The Totem

ONE

His name was warren. he was nine, old enough to sneak out from the house when it was night, but too young for the trouble he might get in. Now he waited for his mother and his father to stop talking in their bedroom. He crouched beside his partly open door, watching for the light to go off underneath the door across the hall. Once he almost panicked when his father came out toward the bathroom, walking back and stopping as if he might look in and check on him. Warren knew he couldn't make it to the bed in time. He crouched and trembled, but his father shrugged and went in to his mother, and the light went off, and Warren was fine.

He waited quite a while, or so it seemed to him, at least. He heard no noises in the room across there, and he guessed that they were both asleep. Cramped from crouching, he gently closed the door and straightened, his legs stiff, groping through the darkness toward the window. It was open, crickets sounding out there in the grass and among the bushes. He was just about to free the catches on the screen and set it to one side when he remembered. Here he'd gone to all the trouble making up a plan, and now he'd almost climbed out and forgotten. He turned to the right to touch his bed and pull the covers back and slip a pillow under there to make it look as if he was sleeping. He'd seen that trick several times on TV, and it seemed a good idea in case his mother or father peered in to check on him. Then he reached beneath the bed and felt around to grab the sack of crackers. He moved toward the window, took off the screen, and crawled out, his legs still feeling cramped as he eased down onto the porch and put the screen back in the window.

But it kept falling off, and he was forced to tilt it so the bottom angled out, the top part leaning on the frame. He studied it a moment. Then he turned and walked across the porch, climbing onto the rail and hanging down, fearful that his parents might still find him, letting loose and dropping, his stomach scraping against the wood that stuck out from the porch. He huddled in the bushes, rubbing his stomach. He wore the pirate top his mother had slipped on him when she brought him in to bed, him waiting until she left, then taking off the pirate bottoms, putting on his jeans and running shoes. He felt beneath the top and touched the welted skin across his stomach, tensing from the sharp, biting pain. That's all he would need is for his mother to see marks across his stomach in the morning. Well, he couldn't do a thing about it. He was out, and he might just as well keep going.

All the same, he crouched among the bushes several moments longer. He groped for the sack where he had dropped it when he'd slipped down from the rail. Then he had it, paper crackling beneath his fingers, and he froze. He glanced around to see if any lights came on inside the house, but nothing changed in there, and he was certain he was being foolish. If they hadn't heard him climbing off the rail and landing in the bushes, then they surely wouldn't have heard the noise when he touched his sack of crackers. What had really bothered him, he knew now, were the crickets. They had stopped their squeaking. That was how his mother had explained their noises to him.

Crickets made that sound by squeaking one leg across the other, and they'd stopped as soon as he had landed. In the darkness, every noise seemed extra loud, and now the silence frightened him. Well, if that was how this expedition would turn out, then maybe he should go back in the house. He'd been brave enough when he was planning this. Now that he was outside in the dark, he started getting scared. Maybe he should go back. No, he told himself. He mustered his resolve and straightened, the sack bunched in his hand as he stepped from the bushes.

Where he lived was in the older section of the town- between the business district and the new homes along the outskirts. There were trees and shrubs for cover and a shaded lane that stretched behind the houses. Wary of the streetlights in the front, he crept toward the murky lane, his sneakers soaked with dew from the grass as he reached the lane's rough, dusty gravel. Back in here, away from all the streetlights, it was blacker than he had expected. He moved slowly, working up his nerve. Over to his left, he saw an object huddled by a shed. He froze again and almost turned to run before he realized that it was a garbage can. His eyes adjusted, and he recognized what in the daylight would have been familiar sights, the swing set in the backyard of the house next door, the old well that was filled in and that he sometimes hid behind, the wooden wheelbarrow from the old days that the man in back put flowers in. He took a breath. The moon emerged from clouds, and he started walking again.

The moon made quite a difference, almost full but not exactly, lighting the darkness around him with a pale, silver glow. There were stars out, too, he saw, and he felt better with each step, passing trees and bushes, cars and gardens, sheds, garages, and more garbage cans, all lit dimly by the silver of the moon. He heard an owl; instead of being frightened, he pretended that the owl was cheering him on. The lane came to a side street, where he waited in the bushes until the headlights of a car went past, and when it was safely up the street, he ran across to where the lane continued. He knew this section of the lane about as well as that part down behind his house, looking at the flower garden up ahead, the tree house, and the old-time water trough and hitching post, watching for the dog the people down here kept out on a chain.

The dog was not around, it seemed, although he could see the chain quite clearly, stretched out from the dog house, lying in the grass, reflecting moonlight. No dog barking, nothing coming after him. He held his breath and hurried past it. Then he felt relieved. Maybe they had let the dog in. Maybe they had taken it away. He didn't know, but he was feeling even better as he passed the last few houses on the lane. He had never been out on his own this late before, and with his fear now gone, he felt exactly as he'd thought he would, happy and excited, thrilled to be out doing this. He came to where the lane stopped and the park loomed up before him. There were trees that shut away the moon, a few thin silver streaks that filtered down upon the grass. He didn't mind the darkness, though. This was one place where he always felt at home. He played here often, coming here with his mother nearly every day. Over to his left would be the swing sets, although he couldn't see them. Down there straight ahead would be the swimming pool and tennis courts. And over to his right would be the stream that wound its way through town and then through here to meet up with the lake. There were ducks and fish and turtles in the lake, and sometimes he would walk there with his mother, eating lunch beside it.

That was where he went, not directly toward the lake, but toward the stream that met up with it, toward a bend that they had walked along. They had gone there Wednesday and then yesterday, and each time they had seen it, the little animal that lived down in the reeds beside the stream. He had been the one who'd noticed it first. "Look, there, Mother, at the cat down by the water." She'd gazed where he had pointed, and she'd said that it wasn't a cat. 'The bushy tail and pointed face and mask around the eyes. That's a raccoon." It stood there in the water, staring at them, and then slowly walked up on the bank and disappeared within the reeds. They waited, but it didn't show itself again. It looked so soft he wished that he could touch it. "Better stay away from it," his mother had said. "It might be wild. It likely is." That night they had told his father what they'd seen, and he had nodded. "Sure, there might be coons still living in the city. Look at all the rabbits, moles, and possums. There's no reason why it couldn't. But they hardly come out in the daylight. Chances are nobody else has even seen it." That had been exciting, the only ones who'd ever seen it. Warren had thought about it all night, and the next day he had made his mother take him there again.

And he had seen it again. It was standing high up on the bank this time and staring at them like before, its head cocked, sitting on one hip. It had stayed there quite a while. Then it had crawled back into the reeds. His mother said there was a hole in there. That was why they always found it in this place. And Warren was even more excited, thinking he had come upon a secret. But today when he had walked there with his mother, it was gone. It hadn't shown itself at least, and he'd been disappointed. He remembered what his father had said, that raccoons didn't like the daylight, and he guessed that, if he'd ever have a chance to touch it, he would have to go at night. Even if he saw it in the day again, he knew that his mother would never let him touch it. So he'd have to wait until dark and go there on his own.

At first, the thought was scary. After all, he'd never gone out by himself like that, and what was more, he knew his parents would be angry. But the thought kept working on him. He remembered what the raccoon looked like, how he'd wanted to reach down and touch it. He remembered how he'd often been tempted to sneak out when things were dark and learn what happened in the night.

Soon the thought quit being scary. He would go on his adventure and one day announce, "Mother, by the way, do you remember that raccoon we saw? Well, one night I went down and touched it." She would look at him, and he would smile, and then she'd know that he was bigger than she thought.

Maybe he would even catch it. That was what really made him go ahead with this. To catch it, bring it home, and train it as a pet. Then his Mom and Dad would surely know how big he was. But even as he thought of that, he knew that he was wrong. His parents wouldn't let him keep it. They would just be mad at him. The thing to do was catch it and then let it go. Later when he'd grown a bit, he'd tell them what he did, and they'd be proud. For now, though, he would only hold it and then let it go. That would be almost the same as having it for a pet. Plus, he'd be out on his own at night, and thinking of that prospect, he was so excited that he started making preparations. All through supper, he'd been half-scared, half-eager, his heartbeat so loud he couldn't believe that his parents didn't hear it. After eating, he had tried to play a game of catch with his father, but he kept dropping almost every pitch his father threw him, fearful that his father would ask him why he was so nervous. He had fidgeted through several shows on television. Then at last the sun had gone down. His mother took him in to bed.

Now, his sack of crackers in his hand, Warren walked among the dark, looming trees, sometimes coming on a silver strip of moonlight and then moving into darkness again. He felt more nervous than when he'd left the house. As much as he was used to coming here, the park at night was quite a different thing. Shapes that should be friendly he could hardly recognize. Others even scared him. That dark object over there. Was that something lurking for him? He didn't think he'd ever seen it. What about that crouching shadow by that tree? Looking toward it, Warren bumped past the water fountain, stumbling back before he realized what he had hit. Then he looked to see the shadow, and it wasn't there now, and he didn't know which way to go. Sometimes he heard noises far behind him, and he turned to figure what they were. Other times the noises were quite close, and he was forced to run. Then he slowed. Then he ran again. And then he heard the trickling of the water, came around a clump of trees, and saw the silver pool of moonlight on the lake, and knew that he was too far to the left. Even so, he'd managed to get here, and the light was better, and he felt a little more at ease. He stopped to eat a cracker, but the brittle, biting noise he made unnerved him, and he dropped it. Then he took a breath and left the lake to walk along the stream's edge, looking for the bend.

There it was, directly ahead. He saw the wide curve in the stream, the reed tops sticking up from down there on the bank, and he was walking closer. The moon was gone a moment, off behind a cloud, making him stop. Then the moon was back, and he started walking again. He was almost there. He looked down at the reeds and hoped that he would see the animal, but he didn't. He strained to notice some sign of movement, but there wasn't any. Then he glanced around him, up and down the stream. There was just the silver-tinted water, shallow, rippling on the stones. For sure if the raccoon were here, he would have seen it. Then it must be hiding in the reeds.

