do, keep a running tally on my scars?

So, in order to get the closures removed, I went to one of those walk-in places that have sprouted like weeds recently.

They're a good idea, the only toss-up being how long you might have to wait. It turned out to be an hour and twenty-two minutes.

Subsequently, while feeling good about not feeling the unyielding closures on my throat, I headed for my half of the duplex.

Upon arriving I found that the King of all cats, Ferd, refused to acknowledge my presence. He strutted away in a most haughty manner, throwing his tail in my direction as if to rub it in. I guess he was angry that he was running short on food. Or maybe it was the smell of his bathroom box.

Either way, I took care of both matters and he eventually he did give me a look and an abbreviated meow. Following our making up I washed some clothes, took a long shower, put on two slaps-worth of smell-um, and grabbed myself a bite to eat.

It was edging on my time to leave if I was to be there to greet Lacy when she got home from work, when my cellphone went off.

"Hello."

Sniffling.

"Hello."

"He...he ─"

"Who is this?"

"T-troy."

"You crying? What's wrong?"

A long whimper before,

"H-he hit me!"

"What."

"Clyde, he hit me."

I found I was taking fast breaths.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, yeah I'm okay."

"Where's he at?"

"He left in his car."

"Where are you at?"

"My front porch."

"Go inside, Troy. Lock the doors, you hear me."

"Yes...okay. Should I call the Sheriff?"

"You sure he's gone?"

"Yes."

"Then lock your doors, stay in your house and keep your phone next to you. I'll take care of things. But if he comes back before I get there, call the Sheriff. You have his number?"

Sniff,

"Yes."

I could hear him shuffling to his feet.

"I'm on my way," I said.

Was running out the front door as our conversation ended. Don't know if I locked it, or even closed it behind me.

Rage does that to you.

Made it to Troy's house in an unseemly short amount of time. Couldn't even remember the drive. Pounded on his door, heard his footsteps.

Heard the clicking of the door being unlocked.

His eyes were large, as if he'd seen a monster. Maybe, in his mind, he had.

His lips were swollen, the upper one oozing blood. Not a lot, but blood just the same. He wasn't crying but one could see where tears had run down his face.

There was no cold, straight-ahead logic going on in within my thinking, none of the forced calm I had used over the years when put in perilous situations.

I was pissed, hell, beyond pissed. There's no describing where my emotional state was just then. But just then there was a need to speak calmly, for Troy's sake.

"Is that the only place he hit you?" I asked.

He nodded.

"Are your teeth okay?"

Nodded again.

"I think so."

"Let me see."

He pulled back his lips, grimacing as he did so. His teeth were straight, looked undamaged.

"Get ahold of you front teeth and gently see if you can move them."

He did. They didn't move.

"Great," I said, "looks like you've just got puffed up lips, like a tough boxer. Let's get some ice on them."

We did, ice in a clean washcloth. Had him sit on the couch. Knelt in front of him.

"Can you tell me what happened?"

"He...he came to the front door and knocked. He was yelling. I shouldn't have opened it but I did. He started saying these bad words to me, cussing and yelling. Said it was all my fault that everybody was mad at him and Clovis, said me and you shouldn't be bothering Clovis. I shouldn't have said anything, but it kinda made me mad. I mean, I never did anything to him or Clovis! I just found the dog and told the Sheriff. I mean, wasn't that the right thing to do?"

"Yes, Troy, it was. You did the right thing and you were brave to do it. He's in trouble now for what he did to you and we've just got to find him. Let me call somebody to stay with you."

Stood up and found the number. Two rings and she answered.

"Hello," Lacy said, her voice bouncy, "get your bandages taken are of?"

"Yes. I'm with Troy at his house. We have a problem."

"What happened?"

"Troy's alright, just a little bruised. Seems Clyde hit him."

"What?"

Her voice wasn't bouncy anymore.

"Clyde hit hm," I repeated. "You have any way to get in touch with his mother?"

"Yes, I have her work number."

"Call her, see if she can come home. Maybe you should come too if possible."

"I'll be there. My god, is he really okay?"

Looked at Troy and tried to give him a cocky smile as I answered her.

"Yeah, Troy's okay. He's a man, he's tough."

"Has the Sheriff been called?"

"Yes."

"On my way."

It wasn't ten minutes and she was running up to the front door, which I opened. She came in, looked at me, looked at Troy on the couch, ran to Troy.

She put a hand to her mouth as she saw his swollen lips.

"You okay, hon?" she asked him.

He nodded in kind of in manly way, pushing his chest out a little. If I hadn't been so riled up, it would have got a grin out of it. All my talk about him being tough was taking hold.

Walked up to Lacy.

"Is Mom on the way?"

"Yes."

"Great. I'm supposed to meet Sheriff Charley. I think I know where Clyde went and we're going to talk to him."

"Oh. Promise me you'll be careful, Kent, promise me."

"Everything will be fine. I got a feeling the only person Mr. Clyde has the courage to come after is a kid."

"Still."

Put a hand on her shoulder.

"Be back shortly. Lock the door."

Headed quickly out the door, but not so quickly that I didn't take the time to hear her throw the locking latch. Got in the Mazda and headed on my way.

Twice I had lied about having called Charley Weeks. Didn't like doing it, but did it just the same. Eventually the call would be made, but not then, not just then.

What had Charley said about Clyde?

'...every other day or so he goes to the Bottoms Up, just down the road on the west of the interstate, to have his beer.'

If ever Clyde Kregal needed a beer, it would be just then. But before getting Charley Weeks involved, I wanted some time with him by myself.

The Bottoms Up bar was just outside the city limits of Scott City, across the road from those same old railroad tracks. The parking lot in front of it was gravel, grass around it high in some places, the front door open. One car sat in the parking area. A small, hairy dog ran out of the open door in order to check me out.

My kind of place, oh yeah. Took a deep breath and headed on in.

Woman behind the bar was smoking a cigarette, eyes glued to the small TV hanging in the left front corner of the room. Soap opera was on. She barely looked at me.

There was but one customer at the bar.

Clyde Kregal, his right shoulder to the door, was smoking a cigarette like the barkeep, his eyes staring blankly at the row of liquor bottles in front of him. He had a half-eaten hunk of hamburger meat on the plate in from of him. Not a hamburger, with a bun and all, but just a slab of rounded ground beef, maybe a half a pound, slathered with a bunch of melted cheese. Must have been the house specialty. Actually, it looked pretty good.

Walked up to the stool next to where he sat, hairy dog following me. He blinked his eyes as if coming out of a trance and turned to see who it was that was crowding in on him.

I can't really explain his look as he took me in. He blinked his eyes a few times and the right side of his mouth twitched upward twice.

Yeah, I was giving him a hard eye.

"Mind if I sit next to you?" I asked.

"Yes," he said with a shaky voice.

I sat down.

"Too damn bad, Clyde."

The barkeep lady walked over to me. She was so zoned out, whether from watching the TV or from the drudgery of her occupation and life that she obviously didn't notice the tension roiling between me and Clyde.

"Help you?"

I dropped a five on the table and ordered a draft beer.

Looked at Clyde. He was staring past me and watching the TV as if there was nothing else in the whole world more interesting. Still, that put me in his side vision, which is obviously what he wanted. I leaned forward and put my face in his line of sight.

"Let me tell you something, Clyde, straight to the point. You're a sorry son of a bitch."

A scowl rolled across his face. He started to form a reply.

"Fu ─"

"Don't say it. I'll beat you to hamburger meat and feed you to that damn dog. Better yet, I'll give you the first punch. Let's see if you can handle a man as well as you do a harmless boy."

The scowl was replaced with an effort to give forth a confused look.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"I got no patience for any games, Clyde. Tell me why you hit Troy. I know you did it, I just want to hear you try to explain it."

He shook his head.

"I never touched him," he said. "Felt like it for all the stories he was spreading about me and my brother, but never touched him. Cussed him because he needed cussing. But I never touched him, never, not that I wasn't wanting to. Little bastard noses around my property, runs his mouth spreading shit about me. Hell yes, I had a right to belt him, but never would. I ain't damn stupid."

Gave him a smirk and took a slug of the beer, never even tasting it.

"You're a trip, you know that," I said. "A mangled dog is found on your property about the same time women are being murdered and disfigured. Your brother looks at women as if he wants to salt and eat them, you run your mouth like a blithering idiot, and now you punch an eleven-year old in the face. All that, and you have the gall to rant about being mistreated, misunderstood. Let me tell you something, genius, quit your shouting and calmly tell me why I shouldn't pound you into the ground."

It was just as things were getting interesting that someone else entered the bar. This someone stopped just inside the door, gawked about, held Clyde and me in an extended gaze, then made his way to a stool near the entrance and ordered a beer.

Frankie Stone.

Seemed I'd just entered the Twilight Zone, except that not even Rod Serling could never have dreamed up a state of affairs as creepy as what was happening in this rundown bar that used a dog as a headwaiter.

Everybody eyeballed each other a long half minute before I turned back to Clyde.

He had yet to break the fixed stare he had planted on Frankie.

"Looks like all your friends are here," I said.

He turned to me.

"Forget about him," I went on, "and talk to me. Remember, I'm the one who saved you from him last time. So, help me out here, tell me why you felt you needed to bash Troy. Were you trying to prove your manhood? Did you think it was a game?"

"I'm getting the hell out of here."

I put my hand on his shoulder.

"No, I don't think so."

Frankie Stone let out a thick cackle.

"Now you know why I wanted to kick his ass," he said, way too stridently.

The lady barkeep was coming out of her stupor, catching hold of the idea that things were getting edgy in her glamorous saloon. She made the five steps to me and Clyde. Maybe that was a good thing.

At that point in time I was riding a ragged edge, in a place I'd rather not ever be. A usually dispassionate Kent Baker had faded away, having seen Troy's tears, Troy's blood, Troy's lips. My mind was in my fists, struggling against a desire to pound Clyde Kregal as much and more than he'd pounded the boy.

"You two getting into it here?" the lady behind the bar was asking.

"He's threatening me, and so's the other guy," Clyde barked. "Call the cops!"

"Don't worry about it, lady, because that's a good idea," I said. "I think I'll do that myself."

Drug out my phone, went to contacts and scrolled down to C.

Three rings and he answered. I clicked it on speaker.

"What's up Kent?" Sheriff Weeks asked.

"I'm at the Bottoms Up with Clyde Kregal. He hit Troy Jaden today, Charley, and gave him a bloody fat lip."

"You lying bastard!"

"As you can hear, he's vehemently denying it."

"I'm not believing this crap, and I'm not believing him. How's Troy?"

"Busted lip. Lacy's with him and by now maybe his mother."

"Man, oh man, oh man. Okay, okay, everybody there keep their cool," Charley said, "I'm on my way."

"Thanks Sheriff."

Saw Frankie flick an eyebrow.

The bar-lady had both her mouth and eyes opened wide.

Put the phone back in my pocket.

"So, guys and gal, I think we'll calmly wait a bit, maybe get soused. While we're doing that, Mam," I nodded my head towards the chunk of meat and cheese in front of Clyde, "why don't you fix me one of those heart attack delicacies."

She looked like she was glad to be on her way to do it.

Actually, the overly large chunk of meat and cheese combo was pretty good. I had almost finished it, maybe a half an hour's time after ordering it, when Charley came in the door. No one had said a word since the phone call, with the other three either staring at the wall or at me eating away like a ravenous hyena. You could cut the tension in the room with a knife, an implement I definitely didn't even need for my repast.

It was getting old seeing folks walking into the Bottom's Up and coming to a clunky stop, something that Charley also did. He first looked at me, then at Frankie, then at Clyde, and lastly the lady behind the bar. His expression said nothing, which said everything.

He finally made his was to Clyde, whose face was red and whose breathing rapid. He stopped next to his stool, and got in close.

"Been to see Troy," he said. "What's wrong with you, Clyde? Did you really think you could do that and just walk away?"

"You mean he really was beat up!"

"What?"

Clyde was almost crying.

"I'm telling you, Sheriff, I didn't do it!"

"Uh-huh, sure. That's as good an alibi as any, right? Let's make this easy, tough guy. You're coming with me to my office and we're going to have a long, long talk."

"But ─"

"Save it, I don't have the patience or the time. You can get up and come with me gentle-like, or I can cuff you and drag you feetfirst to my vehicle. Your choice, Clyde."

Clyde's face held the expression of a high school freshman going to the principal's office. But after a short moment of pleading with beagle eyes, he got up and went ahead of Charley.

Frankie smirked at him all the way, until he and the dog disappeared.

Stretched my back, twisted my head about, took some deep breathes.

I was dog-tired, drained from tamping down my injurious impulses, the utmost tiresome thing you can ever do.

Think about it. Say you're having an argument with a loved one and what's raging inside you is the overpowering urge to say the very most cruel thing you could possibly say, yet you force yourself to hold it in. Think about that, think about how exhausting it is to bite your tongue in order to prevent yourself from doing a something you knew would be the wrong thing to do from the git-go. Then take that example but make the cruel action in mind even worse, that is make it a deep desire to do brutal physical damage to another being.

Yeah, I was dog-tired. But not as dog-tired as I'd have been had my fists pummeled Clyde, or as you would have been had you released your verbal bomb. Some things you just can't take back.

Dog-tired Kent took one more bite of the cow meat spread out in front of me, then drained the last swallow of beer before dropping a large bill on the counter and slowly standing up. Threw my eyes into tunnel vision mode and headed for the door. But, in the farthest reaches of my side view, I could not help but see Frankie Stone's eyes following me the whole way. Damn near made it to through the door, then stopped.

"Crap," I whispered to myself.

Exhaled a trapped sigh, gave myself a droll grin, then turned back inside. Walked over and took a stool nest to Frankie. He remained motionless as I plopped down beside him. There followed a good minute of virile man-spirit, with neither one of us saying a word.

It was he who spoke first, his gaze straight ahead.

"Told you he was a worthless no good son of a bitch, him and his brother both. Hell, his brother probably killed those two women, and we got a third one missing now. Now do you believe his ass needs kicking?"

Followed his lead and decided not to look at him either.

"Well, Frankie, I have this weird idea that I shouldn't attack people on a whim, that there's a need to instead let the authorities prove guilt. That includes Clyde's and yours. Yeah, both are weird ideas, I guess, but you really ought to consider latching on to them yourself."

"Ain't been arrested yet."

"Yet being the key word there, buddy. DA's like to cross all T's and dot all I's, but when all the typing's done, you'll be charged with assaulting me. Bank on it...Wondering, come here very often?"

"Not his hell hole. Driving by I seen your and his cars. Kind of got me to thinking."

"I see. Anyway, since we're having this heartwarming chat, why don't you tell me what in the hell you were doing scoping things out ahead of the search the other day?"