But how to go about this? First Warren walked a distance back and scrambled down the bank. The slope was steeper than it looked. He ended with one sneaker in the stream. The water shocked him, and he lurched back onto the shore. He had no socks on, and the water sloshed within his sneaker, cold and faintly greasy, draining out. He shook his foot, and then his skin adjusted, and he put the foot down on the shore. It sank into mud as had the other. He revolted, and the sneakers made a sucking noise as he stepped onto firmer ground. Now he'd really fixed things. He had mud upon his sneakers, and his mother couldn't help but see that. Surely she would know. He almost panicked. Then he thought of water-he could wash them-and the image of that drinking fountain came to him, and he knew that he could wash them there. He began to feel relieved.

He stepped a little closer to the reeds, worried that the noise he'd made had scared the raccoon into its hole. He had almost dropped the bag of crackers, and now he clutched it to him, drops of water on it and on his hand. He crouched, peering in through the reeds, but there was nothing he could see. The reeds were thick and dark, and he would never find the hole. All the same, he peered as close as he could manage, his face up even with the reeds. Still, he couldn't see. For all he knew, the raccoon was right there in front of him, and if it didn't move, there wasn't any way for him to know. Then he thought that where the raccoon went down into the stream and then turned back and went up to its hole, there had to be a little path, a kind of tunnel within the reeds. He stood and looked down at the stream and made his choice. Bracing himself against the shock, he stepped with both feet into the stream, waded, then turned to face the reeds.

At first, Warren didn't notice it. Then he did. A little burrow in the reeds, a kind of channel where the raccoon came and went. Somewhere up inside would be the hole. He stooped and opened the sack of crackers, reaching in to grab a few. "Here, coon," he was saying softly, but he didn't like the noise, and so he switched to whistling, short and low. He didn't like that either, but he liked it better than his voice, and so he kept on whistling, pulling out the crackers, throwing them. They rat-tied up the passage in the reeds. "Here, coon," he was saying and then caught himself and started whistling once again. He threw a few more crackers, listened harder, but there wasn't any movement.

What to do? Warren crouched a good deal closer, the crackers in his hand. He thought that he would throw them like the others. Then he thought that he would reach in with them. Maybe it would take the crackers from his hand. He held them at the entrance. He reached his hand up in there, watching the hand disappear, And that was when he heard it over to his right. He looked. It was coming down the bank. It seemed to be off balance. "Hi, coon," he was saying. "Here's some crackers for you." But it didn't stop. It just kept coming, and it made a hiss. He had never heard a sound quite like it, something like a cat, but not exactly, and it kept on coming, hissing, and he had his hand out with the cracker, thinking it was going to eat, already knowing how he'd reach to grab it firmly behind the ears, just the way his father had shown him how to grab a cat, and it was past the cracker, its teeth sunk into his hand.

"Aaiieee!" Warren jumped up, stumbling into the stream. The raccoon was attached to him, its mouth sunk into his hand, its weight suspended so it dragged him downward, almost falling into the stream. He couldn't bear the pain, the sharp teeth biting, tearing, scraping on a bone, his flesh now ripping from the weight of what was hanging on him. He was struggling for his balance, flailing, grabbing at the raccoon to free it, swinging, jerking with his arm, and then he swept around and flung the arm, and he was free of all that weight, the raccoon flipping through the air, thudding on the other bank. Warren didn't have a chance to marvel at his strength. The animal was bigger than he'd thought, almost half his size. And heavy-he'd expected he could lift it like it was a cat, and here it felt like someone he was wrestling with.

The force of flinging it away had toppled him against the bank, and he was scrambling to his feet now as the raccoon came for him again. It must have hurt itself when it had landed. It was limping, listing to one side as it surged across the stream. It hissed, and Warren was scrambling with his back against the slope, staring down and kicking with both shoes. The raccoon snapped and bit and got one shoe and wrenched its head from side to side as if to tear a piece away, and Warren felt its teeth go into his foot, and he was kicking at it with his other shoe, ramming down against the raccoon's nose, and then Warren's foot was free, and he was scrambling farther up the slope. That pointed nose, those bandit eyes, he had thought that they were cute, and now he couldn't stop from screaming at the terror of them. He was at the top now, feeling where its breath was at his ankles, jumping up to run, and he could hear it hissing there behind him as he ran with all the power of his fright. He had never run so fast before, his legs stretched out beneath him, his chest on fire, gasping, choking, crying, and the thing kept on behind him, and he kept on running, and he turned to see how close it was and rammed against a tree.

He fell back, his shoulder smarting, and sprawled across the grass. He didn't know how long he'd been there, blinking, straining to move. He fumbled to his hands and knees. The thing was very close. He couldn't see it, but he sensed that it was near, and he was stumbling to his feet. He turned and lost his balance, reaching for the tree. He shook his head and heard the hissing behind him, turned to kick at it, and there it was, but it was nowhere close, out there in the moonlight, turning in a circle, limping, lurching in a circle. He had never seen any animal behave like that. But he didn't stay to watch.

He suddenly was running again, his legs unsteady, his breath an effort, stumbling, his arms out to keep balance, and he didn't stop until he was almost to the lane. He limped along it, his hand on fire. Then he started running once more. He didn't even think to watch out for that family's dog down there. He just kept running. Then he crossed the side street toward the last part of the lane, and he was limping again, looking back to see if it was after him. It wasn't, and he looked down toward his house now, walking slowly toward it, his injured hand oozing blood, warm and sticky, making him wince from the pain. He realized that he had dropped his sack of crackers at the stream. He didn't know why that should seem important, but it was, and he couldn't help sobbing. Then he started across the backyard toward his house.

He worried, not just because his wound hurt and he didn't know if it was bad but as well because his mother couldn't help seeing it. She'd be angry, knowing what he'd done. I have to hide it, he thought. How he didn't know. Keep his hand in his pocket. Stay away from her. Even if she didn't find out until tomorrow night, that would give him time to say it had happened in the afternoon. A dog perhaps. A cat. He couldn't decide. But for sure, he couldn't let her know the truth. He reached the porch, thinking he would climb up, but he didn't have the strength, so he walked around the front and went up softly onto the porch. In the glow of streetlights, he saw his hand, and it was ugly, caked with dirt and blood, the flesh all torn and jagged. He was frightened by it, put his good hand over it, and quickly looked away.

He came around to where the screen was leaning against his window, took it off, and crawled through into his room. Now he feared that he would get blood on the carpet and the drapes, leaning swiftly out to put the screen back in and snap it shut. With one hand underneath the other, catching drops of blood, he fumbled at the doorknob to his room and tiptoed down the hall to close the door behind him in the bathroom. When he switched the light on, he was shocked. The hand looked worse than he had thought, the bite deep down to the bone, and wide, and swollen, oozing blood, covered with grit, a mass of ugly, bulging, ragged flesh. He gripped the sink to keep from dropping to his knees. He had never felt a pain like this, made worse by the sight of what was causing it. In the mirror, he saw the sweat on his face, the dirt and blood across his pirate top, his skin as white as the towels that hung by the sink. His pallor really scared him. He was trembling. He couldn't stop. He turned on the tap to wash his hand, understanding that he'd have to wash the pirate top as well. After reaching down to take it off, he rinsed it, then squeezed it to get the water out. He checked to make sure that all the blood was off, and then he went back to his hand. The more he washed, the more it continued bleeding. But at least the wound was clean now, and he grabbed a rag beneath the sink to bind the wound and keep the blood from dripping. Nothing more to do. He thought about some first-aid cream, but he had bound the wound already, and he didn't feel like doing that again. Indeed he felt sick, and he was thinking only of his bed. He took the pirate top and shut the lights off, turned the knob and went out down the hall.

"Is that you, Warren? What's the matter?"

He froze and waited.

"Warren?"

"Nothing, Mother. Going to the bathroom."

"All right, dear."

Warren tiptoed into his room, closed the door, and leaned against it, breathing hard, sweating. He bit his lip to ease the pain. He waited, but his mother didn't come. He hung the pirate top within his closet, limped to the bed, and sat there, taking off his shoes. The mud. He hadn't thought to wash the mud off, and he'd have to hide his sneakers. Somewhere in his closet. Far in back. He didn't want to, barely had the strength, and had the feeling that this would never end. He took his pants off, put on his pirate bottoms, and crawled into bed. He wished that he had never gone out. He wished that he had stayed at home and gone to sleep. He tried to sleep. His hand kept throbbing. He stared at the moonlight on his wall.

TWO

"It was a dog, all right. There isn't any question."

"That's what ripped his face, or that's what killed him?" Slaughter asked.

"Both. The cause of death was loss of blood from massive wounds around the face and neck."

Slaughter put his beer can down. "You mean there really is a chance his throat was slit?"

The medical examiner just shook his head. "No, I remembered what you said back in that field. I checked the throat especially. The jugular was ripped, not cut. Oh sure, some nut might still have gone at Clifford with a hand rake, something that would tear, but that would leave a different set of marks than all those bites you saw on him."

The medical examiner reached for his own beer can, and Slaughter shrugged.

"Okay then," Slaughter told him. "How about this? The nut rips Clifford's throat and runs away. A dog finds Clifford and starts chewing. That way all the first marks are obliterated."

The medical examiner just shook his head again.

"Well, why not?" Slaughter asked.

"All the wounds showed evidence of bleeding."

"Oh." And Slaughter leaned back in the chair and studied his beer can. That was final. Only living bodies bleed, so Clifford must have been alive when he was mangled. If some nut had ripped his throat, Clifford might have lived for half a minute longer, but not long enough to bleed from what a dog might later do.

It was half-past two at night, and they were in the medical examiner's office. Slaughter had stayed near the stockpens, helping Rettig and the new man ask the neighbors if they'd heard some trouble in the night. He had asked about a prowler or a stray dog that was barking. Then he'd met with Rettig and the new man, but they hadn't learned a thing. The trouble was, the field was too far from the houses. Near the noisy stockpens and the highway over there, a sound from a dog would not have carried very well. Slaughter told his men to write their report and go home but in the morning to search the field.

"What for?"

"I'm not quite sure yet. Do it, though."

Then he'd looked at the setting sun and known he couldn't put it off much longer: he would have to go see Clifford's widow. In Detroit, he'd on occasion had to tell someone that a wife or child or husband had been killed, but he'd never known the people he was telling. By contrast, here those he told were always people he knew, and some days it was worse than being the chief of police was worth.

Like today. To see his friend Doc Markle dead beside that mangled steer. To hear about his friend's wife so distraught that she was in the hospital (Slaughter planned to visit her as well). And then to go out and explain to Clifford's wife what had happened. It was bad enough to have to say that Clifford had been killed. But not to know why he'd been killed or how, that made Slaughter feel inept and worthless. He had held Clifford's widow, let her keep on crying, and helped her sit down on the sofa. He had brought her coffee, waited until her son arrived from the other side of town, and finally decided that he'd earned the right to leave. He told her that he'd let her know when she could have the body, that he'd pass on any news the minute he received it. Then he'd said good-bye and went outside and nearly lost his balance on the porch.

By then the sun was gone, and he was looking at the stars, the rising moon, thinking that he ought to go see Mrs. Markle, but he couldn't make himself. The scene with Clifford's widow had been just too much. The only thing Slaughter wanted was to get away from this, to get inside his car and roll the windows down and drive. To his place out in the country where he fed and watered both his horses-he'd forgotten when he last had ridden them-and then because the things he'd seen today had ruined any appetite he might have had, he put off supper, driving back to town.

He parked, lights off, in the shadows by the stockpens, looking toward the field in case he saw some movement. But there wasn't anything, and after all, he couldn't spend the night like this, so he drove to the station. The lights were on along the hall. The night man was on duty by the two-way radio. Tall and thin. An Adam's apple that bobbed whenever he spoke. "Hi, Chief. I wondered who was out there."

"Much doing?"

"Quiet."

"For a change today."

Slaughter walked toward his glassed-in section of the office. He sat and thought a moment, looking at the night sheet he had read in the morning. He tapped a pencil on his desk and reached to open the phone book. First, the hospital. Mrs. Markle? She's asleep now, resting better. Thank you. Then a number in the valley. Sam Bodine. But no one answered. Then the state police.

"It's Slaughter here. I wondered if you'd check on someone for me. Sam Bodine… That's right. He's got a ranch on Route 43, twenty miles north of town. I wonder if you'd look in on him for me… No, there's nothing wrong, at least not that I know of. But I went out there today, and no one was around. It seemed like they had left in quite a hurry. I phoned later this afternoon and then again just now, but both times no one answered, and I thought if you had a man out that way, he could maybe have a look… Thanks. I appreciate it."

Slaughter hung up and again tapped his pencil on his desk.

Too much in one day, he thought. Fifteen minutes later, the night man told him that the medical examiner was on the line.

Slaughter picked up the phone. "So how'd you know I was working?"

"Well, I called your house, and no one answered. Where else would you be? You mean you've got a lady friend shacked up that I don't know about?"

"You would have wakened me at this hour?"

"Why not? All the rest of us are working. Actually I knew you'd be waiting, and I phoned this number first. You care to visit?"

"You're finished?"

"Just this minute."

"On my way."

"Hey, hold it. Don't forget-"

"I have it in my trunk."

Slaughter stood and left the office. "I'll be at the medical examiner's," he told the night man. He was moving down the hall. What he'd put inside his trunk were two six-packs of Coors that he'd picked up at a convenience store as he was heading toward the office. It was now a ritual with them. Whenever Slaughter made the medical examiner work late, he always dropped in at the hospital and offered beer and talked with him a while. The gesture was a small one but appreciated, and besides, the chance to talk, to get to know the people whom he worked with, that was part of Slaughter's reason for his move out here. In fact, he'd even started looking forward to their chats, as if a corpse were not the reason for their late-night conversations. Not this time, however. No, not this time.

Slaughter got there in five minutes. In a town this size, there wasn't any place he couldn't get to quickly. He parked in back beside the spaces for the doctors and went in through the Emergency ward. The hospital was small by big-city standards: two stories made of brick and glass with wings off to the right and left, and one wing down the middle. But though small, it served the town quite well, and thinking of the nightmares of Detroit, Slaughter was grateful that he seldom saw a bleeding, groaning patient who'd been brought in from a knife fight or a shooting. He walked along the corridor and reached the section marked pathology where, without knocking, he turned the office doorknob, and the medical examiner was in there, sitting, waiting.

As they sipped their beer, Slaughter shifted in his chair to face the darkness beyond the open window where a dog began to bark. A frenzied howl came shortly afterward, then some sounds that Slaughter couldn't identify. He listened, strangely fascinated, at the same time apprehensive.

"You know," he said and turned and paused because he saw that the medical examiner was looking toward the window too and evidently concentrating on the sounds out there. "You know," he said again. "Since we saw Clifford in that hollow in that field, I kept remembering the night sheet that I read this morning. There's a mention about Clifford being missing. Something bothered me about it. I went back tonight and read it through once more. A couple lines above where Clifford's missing, there's a note about a dog that howled all night, another note about a prowler."

"So?"

"Both complaints were from that neighborhood."

The medical examiner glanced from the window, looking at him.

"Not quite near the field, but close enough." Slaughter squinted. "How drunk was he anyhow?"

The medical examiner just shrugged, not even checking through the papers before him. "Point-two-eight percent, and he'd been drinking like that several years. His liver looked like suet."

"Could he walk, though?"

"I see what you mean. Did someone drag him to that field, or did he walk? I found no evidence of a struggle. It could be you'll find something different in the field. I did find some bruises on his right forearm that are compatible with his position in that hollow. Also bruises on his shoulder."

"So?"

"Well, think about it. All those bruises were fresh, so fresh in fact that he incurred them just before he died."

"Not after? Someone kicking at him once he'd died?"

"No, bruises are just localized internal bleeding. If you strike a corpse, you'll cause some damage, but not bruises in the sense we mean them. Only living bodies bleed, hence only living bodies can develop bruises. Now a bruise will take a little time before it starts to color. Half an hour as an average…"

Slaughter stared at him. "You mean he landed in that hollow at least half an hour before he was attacked?"

"That's right. But bear in mind the words I used. I said the bruises were compatible with his position in that hollow. Could be he received them earlier some other place. But it's my educated guess that they're from where he fell down in that hollow. Now it's possible that someone pushed him. If so, I don't know what point there would have been, because the cause of death was dog bites at least half an hour later."

"What time?"

"Three o'clock. Three-thirty at the latest."

"Yeah, the people at the bar said Clifford left a little after two when they closed. Fifteen minutes walk up to that field. Half an hour or so beyond that. Yeah, it brings him pretty close to three o'clock."

"You're understanding then?"

"I'm getting it. There wasn't any other person, as the untouched wallet more or less suggested. He came lurching from that bar and stumbled up the street. He had to piss, he tried a shortcut, or maybe he was just confused. We'll never know exactly why he tried that field. But halfway through, he passed out from the booze. That's how he got the bruises. Then he slept a little, and at last the dog came on him."

"That's the way I reconstruct it."

"But how many?"

"What?"

"How many dogs? One? Or several?"

"Oh. Just one."

"You're sure about that?"

"You know how the language goes. My educated guess."

"Sure, but on what basis?"

"Well, the teeth marks were all uniform. But let's assume for argument that we've got two dogs with the same sized teeth. Their enzymes would be different, though."

"Their what?"

"Their enzymes. Their saliva. Hell, the crud inside their mouths. A dog can't plant its teeth in something and not leave saliva. All the enzymes in those wounds were uniform. They came from just one dog."

"Not a coyote, or a wolf?" Slaughter asked.

"No, the teeth were too big for a coyote's. Yes, all right, a wolf, I'll give you that. A wolf would be a possibility. No more than that, however. No one's seen a wolf down here in twenty years. It's hardly worth considering."

"All right, a dog, then," Slaughter said, abruptly exhausted. "Tell me why."

"You've been living here-what?-five years?"

"Just about."

"Well, I was born and raised here. Dogs are something to be frightened of. People take them into the mountains, camping. They lose them or abandon them. The weak and spoiled ones die. The others turn more wild than many animals who live up there. You see a dog up in those mountains, get away from it. You might as well have stumbled on a she-bear with a cub. I've heard about some vicious maulings. Hell, I've seen some victims with an arm chewed off."

"But this is in the town."

"No difference. Sure, they live up in the mountains, but they come down here for food. The winter was a bad one, don't forget. You know yourself, the stockpens put on guards at night to make sure that the steers are safe from predators. The field is near the stockpens. Some dog from the mountains came down near the stockpens and found Clifford."

"But nothing tried to eat him. He was just attacked."

"Without a reason. That's the point. We're dealing here with totally perverted animal behavior. They just like to kill. They'll sometimes come down here and chase a steer for several miles just to get some exercise. They'll bring the steer down, kill it, and then leave it. In a human, we would call that kind of behavior 'psychopathic.'"

Slaughter put his beer can, vaguely cold yet, up against his forehead. He was thinking of old Doc Markle. "In the morning, I want you to go over to the Animal Clinic. I want you to examine that steer we saw this morning." "What?"

Slaughter's eyes became stern. "I know it sounds a little crazy. All the same, just do it. Look for similarities. Something's going on here." He managed to stand.

"Slaughter, you don't look too good." "I need a few hours sleep is all." Slaughter headed toward the door.

"Hey, what about the beer? There's still a six-pack left." "You keep it. Hell, you've earned it. What you did on Clifford. Just make sure you do that steer. Let me know when you're finished." Slaughter reached for the doorknob. "Something's going on, you said?" "That's right, and what, I wish to God I knew."

THREE

The corridor was empty, and the sound the door made when Slaughter closed it echoed. Like a mausoleum, he was thinking, looking at the imitation marble floor. He paused beneath the harsh neon lights in the ceiling, trying to decide if he had finally accomplished everything he'd meant to do tonight, and still not certain, vaguely troubled, he walked down the hallway. One turn to the right, he nodded to the nurse on duty at Emergency, and then, the automatic doors hissing open, he stepped out to face the night.