"None of your damn business."

"Well, I beg to differ, since me reporting you being there to the Sheriff was one of the reasons you tried to cut my throat and, or, blow my brains out."

"Here's the truth, Baker, I was searching for the missing girl too, only I knew I couldn't do it with the search party, not after what you done to me."

"Trying to redeem yourself?"

He finally turned to face me.

"No, damn it, I live in this town too! I feel terrible about what happened to those two women, and now Myla is missing. It's sad, she's such a sweet girl with a lot of problems. Who would want to hurt her? Thinking about it, I knew I had to do something, so I went and looked. You think I don't have any feelings?"

"I don't think anything, I just go with what I know. You have a reputation for picking fights, acting like an eighth-grade bully. Maybe you get a kick out of stomping people, maybe you've taken it even further for an even bigger kick."

He narrowed his eyes.

"You don't know me at all."

"So you say to the man with a scar on his throat."

"Alright, alright, I'll admit it, I wasn't thinking too good then."

The lady tending the bar was in the kitchen part of the place. Looked like she intended on staying there. Couldn't say I blamed her.

I was bushed when I sat down beside him and wasn't getting any less so badgering him. My brain was flowing like cold molasses through a pin hole. That put me to silence, sitting there and wondering if I wanted to get up and go or not.

For his part, Frankie put his head down, bit his lower lip, and gave the bar wood a long look. It was obvious he was having trouble bringing up his next words.

"I...I'm sorry for what I did to you, Baker."

That threw me. Did he mean it?

Or was he trying to get me to talk to Charley on his behalf?

Then it came into view. A sheen of moisture in both of his eyes. The bully of yore wasn't as tough as he let on. I said nothing, knowing he had more to get off his chest. Gave him the time.

"You have to understand," he said after a while, "I've lived here my entire life, ain't never lived nowhere else. I've...I've never done much, got no good friends, never even had any back in high school. I don't know, I guess I'm the kind of person who don't look or act like someone somebody wants to be friends with. Got a job that don't pay diddly squat, ain't never been married, hell, never have had a girlfriend to speak of. No brothers or sisters, no grandparents left, so it's just me. My Mom's dead and I wouldn't go to visit my son of a bitch father for nothing. What little I got left is my pride, and I ain't got much of it left anymore. And I guess what I did to you was some kind of dumbass way to bring some pride back to me if only in my own mind, if that makes any damn sense. Anyway, I'm sorry, and I really mean it."

He lifted his head and kind of gave me a sideward, kind of embarrassed glance.

"Damn, Kent, tell me why I'm telling you this."

"I guess because you're really sorry, Frankie."

"I am. I screwed up big time, and will probably go to prison and got nobody to blame but myself."

"Are you also sorry for all the other fights you started?"

"I didn't start them all."

"How so?"

"Some was with brothers of people who I did start it with."

It really wasn't that funny, but we both chuckled. Then,

"But, Frankie, deep down you really are sorry for all your fighting, aren't you?"

Again, he couldn't look at me, only nodded.

"Weren't you afraid of getting hurt bad yourself?" I asked.

The nodding went to a shaking of his head. The words came out of him more like he was talking to himself.

"Nah. Hurt don't mean nothing to me. I grew up with hurt, got to where I expected it. My old man leathered me most every chance he got, several times a week, sometimes just to be doing it. Usually that was when he got drunk, which was about every other night. My mother couldn't stop him, she was as scared as I was. Nights were, I just laid in my bed waiting for him to come, wanting to get it over with. He'd finally come into the room jerking his belt out, stinking from the beer and from not taking a shower after work.

"No. No, I ain't scared of no hurt. I'm scared of going to jail, of being more alone than now, but not of being hurt. I got callouses to most any pain."

So, there it was, clear as mud and just as maddening to plod through.

Here was a guy, if he was to be believed and I don't think he was that good an actor to not be believed, who crawled through a pained childhood. A childhood full of an unforgiving loneliness that had bled its way into adulthood. At some point, one would have to figure, he would want to be a somebody, if not by finding friends, then at least by being someone who was being noticed. Become a figure everybody had heard of.

To begin with, he was big and intimidating enough to gather attention and, if one adds being a butt-kicker to that, he'd more than earned the notice he'd never got as a child, except for the attention he received by way of the raw end of a heartless belt.

Did I feel sorry for him? I don't know. All I did know was that I was getting pissed again. And maybe a little disgusted with fate, as it is when it introduces itself as a cruel ruse.

Where, however, to go with it? More than anything I wanted to go to Charley Weeks and see if he could intervene with the DA and put the brakes on any charges Frankie might be facing for what he did to me.

But as much as I felt I that's wanted, I knew it wasn't possible. The mist was too thick, had not yet been broken through, leaving way too many things left to be answered.

Why was Frankie nosing around the river on search day? He'd given a reason, but could he be believed?

Two women dead, one missing. If and until the killer was located, one of the possible suspects would probably be best off sitting in jail, at least until the last dog dies.

If it was a good idea for that to be the best place to throw Clyde Kregal, and it damn sure was, the same had to be said for Frankie Stone.

And his heartfelt apology to me did not mean he had tossed away his uncontrollable temper. It could still be causing turmoil in him under his skin, as his father's belt had on the outside.

No, there was no way to cut Frankie any slack, at least not right then. But maybe a small, friendly courtesy was in order, as even a small one would be a big thing to this guy.

As it was, Frankie didn't seem to want to talk anymore, seemed ill at ease. After all, as he had wondered, why was he spilling his guts to me?

"That your first beer, Frankie?" I asked him.

"Yeah."

"Planning on having any more?"

He shrugged.

"You know," I said, "if you laid off the drinking, you might keep yourself out of any more trouble. Last thing you need to do right now is get yourself in another brawl. Tell you what, why don't we come to an agreement between you and me. From here on out, both of us will make two beers our limit. Two beers and some friendly conversation with good folks, and then it's going home time. What say, Frankie?"

"I don't know."

"Is it that bad an idea?"

"A...well, guess not."

"There we are. And to go with that, here's something I want you to know. If you go to trial for what you did to me, I'll demand to give testimony on your behalf, in that I will tell them about what you said tonight, about the remorse you feel for what happened."

"Why would you do that?"

"Because it would be the right thing to do."

Moisture in his eyes again.

"But for now, Frankie," I went on, "let me buy you and me one last beer."

Took us maybe half an hour to drink our second mugs of beer. The conversation was limited, but there was enough there that we both felt good about it.

Frankie got up and left first. His mood had changed, his demeanor not as churned up as it had been when he entered the Bottoms Up.

I hoped it would stay that way.

As for myself, I had flowed into my third frame of mind since arriving there, having gone from being red-hot angry, to bone tired, and then finally onto beyond bone tired. It seemed an impossible mission to drag up the gumption and slide myself off the soiled stool.

Finally, though, I did.

No other customers had bothered to come in. The bar lady was still hiding in the kitchen, and the TV was still droning on in its useless way when I made my way out of the door.

Exiting, as it were, the Twilight Zone.

Chapter 12

What's love got to do with it?

Upon my arrival at her house Lacy was waiting on me, standing in her open front door.

When I got up to the porch it was clear she was crying.

"What's wrong?"

"Did you find him?"

"Yes, the Sheriff took him in for questioning. Is Troy okay?"

"Yes, he's with his mother. He actually seems to have forgotten being hit and seems like he's kind of proud of his swollen lip."

"Sounds like Troy. So, tell me why you're crying, Lacy"

She turned and made her way to the couch. I followed and sat down beside her. She used a tissue to wipe her eyes.

"I'm scared Kent," she said.

"Clyde won't bother you again. He's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he's smart enough to know he better behave himself."

"It's not just Clyde, it's everything. Misty and Janice murdered, and Myla missing. You being attacked by Frankie Stone. What's happening? What's going on?"

"I've talked to Frankie. I don't think he'll bother anybody else."

"When?"

Told her about his arriving at the Bottoms Up, and about what he'd said, about how sincere his apology sounded.

"I don't know," she said, "he almost killed you. And no one has been charged for anything. Terrible things are happening, everything is out of control. It scares me, because I can do nothing about it."

While we were talking Addie was on her stomach atop a puffy blanket on the floor, periodically lifting her head to look about at nothing in particular, and yet everything.

"Sometimes I wonder what I thought I was doing," Lacy went on, "bringing my baby into the world. How can I protect her, especially now, because it seems like there's no protecting anyone? What if Clyde had used a club to hit Troy, instead of his fist. What if?

"Poor Misty was returning home after a walk with a friend and is grabbed up and murdered, in a terrible way. I knew Misty, I'd see her walking down the street, a sweet girl with her whole life in front of her, neither one of us when we waved at each other thinking there was any kind of a chance something would happen to her. I went to the funeral. Her parents were inconsolable, I mean, how else could they be?

"Janice Thompson was out for a jog, probably what she had done hundreds of times before. Myla, oh my god, Myla was somehow taken from her own house, her own house, not far from here. She had her problems and never got the chance to have a full life like other young people her age. It's all so terrible, so frightening, and me and my baby, all of us, could...could..."

She paused to gather her thoughts, her lips quivering.

"I don't know, I just don't know," she said. "It's sounds crazy but it's because I love her so much that I think maybe I should have not even brought her into this kind of a world."

"It will all work out," I said. "Whoever is responsible will be caught."

"But ─"

Grabbed the fingers of her left hand and put them on the side of my neck.

"I promise you, as long an I have a heartbeat, nothing will ever happen to you or Addie. Ever."

"And Troy?"

"And Troy."

She tried to place a poignant smile under her wet eyes.

"Are you my hero?"

"No, I'm just a sad sack who's in love with you and your baby. I'll let that love carry me to whatever I have to do. Whatever, no matter what."

She dabbed at her eyes, her tears at an end, her smile less sad.

"But you have so many scars now."

"And a hell of a nurse to heal any new ones."

Addie decided to look at us and make a gurgling noise.

"Sounds to me like two nurses," Lacy said.

A little later I mounted the porch with Troy's red bike on it and knocked. I could hear his bounding footsteps in answer my knocks.'

"Kent," he called out as his hello, "what happened to Clyde?"

"The Sheriff took in. He's being questioned."

You could see he seemed a little disappointed.

"Did he put up a fight? You must have had to hit him, right?"

"No, and that's good, Troy. Doing to him what he did to you would just be trying to get revenge, and that kind of revenge doesn't help anything."

Little did he know this guy was one inch away from thumping the low-life. Standing on Troy's porch and after what he'd said, I belatedly knew then it was a very good thing I hadn't.

Luck of the ignorant.

The little man's mother came up behind him.

She had a world-worn look about her, as if all nights were too short, all days too long, all dreams too far out of reach. She did, however, carry an attempt for a warm smile.

"Nice to see you again, Mr. Baker," she said.

"Call me Kent."

"I've been hearing a lot about you."

"Some of it good, I hope."

That widened her smile.

"Going by what this boy says," she said, putting a hand on Troy's shoulder, "you have no downside. Thank you so much for looking out for him. I work such long hours and, with him at home by himself, I worry so much. Especially now with such horrible things going on."

"He's a good kid. You've done well raising him."

"Days are it seems to me he's raised himself. Oh, where are my manners, please, come in."

"Thanks, but I can't stay. Just came to see how our tough guy here is doing. Looks like your lip's no bigger than when I left earlier, Troy. Is it bothering you?'

"Not really."

"Can you eat?"

"Oh, he's had no trouble with that," Jean said. "He's just downed a huge burger and way too many fries."

"Can't never have too many fries."

"I heard you tell Troy that Clyde is in jail."

"He's with the Sheriff, no way to know right now what will happen next."

Her eyes narrowed, and her face creased.

"Thank God, at least he's in custody. My heart dropped when Lacy called me. I thought maybe my son was really hurt bad, and he's all I got. I cried all the way to here. We've lived across the street from the Kregals for years. They're odd people, but have always pretty much stayed to themselves. Clovis seemed harmless, but then came that business of Troy seeing that poor dog with no eyes, and then these young women are murdered in the same way. None of it makes any sense, none of it. Troy even mowed their grass for a while for almost no money, and now Clyde comes over here and hits him. Why would that man do such a thing?"

"I don't know. But if we're lucky he'll be in jail a while."

"And if he's not?"

"That's another reason I came over. If anything comes up with Clyde, or Clovis, or anybody else, please don't waste time, call nine-one-one. But the thing is, I'll be next door at Lacy's and Troy has my number, so don't hesitate to call me too, since I'd be closer than any police officer."

"Thank you, that's very nice of you and makes me feel better, especially since I have to work tonight. Troy's told me all about you being a well-known DEA agent."

I had to laugh.

"Well, not always so well known in a good way, believe me."

"You made a lot of arrests of killers and bunches of other bad people though!" Troy said.

"Let's just say I earned my money. Important thing now, Troy, is to keep your phone close at hand. Call nine-one-one first and then call me, and give my number to your Mom."

The day drifted away and, in no time, it became early evening. Charley Weeks had not called to inform me about what was happening with Clyde Kregal, a thing I knew he eventually would do. It made me think they still had Clyde under lock and key, and that he wouldn't be coming home any time soon. I voiced my thoughts to Lacy.

"I hope you're right because we could use some peace on this street," she said. "Let me put Addie to bed."

Took a seat in her living room, my mind bounding about like an addle-brained rabbit's. I was existing within one of those periods when you're so tired you can't relax. You just sit and let your pumping heart do its job.

Baby asleep, Lacy came in and sat beside me. Neither of us had anything to say for a short while. She broke the silence.

"Hungry?"

"No."

"What do you want to eat?"

"Nothing."

"Good. I've got some chicken I need to fry up."

"We can order in."

"I need something to do."

"I'll watch you do it."

Just a couple of hours later we took our scrambled bodies and minds to bed.

Her fried chicken had been delicious. We allowed salads to meet the requirements for our vegetables.

Laying in the deepening darkness, her body snuggled up to my side, the disembodied, dark fatigue gave way to a gray calmness. It was her being there, her head on my chest, that made it happen. It seemed to me she was feeling the same way, though I had no proof of it.

"Kent," she said with a delicate voice.

"Yeah."

"Can I ask you something?"

"You don't have to ask me if you can ask me something."

She wriggled in closer and put forth a subtle kind of laugh.

"I know I shouldn't be asking this, not with what everything that is happening now," she said. "But I need to know. With all my heart and soul, I need to know. Because there's been certain things I will always need to know, to discover, no matter anything else. Life is so precious, and more so right now with all that's going on in Scott City."

She fell silent for a moment and it was like I could feel her mind coming up with the right next words. She found them.