The parking lot was rimmed by darkness. There were floodlights just above him, though, illuminating the lot itself, and he was walking toward the cruiser, noticing the countless insects that were swirling around those lights. The swarm of insects bothered him, making him scratch at a tingle that inched down his neck. The air at least was cool, pleasant after the heat of the day, and fresh as well in contrast with the cloying sick-sweet smell of the formaldehyde which, because he liked the man, he never mentioned to the medical examiner. He reached the cruiser and glanced in the back seat before sliding into the front, a habit that he retained from when he'd worked nightshirts in Detroit. Then he sat there, thinking once again, not prepared to go home, but still uncertain what it was a part of him intended he should do. He was tired, that was certain, but he couldn't keep from feeling that his work was not yet complete. No, it wasn't even duty. Something strong out there was drawing him.

He turned on the engine and backed the cruiser from between two cars. After glancing one last time at all those swirling insects, he drove along the side of the hospital and out the front to reach the street. The night was darker here. He swung left without thinking, merely following his inclination, and when he steered right at the next intersection, he was guessing that he meant to go back to the station. But he reached a stoplight, and when it changed to green, he didn't go straight through but instead veered left, and now he found that he was driving toward the outskirts, toward the northeast section of the city, and he finally knew where he was going.

There was little traffic. The lights were out in most of the houses. A few streetlights were out as well, and he came around the corner, driving slowly, glancing around, stopping by the Railhead tavern. It was closed by now. This late it had better be, he thought. He got out, his flashlight in his hand, and walked up to check the doors. But they were locked as he'd expected, although it would have been a pleasant joke to come here for a different reason and then as an accidental extra find that they were serving liquor after hours. To be certain, he checked all the windows, too, and then the back. He even checked the garbage bin to see that all the bottles had been broken as the law required. Now you're getting mean, he told himself, and switching off his light, he walked back to the cruiser.

It was three o'clock now, just about when Clifford had been killed. Of course, Clifford had entered that field at least a half hour earlier, and maybe if he'd fallen, sleeping, closer to an hour. But now was when the attack had occurred, and Slaughter stood by the cruiser, staring up the street toward the field. There were houses all along the far side of the street, rundown mostly since this section was the closest that the town had to a slum: listing porches, dirt instead of grass, cardboard here and there in place of windows. But the people, although poor, were peaceful, and he'd never had much trouble with them. From the bar, of course, but that was mostly workers from the stock-pens, and Slaughter stared up past the field toward the vague silhouettes of buildings at the stockpens. Three of them. The cattle stayed outside except for special auctions, and there wasn't any need for more than just an office and two arenas. In the stillness, Slaughter heard cattle lowing faintly from the far side of the field. He hesitated, then started up the sidewalk toward them.

In the open like this, he had no need for his flashlight. There were stars, a nearly full moon. They gave the night a glow that made it almost magical. So Clifford would have thought, he guessed. He himself was trying hard to think like Clifford. Last night had been bright like this, and Clifford had come from the bar and walked up this way toward the field. Clifford had been drunk, of course. With that much alcohol inside him-point-two-eight percent-the glow would have been just about the only thing he noticed. And he wouldn't have been walking. He'd have staggered, lurching slowly up the street, and maybe that was why he'd tried the awkward shortcut through the field instead of going twice the distance around the block. Because Clifford knew that in his condition he would never otherwise have managed to get home. He had stumbled slowly toward the field, and anything that might have hidden low in the weeds there would have seen he was an easy target. No, the timing was all wrong, Slaughter thought. Keep remembering those thirty minutes between when he fell and when he was attacked. Anything that saw him come and knew he was an easy target would have tried him right away. There wasn't any reason for the animal to put off lunging. Unless the thing had not been interested. Unless it tried the cattle next and didn't like the men on guard there and then came back, killing Clifford. Why? It didn't eat him. Out of anger? And the thought was strangely chilling now as Slaughter left the sidewalk, stepping into the rustling grass and weeds and crunchy gravel of the field.

Slaughter told himself that this was crazy. He was tired. He should be home and asleep by now. But if there were some kind of wild dog coming into town, it would return to where it was successful at its killing, and the next night was as good a time as any to expect it. Slaughter was ten steps through the field, moving up from the corner in a vague line toward the center and the hollow there and Clifford's house up near the far end of the other block. This route would have been close to the direction Clifford followed, although Slaughter wouldn't know for sure until the two men he'd assigned to this had come here in the morning and investigated. Oh, that's fine, that's really great, he told himself and understood now just how tired he must be, shuffling through here, marring any tracks that they might find. That's great police work. Like a bad joke. Thinking that the criminal will come back to the crime scene, our investigator scuffs out any evidence that might be left. That's really great. Just what the hell must you be thinking? Well, I've done the damage now, he told himself, and he was too committed to his purpose to go back without some satisfaction. He might just as well keep going.

Which he did reluctantly. Because in spite of his determination, he felt really, unaccountably, disturbed. Not the vague uneasiness that he had been experiencing since finding old Doc Markle. This was something different, more precise, some visceral reaction to this place and hour. Part of it was no doubt caused by Slaughter's fatigue, by memories of Clifford's shredded face, by thoughts of what the medical examiner had called "psychopathic" animal behavior. Mere Pavlovian suggestion that he understood and could make compensation for. And part of it was no doubt too the stillness of the night, Slaughter all alone here in the silence that by contrast emphasized each brush of his pantlegs through the weeds and grass, each crunch of his boots upon the gravel. He was knee-deep in the grass now, moving slowly, the flashlight in his left hand ready to be switched on if he needed it, his right hand near his revolver in its holster, and he told himself that he was being silly. He had gone through worse than this when he had worked on nightshift in Detroit, checking through an unlocked warehouse, chasing someone down a mazelike alley, walking into that grocery store, those two kids. That was quite awhile ago, he told himself, heart pounding. You're just not used to this the last few years. It didn't help as well that now a rustling wind had started blowing through the weeds and tall grass, making sounds as if there were movement in them. Once Slaughter turned, but he saw nothing, fighting the impulse to switch on his flashlight. No, save it until you're absolutely certain, he was thinking. Don't scare off some thing before it's close enough for you to see it.

So Slaughter continued walking. He had thought that with the night light from the stars and moon he'd have no trouble seeing. But the silver glow distorted things. Indeed it made objects seem much nearer, and it obscured details so that everything seemed blurred. He glanced toward the stockpens with their shadows and their faintly moving shapes of cattle and the buildings behind them. He was thinking that he'd better not get too close to the pens, or some guard might mistake him for a thief and pull out his gun. Slaughter was halfway through the field now, and he couldn't find the hollow. He'd been glancing so much all around that he had angled from his course, and now he didn't know if left or right was where he ought to go. The hollow had been rimmed by long grass, he remembered, and he maybe wouldn't find it even if he stood ten feet away. He told himself he should have kept his eyes toward Clifford's house across there, keeping in a line with it, but now that he considered, there was no way drunken Clifford would have staggered in a straight line anyhow. He'd have veered off one way, then the other, so this was still a replication of what had happened, and Slaughter figured that he'd shifted too much toward the stockpens. Moving now the other way, he suddenly was conscious of the wind. Or rather the absence of it. But the rustling through the grass had still continued, coming nearer.

He turned, startled, ready with his flashlight, lurching back to gain some distance, and the tangled strand of broken wire must have been there all along for him to see when he first came here, staring down at Clifford. It was snagged against his heels now, and his arms flew out, his head jerked up to face the moon, and he was falling. He was braced to hit the ground, already calculating how he'd have to roll to break his fall, but he kept dropping, surging heavily past the level of the ground, and then his head struck something hard that set off shock-waves through his brain and left him sightless for a moment. He was rolling. That was all the motive he retained, just reflex and his training, pure adrenaline that scalded him into motion. He was reaching for his gun. He'd lost it. He was in the hollow. Panicked thoughts that he was powerless to order. Christ, the hollow. It had happened just like this to Clifford. Slaughter groped for his flashlight, but he couldn't find it. He heard rustling coming toward him. Scrambling from the hollow toward the open ground where he at least would have the chance to run, he felt the claws flick down his face, and he was screaming, falling backward, landing breathless on another object which was so hard that it seemed to rupture his right kidney. He was fumbling for it, Jesus, and he saw up there the thing as it was crouching now to leap at him, its fur puffed up to make it even larger, hissing, its eyes wild, mouth wide, teeth bare, leaping toward him, and he had the gun from underneath him now. He raised it toward the hissing fury diving toward him, squeezing the trigger, blinded this time by the muzzle flash, knocked flat by the recoil as the fury blew apart above him, thudding on his stomach, and he didn't think the blood would ever stop its shower upon him.

FOUR

The hotel room was small and musty, space enough for a narrow bed, a desk and chair, a TV on the desk, and that was dial. The desk was scratched, its finish cracked by years of drinks spilled across it, plus the television had no channel dial. You had to grip a tiny metal post and turn until your fingers ached, and even then that didn't do much good because the television only got one channel. The image kept flipping, black and white. The window had no screen. You had to leave it closed to shut the insects out, which partly was the reason for the mustiness in here, but mostly, Dunlap knew, the must was from the aging wooden walls. The place had been erected back in 1922. Dun-lap knew that from a plaque that he had seen embedded in the bar downstairs, as if a hotel so outdated were something the town was proud of. Threadbare carpet, creaky bed, a common toilet at the far end of each hall. He'd had to get up in the night to urinate, had made a wrong turn coming back, and almost hadn't found his room, so involuted were the halls, one merging in a T with others and those others merging yet again with others, like a rabbit's den, a gigantic maze that kept twisting inward. Dunlap was fearful about what he'd do in case of a fire, which considering the tinderlike walls was overdue for several years now, and he didn't like the thought of jumping toward the alley from the second story.