"I've yearned for very few things in my life. I've always felt one had to be glad for what you have, with so many people in the world having so much less. Still, I have always dreamed about a few things that I've yearned for to complete my life. A child was one, and now I have my Addie. She's perfect, and what was once a dream came true. With her in my world that left just one more very important wish to fulfil."

She raised her head and, even though it was almost dark, gazed into my face.

"So, I must ask you, Kent, even though I have no right to ask you, no right to be pushy. Still. What is going to become of us? What will our love come to mean?"

There are queries and then, wow, there are queries.

Thing is, I had been thinking about the same thing for days, and was just then very pleased that it was her who brought the subject up. Her phrasing had been done in a much more moving way than this guy could have ever imagined.

And I did not consider her being pushy, as other men might have. Having come to know her as the honestly sweet person she was, she most assuredly deserved an answer. Yeah, she had every right to asked her questions and, in the end, it was up to me to respond.

"Lacy, you're the first lady I've ever said I love you to, and meant it. Obviously saying it, and meaning it, is not an easy thing for me to do. Why? I don't know. Guess I've just grown some leathery skin. Too many deaths, too much inhumanity, too many monsters who just don't give a damn. Maybe all that has coarsened me, made me a cold fish. Or, hell, maybe I'm just a pathetic human being."

"Kent ─"

"Let me finish, please. I didn't say all that to gain some pity, I'm not intelligent enough to be that calculating. It's simply is what it is, and I'm to blame for it. I chose my profession, I've chose to get involved in all kinds of nasty goings-on, I've forced myself to be cold and heartless when cold and heartless was needed. Maybe I did all of it for some kind of a sick thrill, I don't know. It scares me to think that may be the answer, because what I'm talking about is the fact that I've killed people, Lacy, you need to know that. All in self-defense and, yes, all of them deserved it, but still the fact is I've killed human beings and, I can truthfully say, without a whole lot of regret. In any case, maybe all of that is what has made I love you a phrase that's not easy for me to say, my thinking being no one would want to return love to a person who could do such things. That being so, I wouldn't blame you if you changed your mind about your feelings."

She pulled my face to hers.

"You are a good man, a compassionate man. You have saved lives, of that I'm sure, of that I've seen. I'll say it again. I love you with all my heart, Kent Baker."

I put a hand up to touch her cheek.

"You asked me what our love will come to mean," I said. "Okay. My feeling is it will always mean as much as we have power to put into it. From my side, given that you are so worthy of all the love another can give you, I plan on proving my love for you for a long, long time. Forever and longer, if I can somehow swing that."

Blew out a short puff of air, chuckled a chuckle.

"Whew, that's new territory for me," I said.

Her eyes were wet.

"So, it's me and you, Love."

"Well, not just that. I kinda feel like, shoot, I'd really like to be a stepdad."

We did not make love that night.

Yes, the desire was there, but it had been shooed away by our words, the solid footings for a boundless, promising future. The satisfaction found in our proclamations of love, and what they portended for years yet to come, far outweighed any fulfilment to be garnered from mere physical gratification.

That left us to hold each other in the gathering darkness, and to falling asleep at almost the same time somewhat later, knowing that the impending dawn was to bring a bright new day in many more ways than one.

Chapter 13

Rope-a-dope panties

We lounged around Lacy's place the next day, enjoying life in the slow lane.

She'd taken the day off, her boss being a good boss, and we filled out time with Addie when she was awake, and then ourselves. Chatting about small memories, tiny subjects, each appreciating the fact that the only real thoughts bounding around in the other's mind concerned what we had said the night before.

It was late afternoon when she pinged up her face in the way a person does when they have a sudden notion.

"You'll need to go and check on Ferd pretty soon, won't you?"

"Oh, yeah, I forgot, but I guess I should."

"Go, but I have an idea. Pack his bag and bring him down here to stay. That way you won't have to continue running back and forth."

She threw me a side-eyed look.

"Unless, of course, you prefer to go back and forth."

"What in the world would make you to think I would want to?"

"I never said the word want, Mr. Baker. What I said was out of consideration for you and your sad little car."

"You use too many big words. I'm confused."

"You're a man."

"Touché. But your contemplation is worth my brainstorming."

"Now who's using big words."

"Thing is, Lacy, are you ready for a house full of floating cat hair."

"Yes, if it will keep you here."

It was late afternoon before I somehow managed to get the gumption to head north and retrieve my cat. No real reason for waiting that long to start other than it was one of those days that seem to fly away.

Anyway, finally arrived at my apartment and attempted to explain to Ferd that he was going to have a great time for a while at someone else's house and wouldn't have to spend so much time alone.

He acted as if he could care less. His whole demeanor always revolved around caring less, seemed to me.

There are not many people who would be senseless enough to try to travel down a road with a cat in the car, without having a travel cage to put said cat in. Suffice it to say I happen to be one of those senseless folks.

Ferd did not enjoy the ride in the least. He bounced from me to the passenger seat to the back seat and back to the front seat again where, due to his frantic panic, he managed to change the radio station twice by slamming into the radio control panel during two of his frenzied contortions.

I arrived at Lacy's house exhausted, scratched up, completely defeated.

Ferd, who'd quieted down as soon as I shut the engine off, gave me a glaring look that was easy to read.

"It'd take a dozen of you to make half a nitwit," said look said.

Didn't have the energy to argue. Latched onto my imperious cat and made my dejected way to the house. Lacy had the door open before I made it to the porch, a big smile on her face. The smile drained away once I got close enough to take in my appearance.

"Something wrong?" she asked.

"No," I replied, "just tired."

Introduced her to Ferd again, whereupon she took him in order to introduce him to Addy.

"Whatever you do, don't say anything about the ride down here," I said as I trudged back to the Mazda to get the rest of Ferd's stuff.

It was just as I got there that Troy came riding down the street on his bright red bike. He came to a skidding stop in front of me.

"He's back," he said in an anxious voice, no hello involved.

Such was my mindset that I had no idea what he meant.

"He's back?"

"Yeah, he's back!"

"Who?"

"Clyde!"

I finally came out of my stupor.

"Really? When did he get here?"

"Couple of hours ago. He pulled into the driveway and went straight to the old chicken house. Looked like he had some beer with him. I saw your car was gone, so I decided to go for a bike ride, in case he decided to come over to my house again. Then I saw you pull back into the street here so I rode back fast to tell you."

He said all that without taking a breath.

"Have you seen him since then?"

"No, but like I said I got away."

"Is your Mom at work?"

"Yeah, she won't be back till like five tomorrow morning."

I studied his nervous face and bluish swollen bottom lip.

"You know what, Troy, maybe you should stay with us tonight. You can sleep on the couch. I mean, I don't think Clyde is stupid enough to come near you again, but just for the heck of it call your Mom and tell her where you'll be."

"No, no I don't want to do that."

"Why not?"

"I can't sleep any place but in my bedroom. I'd be up all night and probably you would be too. Anyway, I got my phone and I can leave all the lights on."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. You can get over here quick, I know you can."

I thought to push him some more about it, but then let the thought pass. Boys his age like to think they're grown up. I know I did when I was there. And he was right, I could get to his house in less than a minute. Plus, as mentioned, even Clyde Kregal surely had enough sense to behave himself, unless he had an extra strong yearning to live in an eight by five cell for a few years.

Yep, figured I needed to give Troy a shot at being a little-big man.

"Okay, Troy, but sleep with your phone. Call me for any little thing you hear or see. Got that?"

"Yeah, Kent, I promise."

I held out my hand and, with a puffed-up chest, he grabbed it for a shake.

The cell phone rang three times before it was answered.

"Hello, Kent."

No surprise, Charley weeks sounded very tired.

"Charley, sorry to bother you. Know you got a ton going on but Troy said he saw Clyde coming home and I was hoping you had time to talk about it. You at home?"

"Yep, but no problem, Kent. Sorry, it's been a long day, but I should have called you earlier. It's just that things got away from me."

"No, don't worry about it. I thought to wait till morning, but figured we all might sleep better if we knew."

"Understood. Here's the story, plain and simple. D.A. didn't push things especially hard against Clyde, what with the fact being the complainant is an eleven-year old, and nobody else to back up his story. Showed the judge my picture of Troy's lip and that helped a little. Seemed to piss him off. Told Clyde he best not go anywhere near the boy unless he wanted to spend a long time in jail. Set bail and Clyde paid it and drove off, awaiting a possible trial and still bitching he was being picked on. I mean, that's not quite the way he phrased it, but in so many cuss words that was the point he was making."

"The guys a frigging idiot. Does he really think anybody believes him?'

"Guess he thinks if he whines enough, they might start leaning that way."

He let out an extended sigh.

"Tell you what, Kent, things round-about my town are going to hell in a handbasket. Got nothing on nobody about what happened to these women, just a scared feeling about Clovis. Also got more than I can stand about the crap his brother is causing, and Frankie Stone running loose and doing all kinds of suspicious stuff, and then following that up with trying to kill you. Makes me just want to scream."

"Hold it together, bud, you're the only hope we got. With the Fed's help and the state boys also hanging around and you at the helm, something will turn up. It always does."

"But how long do we have to wait? How many more victims will we have until that happens?"

I had no answer to his questions.

"Anyway," he continued, "are you going to be my lookout on East Beech Street for the near future?"

"I'll be here. But it's nine-one-one first, then me."

"If I sleep at all, I'll sleep a whole hell of a lot better knowing that."

I was having a dream where I was changing the dream I was dreaming. Ever done that?

You know, you're dreaming and you know you're dreaming and you did not like where things are going, so you try to modify the dream into a more desirable conclusion, especially if it's an unpleasant one. Ever do that?

Or is it just me?

It could be just me because I've always been considered kind of weird. In fact, my moniker when I was in high school was K.W., the W being weird. And so you know, the K wasn't for Kent, but rather Kinda.

Anyway, I was in dream modification mode when an irritating noise began clawing its way into my gray matter. It was my cell phone and the time was twelve twenty-two a.m. Took notice of the name with the number.

"Troy? Everything okay?"

"Did you hear that!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Watching TV in the living room and I think I heard a gunshot! Did you hear it?"

I had jumped to a sitting position, throwing my legs onto the floor. Lacy was coming up also.

"No, I didn't hear anything," I said. "Troy, is somebody outside your house shooting a gun, is that what you're saying?'

I was on the move, heading for a front window.

"No, no, it sounded like it was across the street. I think it came from Clyde and Clovis' house."

I was at the window. Could only see darkness overhung by darkness. Lacy was coming up behind me.

"What's happening? What's going on?"

Put an open palm to her to let her know I needed some time.

"Is your Mom working, Troy?"

"Yeah."

"Are all the doors locked?"

"Yeah."

"Did you call nine-one-one?

"No, gosh, I was kinda excited and called you."

"Okay, alright. I'll be over in a minute. Don't let anybody else in."

"Okay."

"What is it!" Lacy demanded to know after I hung up.

"Troy thinks he heard a gunshot from the Kregal's place. Who knows if he did or not, could have been a car backfiring, could have been anything. I'm going over to talk to him and check things out."

"Do you possibly think it was a gunshot?"

"I didn't hear anything, and I'm guessing you didn't either, but who knows? We're in the back part of your house and Troy has young ears and maybe was still up. I just need to talk to him about it."

Went to the bedroom to get dressed. All the commotion had disturbed Addie and Lacy went to tend to her. After putting on my pants I dug to the bottom of my overnight bag and pulled out my short and lethal Beretta 8000. It's a 9mm, three and a half inches long, with a ten-shot magazine, a firearm that fit my hand like it was an extra skin layer. Acquired it back in my DEA years from a sadistic French drug runner who would never, ever need it again. Slid it into a pocket before Lacy could see it.

She met me in the living room as I headed for the door.

"Please, be careful," she said, her eyes etched with worry.

Gave her a smile.

"Don't worry. I'm sure there's nothing to this."

Gave her a kiss and went out the door.

The air was clammy, the breeze light. Troy was at the front door looking through the glass. He unlocked the door and let me in, his eyes wide.

"I'm glad you're here," he said.

"Tell me about it."

"Well, I was awake in the front room here. Just watching the TV and I heard the gunshot. It was loud, real loud."

"You sure it was a gun?"

"Yes. A couple of times when I was walking down the railroad tracks towards the bridge, I saw somebody down by the bank shooting at cans and stuff. It sounded just like that, like a, like a pistol."

"Just one shot."

"Yes."

"And it sounded like it came from across the street."

"Yes, the noise sounded like it bounced directly off the front of my house. It scared me, I jumped backwards and almost fell down. You remember, Kent, I told you about Clyde having a pistol with him when he's sitting and drinking in that old chicken house. Think it was him?"

"Don't know, Troy, but I think that's a leap. If it was a gun you heard it could have been a longways off. Sometimes the air and the atmosphere can make things sound closer than they are."

"Well, it was a gun, I know that. What are you going to do? Are you going over there to see.?"

"I don't think I should do that, I'm not a law officer."

"Well, you could stand at the top of the hill and look down there. If the shack door is open maybe you could see something."

It wasn't a comical situation in the least, but still I had to laugh a bit at his last comment.

"If someone's got a gun down there, do you think that would be a good idea?"

"Oh, I guess not. You going to call the Sheriff?"

"Maybe."

Then it occurred to me that doing what he suggested wasn't such a bad idea after all. It was all probably nothing ─ no other lights on the street were on ─ and there seemed no good reason to upset the whole neighborhood by bringing in the police. A quick look from the top of the hill would hurt nothing.

Hopefully.

"You stay here," I told him. "Don't open the door, don't go out on the porch, just stay right here."

It was obvious he was disappointed.

"Oh, okay," he said.

Slowly made my way across the street to the curb on the opposite side. I didn't have my arm hanging over my hand gun like the cowboys in the dusty, dunged streets outside the taverns in the westerns. But my hand was kind of close to my pants pocket.

Careful is better than dreadful.

Came to a slow and careful stop on the grass beyond the curb.

The house and shack were a good distance down the slope, maybe a hundred-fifty feet or more. The buildings and the trees and brush beyond them looked like black hulks, no street light being given a chance to light them up due to how low they sat.

A window on the front of the house gave forth a rectangular run of light around the exterior of a pulled down shade. The chicken house door was wide open and a bright light poured out of it and onto the steps and grass in front of it. Squinted my eyes and concentrated on that part of the interior of the shed that I could see. No sound seemed to be escaping the building. No one was moving about. No nothing.

No nothing, except...

Gave my eyes a hard blinked and squinted again, trying to make a pair of binoculars out of my eyeballs. Was that...was that?

Was that the figure of a person laying on the floor, feet towards the door? Was it?

Damn and double damn.

Drug out my phone instead of my Beretta. Called the Sheriff.

He arrived in maybe twenty minutes, a hard-faced expression on his face.

Explained to him how Troy thought he'd heard a gunshot.

Told him to take a long look for himself into the Kregal's old chicken house down at the bottom of the grade.

"Oh no," he said.

"Could be just Clyde passed out," I said. "Troy claimed he came home lugging a handful of beer."

"Hope that's true, but there's something weird about how that body is laid out. Don't you think so?'

"Why I called you."

"Well, it gives us an acceptable reason to walk down there and check it out."

"I don't know, Charley, I'm not a bona-fide law officer."

"Hold your hand up."

I did.

"Now you're bona-fide," he said then. "Come with me."

"Okay," I said.

Down the hillside we went, slowly, as if we were walking on ice. As we got closer and things came into focus, Charley drew out his weapon, holding it up and tightly clasped in his hands. Got to the door and looked in, Charley covering the entire interior with his firearm.

What we saw showed us the time of danger was over. With wide eyes, he slowly lowered his gun.

Across the room, along the back wall, a small record player was spinning a record album, one on which the music had long since been played. The needle was scratching away around the center of the disc.

To the left, near the middle of the room, Clyde Kregal was sitting in a worn easy chair, facing the turntable. He was slumped at an uncomfortable angle to his right, his left temple bloodied. The knuckles of his right arm were lying on a white, plastic ice cooler. A large amount of blood had run down the arm and over the cooler, eventually to end up pooling on the rough floor.

To his left was a small side table. Sitting on it was an opened beer and a piece of paper. On the floor at the bottom of it was a small revolver.

That was bad enough, but it was just the beginning of the dreadfulness in that pathetic place.

There's a term that has been floated around for years. Hogtied.

Its initial meaning was a method of getting four-legged farm animals, including horses, under control in order to do something to them they would not like. What was done was that their legs were tied together, except that only three were tied up in order to prevent injury to the animal.

Some police agencies have used a variation of it, tying together all four limbs, legs and hands of a culprit, together behind the back in order to control certain unmanageable folks during an arrest, though the procedure is frowned upon now because it makes breathing difficult for the offender.

Then there's the like-named method that has been used by the Mafia and other terrorist groups for years.

A method that had been utilized on Clovis Kregal, him being the prone body we'd seen from a distance.

His lower body was towards the door, his hands had been duct taped behind his back. His feet were tied with a small diameter rope, with the other end of the rope being made into a noose that was then put around his throat, but not until his head had been pulled back and his feet curled forward. His mouth gaped open at the bottom of his oxygen-deprived face. An uncomfortable position, to say the least.

If one is hogtied that way it's not long before your back and legs demand some relief from the intense discomfort. Lower your head and legs to relieve that discomfort and you tighten the noose, so you try to maintain the painful position as long as one can until you can't stand it anymore, and so you ease the position of you neck and back and the noose gets tighter and you panic and arch your body again until you can't stand it anymore and you ease off again and, etc., etc....

It's a hell of a way to die, to say the least. Hogtied, wide-eyed, and with the knowledge you're killing yourself.

Clovis' mouth was hanging open at the bottom of his oxygen-deprived face. Looped over his execution rope, halfway between the neck and feet, was a woman's panties, colored a pleasantly cool shade of blue.

"Oh my god," Sheriff Weeks said.

We went up the three steps to just inside the doorway, no farther, and looked around.

I scrutinized every inch of that small room, even going so far as to bend down to look under Clyde's chair, which had high enough legs to allow seeing the floor under it.

What was there was the piece of paper on the side table. It was covered with blood. There were also some empty beer cans on the floor, along with a huge dose of filth.

Oh yeah, and a baseball bat on the floor close to Clovis.

Other than that, and two dead brothers, there was nothing else to see. Charley stepped on in and went through the useless motions of checking both men for a pulse, then turned to me shaking his head, his face dog-tired, long and pale.

"Did you notice the noose," I asked him.

"How so?"

"It's not a slip knot, it's an old-fashioned double tied knot. Somebody wanted to slow things down, make him suffer longer."

"Damn. You're right. What in the hell is happening?"

"You're dealing with one sick son of a bitch."

"Do you suppose Clovis wasn't involved with killing any of the women? Do you think whoever killed them killed these guys?"

I shrugged. He shook his head.

"Guess I better call folks I need to call," he said.

Law enforcement people began pulling up in minutes, lights a-flashing. They began stringing out the crime scene tape. I took one long, last look around the chicken house interior then started up the hill to stay out of their way.

The entire neighborhood was waking up, obviously. People standing outside their homes, craning their necks, worry etched on their faces. Two of those people were Lacy and Troy, standing on the sidewalk in front of her house. Even Addie was awake, Lacy holding her.

"Kent, what's happening?' she asked me in a quivering voice as I approached.

There's no easy way to say some things, so you just go ahead and say it.

"They're both dead."

Being blunt was a stupid thing to do. Her knees trembled. I ran up to her and grabbed Addie.

"I'm sorry," I said, "I'm sorry."

"Told you I heard a gun!" Troy said. "Are they both shot?"

"I can't talk about anything, some things the police don't want to get out. You okay, Lacy?"

"My god, where does it all end?"

Babysitter Elaine and some of the other neighbors came walking up and asked what all the police cars were about. Told them the police would let them know before long, having finally decided to keep my big mouth shut. Gave Troy a look that told him to do the same.

The dark night, it seemed, couldn't be over soon enough.

"Let's go inside," I said.

"No, I just can't," Lacy said. "I need to stay out here until they let us know what happened."

"They may not open up about it tonight."

"I don't care. I have to stay here to find out."

"Then let's go sit on the porch."

So, we did. Lacy and I sat on some outside padded chairs she had there, while Troy took a seat on the top step, his eyes locked on the police cars across the street. For once he wasn't chattering, only quietly sitting there like a hen intent on hatching eggs.

Addie found it boring enough to fall back asleep.

The sun, red as the fresh blood on Clyde Kregal's head, finally rose. Most of the residents of East Beech stayed outside like us, waiting impatiently for answers. There looked to be a lot of no-shows for work that day.

It was around about six-thirty that Sheriff Charley Weeks came into view at the top of the hillside. He conversed with some of the policemen there before glancing our way and making his way across the street. He stopped at the bottom of the steps and spoke to Troy.

"Son, I need you to come over to my car so we can talk about what happened last night."

"Sure," Troy answered, rather tentatively, at least for him.

In about twenty minutes they returned, Troy again taking his seat at the top of the stairs. Once more, he was quiet.

Charley turned to me.

"Got a minute, Kent?'

"Sure."

We made our way to his vehicle.

"You're into this up to your neck," he said, "so I felt I needed to fill you in, see if you got any input."

"Understood."

He heaved a sigh.

"Gotta keep it in mind that we're just into it, but right now this deal looks like a murder-suicide. There was only one used bullet in the revolver, so it had to be the one that killed Clyde. Given where the weapon, that turned out to be a .22, was found on the floor to his left, it would seem there's a good chance he put the bullet into his own head."

"Why would he kill Clovis?"

He handed me the unlined piece of paper that was on the side table. Looked like it was copy paper except that, although it made the eight and a half inches wide, it was short of the eleven and a half long. It was in a clear plastic folder, and was well dotted with blood, but the words could still be read.

"Looks like the bottom part of this sheet was torn off. Wonder why?'

"Huh? Why did that come to mind?"

"Just curious. I could understand it if it was torn roughly out of a binder or something but it's the bottom end of copy paper."

"Could be Clyde was a miser as well as a jerk. My wife tears pieces of paper to write notes on, though I got to admit she's no cheapskate."

"Yeah, I see what you mean."

The message was a scrawled, printed handwriting done in pencil, the letters misshapen and the syntax muddled.

You little bastard you have gone ruined my

Life. How could you do this to me after all I've

did for you? It ain't right it just ain't right damned it

and I want people to know. Your goin to pay for what

you done.

After reading it I had to give it some thought. Then,

"You think Clyde found out his brother had something to do with what's happened with the three women and killed him for it? Then killed himself?"

"Don't know for sure that's the reason he killed his brother all I know is it was his bat on the floor. Years ago he or somebody put his name on it. Clovis was hit on the head from behind, not enough to kill him but hard enough to make him senseless for a long enough time to get him trussed up the way he was found."

"But why kill him like that? Why not shoot him?"

He shrugged shoulders.

"Who knows. Clovis was a little strange, but Clyde was a raging idiot."

"But to kill himself?'

"He was drunk, by the look of it. I've come to find out plastered drunk people don't think straight. Maybe he felt guilty about what he'd done after he'd got enough beer down his throat, or maybe the opposite, my thinking being maybe the beer put him in a mood to do it and then he felt guilty afterwards when he'd sobered up some. End result was the same either way."

"Everybody else thinking murder-suicide?"

"Leaning that way, but none of us are ready to say it publicly. There's a lot of work to be done yet. Thing is, we did find some papers in the house that were written by Clyde and the handwriting looks the same as the one you have there. Course we got to have an expert verify we're right but I'd make a bet that he wrote that tirade. Now, are you ready for the kicker?"

"Ready as I'll ever be, I guess."

"The bat had quite a bit of blood on it. Thump he gave Clovis barely broke the skin. I'm betting when we send the samples off for DNA testing some of it will match these women we've lost."

That kicked me back a bit.

"Un-damn-believable. Why wouldn't it have been thrown away, or at least cleaned?"

"One strange, one a raging idiot."

"Let's see now. The only lady Clovis could have killed was the first woman, Misty Dane, since he was out of town when Janice was killed, and let's say Clyde discovered proof he did it and went berserk and killed him. Or maybe he figured out ─"

Just then a patrolman came long-striding up to Charley's window.

"Sheriff, we found something while we were searching the areas surrounding the house."

"What'd you find?"

The officer flicked his eyes towards me.

"That's alright, John, Kent is one of us."

"Okay, well. Well, sir, we found a body in the woods behind their home."

"O-o-h-h damn!"

Charley looked like he was going to be sick. Had to admit, I felt the same way.

"It was impossible to see in there, Sheriff," the deputy continued. "It was all scrubby brush and vines and the body was covered with leaves."

"How'd you find it?"

"The smell."

When I got back to her house, I told Lacy the authorities had not decided yet what exactly had happened with the Kregal brothers, but that I didn't think it would be long they would be announcing something. Lord knows, there was no desire to tell her about a body being found on their ground even if I had permission. She was upset enough as it was with the brothers being dead, without having to absorb the fact that someone else was too.

Calamities are best endured in small doses.

Even more official vehicles began showing up, the Feds, I had no doubt. East Beech Street was just on not very long parking lot.

The day squirmed away, slimy and ponderous. Folks were still outside, arms crossed while continuing to thrash out theories about what was going on with each other, by the time the sun was dropping low. A policeman was placed down by the main drag to turn away people who did not live on the street. Several news crews from far away TV stations had toted their bodies and equipment in the from the main road, having been told by the selfsame cop that their vehicles carried no more weight than anyone else's. Scott City had killed its way back into being news.

It wasn't until the sun was half down that the information filtered out that another body had been discovered. Of course, most everyone had the stomach-twisting feeling that it had to be Myla Stevens.

It was two hours into the night before those fears were confirmed. Miss Myla had been found at last. The news crews went bananas.

Lacy was beyond being shocked. She was numb, motionless, as if in a trance. I sat on the couch with my arm around her and said nothing. Only let her know with my clinging arms that I was close, that I was there, would always be there.

Troy's Mom made it home through the traffic jam and she and he went home to lock the doors and leave all the lights on.

Around ten I tried to persuade Lacy to go to bed.

"We'll know more in the morning," I told her.

"I won't be able to sleep."

"You'd be surprised. Your body may just decide it's had enough. I've found that out in the past."

She tried to smile.

"Will you hold me?"

"Oh, I guess so, if I have to."

Chapter 14

Words to the vision.

I was right about a body sometimes shutting down in spite of the owner. We were both probably asleep within half an hour of going to bed. And, yes, I held her.

Woke up a little after three, still holding her. Tried to go back to sleep but it didn't work. Guess my shut-down theory was only half true.

When I wake up like that ─ and it's not because I have to go to the bathroom ─ there's always an uncanny reason. A noise, rain pounding on the roof, a stupid dream, or my innermost brain lambasting me to pay attention to it. The innermost part of my brain is the leery part of it, the part that knows something that hasn't broken through to the rest of my intellect.

Laid there thinking, okay innermost brain, what do you want?

Three o'clock ran into four, four into five. No sleep, no answer for it. Not because I'm getting older and thus more forgetful, or for some other reason maybe just unable to bring things into focus. No, it's just that somewhere along the line I've seen something, or heard something, that means a whole hell of a lot, and haven't quite gotten to the point to center on it. I sincerely hope everybody has an innermost brain that nags them and that I'm not the only person who is totally wacko.

Wanted to get up and walk around and kick my gray matter into gear but I still had a tight hold on Lacy, and nothing was going to outweigh that. Did not want to wake her up and, besides that, it just felt too delightful to be able to hold her.

And anyway, this boy knew that whatever it was that I was supposed to pay attention to and dredge out an answer for would slam-bang me eventually. It'd arrive soon enough, always does.

Lacy woke up at six pondering whether she had the mindset to go to work, so upset was she about the events of the day before. She asked me what I thought and I told her it was best for her to try working in order to force her mind onto something else. And if it didn't work, then just come on home. She eventually agreed that that was a good idea.

She called Elaine and verified she was in the mood to babysit, then left for work before eight o'clock. After she drove off, I sat down and brooded over my day.

I wanted in the worst way to get some more information about what had been learned from the discovery of Myla Stevens' body, but knew it wouldn't be right to call Charley, he being busy as hell. What brought on my brooding was the fact that he was my only path to information.

So, it was to sit and wonder and try to kick-start my innermost brain.

It made for a long, long day.

Went out onto the front porch later in the afternoon to wait on Lacy. It was hours before she'd be off work but anything beat wallowing on the sofa in the house.

The police tape that was strung along the front edge of the Kregal homestead was rolling in the breeze. An unmarked car was parked in front of the tape, a forensic cop's conveyance most likely.

A few people milled around outside their homes but nowhere near as many as the day before. Fear still hovered in the air, but it had been transported indoors.

A county police vehicle pulled up and I recognized it right away. It was Sheriff Charley Weeks, once more returning to the scene. He pulled himself out of the door, twisted his sore spine back into place and slowly started walking around his vehicle, noticing me just as he reached a taillight. He gave a small wave then turned to cross the street walk. Stopped at the bottom of the porch steps.

"Those look to be some comfortable chairs. Mind if I sit in one?"

"Not at all."

He worked his way up the steps and plopped down into the chair next to mine. Sighed and leaned back.

"You've been up since yesterday, haven't you?" I asked.

"Yep."

"Go home and go to bed, Charley. Start again tomorrow."

"Would you?"

I exhaled a morose chuckle.