Plus, he didn't have much strength to do it. He was sick again. He tried to think back to a night when he had not been sick, and with his lack of memory, he was doubly fearful. How much longer could he keep doing this? He'd sat and watched the reruns on the TV set behind the bar downstairs from eight o'clock until the place had closed. He had no way of telling just how much he'd drunk, except that near the end the barman had looked strangely at him, and the programs were a blur of ads and station breaks. And don't forget the stock reports. Oh, my, yes, not the stock reports. But out here stock was not the closing points of Xerox, Kodak, or the rest of them. No, stock was cattle, and the market prices came on first at eight and then at ten and then again at sign-off time. Hey, he could not have drunk too much if he could recollect all that in detail. No? Then why was he shaking? Why was he so sick that breakfast was a thought he couldn't tolerate? He had to have a drink before he dared go down the hall and shave, and then another when he came back, before fumbling with the buttons on his shirt. It scared him. This much he could recollect, a time when he had not required one drink in the morning just to function. Now, this morning, he had needed two, and if he weren't careful, he would soon need a third. But there's a difference, he was thinking. Needing one and taking one. Let's make sure you keep in mind the difference. Dunlap picked up his tape recorder and his camera where he'd set them by the television. Vowing to himself that he would clean his life up, feeling virtuous, determined, he didn't pick up his pint of bourbon when he walked out the door.

The hall went to the right, then left, then right again, then opened on three sides to show the lobby down there, a moose head on the wall-from thirty, forty years ago, no doubt; the thing looked shabby enough for that-gray tile floor, discolored wooden check-in counter, a bald wrinkled man in denim clothes behind the counter. Dunlap took a breath and instantly regretted it: the must was even worse up here. He asked himself again what he had ever done to deserve being sent to Potter's Field, then trudged down the stairs, crossing the lobby toward the street.

The sun was like a knife jabbed into his eyes. Eight o'clock, and how hot would the day be with the sun so fierce this early? He didn't want to think about it. Eight o'clock, but he'd been awake since well before dawn, and that was something else his drinking had affected. Now he hardly slept at all, and when he did, not deeply, waking often, drifting back and forth from grotesque dreams. He didn't want to think about that either. Not the image that had constantly been coming to him. He walked toward the corner, concentrating on the coffee he was going to taste. Sure, you could buy a drink back at the hotel, but there wasn't any place to get some coffee. "Try the Grub-steak at the corner," he'd been told, and hell, they either didn't know the way to spell it, or they maybe were more clever than he thought. The one thing he at least was getting was a mess of local color. You don't talk like that, he told himself. You're here one day, and they're infecting you. You'd better keep your mind on what you're doing. Which was fine with him because he didn't want to think about a lot of things, but work was hardly one of them. He sensed that he was on to something.

Dunlap entered the diner. The counter was a horseshoe, the curved end in the middle of the room, and sure, what else did you expect? he thought. He looked at all the men in cowboy hats who in turn were looking at him, and he passed them to sit in a far corner booth where, quicker than he had expected, a waitress-her hair pinned up beneath a net-came over to him. Haifa minute later, he was sipping coffee, but although he'd been eager for it, he had to drink it slowly lest he throw up. Yes, he was on to something. "Christ, he's dead, all right," the voice had blurted through the static on the two-way radio. "Lord, he doesn't have a-" The only thing that Dunlap had been able to discover was that two kids had been playing in a field where they had stumbled upon the body of a man named Clifford whose face had been so mutilated that policemen couldn't tell at first exactly who he was. The woman who had sat behind the radio had tried to avoid Dunlap's questions and had finally suggested that he leave-the chief would see him in the morning. Dunlap had lingered even so, but when policemen from the day shift had begun to come in for debriefing, they had made it clear that he should leave, and he'd had no choice but to go out on the street. He had hoped to talk to Rettig and a new recruit named Hammel whom Dunlap gathered were the men assigned to this investigation, but they hadn't come in yet, and he had quickly gotten the picture that unless he had the chief's permission, no one would be talking to him.

Nonetheless, the symmetry appealed to him. A murder twenty-three years ago, and now another as he arrived to do the retrospective. The contrast would be worth reporting, how the separate murders had been handled, if this second killing were indeed a murder. Well, a dead man with no face, that surely wasn't ordinary, and as far as Dunlap cared, the difference was the same. That first murder had been something he hadn't counted on. There hadn't been a mention of it in the files that he had looked through in New York. When Parsons mentioned it in passing-yesterday in Parsons' office-Dunlap had required all his discipline not to show his interest. He had just kept sitting there and nodding as if vaguely bored by all this ancient news, but really he had felt his heartbeat quicken, felt that tug inside him as he guessed that there was more here than he had anticipated. He had kept his guard up all the time he and Parsons made their bargain. He had still looked bored when he had gone down to the paper's morgue and asked the man in charge to bring the microfilm. But when he was alone, he'd squinted in suspense for it, and in an issue twenty-three years ago, the first week in October, he had found it.

It was pretty much the way that Parsons had described it. The town had evidently feared another rush of hippies coming through, especially if reporters showed up, publicizing what had happened. Once the town had adjusted to its shock, it must have worked to keep the news from going farther. And the tactic was successful. As much as Dunlap knew, the story had been strictly local, a headline the first day, a third-page feature the next day, then a few paragraphs buried near the sports section. A rancher had wakened to find that his eighteen-year-old son was missing. At first the rancher wasn't bothered, thinking that his son had gone out with some friends and simply stayed the night. He'd made some calls but couldn't find him, waiting through the afternoon until at suppertime the boy was still not home, and he got worried. On a chance he phoned the state police, fearing that there'd been an accident or maybe the boy had gotten in trouble and was too afraid to call. The police hadn't heard a thing about him, doing what the father had already done, however, checking with the young man's friends. The friends, though, didn't know a thing about him either, hadn't seen him in a couple of days. He'd been moody, staying to himself. He'd even broken up with his girlfriend. Someone thought of suicide, and then they really did get worried. This was sure-no vehicle was missing from the ranch. The son had either walked off or had gotten a ride. Had he run away? The father spoke of arguments that they'd been having, and as Dun-lap had gone through the story, he had sensed that the arguments were severe. Small town rancher's son who wanted something more. Father who repressed him. Reading through the microfilm, Dunlap had been puzzled why it took them so long understanding. But it did. Indeed it took them several days. But then a friend remembered how the boy had hung out with those hippies when they'd caused that trouble in the town. The friend had even seen him smoking marijuana. The son had talked about the hippies often after they had left. The father and the state police considered this for a while, and then they finally had it figured out. The father wanted to go up and get him, but the state police insisted that they go alone. They evidently saw how furious the father was and concluded that they'd save some trouble if they went up on their own. Besides, there wasn't any guarantee that the boy was up there. This was just a chance. No point in making judgments until they knew.

The next few details Dunlap had to guess because, while there was plenty of space devoted to the missing son to start with, once the murder occurred the lid came over the story. Dunlap was impressed by someone's thoroughness. That was Parsons, he suspected, working to protect the town. There wasn't any way to know exactly what went on. The rationale was obvious. To guarantee that the trial was fair. To keep the jurors free from bias. After all, a small town, if the trial took place here, news about the murder had to be subdued and dignified. Oh, it was dignified all right. Hell, it was almost non-existent, and back in 1970, a small town in the boonies could get away with that. There hadn't been those recent major court decisions about freedom for reporters at a trial. Not that any local newsman would have worked against the blackout. No, the point was to keep outside newsmen ignorant of what had happened here. Conspiracy is what some people call it, Dunlap thought and sipped his coffee. Now you're thinking like a Woodward or a Bernstein. Let's not make too much of this. Well, make too much or not, he sure as hell was going to find out what went on up in that compound.

He walked toward the counter and paid fifty cents for his coffee. As he left, he glanced back toward the elderly waitress who was staring puzzled at him, then down at the two-dollar tip he'd put on the table. What now? Showing off? Well, why not? If he felt like being a big-time spender from the city, he was maybe condescending, but at least he didn't hurt somebody, and besides it made him feel good. He might be a boozer, but at least he wasn't stingy. He went outside, and once again the sun stabbed his eyes. It was even worse, though, hotter, more intense, and his elation as he left the diner suddenly was gone. He felt nervous and impatient. He had planned to go back to the newspaper's morgue, but he was doubtful that he'd learn much more. He'd tried to get in touch with the police chief several times last night, but Slaughter had been neither at his home nor at the station when he'd called, and Dunlap was determined now to speak with him. He hitched the straps of his tape recorder and his camera around his shoulder and marched through the glaring sunlight up the street.

The time was half-past eight. He noticed lots more traffic, mostly pickup trucks with people crowded in them, come to town on Saturday to shop or merely look around. He noticed that the stores were open, and he was thinking that he maybe ought to stop at one and buy a hat. Oh, that would look just great. A city suit and a cowboy hat. Well, keep your pride then, but before long, out here in the sun like this, your face'll be as parched and leathered as those people in the pickup trucks. He passed the newspaper's office, wishing he could hail a taxi, but he hadn't seen a taxi since he'd come here, and he trudged on, beginning to sweat. Well, this would be the last time he would let them send him to a jerk-off town like this. He sensed that there was some good story here, and when he put it all together, he would show them he was just as good as he had once been, and he wouldn't have to take this kind of job. But then an odd dilemma started working on him. Dunlap was anxious to get out of here, but if he meant to guarantee that he would never find himself this low again, he'd have to take more time than he could tolerate. He might be here a week from now. And that was too much for his mind to bear as he walked underneath the trees at last and up the front steps to the police station.

Of course, the chief had not come in yet. What was worse, the chief had phoned to say that he didn't plan to come in at all.

He'd had some kind of trouble. "And what am I supposed to do?" Dunlap asked the policeman on duty.

"Well, maybe if you told me why you had to see him."

Dunlap slumped in a chair. He'd gone through this the day before, but there had been a different person then, a woman, and Dunlap studied the policeman, sighed, then passing through frustration told him very calmly what it was he needed.

"That's no problem."

Dunlap blinked. He didn't think he'd heard correctly. "What?"

"If you had told me who you were to start with. When the chief called in this morning, he explained you might be stopping by. Just hold on while I call him back."

And fifteen minutes later, Dunlap stood across from a row of dingy houses, staring at a barren field with stockpens up at one end and a bar, the Railhead, down at the other. He had carefully avoided mentioning his interest in the recent killing, concentrating only on the compound twenty-three years ago. As a consequence, when he had found out where the chief was sending him, he'd been astonished by his luck. The Railhead. He had heard that name on the two-way radio yesterday. This was where the mutilated body had been found. Dunlap looked at the two policemen who were standing in the middle of the field. They turned to study him when the cruiser that had brought him here pulled away. The sun was stark. A wind hurled bits of sharp, hot sand at him. He licked his gritty lips and started through the field.