"No, guess not."

"Well, truth is, I am planning on heading home, just came by for one last look for something there that we might have missed or something that's not there that we should have noticed. You know, maybe come up with a eureka moment."

"Wish you luck."

By this time, he had put his head back and closed his eyes.

"The officer was right last night," he said after a while. "She would have never been found by the bare eyes. That area behind the Kregal boys' place wasn't what you would call an open woods, it was just scrubby trees and blackberry vines. No surprise, I guess, considering the shape their house and garage were in. Anyway, the only easy walking was a narrow deer path through the middle of the whole mess, not over a foot wide. The guys who went in their looking around are all scratched up today. We ended up identifying her by a photograph we had. We also had to have her parents verify it was her panties. Ever ask a mother to identify her dead daughter by a pair of panties?"

He took a moment to purse and wet his lips before going on.

"She was all covered up with leaves and other junk, maybe six-eight feet from the deer trail, and the summer heat was doing its job on her. Made it hard to breath, much less look at her. When the wind was right there was no way those boys couldn't have noticed the odor but, hell, one of them probably put her there."

"But which one?"

"That's the big question, isn't it? My guess is Clovis, what with his ogling the ladies and what you said about the car and Misty's murder. Plus, you got the note that Clyde left. Something had him totally pissed off for him to kill his brother and himself, wouldn't you think?"

"But if we say he thought his brother killed Misty, had some kind of proof of it, who killed Janice and kidnapped Myla? Clovis was out of town when Janice was murdered but both were around when Myla went missing. And Myla was mildly retarded, yes, but there's no way I can see that her opening the door to either of them, much less actually leave with one of them. I guess someone could have forced her, but you still have to get by her opening the locked door first."

"She most likely knew Clovis, seen him walking around. Maybe she hadn't heard the stories about him and would have considered him harmless."

"That could be. Still, you have Janice."

He nodded.

"True. But my guess is Frankie Stone is good for her."

"Motive?"

"Could be he's a lifelong sicko, and has always wanted to give it a go. What better time than when you could pull it off and figure to have it blamed on whoever it was that killed Misty. Or better yet, could be he killed Misty and Myla too and put Myla on the Kregals property in order to put the onus on one of them."

"Have you had this same type of conversation with everybody else who's here?"

"Almost verbatim. Thing is, we've got the bloody bat. That could clear a lot of things up if the women's DNA is on it. We put a rush on it being tested, but there's a lot of killings going on in this country. A rush doesn't always mean a whole hell of a lot."

"And there's no way for two of the suspects to confess when confronted with the evidence."

A gently pleasant breeze was filtering over the porch from the south. We both turned our faces into it. It felt good, but it seemed a shame to me that we should be enjoying it. Enjoyment seemed an inappropriate feeling, considering.

Charley began speaking, maybe more to himself than me.

"Myla was battered like the others. Wacked on the head till it finished her. She was on her back when we found her. Her eyeballs were gone, Kent, just like Misty, except they weren't slashed out. They were taken out somehow, looked like almost surgically, clean as a whistle. All you had was two black holes behind the drooping eyelids. It reminded me of the damn dog. Tell you, I'll carry that vision of her the rest of my miserable life. Sick bastard. I don't know if I could manage to get him to the jail if I caught him...the dog, the damn dog. Hell, we didn't even discuss that part of it when we were talking."

I didn't reply to what he'd said. He needed silence and the cool breeze.

It was a good five minutes before he spoke again.

"I know you know that what I told you is between us."

"Yes."

"Know what, Kent, I think I'll take your advice and just go home."

After Charley left, I began plodding through all we'd discussed, looking for that elusive eureka moment he was talking about or, in my case, an innermost brain convulsion.

Something had kept me awake the night before, other than the death and mayhem at the Kregal house. Sad to say, I've waded my way through an ocean of death and mayhem. I'm not calloused to it, heck, quite a few times it's been my doing. It's just that sooner or later you have to sleep, regardless of the shedding of blood.

So there I was, taking in the breeze, thinking about Clyde, feeling deep revulsion about what happened to Clovis, feeling outright sick about young Miss Myla meeting such a horrid end to her young life. Visualizing all that we'd talked about, about how Myla was found, and the bat, and the eyes.

On and on my mind churned, putting our words against all the images.

My mind rode back to inside the shed. Clyde to the right, Clovis to the left, beer cans on the floor, nothing under the chair, gun, baseball bat, blood on the sheet of paper, Clovis' hands duct taped together behind his back, the rope running from his ankles to his neck, filthy floor and...and...

Words to the vision. Words.

Charley's words.

"...one last look for something that's there we missed, or something that's not there that we should have noticed. You know, maybe come up with a eureka moment."

"...missed..."

"...something that's not there."

Not there.

Not...not...

Scrutinized every inch of that small room, every godforsaken inch and...and...and suddenly innermost brain convulsed at long last, my thoughts running rapid fire.

Duct tape.

Duct tape on Clovis' wrists.

Where was the damn duct tape?

If Clyde was planning on killing himself, why would he worry about leaving the duct tape behind, duct tape that wasn't all used or the empty spool for it?

Why?

Only one way to figure it.

He's not the one who used it. That would be a person who had to worry about maybe some DNA evidence or fingerprints being left on it.

But who?

Why? Who?

Someone who had it in for them, blamed them as being the killers of the young women perhaps?

Or was there some other reason for the butchery?

Bottom line, whoever it was hatched a very good plan. But said plan required knowledge of how Clyde spent most of his evenings drinking beer in he shed, and had to know the exact right time to pull it off, that being after he had drunk too much beer. To be safe though, to make it all work, you had to be sure it was a beer night.

And then it'd be just great for the cops to find out about the murders right away. The paper might blow away in a swirling wind, who knows?

I mean, if it hadn't been for ─

Chapter 15

Coincidentally

Got up from the porch chair feeling hollow.

It's all about the word coincidence, a word that should not exist, at least not in the world I had come to know, a world where you labored in the realm of vicious crimes. In that line of work, a 'striking occurrence by mere chance' ─ the definition of coincidence ─ means trouble, especially as it occurs in multiples.

Think about it this way. If you end up by accident sitting by an old acquaintance in a stadium with forty-thousand people, that's a coincidence. But if you end up having four or five random old friends in your bleacher area, none of whom claiming they knew the others would be there, there's no way that's a coincidence no matter what they say about it. Too big a group, too many numbers. Something's up. It just ain't gonna to happen by coincidence.

When it comes to murder you take an overdose of perceived coincidence with a huge grain of salt. Violence and death are not blind, random luck, but things which are fashioned for a reason. That's what I mean by it being a word that shouldn't exist, at least not in law enforcement. This boy had found that to be true oft times over many blood-spattered years.

Thinking about it, about the 'coincidences' that were riding through my thinking, was making me feel sick. Still, sick or not, it was time to slowly cross the street to stand by the police tape.

Gazed down at that pathetic fenced in area outside of that pathetic building that was built so many years ago, a place meant to house chickens. Two to three feet high tall grass and weeds were intertwined in the poultry netting that made up the fence.

Supposed coincidence one, discovering the tortured dog:

'So, I was going down the sidewalk in front of the house and saw some hair or something in that pen.'

How can you see what you can't see? How could he have spotted 'hair or something' on the ground in a pen when you had tall growth in the fencing? How? Hell, a human being lying in that pen would have been hard to see from the top of the grade.

Maybe he's a psychic, huh? Eyes closed, murmuring and swaying, and finally bringing up the troubling vision of a mutilated dog in the chicken house pen.

Bull crap. None of this is anywhere near funny, Baker.

Because could it be that it was more than a trifle possibility that he could have tortured it and left it there? It's known that many serial killers started out with animals as children. Was he capable of such a thing?

Supposed coincidence two.

Was he capable of such a sick atrocity?

What he had said about being a forensic scientist?

"I love dealing with dead bodies."

And,

"You just can't let the pain make a difference."

And,

"You just can't let thinking about the pain they went through stop you."

And,

"...I have Ted Bundy's picture."

Supposed coincidence number three.

Only he had heard the gunshot that buried a bullet in Clyde's brain.

"Watching TV in the living room and I think I heard a gunshot!"

Okay, alright, he owned young ears. But the Kregal shack was well below the level of East Beech Street. There was the grassy slope and overhanging trees to absorb the sound waves. To go with that, the door was small, the opening ─ if the door was initially open ─ was very narrow, allowing for the interior wall to soak up the blast. It would seem that the topography of the hillside, and all those other factors stood a good chance of being the makings of an acoustic shadow.

Put along with that the fact that it was a small .22 caliber gun being used and he was inside a house with the windows closed, maybe the air conditioner running and, by his own words, watching television.

Not only did he hear it but, in spite of all that, he was sure about the location.

"I think it came from Clyde and Clovis' house."

To go along with that, he also said,

"If the shack door is open maybe you could see something."

Why would he say that? If a shooting had occurred, why would someone leave the door open?

Yet, yes, the door was open.

Supposed coincidence number four.

Removal of the eyeballs.

What had Sheriff Weeks said?

"Eyes had been jerked clean out, neat as can be, and were nowhere to be found. Damndest thing I ever saw."

What had been the statement from the person I was wondering about?

"I'd heard that the first lady who was killed had her eyes jabbed out with a knife. That's sickening. Who would do it that way!"

That way?

Myla Stevens' eyeballs had been cleanly removed.

What it boiled down to was that it seemed, from the dark beginning, whenever something swirled Troy was in the storm's eye.

Yeah, one eleven-year old Troy Jaden.

I turned and walked back across East Beech Street. Had somebody came speeding up in their Mustang out of nowhere it's a sure thing I would have been run over. My mind was in the mental mud of no-mans' land.

Plopped down in the comfortable porch chair. Rubbed my eyes and shook the dust out of my brain.

You're out of your mind, dude, I told myself. You've lost it. You need to find a huge oak tree with an obscenely large knot hole. Belly-roll your sorry ass through it and make yakity-yak with the rest of the squirrels, if they'll have you.

I mean, think about what you're thinking!

Troy. Excitably funny, earnestly curious Troy.

Still, somehow, young Troy seemed to be somehow involved in every turn of events.

Phew-w-w.

Calm down. Be logical, if possible.

How...how about considering the buts.

As in your having all these ponderings about Myla Stevens eyes and Troy's comments, but what about the other two women?

But what about Clyde pummeling him?

But what if he did see the dog somehow, someway?

But what about the letter next to a dead Clyde, seeming to blame Clovis for Myla's death?

But what about her panties hanging over the choke rope?

Still, there was an opposing but.

But ─ why did every turn of the events seem to involve Troy in some way or another?

Calm down. Be logical, if possible.

Logic: there was only one way to see if those ridiculous thoughts I had been pondering signified anything, or were just the ramblings of my dented mind.

And it was not to contact the cops concerning my misgivings. If, as I hoped, they all came to naught, I would forever be a persona non grata to Troy and the majority of folks in Scott City, Troy being the key person here.

I prayed to God they were deranged ramblings, but there was no doubt I was on my own to find out for sure. It was a dicey move, the plan revolving inside my head, but this boy knew there would be no rest for me until said move was made.

And Troy's bright red bicycle was absent from his front porch.

Went inside Lacy's place by way of the front door, grabbed some latex gloves from the cabinet under her sink and put them on. Exited out of the back door. Checked out the neighboring back yards and saw no one. Casually strolled over to the back yard behind the Jaden's house.

They had a small, wooden back porch that was gotten to from the house by an old wood door, probably the original door for a house that was at least fifty-years old. Continued my casual saunter to the steps of the porch and walked on up. I was right about my feelings concerning the door's condition. It was well-made and still solid, but the constant wear of divergent outside temperatures over all the years had taken their toll. Hot summer temps that caused the wood to expand, along with cold temps causing it to shrink, had loosened the density of the wood. I opened the screen door, grabbed the door knob of the wooden door and gently jiggled it to discover that it was fitting loosely inside the frame around it. It had no deadbolt. If you knew what you were doing such a locked door was no problem at all. I happened to know what I was doing.

Got an old, limber plastic card out of my wallet, an insurance card that was connected to the health insurance I'd had with the DEA. Of course, it was worthless now. Why I kept it, I have no idea. Why do any of us keep the things we keep?

Since it was useless, I bent it until it held a fairly sharp curve. Slid it by the doorstop slat at the level of the door knob and, taking advantage of the loose fit of the door, worked it into the curve of the door lock latch. Fifteen seconds of jiggling the card and the door obediently cracked open.

Oh, good lord, it's Troy you're wondering about, Baker, I thought once more.

Troy.

Thought about it, then cracked the door open.

Got down to considering the business at hand.

Jean Jaden was at work, I was sure, what with no car being in the driveway. Troy's bike was gone and so, hopefully, was Troy. Contemplated about the fact that if I was wrong about either of those two things, or if one of the Jaden's came home and walked in on me, me and Sheriff Weeks would no longer be friends.

Contemplated, then walked in, the 'in' I walked into being the kitchen. Stopped, listened a long two minutes, heard nothing. Passed around a table to get to the interior door across the way. It opened into the living room. No one there. Went to the front door and peeked out.

Bike still gone, still no car in the driveway. Crossed over to the closed door that led to Troy's bedroom, opened it and went on in.

Same as my last visit. Neat and tidy, bed made, nothing strewn on floor. Frog in jar, still holding his breath in the formaldehyde. Mr. Ted Bundy's pleasant face in a picture frame, still holding its place of honor next to one holding Einstein's. Spotless wooden table still holding a laptop computer. Poster of human body without skin still hanging in all its glory on a nearby wall.

One hell of an orderly room to be occupied by an eleven-year old boy. Did that mean anything? Does anything mean anything anymore?

Went to the window and opened it and slid out the screen, a long clunky one. If someone entered the house the window would be the quickest way out. And, if I was fast enough in leaving the house, it would be up to law enforcement to figure out who exited through the window.

If I was fast enough.

Got down to work. Went to the clothes dresser and carefully fingered my way through his clothes. Nada.

Looked under the bed. A few books there and some shoes, but nothing else, not even some good old-fashion dust or a girlie magazine. No surprise about that.

Next came the closet. First off, looked to see if there was a covered entryway into the attic.

There was none.

Stomach was churning, waiting for the noise of a door opening.

Stopped to poke my head out of the door to listen for any sounds, especially sounds of entry.

Nobody there, just me and the google-eyed frog.

Made a careful search of the clothes on hangers and on the shelves. Just clothes, nothing in the pockets, no suspicious stains.

There was a rug on the floor beside the bed. No trap door under it. Things were looking better. I was feeling significantly foolish and glad of it.

Where else to look? What else to see?

No way would he hide anything anywhere else in the house. Too smart for that.