The two policemen met him halfway. "Yes, sir, may we help you?" one of them asked.

And Dunlap thought that things might just be getting better as he told them. But the one named Rettig didn't want to talk.

FIVE

Oh, that's wonderful. Just god-damned great. I'm out here in the middle of this stupid field, and this guy Rettig doesn't want to talk. Well, what else did you think would happen? Dunlap asked himself. Just because it got a little easier a while ago, you figured everything would be simple now? Hell, you're the one who's simple. Wake up, do your job. Dunlap knew that Rettig wasn't just the man in charge of this investigation: Rettig had been with the state police back then. Dunlap had learned that from the man on duty at the station. He had learned as well that Rettig was the one who'd spent the most time with Wheeler. Twenty-three years ago. "Look, way back then. I don't see what the problem is."

But Rettig didn't want to talk.

Wheeler was the rancher who had lost his son. "All right, then, you don't even need to talk about it. Let's try this. I'll tell you what I know." And guess, and less than that, just make up on the spot, Dunlap decided, but at least this was a way to draw out Rettig, to get him talking. "You just tell me if I'm right or not. I'm going to do this story anyway. You'll want to make sure that the parts about you are correct."

Dunlap studied him, and Rettig wasn't certain, staring back. So as another gust of wind came up, the dust obscuring them, their faces specked with grit, Dunlap started prompting him, anxious to fill the silence and keep Rettig from having a chance to say no. "You drove out toward the commune, looking for the boy. You headed up the loggers' road. The sentries wouldn't let you through the gate. They made you go back to the town to get a search warrant. But in the meantime Wheeler had decided not to follow your advice. He went up on his own, despite what you had warned him."

"No, that isn't true." Rettig hesitated, then continued. "Wheeler didn't go up in the meantime. We had made him wait back at the station-not the one in town, but the state police barracks out on the highway-and he heard us call in that we had to go to town to get a search warrant. That's when he drove out. The man on duty at the station went to take a leak, and Wheeler left while he was gone."

"And Wheeler was upset enough, the man on duty called you to go back up to the compound," Dunlap said.

"That's right."

"So you couldn't have been very far behind. Wheeler didn't have to go home for the gun. He was a rancher, and he likely had it in the trunk or car or Jeep, whatever he was driving."

"A pickup truck."

Dunlap had an image now of all those pickup trucks that he had seen this morning, families come to town: the guns in racks behind the driver's seat.

"A rifle or a shotgun," Dunlap said. The last word made Rettig's eyes flicker. "Yes, a shotgun," Dunlap said, and now he understood why there'd been no details about the murder. "Wheeler was cursing, angry at the boy for running off, angry at the compound for the trick that it had pulled. More than that, he didn't understand those hippies. He was afraid, going up to find the boy and rescue him. He roared his truck right up that loggers' road and crashed straight through the gate. He drove until the road came to an end, then jumped out with his shotgun, running through the woods, the sentries racing after him. He almost made it to the clearing when they tackled him. There was a fight. He jumped back, shotgun ready, and he blew one bearded hippy's head apart."

Dunlap had to pause, to check for some reaction. He was guessing, based on what he'd read, but it made sense, except he didn't know exactly how the shooting had occurred, especially what part of the body. But it had to be the head. Head or groin-otherwise the paper would have been more specific. But a shotgunned head or groin was something that you didn't mention if you wanted to be delicate, and since as far as Dun-lap knew there was no sex involved in this, the head, its long hair and its shaggy beard, would have been what the rancher likely shot at. Hell, it was symbolic of the trouble. Dunlap kept waiting as the wind died.

In the silence, Rettig murmured, "His face looked like somebody had squashed a quart of strawberries on it. Just this mushy red stuff, no eyes, no mouth, nothing. Just this mushy red stuff." Rettig guided him toward the cruiser. "I've said more than I intended."

"Look, I understand. I'll make a deal. You call your chief, and he'll explain that it's all right. I told you at the start. I cleared this first with Parsons, then with him."

Rettig looked skeptical. "I have to go to his place. I'll be sure to ask him."

"Take me with you?"

Rettig frowned.

"I mean, I don't have any car. You can't just leave me." "I can leave you. If you cleared this as you say, I don't want any trouble, though." Rettig thought about it. "You get in. We'll drive you. But you'd better not be lying."

Dunlap smiled and hurried into the back. The other cop got in the front beside where Rettig drove, and both were taking off their hats, and Dunlap wished that they had rolled their windows down when they had parked the cruiser. The heat had built up in here so that his clothes stuck to him and to the seat. They drove up past the stockpens, Dunlap glancing at the cattle in there and then watching how the slums diminished as they turned left and headed toward a newer section of the town. They were going through an underpass, and quicker than he had expected, they were in the country. Dunlap had noticed in the phone book that the chief's address was R. R. something, but he hadn't really understood how far out that might be. They went past sun-baked grassland. No one spoke. On occasion, there were static-distorted voices on the two-way radio, but neither man picked up the microphone to answer.

Dunlap studied them. Rettig with his red, curly hair. The other man, much younger, blond, his hair cut short in imitation of the style back in the fifties, with the difference that out here the style was not an imitation, rather a continuation. They both looked like football players, big and tall and husky, and the man back at the station had been big and tall as well, and Dunlap was thinking that their size might be a part of what the chief had looked for when he hired them. If that were true, then Slaughter maybe had some big-time notions about how to handle trouble. He might not be just some hick, and Dunlap considered that, then tried to get Rettig talking again. 'You were close enough to hear the shot." Rettig stared at his rearview mirror. "Look, I warned you-"

But you answered me regardless, Dunlap thought. Oh, you were close enough, all right. Hell, you were nearly there to see it happen. Once you heard the shot and saw that shattered gate, you sped up through it, stopping by the pickup truck and running farther up the trail to find the rancher with his shotgun aimed at several other hippies. Oh, yes, Dunlap could imagine what the scene had been like, the hippies looking down the barrel of the shotgun, terrified, not knowing what to do. If they ran, Wheeler would fire. If they stayed, he'd likely do the same, the rancher too far gone to maintain control, his eyes wide, his face stark, breathing hard and tensing his finger on the trigger. And the two of you, the last thing that you wanted was to shoot the guy. You didn't want him shooting someone else, though, either, even if that someone else was just another hippie, the first one spread out on the ground, his face like someone had squashed a quart of strawberries on it. And the others. Sure, there would have been other hippies from the compound who'd heard the shot and come running through the trees, and when they saw the body, they stumbled back or maybe just froze in shock, and soon the rancher became more nervous, seeing people all around him, hippies, his finger tight on the trigger as he squinted at the two cops who had their guns out, telling him to stop this, inching toward him.

"How'd you manage to take it from him?"

"What?"

"The shotgun. How did you take it?"

Dunlap hoped that the question would appeal to Rettig's pride, but the cop just stared down the highway.

"Some dumb hippie tried to grab him," Rettig said abruptly. "Wheeler turned, and I jumped close to get the shotgun. I had it pointed toward the ground when it went off. It blew up bits of dirt and pine needles. But I had him, and he couldn't work the pump to slide another shell in."

My, my, my, and sure, you didn't have much trouble telling me how well you did, Dunlap thought. He knew that soon he'd have it all, especially what happened to the rancher's son.

"Hey, tell me what you saw up there."

But Rettig didn't answer.

"I mean-"

"Look, I said we'll clear it with the chief first," Rettig told him, and their little game was finished. Dunlap didn't even try again. He sat back, his clothing sweaty against the seat, and watched the country they were passing, flatland mostly, clumps of brush out in the fields. They turned left through an open, listing, wooden gate. Then they were on a weedgrown wagon road, and he heard gunshots, many of them, louder as they sped along the dusty road. Dunlap leaned ahead.

"Trouble?"

But they didn't answer. They sped down a hill, dry red earth on either side, and there were buildings in a hollow: first a modest house, four rooms maybe, with a porch in front, painted white; and then a barn, about the same size as the house, and painted white as well; some kind of shed, and it was white. And all three were beside a fenced-in pasture where two horses shied from what disturbed them in the gully.

SIX

Slaughter watched them shooting by the gully. Then he turned to face the medical examiner. "It was a cat, all right. I shot its fucking head off."

The medical examiner narrowed his eyes. 'You're sure?"

"You think I never saw a cat before? The god-damned thing attacked me. Some big torn. I mean a big torn, fifteen pounds at least. And if I hadn't shot it, I'd have had my face scratched off."

The medical examiner scowled. It didn't make sense. Not only the attack, but Slaughter's fierce reaction. And then he understood. Sure, Slaughter must have been terrified. Lying in that hollow, thinking he would end up next like Clifford. He likely hadn't felt that kind of fear since he had worked back in Detroit. He wasn't used to it, and he was angry now because he'd lost control. The medical examiner had never thought of Slaughter's being capable of fear. The thought was oddly new and made the medical examiner feel sympathetic, liking him even more.

Over by the gully, the men continued shooting.

"What about that scratch? You'd better let me have a look at it," the medical examiner said.

But Slaughter only waved the offered hand away. "I fixed it up myself." The scratch was long and deep across his cheek, thickly scabbed and ugly. "Old Doc Markle made me keep a decent first-aid kit out here. Just in case. From when I tried to raise those horses. First I washed it. Then I disinfected it."

"I was thinking about stitches."

"No, it isn't bad enough for that. I should have gone to see you, but all I wanted was to get home."

Slaughter turned toward the sound of the cruiser angling down the red-clay road between the hillocks. Rettig and the new man were in the front. But as Slaughter watched them drawing closer, a dust cloud rising, he could see as well another person, this one in the back, a man in a gray, wrinkled suit, his face-it was obvious even through the dusty windshield-as gray and wrinkled as the suit.