Yes, there was the basement, but for sure one that was not finished, and in being so had visible floor joints and concrete walls with no failsafe hidey-holes. Plus, Mom no doubt made regular trips down there.

Where else to look?

Stepped to the middle of the room and gave it one more once-over.

The bed. Had looked under it, but not within it. Memorized the lay of the blankets and pillows, then began feeling around. Lifted the mattress enough to see under it. Same thing with the box springs.

Ah-h-h, great, nothing there!

You're a fool, Baker, but as of then a happy fool. Pressed your luck enough, time to leave.

With a grin on my face and a song in my heart, I went to the window to replace the screen. Big screen, hard to get into place, lost balance a little and felt the windowsill move.

"Crap," I mumbled, thinking I broke it.

It wasn't broken but for some reason had tilted up from the front edge. Bent over to see why.

The why was there were no nails in the wood to secure it into place, all of them obviously having been removed and the wholes painted over. The only thing that had been holding it was a small metal shelf bracket. Each half of the bracket was maybe an inch long and each had a hole with a small screw in it, one inserted into the wall, one into the sill. The one for the wall had pulled out because of my thumping it, having barely been long enough to reach through the plastered wall.

Thing was, it was all meant to make the sill easy to remove.

Lifted it up and out of place.

The two by four board that sat beneath the sill had years before been nailed onto the top of the short studs below it. A section of the two by four had been meticulously cut out between two of the stud boards. It had to have been a hard, time consuming work to have done it without damaging the wall.

Put the sill on the floor and looked down into the opening. It was a dark hole, but something was there in the shadows. Wished I had a flashlight, very, very much did not want to reach down there without knowing for sure what was there to be touched. But, of course, I had no flashlight and had no time to find one. Took a deep breath and reached in.

Felt something cool to the touch, circular. Brought it up.

It was a partial roll of duct tape.

Mind went back to why someone would hide duct tape.

Mouth went dry, just like that. Laid the tape to the side, slowly reinserted my hand inside the wall.

Felt something rather long and thin, got a grip and pulled it out. Took a half a minute to figure out exactly what it was.

My grandmother, the lady who'd raised me alongside my grandfather, had one. What it was was a small handle with a half-circle piece of metal at each end, the metal shaped like a small bowl. There were two because they were different sizes.

What Grandma did with them was to take a watermelon or a cantaloupe ─ we called them mush-melons ─ and use a rotating motion with the metal bowled things to make a nicely rounded sphere of the fruit that was a perfect fit for a mouth. She called it a melon baller and, yeah, me and my buddies had a good time with that name.

But this melon baller had been tinkered with. The edges of the circular metal parts had been minutely sharpened with a file.

You don't need a sharp edge to make watermelon balls.

Took a closer look at the black handle of the thing and the silvery metal on each end. Thought I picked up some smudged places.

The smears were red in color.

Once more:

"I'd heard that the first lady who was killed had her eyes jabbed out with a knife. That's sickening. Who would do it that way!"

Placed the melon baller next to the duct tape. Put my hand back down into the wall. This time I once again felt something round, round and kind of heavy. Knew by the shape what it was. Had no choice but to bring it up and examine it.

A pint-sized glass canning jar, lid tightly on. Clear liquid in it. Things floating in the liquid.

Four eyeballs, undamaged, perfectly preserved.

Two large white orbs with brown irises. Two smaller white orbs with blue irises. Tattered pieces of the four rectus muscles ─ the muscles that move the eyes left and right, up and down ─ hanging off the sides of the eyeballs.

The two large eyeballs had big, brown, well defined irises with black centers.

Maybe like the eyes of some dogs I'd seen.

The two smaller ones had blue irises.

Felt ill.

Wondered, oh no, what color Myla Stevens irises were. Studied the room, taking in the extreme neatness of everything.

"...keeping my room clean keeps Mom out of here."

Deliberately placed the jar on the floor. Put my hands on each side of the opening in the two by four, braced myself, closed my eyes and lowered my head.

Somewhere within the deepest reaches of my skull a problem was nesting, a dilemma that needed my immediate attention in resolving.

How was I to get the authorities to conduct a legal search of Troy's room without them figuring out that I had broken the law by entering it myself, an action that would make anything they discovered illegally obtained evidence in a court of law. I really, really needed to set my mind to figuring out how to handle that problem because it could be dangerous if things were strung out.

But figuring it out was not to be.

I was numb, frozen in place. Immobile to the world and made immobile by the weight of what I had found, that being the possibility of a diabolical heart so deeply rooted within one so young. One so capable of coming across as a gregarious being, a creature he definitely was not.

Wanted in the worse way to wake up, jerking upright on sweated sheet, so glad that it was all just one long, horrifying dream. But a dream it was not, and the nightmare to come was just at its beginnings. I wanted to melt away. I wanted to scream.

Then I heard the scream.

Chapter 16

...on top of the world.

The shriek was high-pitched, anguished, demanding attention. Someone was in dire-straights.

It brought me out of my stupor. Hurriedly put the various incriminating items back into the wall, replaced the sill and screen, hand tightened the screw in the angle that held the sill into the wall then tore out of the bedroom and out the back door. Stopped in Lacy's backyard and listened. Whoever it was was still screaming in desperation from somewhere in the front-side of the house.

Ran around the house and saw her. Elaine, Addie's babysitter, sprawled on the city sidewalk in front of her home. Sprinted up to her. She saw me coming and held out her arm.

"Oh my god, oh my god, help me please!"

"Elaine, you alright!"

"The baby, the baby!" she shouted with what little breath she had left.

"The baby? Addie?"

"He's got her, damn it, he's got her!"

"Who, Elaine, who?"

"Troy."

"Calm down, tell me what happened."

"He, he came riding up on his bicycle and I had the baby in her little car seat carrier. He knocked me down and took her from me."

Felt like somebody had sucker-punched me.

"Where'd he go?"

She pointed to the right and back.

"There's a trail through the woods there that the kids use to go to the railroad tracks. That's where he came from and...and that's where he went."

"The railroad tracks?"

"Yes, yes. He was holding onto the carrier and riding his bike at the same time. He's going to drop her, I know he's going to drop her!"

"Okay, okay, how are you? You hurt?"

"No, I don't think so, I just can't get up."

"Let me help you."

"No, no! Go after him, get the baby."

"But ─"

"My god, man, just go! I swear, I'll be getting up in a minute even if I have a broken bone. Just go!"

I nodded, drug out my phone, and ran towards the tree line. Dialed Charley's number as I did. He picked up on the second ring.

"Hey, Kent."

"Can't talk long. Troy Jaden has taken Addie, Lacey's little girl. I'm sure she's in danger."

"What?"

"Took her from Elaine, her babysitter. You know her?"

"Yes."

"She needs an ambulance on East Beech. Troy's heading to the railroad tracks, my guess to the railroad bridge. I'm going after him."

"Now wait ─"

"Can't talk anymore."

I hung up.

As a kid I'd taken a shovel, hoe and a small hatchet and grubbed out a path through a forest to make a bike path. It had been fun skimming past the trees on my two-wheeler as if I was on a three-wheeler. It looked like the kids in the East Beech street neighborhood had done the same thing. Their path was fairly wide and well-worn, the aim of it being to get to the railroad tracks, a place they shouldn't be in the first place. A dangerous place where Troy had taken baby Addie.

And why?

Didn't want to think about that, just kept running while carrying an ongoing dread he was going to drop her. Finally broke through the trees at a spot next to the high fill that held the railroad tracks. And there was the red bike, tossed down into the weeds. Looked to the north as I clamored up the fill. Didn't see him, a curve in the rails cutting down sight distance. Began running down the middle of the tracks with an ear pinned to any sound of a train coming, hoping Troy was doing the same.

In the near distance I heard sirens.

I'm not a man who often prays. Thing is, I do believe in a Supreme Being. Far too many marvels exist for there not to be someone or the other making them pop up. It's just that I can't put my fingers on the Him of him, could not put a face to it.

But just then, running down the tracks with my heart in my throat and a terrorizing apprehension screeching inside my mind, I began praying in the hope He held no grudge against an only-when-I-really-need-you believer. It helped to know that there was no doubt He had an abounding love for the little ones, else wouldn't have made then so precious.

Moved on and on, legs pumping, squinting in the hopes of seeing him. Then finally I did, just after rounding the corner that allowed me to see the huge railroad bridge over the Mississippi. Could see the whole length of the bridge and the town of Thebes across the way and see, out on a narrow walkway on the north side of the bridge and heading east, a figure carrying something off to the side.

Carrying a baby on a bridge where freight trains ran, trains which can required miles to stop.

Picked up my pace, started shouting.

"Troy, stop, there could be a train coming! Stop now!"

He paused, gave me a short cursory glance over his shoulder, then continued on his way.

Picked up my pace, long-stepping across the concrete abutment that led to the main bridge structure. Just got to the walkway when Troy turned right and began crossing the two double main tracks to the south side of the bridge. Arriving there, he did something that turned my stomach, brought out a groan.

He began climbing up a small metal ladder that had been welded into the bridge beams, using only his left hand to hold onto the ladder, sliding it up the vertical stanchions at each step, while in his right hand he held the carrier in which Addie was laying, the carrier flopping about wildly with his movements. Thank God she was strapped in.

It looked like Addie was curiously taking everything in.

"Stop, before you drop her!"

Then he did something that made things so much worse.

He laughed. A cackling laugh that spoke volumes about his not giving a damn, announcing within the snicker that what would be would be, baby or not. The laugh of a movie screen mad scientist, except this boy wasn't acting.

On up he went, still chuckling. By the time I made it to the ladder he was more than halfway up, the total distance to the top being maybe forty feet or so. Clamored up at a faster rate than he was doing but still way to slow. Never took my eyes off the hand holding Addy. If she slipped from his grip there would have to a try for the impossible catch, that being to somehow fling my arm through the carrier handle as it went dropping by. The timing would have to be perfect, which is where impossible came in.

The wide, brown river flowed beneath us, its endless run a timeless wonder. It had existed for eons and, in all probability, would continue undulating along for innumerable more. It was built for longevity, not anywhere near as rickety as the boned beings just then scuttling up a ladder on the huge bridge above it, the tiny ant-like specs that could so easily be broken. Many of those specs the Mississippi knew well, having countless times bloated them and floated them away. It all made for a tragically ridiculous comparison, the roiling water's strength contrasted with humankind's frailty or, better yet, stupidity.

By a miracle fashioned by a guardian angel Troy made it to the platform at the top of the ladder without dropping Addy. He quickly climbed out of and away from the opening they'd passed through and waited for me.

Eased my head through the opening.

The metal floor of the platform was probably an eight-foot square. A red beacon light sat atop a short pole in one corner the reason, no doubt, the platform was there. A single angle iron railing ran around the platform at my bellybutton level.

Troy had moved straight across from the to the from the ladder opening, putting himself and the baby on the side with the long drop that led to the river. He had the baby carrier casually teetering atop the narrow angle iron railing, his hand near the bottom of the carrier handle. He might as well have been holding a rock he was planning on dropping off for the fun of it, going by the nonchalance with which he held the carrier.

Little by little eased myself onto the platform. He waved his arm about in a circular motion.

"Just like I said, right? On top of the world."

Knew there was a need to move slowly, speak calmly.

"Let's not take chances, Troy. Put her on the floor, please."

He ignored my words.

"What were you doing in my house, Kent?" he asked. "I was coming back from the railroad tracks and when I came out of the woods I saw you go in the back door. You see me?"

I shook my head.

His voice was strange in that it was even and full, deeper, almost like an adult's. It held no high-pitched eagerness, just a calm flow to the words. It was unnerving to hear,as if the sound of it didn't belong to him.

To go with that his eyes were dull, had lost their youngster glow.

Knew I had to talk to him, bring back the old Troy, get him to let me take Addie.

"Troy ─"

"I waited a while after I saw you go in," he said in the same tone of voice. "When you didn't come out after a long time I knew you'd found something. You were in my room, weren't you?"

"I ─"

"Shut up!"

The anger rolling through him caused him to jiggle the baby carrier. Raised my arms and moved towards him. He reached into his pocket and came out with a snub-nosed revolver. Dying wouldn't save Addie. I stopped.

"Back up," he said.

I did.

He shook the baby about again and in doing so jerked my breath away.

"Scares you, don't it. Afraid I'll let loose. Well, if you come at me again, I will. I'm not the wussy everybody thinks I am. I'll let go of her, wouldn't bother me a bit, and after I drop her I'll shoot you. That would bother me even less."

"Shoot me if you want, if it'll make you feel better. Just don't hurt her, Troy, she's done nothing."

"Oh-h-h, the big hero. I'm not impressed, Kent. Heroes are fools. Most people are fools."

Once more I was baffled about the voice, the mannerisms. Thought I needed to change the subject.

"Where'd you get the gun?"

He put forth a grin wrapped around a wrinkled sneer. It too was something I'd never seen before.

"Got it from this piece of shit guy who moved in to screw my mother. I knew where he had it hid. I know everything that goes on in my house. I stole it one day while they were at work. He went crazy nuts when he couldn't find it, first said my mother was hiding it from him then said I took it. She kicked his lazy ass out. Thought for a minute he was going to kick her ass but he was too much of a wimp to do it. Thing is, he should have, that would have been fun to see. But, hey, let's talk about something else. How about we talk about what you found in my room. I mean, I know you found my treasures, cause I got to admit you're pretty smart. Too much of a softie, but a little smart. So, did you find my hidden jar."

I nodded.

"Pretty neat, wasn't it? Did you figure out the big ones were dog eyes?"

Nodded again.

"And the small ones?"

"I'm thinking they were Myla's."

That time he nodded with a huge grin on his face.

"Pretty neat, huh?"

And there was the truth of it. The nightmare was not a dream, proofing the whitest of souls black.

It was then that Addie started squirming and fussing, twisting her head about.

"The sun is bothering her, Troy. She shouldn't be in it, she'll burn."

"And?"

"Can't you at least put her down on the floor? Your shadow will shade her a little bit."

He narrowed his eyes as if trying to figure me out.

"The sun? You're worried about the sun?"

"She's just a baby."

He shrugged.

"Okay, if it makes you happy. I mean, don't we want everybody happy?"

Put the baby and carrier down to his left side. And there, yes, she was somewhat shaded from the sun. She quit fussing.

But she was still on the outer edge of the platform's floor. All it would take would be a push by his left foot and she would be gone. Still, at least he wasn't holding her with a loose hand.

The sound of people talking came rolling over us. Breathless voices, frantic chatter.

A large group of people were walking onto the bridge walkway. I could make out Charley Weeks, other uniformed officers and some not in uniform, along with a woman.

Was it? Yes, it was.

Lacy. No way they could have kept her away, no way.