But when the cruiser stopped and they got out, the man hitched up what seemed to be a tape recorder and a camera, and his body wasn't stooped or wasted, and if Slaughter's judgment was correct, his age was forty, forty-five. A face like that, though. Slaughter knew there wasn't any question. This guy was a boozer. Dry and brittle hair, gray like the rest of him.

Slaughter stepped from the porch. "There's some beer inside," he told the medical examiner. "See you later."

"Wait a minute. I have questions."

"Later." Slaughter walked toward the gray-faced man who had the tape recorder and the camera.

Rettig and the new man didn't even bother looking toward the sound of the shots in the gully, but the gray-faced man was staring in that direction.

"We did everything you told us," Rettig said as Slaughter reached them. "Nothing."

"I expected." Slaughter held his hand out. "Mr. Dunlap." And that earned the look that Slaughter had anticipated. Dun-lap was impressed. Slaughter always made a point of keeping track of names. He'd learned that in the city, understanding that a name could mean the difference between trust and panic. "People tell me you've been looking for me."

Dunlap gripped his hand. 'You're a hard man to find."

"Not so hard. You're here, after all." Slaughter smiled, and Dunlap turned once more toward the gunshots in the gully.

"Look, if you don't mind my asking."

"Anything. That's what you're here for," Slaughter said.

"That shooting."

"Target practice. It's a pattern we got into. Saturdays, I have the men I work with out to drink some beer and eat some chili. At the start, though, before they drink the beer, they go back behind the barn and do some target practice. Some towns don't require that, but I insist my men shoot two times a month at least. The shift on duty today will come out next week, and we alternate like that. You care to see?"

As they walked toward the barn, Rettig joined them. "He's been asking about Quiller and the compound."

"I know it," Slaughter said. "Parsons phoned about that. Quiller was before my time. That's why I sent our guest to you."

"He said that he had cleared it, but-"

"You did exactly what you should have. I tried calling on the radio, but evidently you weren't near the cruiser. There's no problem. In your place, I'd have been suspicious, too."

They passed the clean white barn, the gunshots louder, echoing, and then they came around the back, the dirt here hard and brittle, and five men were in jeans and rolled-up shirt sleeves, spread out by the gully, shooting revolvers at tin cans below a ridge across the ditch. The ditch was maybe twenty feet across, the cans another five feet farther on, and three men were reloading, glancing at where Slaughter came with Dunlap and then Rettig past the barn to reach them.

One man said, "That beer had better be as cold as you pretend it is."

"I lied," Slaughter said. "It's even colder."

They laughed.

"Looks like we could use some new targets." Slaughter pointed. All the cans across there had more holes than metal, barely held together by the seams that joined them.

"Well, we figure once we blast them till there's nothing left, we can say we earned the beer."

"A hundred rounds per man. No less than that." Slaughter gestured toward Dunlap. "This man's from New York. He's a reporter, and he's doing research on that commune in the hills. I want you to cooperate. I don't know all that happened back then, but I don't see much use hiding it."

They studied Dunlap and nodded.

"How come you're not out here shooting?" one man asked Slaughter.

"I put in my time before you came."

"Oh, sure you did." They looked amused.

Slaughter glanced at Dunlap, then at them, shrugged, and drew his revolver.

Dunlap stepped back automatically. He stared at the gun as Slaughter approached his men and concentrated on the cans on the other side of the gully. He braced himself, his body sideways, his feet apart, and aimed, then squeezed the trigger. A can flipped, the shot loud, the recoil spreading smoothly through Slaughter's body, and he cocked again and fired, cocked and fired, six times altogether, the shots echoing on top of one another as the can went through its clattering dance and, with the last hit, fell apart. Slaughter had worked his hand as quickly as the eye could follow. His men were laughing, clapping, as he shrugged, then pressed a button that allowed him to swing out the handgun's cylinder. He pocketed the used cartridges and reloaded.

"I see you've got some rounds to shoot yet," Slaughter pointed toward the half-full boxes by their feet. "That beer is getting colder." He winked, then walked toward the barn. "And pick up all your empty cartridges this time."

"Yeah, yeah," they told him, looked toward the riddled cans, and started firing again as Slaughter led Dunlap and Rettig back to the house.

"That's impressive shooting." Dunlap said.

"Nothing that a little practice doesn't help," Slaughter said. "I wasn't kidding. I did my stint before they got here. Sometimes I shoot with them. Mostly I just sit up on that porch and welcome people. There's a western gentlemen inside me trying to get out." He noticed that Dunlap smiled then. That was good. The message from the mayor had been emphatic. Give this man a good impression. "You must find this country different, coming from the East and all."

"A little," Dunlap said.

"Yeah, I felt that way myself at first."

Dunlap shook his head. "At first?"

"I came here from Detroit. Five years ago. A little while out here, and you can get to like the easy way of life."

Which Dunlap didn't buy, so Slaughter didn't try to sell it anymore. Slaughter had been just about as friendly as he'd planned, but he had other things to occupy him, and he didn't have the time to give this man a guided tour.

They passed the police car Rettig had brought, walking toward the porch, and Slaughter saw that the medical examiner was up there, drinking beer, talking to the new man. Slaughter was just about to ask if Dunlap wanted any beer when the medical examiner interrupted him.

"Your man here says it's still down in that hollow. Look, I want to know if that thing bit you."

"No, I thought about it, and I checked," Slaughter said. I even took my clothes off back here, and the only mark is where it scratched me." The scab was thick on Slaughter's cheek.

The medical examiner persisted. "Scratched, not bit you?" "Does this mark look like it bit me? No, I'm certain." "Well, I want to check that cat regardless. Cats don't go at people that way."

"Some cats do. When I was in Detroit, I had my share of bites and scratches. Cats gone wild and living in abandoned tenements. I know exactly what you mean, though. This is different. Cats might fight back, but they don't come looking to attack you."

And the five of them were silent. Dunlap had been listening with interest. Slaughter turned to him. He noticed that both Rettig and the new man had been looking at him, too.

"You're right," he told the medical examiner and then explained to Dunlap, "You see, we've got a situation here, but it's not the reason you're invited. I could ask you to go in the house and have a beer, but then you'd think that we were hiding something from you. So I'm going to let you stay. But understand this. Anything about the commune, that's your story. What we're saying now is strictly off the record." Slaughter waited.

"Sure. I guess you have your reasons."

"You'll know soon enough." Slaughter turned toward the medical examiner again. "My handgun's a.357. I loaded magnums before going in that field. I told you, when I shot that cat, I blew its fucking head apart. I'm no pathologist, but I'm aware of this much. If you want to check for rabies in an animal, you run some tests on portions of its brain."

"That's correct."

"Well, brain, hell I can give you all the brain you want. It's scattered, bits and pieces, all across that goddamn field. But they'll be so contaminated, you won't have a use for them." Slaughter pivoted toward Dunlap. 'There. I've said it. Now you understand. If word about rabies ever gets through town, there'll be a panic."

Dunlap's face was ashen. "That's what happened to this fellow Clifford?"

Slaughter studied him. "You do your job. I'll give you that. No, we're not sure about him. We've been edging around this subject since last night." He asked the medical examiner, "You're sure it was a dog that killed him, not a cat?"

"I told you."

"Swell." Slaughter stared down at the porch. "I need a beer. He looked around.

"Sure," Dunlap told him. "I'll take one."

Rettig: "Me as well."

The new man and the medical examiner already had one.

"I'll just bring a cooler." Slaughter entered the house.

SEVEN

Christ, what's the matter with you? Slaughter thought, trembling once the door was closed. You're damn near cracking up. A cat attacks you, and it's like you never used a gun before. What's happening to you?

I'm out of practice.

Weak and soft is more the truth. That easy life you told that guy about-you really fell for it. Hell, life's so easy for you that you lose your nerve when some stray cat jumps at you.

No, that isn't true. I do my job. I'm good at it.

But you know you're lying. You can go through years and years of doing what you think must be your best. But then you get in some real trouble, and you understand that you were coasting, and you didn't even know it.

Hell, I don't know why I even bother trying.

Sure you do. That emptiness inside. That grocery store. Those two kids. What they did to you.

You want to prove yourself.

And that purely was the truth.

He stood inside his small, neat kitchen, staring at two coolers filled with ice and beer, and he was thinking that he'd open one can right away. But that would be a public show of weakness, drinking before he brought out the cooler for the others. Maybe not in their eyes weakness. But in his. So he lifted one of the coolers and returned to the porch.

They didn't even look at him, just concentrated on the cooler as he opened it, the glinting ice, the cans of Bud. They made a ritual, all snapping tabs at once and raising beers as if in toast, then sipping.

"All right, so what do you suggest?" Slaughter asked the medical examiner. He hoped the beer would relax him.

"Well, no matter what you say, I want to see that cat. Tell your men to keep watching for animals that act strangely. I'll check the hospital for anyone who comes in bitten. The truth is, though, there's not a lot we can do until we have another incident."

"That's if. "Rettig hadn't spoken in some time.

"Right. That's not until but if. Let's hope at least," Slaughter said.

"Don't wait for a dog or cat that's foaming at the mouth. A symptom like that shows up late," the medical examiner said. "What we're looking for is an attack without a reason. Totally irrational aggression."

Something clicked in Slaughter's mind. "That's funny."

"What?"

"You said the same about those dogs up in the hills."

And everyone became silent.

Too much so, Slaughter realized. It wasn't only them but everything around them. Sure. The men had stopped shooting. They were walking past the barn now, laughing, holstering their weapons as they joked among themselves and came near, rubbing their hands together as they stepped up for a beer.

"Who died?" one of them asked, noticing how somber everyone was.

"We've got a little problem. Did you pick up the empty cartridges?"

They nodded.

"Good. When you get a chance, reload them. We might need them."

And they paused where they were reaching for the beer.

"I have to check the horses," Slaughter said. "Let's take a walk. I'll tell you all about it."

He stepped from the porch. "There isn't much to tell," he heard behind him and saw where Rettig had moved back a little, talking now with Dunlap.

Rettig evidently noticed how Slaughter looked at him. "You're sure it's all right if I talk to him about what happened at the commune."