Troy was taking them in too, though their presence didn't seem to bother him in the least. He almost looked bored.

I wondered what that meant. What had he become?

My cell phone rang. Got to the third ring.

"Answer it," Troy said.

I did.

"Hello."

"Man, what the hell is going on?"

Charley. The group was almost to the ladder we'd climbed.

"Up here with Troy and Addie."

"Elaine's been taken to the hospital, though they don't think it's anything serious. Did he really knock her down, and he's got the baby up there?"

"Yes."

"I can see you both up there now. Is the baby's alright?"

"Yes."

Some words came out as a sobbing moan in the background. Knew it was Lacy.

"My baby!" were the words.

"I'm coming up," Charley said.

Charley had been talking excitedly and Troy had youthful ears. He put his foot to the side of the baby carrier and gave it a tap.

"Tell him no. No one else comes up here. Understand."

I nodded.

"Gives us some time here, Charley," I said. "Troy and I are talking."

"I heard him. Give me a sec."

He hung up.

"He better not be trying something," Troy said.

"He's talking with the others."

"Are they FBI guys?"

"I don't know."

"They try anything, and she goes over."

"Where would that get you?"

"Doesn't matter. But it will get her to the river."

My anxiety was building. He was beyond scaring me now. I was at the point where I didn't know how long to go before making a slim-chanced attempt to reach little Addie, who was at least six feet from me, a move I really hated to ─

My cell phone clanged.

"Yeah."

"Okay," Charley said, "you guys got a while to talk things out, to convince him to give up. We can't give you long."

"Understood."

Put the phone in my shirt pocket.

"No one else is coming up, Troy."

He gave forth a full-faced smirk.

"Setting up a sniper, aren't they?"

"Have no idea."

"Yes you do."

"All I know is the best thing you can do is ─"

He raised the revolver a trifle bit.

"We're not talking about that, that's boring. Don't you want to talk about all the other stuff that happened?

"If you want."

"Ask me something."

"I'd like to know everything, Troy. Why? Why did you do everything you did?"

"Gosh, this will take a while. They'll probably shoot me before I'm done."

He moved his foot to where it was more strongly into the side of the carrier.

"Damn," he went on, "it's hard telling what kind of a reaction I would have to that. Anyhow, I've been wanting real bad to talk to someone and I kinda like it being you. We're friends, right?"

"Yes."

"Well, Mr. Baker, first thing you need to know is I have these feelings for a long time. Started when I read about Ted Bundy, some of the stuff he did to the women he killed. Thought it would gross me out but...but it was kind of exciting. Know what I mean? It was something about being the boss, being able to control someone and do whatever you want to them. Having someone you could do what you wanted to with and not worry about how they felt. It's...it's hard to explain."

Said nothing. Gave him the chance to go on. It needed to be out there and when he was babbling he wasn't thinking about pushing Addie over the edge.

He put together what more he wanted to say, then went on.

"So...so it started when I saw Clovis getting into the car like he was going to drive it away. I'd never seen that before! I couldn't believe it. And he was carrying this baseball bat they had in their garage, I'd seen it there when I got their lawn mower to mow their lawn. I'd been riding my bike down the street and was where I could see him real good. Went to my porch as fast as I could so he wouldn't know I was watching and waited, and there he came up the hill in the car. I'd heard music from the shed so figured Clyde was probably drunk and passed out again. Anyway, Clovis just drove off, not very good, he was all over the place, but he made it to the main road and I could see him going south. It was all really weird."

He began sounding like the old Troy again, his voice higher pitched, like it'd always been when he had a story to tell.

"So," he said, "you know what happened then."

"No," I lied, "I don't know."

"Wow, you're not as smart as I thought! What happened was Misty Dane was murdered, and I was sure Clovis did it. So a day or so later when Clyde had left and Clovis was in the house watching TV, I went down there wearing gloves and snuck into their messy garage and found the bat. It had blood on it. It really excited me and I just ran my hands over it. Thinking about how it had killed Misty, that I could actually touch her blood! I mean, it got me all worked up down...down there. It didn't gross me or nothing like that at all. I knew something then."

"What did you know?"

"I knew why I liked killing the frog, and reading about Ted Bundy and other killers. But anyway, you know what happened next, I bet."

"Sorry, Troy, I don't."

"Think about it! I'm at home by myself a lot. I get bored and I pay a lot of attention to what's going on in the neighborhood. And well, the day they said the Thompson lady was killed I saw Clyde leaving the house going north in the right direction. And Clovis was out of town."

"And?'

"Come on! Don't you think there's chance he killed her? He probably figured out Clovis killed Misty, could have been the bat or, stupid as Clovis was, he could have told him. So, he killed Janice Thompson while Clovis was out of town to throw suspicion off of Clovis."

"His driving away wouldn't prove all that, Troy."

That made him mad.

"You're stupid, you're so stupid!"

I didn't want him angry.

"But I could see where you could be right, I really can," I told him.

That mollified him, somewhat.

"Why don't you keep your mouth shut and let me do the talking," he said.

"Sure, go ahead."

He sighed.

"Well, I guess it could be Frankie Stone though, since he did do what he did down by the river. Yeah, I guess it could have been him. But it don't matter anyway. What matters is what happened next, to Myla. I knew I couldn't keep myself from doing it any more. I had to, I just to know what it felt like."

I had to risk asking it.

"You killed her?"

The smirk he'd had up till then eased into a strange, strange smile.

"I got her eyes balls in a jar. It's be a little hard to deny killing her, now wouldn't it?"

So much for me worrying about his home being searched. I just had to hope he wouldn't blurt out about seeing me go in his house now that the phone was on.

"Do you want to tell me about it?" I asked.

"Why wouldn't I?"

"I was only ─"

"Kent, I know you left your phone on when you put it in your pocket. I'm smart, not stupid like you. But guess what, I don't care. This is what I did. I knew Myla, she'd sometimes be sitting on her front porch when I was out bike riding. We'd talk. I could tell it made her happy for someone to stop and blabber with her. It was kind of pathetic, the way she acted about it. So, when Clovis killed Misty and would someday be caught, I figured I had my chance to do it, to at last do it. Just thinking about it made me feel, feel...you know. I could do it, I knew I could do it, and was smart enough to make it look like Clovis did it. What I did was, I waited until her parents went to church, everybody in the neighborhood knew they went on Sundays and Thursdays. I went to her house and knocked and she was didn't even think about it, just opened the door.

"As usual she was stupid enough to be happy to see me. We kinda talked a while and then I finally asked her if she wanted to see some baby bunnies. She really, really wanted to but said her Mom and Dad wanted her to stay in the house. I said, well, they'll be grown up soon and then she wouldn't ever get to see them and she kinda moved around and bit on her lips and finally said okay.

"There's a path through the woods on the other side of the road from her house that ran up behind Clyde's house. All the kids know about it, it's kind of part of the shortcut to the railroad tracks. Anyway, we got across the road without a car going by and when that happened I knew I was lucky and that it was meant for me to do it. I felt like I was going to explode. We got to a place just behind the chicken house a little bit and she was getting tired of it taking so long to see the stupid bunnies, and so I told her we were real close to where they were except we had to go into the brush off the trail a little ways. She didn't like that but she did it anyway. The briars scratched her and she fussed about it but she kept following me. We got to this brush pile next to this big oak tree and I told her the rabbits were in it and if she bent over and looked she'd see them.

"What I'd done was, I'd snuck down into Clyde's garage that morning and got the baseball bat and carried it with a small towel wrapped around the handle, and I put it behind the tree."

At this point he stopped to catch his breath. Or maybe he was just excited about what was coming next. Reliving it perhaps. All I know it seemed like I wasn't even there.

"She bent down and I grabbed the bat with a clean handkerchief I had in my pocket and I...I hit her on the back of the head. Made a funny noise, from me hitting her and the sound that came out of her. She fell and was kicking so I hit her again and again and again. I rolled her over because I wanted to see how dying happens. Took her a while to stop breathing."

He looked off into the distance.

"Hitting her until it was over felt was like I told you what it would be like to be up here on this bridge. Remember? Felt like being on the top of the world. I mean, it's like putting the worm on the hook. Can't let the pain in it stop you doing it because ion the end there's pleasure in it for you. Weird, huh?"

I didn't want hear even one more word come out of his pathetic damn mouth. But if he was talking, he wasn't flirting with the idea of pushing Addie off the platform. That being so, he needed to keep on yakking until which time I could figure out a way to get her away from him.

Addie, by the way, had fallen asleep. Talk about the sleep of the innocent.

He was talking again, and it seemed like to himself as before, seeing something only he could really see.

"She was losing air, dying slow. I got down and looked into her eyes, I wanted to see what they did when things were going black. It was part of the thrill, you know, and I was finding it hard to control myself. What I thought was the eyes would go glassy or maybe just do nothing. But that's not what happened. I got closer because I couldn't believe it. Inside her pupils I saw something, I saw it for sure, it was there. Inside the black of both of her pupils I saw other eyes looking out, just the pupils and the colored part around them, no eyelashes, no nothing. The colored part is the iris, I looked it up. So, in both her eyes I saw this blue iris circling around black pupils and as her breathing slowed those eyes inside her eyes slowly got smaller, like they were going back into her head, until she stopped breathing and then they disappeared in the black pupils of her eyes. I'm not making it up. I'm not! You know what I think? I think it was the devil, I think he was taking her away."

"Myla? The devil?"

"We all die with the devil."

Just then, I had nothing to say.

Troy? What he'd described had taken a strong hold on him, as his face was vacant, yet puzzled. But then all of a sudden it was like he woke up and a grin plied across his face.

"And guess what?" he said, his tone brighter. "Remember when we were talking about coming up with new words? Well I came up with one for what I saw. Do you want to hear it?"

"I suppose so."

"It's dieyes! D-i-e-y-e-s. Get it? The e at the end of die is the same e at the start of eyes."

"Sure, I get it, Troy."

He frowned.

"You not excited about my word. We're not having fun like we did at my house. I don't know if I want to talk to you anymore."

"But you haven't told me everything. Like, why did you remove her eyes?"

"It was part of the thrill, don't you understand? It wouldn't have been worth it without that. But it was done the right way, not tearing them up. I was smart enough to find a tool to do it, a thing you make watermelon balls with it. Smart, huh? And now, that's about all of it."

"Come on, Troy, don't you want to tell me everything else?"

"Sure, I guess so. Like about the dog, huh?"

"Yes."

"Well, like I said, I knew if I was going to kill Myla, I'd have find a way to make it look like Clovis did it, since people thought he was a sicko already. Killing her behind his house was part of that but for that to work the cops would have to search the property. What happened was I saw a dog without a collar wandering around the neighborhood and I real quick came up with a plan. My Mom was working so I brought it home and fed it. It was really skinny. It made him happy, he really liked me. So, what I did was, I took him into my back yard when the neighbors were gone to work and grabbed a piece of a board from the garage and hit him with it. It was terrible! He was a lot harder to kill than Myla, I had to chase him all around. Every time I hit his head, he slowed down but it still took a while and it was making so much noise I was afraid a neighbor would hear it. Guess they're hard to kill because they have to be tough to find a way to live outside. Had to hit him till he was kind of knocked out, then got a knife and stabbed him a while.

"But I killed it and then waited till I was sure the brothers were sleeping, it was after midnight, and I took the dog down and put him in the old chicken pen. The next day I told the cops about finding the dog and everything but, shoot, they didn't search the place after all! I couldn't believe it. All they did was look at the stupid dog. How do they expect to solve murders when they're so ignorant? But I guess I should have slashed Myla and the dog's eyes out like Clovis had done to Misty, but I just couldn't do it. It's just too gross and I wanted both their eyeballs in my jar to help me remember what I'd done, how doing what I did made me feel so good."

Thinking about all of it had him chewing on his bottom lip. Then,

"I knew then, though, I had to come up with something else. That's when I got the idea for Clyde beating me up."

"How did you get Clyde to do it?"

"What? You think Clyde hit me? That makes no sense, I coulda been hurt real bad."

"Then?"

"Think about it, Kent. I did it myself! I knew I couldn't take a chance of leaving marks on my knuckles so I used my knee. It was easy, I just sat in a chair and bent over and jerked my knee into my mouth. At first, I didn't do it hard enough because I was afraid about how much it would hurt, but then I just held my breath and smacked myself real good. It really hurt, but it gave me a swollen lip so it worked. I didn't even cry, that's how tough I was. Bet you're thinking about how tough I am."

Clyde had gotten angry when I confronted him. A righteous anger, or so now it seemed.

Sorry, Clyde, wherever you might be. It's just that Troy doing such a thing to himself didn't come anywhere near to entering my feeble brain. Standing there on that massive chunk of concrete and metal spanning the Mississippi, I finally realized what a cold, hard hulk of damaged goods he was. Extremely damaged and dangerously determined. In other words, he was, to my mind, unredeemable.

And still within kicking distance of Addie's baby carrier.

And, also, we still hadn't even touched the subject of the deceased Kregal brothers.

"So, I guess what you did to Clovis and Clyde was your last-ditch effort to get the authorities to search their property."

"Why do you think I killed them?'

"Who else is there, Troy?"

He laughed, he actually did.

"Now you're using your stupid head," he said. "Yeah, I was tired of messing around waiting on the cops, I was gonna make sure they did a good search. Anyway, Clovis I know for sure killed Misty and maybe Clyde killed Mrs. Thompson, so I figured I was doing a good thing. Don't you think it was a good thing?'

"It doesn't matter what I think."

"You just want me to say I did it."

"Could care less."

He was getting agitated again.

"I was real smart about it! I know you want to hear how I did it."

"Fine, tell me."

"I will. I don't care, I will. What happened was I saw Clyde come home with a lot of beer so I knew he would be passed out and all I'd have to do is give him some time. It was probably about eleven o'clock when I snuck down the hill with everything I needed and looked in the shack. There he was, snoring like a pig. His gun was on the table beside him like it always was so I went in and picked it up. I had on a pair of brown jersey gloves. Had this rubber floor mat that was in our garage. None of it was cloth and the bottom was smooth and pretty thick. I put the piece of paper on the table so it could have blood on it and I completely covered the gun with the mat up to the end of the barrel. Nothing to it. Put the gun close to his head and pulled the trigger. Between the gun being close to his head and the mat wrapped around it there was hardly any noise at all. He sure as heck wasn't snoring anymore."

He might just as well have been talking about what he did during Christmas vacation, the laid-back way he was putting it out.

"How'd you get the letter to Clovis?" I asked him.

"I had it all along. He had written it to me, not Clovis, Kent. He was all mad about the dog and wrote it and taped it on my front door. He was a real dumb butt, thinking he had been so good to me by letting me mow his lawn with that crappy lawn mower, and then paying me almost nothing. Like it was all so great, what he'd done for me. What a joke. But I was glad he wrote it because it did sound like maybe he could have written it to Clovis, especially since it looked like he killed Clovis. I tore the bottom off of it because he'd wrote another line that had my name on it. It was all my idea and funny thing is everybody fell for it, even you."

He was right about that.

I didn't have to nudge him to keep him talking.

"After I was done with Clyde I went to their garage and used a flashlight to find the baseball bat. I put it in the corner of the shed by the door and then went and knocked on the house front door. It took Clovis forever to get there and I was getting kind of scared he wasn't going to answer at all. But then he finally opened the door and I told him something was wrong with Clyde and he needed to come with me and see. Dummy that he is he followed me over to look, though he didn't seem that upset, more like he was just kind of curious. When he walked in the door and saw Clyde and all the blood he stopped and looked like he was having trouble figuring it out. I grabbed the bat and hit him on the back of the head as hard as I could cause I learned from the dog that you had to swing hard or else they could get away. He fell right down and so while he was still goofy I duct taped his hands. He still wasn't wide awake by the time I got the rope on his feet and around his neck. Learned about how to do that on the internet and thought people would figure it was just the kind of really mean thing Clyde would do.

"Took a while but he finally started hacking and choking and so I knew he was waking up. It took him a long time to die, what with him choking, and he was making a lot of gross noises but finally he did. I tried to watch is eyes at the end to see if I saw what was in Myla's eyes but he didn't have them open all the way. Thing is, I really wanted to get their eyes for my collection but knew I couldn't because it wouldn't make sense. Anyway, I hung the panties I'd taken off of Myla on the rope and went home. Took the duct tape with me because I had used it before without gloves. Nobody saw me go to their place or when I went back to my house. It worked perfectly, I mean, the cops finally came! I don't think anybody could have done any it better."

It took a couple of seconds for him to replace the breath he'd used up in the excited telling of his story, then,

"Well after that, you know, I called you."

Everyone comes to a time in their existence when they are beyond speechless, in a zone where the world itself has lost its significance, where reality at that certain moment is unreal, not to be believed, delegated to being a wideawake yet nightmarish apparition. You hear what you hear but your mind locks a door to the gist of it. Not by choice, but because it has to.

I was just then within one of those lapses of time, where only one thought could find its way to trickle through my mind.

Hell, Baker, he's just little taller than the railing next to him.

Was it the devil that he saw in Myla Stevens' irises, or had he seen a reflection?

My cell phone was still on and I was sure the receiving phone was on speaker, and yet no one listening in seemed inclined to voice an opinion. Were they in the unnerved zone too?

So, there we were. Myself, Addie and the youthful monstrosity, alone on our metal landing, a light breeze blowing across the world at our feet.

It was time for something to happen because Addie, still napping, needed to be held by her mother. The grisly tale had been told and with Troy now silent. It would seem a good chance his thoughts would start running to what other cruel deed or deeds he could come up with.

You need to do something, Kenyon, and do it now.

I had tried being nice, listening avidly to his obscene blabbering, had politely answered all his questions, doing my best not to upset him. But now, maybe now, it was time to be mean, piss him off, irritate him so deeply that it would put his full mind on being upset long enough that it could buy me a few seconds.

It had worked with Frankie Stone − a chance to take advantage of a minuscule pause to end things.

With Frankie, a few seconds were enough. But, oft times, they're nowhere near enough. Thing was, just then, I had no choice.

The awareness of the possibility for a few seconds had come to me when I had finally put my attention to the little revolver he was pointing at me.

Revolvers are one of two types, single action or double action. With a single action the shooter has to physically pull the hammer back in order to pull the trigger and fire the weapon. With a double action revolver, the hammer is pulled back by the action of pulling the trigger and, at the end of the stroke, the hammer drops automatically. The trigger pull is longer than a single action firearm and generally much heavier by several pounds.

The hammer of the revolver Troy was holding was not pulled back.

In the near past, during my last nightmarish misadventure ─ the one that had forced me into the soaked cow pasture with a horrible purpose in mind ─ I had succeeded in staying alive due to knowing ahead of time that the revolver pointed at my face was a single action.

Now here I was again, a revolver being held six-feet away, with me as its target. Once more, it would have been good to which type this gun was.

But this time that knowledge didn't exist. All that was known was that if it was a single action weapon, I had the blink of a few seconds to make a move while he cocked the hammer or, better yet, did not know he had to cock it which could possibly give me considerably more time.

If it was a double action the only seconds I would could depend on would be the length of time it would take him to jerk through the heavier trigger pull.

Sadly, this go-around, there was no way to know what type of killing machine it was.

Either way I needed him upset and, in being so, having heavy, seconds-eating brainwaves, contemplations that would bring on three or four puzzled blinks of his eyes.

If three or four couldn't be gotten, there would be a good chance two more people would be dead, one being preciously innocent.

Oh...well...

Time to try.

"Damn it, boy," I growled, "what the hell is wrong with you? You killed people!"

He displayed a gnarled grin.

"I didn't kill Misty or Mrs. Thompson. I'm pretty sure Clovis killed Misty, and I guess either Clyde or Frankie Stone killed the other one."

"Which means we've got three dead women by three different people."

That time he actually laughed.

"Uh-huh, I guess so."

"You act like that doesn't mean anything to you. Are you that heartless, you little creep?"

His face told me he was noticing my change of mood, but still he shrugged.

"Heck, it's no big deal. People die every day."

"Yeah, right, and your gonna pay for the ones you killed."

"You're forgetting something, Kent, I don't turn twelve for another month, and you have to be twelve to go to prison. On top of which, I'm crazy. I have to be, right?"

"Not necessarily. And about that twelve- year old stuff, seems you've been too smart for your own good. A juvenile must generally be at least twelve years of age to be charged with a felony, you got that right, but even children under twelve years of age may be certified to stand trial as adults if the charges involve a serious felony, like first or second-degree murder. What you've done, buddy, falls into that first-degree stuff. Should have put your glasses on when you read that computer screen, Shorty."

"You're lying."

"You have to know I'm not."

What I'd said had given him pause, but not enough, so I gave him my best snarky grin.

"But, to hell with a trial," I said. "I think you need to pay for what you done right now."

Slowly reached into my pocket and pulled out my keys, holding the largest one between my thumb and forefinger. Gave him a fierce stare and a gruff voice.

"What I'm going to do is, I'm going to rip you open at the belly button and feed you a gut. See if you like the taste of that, you little bastard."

"B - but I have the gun."

"I'm not scared of your baby gun, cause I know you're not finished yakking. You're too damn full of yourself to quit talking now."

That did it. He flinched and the arm with the gun subconsciously twitched a bit to the right.

Plunged in low towards his midsection, throwing my arm up in an attempt to knock the gun from his hand but he was young and fast and swerved left causing my head to hit him right of his belt buckle, the gun flying out of his hand without discharging as his body rolled over me. He feinted to the right as if going for the revolver whish forced me to reach for it and as I did he jerked himself the opposite way, flinging his arms out in a pushing motion towards Addie causing me to make a swinging kick into his ribs that blew a squeal out of him and sent him twirling off the platform, his legs bouncing off of Addie's carrier, putting it to flittering and fluttering to the point of starting to go over the side of the platform and wrenching my heart as I dived and caught it by the carrying handle a half second before it would have been in open air.

Seconds, a matter of seconds.

Quickly placed the baby in the middle of the platform then went to the place where Troy went over.

By some breathless miracle he was four feet down, clinging to the bottom of an angled metal brace. I couldn't believe it. Went onto my stomach and reached out to him.

"Grab hold now, Troy, take my hand now!"

He didn't, only calmly stared into my face.

"Look into my eyes," he said.

I swear to his day I saw them, I swear to God I did. Inside each of Troy's enlarged eye pupils were other pupils, each surrounded by an iris, a thin line of Troy's black pupils own encircling them, accentuating them. The irises were a circle of cold blue outshoots, swirly shaped like elongated and curved candle flames, the ragged edges sharp and carrying a hint of an unyielding cruelness. They were eyeing me as much as I was eyeing them.

Troy knew what I was seeing. He grinned up at me while the extrinsic irises of the creature inside his eyes slowly faded deeper into the black of his pupils, until they finally faded away.

Then he let go, to slowly fade away himself, downward.

Heard the shrieks and yells as those below me as they saw Troy pass by.

I was disembodied, as it were, and moved as if pushing through mudded water, deep water, hot water, in spite of the chills stirring over me. It was hard to breathe, as if a serpent were enfolding himself around my lungs.

Had no idea what to think, what to believe.

Went over to where Addie was kicking and fussing about in the carrier. Released her, picked her up and held her head tightly against my neck. I wanted to comfort her, and also needed with all my heart and soul just to touch her.

Needed, in the very worse way, to feel new life.

Epilogue

...second place...

They came clamoring up the metal ladder one after another, Charley Weeks in the lead, enough of them to make the cold steel platform a packed place.

Charley looked beyond dazed. For the longest time all he could manage was shaking his head.

"Heard it all," he finally said. "Damn, Kent, heard all he said, can't believe everything that's happened. Just can't. Got a boat coming and some officers searching from the river bank but, hell, it had a been like hitting concrete."

I had nothing to add, at least not just then.

It was decided that Addie would be lowered with a rope one of the police officers had somehow decided he needed to bring down the tracks with him.

I climbed down while she was lowered just above me, another man staying level with her to keep her on track. No sooner had I stepped away from the ladder than Lacy let out a cry and ran to meet the baby carrier, unlatching Addie to pick her up and hold her, rocking back and forth, tears streaming down her face. The few law enforcement folks who still there, tough guys and gals all, moved away and gave her room. There was no applauding from any of them, only a load of quavering smiles and a goodly smattering of wet eyes.

It was perhaps ten minutes later that she gave her baby one last long kiss and handed her to a lady police officer. She then turned and slowly made her way over to me, her lips quivering.

"Troy...w...why?"

"S-h-h-h, not now. Not right now. We'll talk later."

But not about the eyes, I thought, never about the eyes.

She nodded, then wrapped her arms around me and embraced me as tightly as I've ever been embraced. She looked up at me, her face telling me all she wanted to say.

I had nothing to utter either. There were no words worth the effort of uttering. I was holding her. She was holding me.

Submerged my face in her soft hair and felt the love that flowed from the tender softness of the rest of her. Holding her drained the darkness that surrounded my innermost visions and unhinged the bloodred memories of all new and past demons. My thoughts were eased, an easing which brought forth deep within my mind a secreted smile that said I held no grudge about being put in second place when it came to hugs.

* * ~ ~ ~ * *

Thank you for reading my book. If you enjoyed it, won't you please take a moment to leave me a review?

Thanks again!

Paul Hennrich

Blurbs of other books by the author released through Smashwords:

~A Civil War Era Historical / Fiction Novel~

The Reach

Three high-spirited boys and a headstrong girl grow up together in the idyllic, hilled countryside of southern Illinois during the 1850's, sharing childhoods filled with friendship, adventure, young love, devoted families and the golden sunshine that rests gently on the young. But with adulthood comes the 1860's, a time of cannons and minié balls and numbing tragedy.

It's the tragic era of the Civil War, followed by the savage fighting against the Indians of the American west, two unforgiving wars in which these young people become embroiled. Their relationships come to mirror the turmoil roiling their country, where love and friendship is so easily lost, and a final redemption can only be attained through heart-rending sacrifice.

The Kent Baker Mystery / Suspense Series:

Definitions

Undercover DEA agent Kent Baker, a loner deemed a loose cannon by his Washington bosses, is serving a mutually-agreed upon leave of absence from the agency. Following his being cut loose he had moved back to St. Louis and was holed up with nothing but the lingering horrors he had witnessed while working undercover fighting against the Mexican drug cartels.

While trying to finally unwind with a rare night out on the town he saves a beautiful lady from a roadside assault. This Good Samaritan act of kindness draws him into a relationship with her, along with a complex chain of events involving a run of brutal murders perpetrated by killers who carry a shadowy demand for revenge.

Even as he struggles to piece together all the reasons for the mayhem, his chaotic past comes back to haunt him, and further complicates his life.

In the end, Baker finds out that being a Good Samaritan can at times be a bloody business.

Scavengers

Kent Baker's best friend's grandmother is found dead in a pig sty. She fell, hit her head, and while unconscious the pigs finished her off, or so say the local law enforcement authorities.

But his friend receives a phone call where an anonymous voice insinuates the death was not an accident, and so he asks Kent to check things out and help him find some closure.

Baker, on an extended forced leave of absence from the DEA, most certainly has the time, to go along with the unforgiving mindset of an ex-undercover agent. It does not take him long to discover that something evil has skulked into the peaceful Illinois farm country, an entity the good folks living there cannot fathom or stand up against.

Kent Baker, however, is a man who gives as wells as he takes, and holds no such queasiness about delivering brutal retribution in order to bring an end to the violent tendencies of a ruthless murderer.

Entertainment

Early one autumn morning ex-federal agent Kent Baker is shot and wounded in a drive-by shooting, along with an elderly man who dies and a thirteen-year-old girl who is left paralyzed.

The police find little motivation for the attacks other than they appear to be the random work of a psychopath. Kent is not so sure and begins investigating on his own stark terms.

While doing so he must contend with a homicidal drug pusher out of his DEA past, along with some other random folks who carry strongly held cravings to kill. And then there is also his mind's eye that replays, every day, the enraging vision of the paralyzed teenager.

Bottom line is, with Baker, revenge can be a flexible concept.

Kinfolk

It seldom happens that a complete stranger calls to say you are the only person who can save his life.

And yet Kent Baker, ex-DEA agent known at the agency as a loose cannon, gets such an appeal. At first, he puts it off as a prank call from some acquaintance with way too much time on his hands.

But the caller seems painfully sincere and so Kent decides to at least hear the fellow out. In doing he so discovers that a prank call would have definitely been for the better, as what is involved is an accusation of a sexual assault on a young teenaged girl, followed by a woman being brutally beaten, and other people dying in cruel ways.

It soon occurs to him that all the gruesome goings-on revolve around his having shown up in the small, peaceful village of Prairie du Rocher, Illinois, to help a lonely man who most desperately needed help.

But Baker is not one to run from treacherous situations, and so he immerses himself into a brutal whodunit where even those who should love you are not to be trusted.

My next novel will either be the next segment of the Kent Baker series, or I may go in another direction for one book, just for the heck of it. I'm kind of wavering. Anyway, if my choice is another Baker escapade, it will be entitled:

### Did

If I go the in another direction', that book will be entitled:

### For I Have Sinned

To find out more about the next novel, (whichever it may be), and any other novels to come, please go to:

http://paulhennrichauthor.weebly.com

To contact me please feel free to go to:

paulhennricharts@gmail.com