"Hell, I don't care." You're getting jumpy, Slaughter told himself and walked with the other men to reach the horses.

EIGHT

Rettig watched them go, then again faced Dunlap. "Really. There's not much more to tell." Despite permission to discuss this, he was nonetheless reluctant. He still remembered the secrecy with which the case had been conducted. There had been such trouble in the town, such bad publicity that summer, that the council had arranged for secret sessions to discuss this new development. Parsons had been mayor then, as he still was, and the general agreement had been to keep news about the murder quiet. Otherwise those hippies might come back, and those reporters, and the trouble might begin again. The trial had been delicate, the matter kept within the valley, with some understanding from the nearby towns beyond the mountains, and the valley had gone back to being normal. Even though the state police had jurisdiction in the case, and they were separate from the town, they had nonetheless cooperated with the town, realizing that the valley was related to the town, and Rettig in particular had been warned to keep his mouth shut. Oh, nobody ever said that quite so forcefully, but the implication had been clear, and he was very careful. It was twenty-three years now since he'd thought about the case, but he remembered the way things had been back then, and it was hard for him to break his habit. "Really. Not too much. You figured most of it already."

"But the son? What happened to the son?" Dunlap took his coat off, setting it across a chair on the porch.

"He was fine. I went up with another man and searched the compound. The rest of the men stayed back to get the hippies' version of what had happened. Wheeler had cracked up by then, and they were helping him into a cruiser. We went and-" "Tell me what it looked like."

"Oh, not much. I'd heard too many rumors, and the place seemed ordinary by comparison. Just rows of barracks lined up to form streets. Like in the Army but more like migrant work-camps. Like in the Depression. Pathetic, really. There were gardens by each bunkhouse, dying flowers in them, but the flowers never really had a chance up there. All that shade, the thin air, and the lousy ground. The worst part was the fields they'd tried to plant with corn and beans, tomatoes, stuff like that. They'd put the seed in too late, and a farm crop never does well, even down here in the valley, so I can't imagine why they thought that corn would do well in the mountains. It was awful, all these little stumps of corn that never quite developed, little ears on them, all browned by the early frosts. They had a mess hall, I remember that, crude log tables in there, and they had a kind of officer's command post with a sort of square in front where people must have stood to get their orders, but it was obvious that things weren't going well up there, and I couldn't help wondering what they were going to do when winter hit. Oh, yeah, we found another building that was like a big garage."

"The Corvette."

"What?"

"The red Corvette. The classic 1959 that Quiller drove. You found it?"

"I remember hearing about that. No, we never found it. Oh, we found a van and then a pickup truck. But that was all. No red Corvette. Believe me, I'd remember it."

"Christ, what the hell is going on?"

Rettig stared at him.

"I've done some checking," Dunlap said, "and as far as I can tell, Quiller never sold it. But I know he took it up there. What in God's name did he do with it?"

"You've got me," Rettig said. "All I'm telling you is what I saw. If I'd been looking for that car, I might have found it. But I had my mind on searching for the boy."

"You found him?"

"In a while. It took us quite & while. We checked the buildings and the forest. If I hadn't stopped to take a leak, I maybe never would have found him even then. But I went over by an outhouse, and I found him in a trench. He sure was dirty. I remember that. And scared, although he never said what happened to him in the compound. Mostly he was scared about his father. Even when we brought the boy down to the cruisers, he refused to get in with his father. We were forced to drive them separately."

"And what did Quiller have to say?"

"Excuse me?"

"Quiller."

Rettig shrugged. "Nobody ever saw him."

"What? You searched the compound, and you never saw him?"

"No one did."

"Well, where could he have hidden? Why would he have hidden in the first place?"

"Don't ask me. He might have been out in the forest. I don't see the difference it makes."

"No, I don't either," Dunlap told him, frowning. "But there's something strange about all this, and I wish I understood it."

"Are you getting what you wanted?" a voice interrupted.

Dunlap turned to where Slaughter stood beside the porch, his deputies with him after they had come back from the horses.

"Mostly," Dunlap said. "There are still a few loose ends."

"Well, tie them up. We want you satisfied."

You bastard, Dunlap thought. Putting on this country show for me. You're ten times more sophisticated than you pretend. He glanced at Rettig. "So what about the trial? I never read the end of it."

"Oh, Wheeler was convicted," Rettig said.

Dunlap nodded. Sure, the coverup was just to keep the town safe from another bunch of hippies coming through. If Wheeler had been freed and word had gotten out, there really would have been some trouble then. The town had done the wisest thing.

"His lawyer tried to plead insanity, but people here don't understand that sort of thing," Rettig said. "The charge was manslaughter, extenuating circumstances, and the son was such a prick when he was on the stand, clearly out to get his father, that the jury sympathized with Wheeler, recommending that the judge go easy. Two years was the sentence, and the day the trial was over, Wheeler's son got out of here. The town police had kept a watch on him to make sure he didn't leave before then. Also to protect him. There were plenty of ugly feelings toward him, people angered by the painful choices he had caused, and he just packed his gear and left. Some people figured that he went back to the compound. But I always doubted that. Once his father was released, the father surely would go looking for him again. The kid was scared enough that he would want to run much farther than the compound. He would want to put a lot of miles between him and his father."

Slaughter stepped up on the porch. "All that happened here? I take it back about country life being easy." He stooped to pick up another beer, then restrained his impulse. "Look, I think we'd better break this up. If we've got the trouble I think we have, we should all be on duty. Grab that phone," he told the new man. It was ringing inside, and as the new man went in, Slaughter faced the rest of his men. "You know what to do." He told the medical examiner, "I'll go with you to get the cat I shot." Then he told Dunlap, "How else can I help you?"

"Well, I'd like to see the compound, talk to Wheeler-"

"I don't understand what you're looking for, but you can see the problems I've got. I'll make a deal. You let me have today, and I'll go out with you tomorrow."

"Can somebody drive me back to town?" Dunlap asked. "I'd like to examine the records in your office."

You're pushing, Slaughter thought. You know I don't have time to watch you. He was just about to answer when the new man appeared in the doorway.

"That's the state police," the new man said, and Slaughter felt his apprehension intensify. His mind seemed to tilt, and he knew that normalcy was on the other side now.

"Did you phone them yesterday about a rancher named Bodine?" the new man continued.

"That's right. Damn it, tell me what they want."

"Well, the ranch is still deserted. Not only that, but…"

When Slaughter heard the rest of it, he murmured, 'Jesus," and rushed in toward the telephone.

NINE

The helicopter circled high above the foothills. It was just a speck up there, and Slaughter barely heard it as he sped across the bumpy rangeland, squinting upward, then glancing straight ahead to make sure he didn't hit a rock or a clump of sagebrush or a gulch he wouldn't see until he was almost on it. He glanced to the left as well, worried by the wide, deep drywash over there, and hoped that he'd made the proper choice when he drove down along this side instead of heading across the bridge back near the ranch and moving down along the opposite side. He was aiming toward the helicopter, closer to it, closer to the dry-wash too and worried that he'd have to stop the cruiser soon, to cross the gully on foot and walk the rest of the way.

He didn't have to. One bend in the wash, and then it straightened, almost in a line up toward the helicopter high above the foothills. He was taking chances, speeding faster.

"Aren't you worried that you'll break an axle?" Dunlap asked beside him.

"Not in this car. It's designed to go through anything. I made sure we got the best."

Slaughter concentrated on the bumpy terrain. Bringing Dunlap with him was something he regretted. But he hadn't wanted Dunlap going through his files when he wasn't around, and certainly he hadn't wanted Dunlap asking people questions about what was happening in town-that would surely start the panic Slaughter wanted to avoid-and so he'd made a quick decision, taking Dunlap with him. Slaughter told himself that there was no place where Dunlap would be harmless. At least this way the man would be in sight. But Slaughter wasn't confident. Of all the weekends for a reporter to arrive, he thought, and he was speeding faster toward the helicopter high above the foothills.

"What about that cow the medical examiner mentioned?" Dunlap asked.

"The steer."

"I beg your pardon."

"Out here they call beef cattle 'steers'."

"I didn't know."

"It's all right. I called them 'cows' too many times myself. It takes a while to get adjusted."

Maybe I've changed the subject, Slaughter hoped. The night before, he'd told the medical examiner to check the steer that had been found next to old Doc Markle's corpse. But it turned out that someone at the veterinary clinic had mistakenly had the carcass incinerated. Slaughter had been furious. Wasn't anything about this trouble going to work out easily?

"But what about the steer?" Dunlap asked.

So the subject hadn't been changed, after all.

"A different problem," Slaughter told him. "Something got a steer two nights ago. We don't know what did it."

"The steer was Sam Bodine's?"

And how did you know that? Slaughter thought. "Yes, that's right. Bodine's."

"So then this problem isn't really different from the other."

The helicopter now was lower as the foothills loomed before them. Slaughter had to look away, the helicopter in a straight line with the blazing sun, and then he saw the state-police cars where the rangeland ended at the bottom of the thickly wooded slope. He drove as far as he was able, stopping by the other cars, his bumper up against some sagebrush, and he scrambled out, putting on his hat, holding it as dust was swirled up by the helicopter coming down. He looked around, puzzled, wondering where everybody from the cruisers had gone.

The helicopter's roar was deafening, so he didn't hear them coming through the trees. Abruptly, they emerged from the underbrush, Altick and three men he hadn't seen before. They all belonged to the state police, but Altick was the ranking officer, a captain, so Slaughter focused his attention on him. One thing about Altick, he was good at what he did, so good that no one ever made jokes about his unflattering mustache. He'd been forced to grow it after he had tried to stop a knife fight and had nearly lost his lip when two drunken cowboys turned on him. The scar was partly visible beneath the sandy bristles. He had his hat off, wiping at the sweat across his forehead. Then he put it back on, stepping down toward Slaughter, on a level with him now and just about as tall.

They tried to talk but couldn't hear and turned to watch the helicopter set down, rotors slowing, engine dying.

"Nobody told me you'd be in on this," Slaughter said.

"Well, Bodine was a friend." Altick's voice was raspy. "That's why we got on this so fast. I knew the forestry department had its helicopter out this way. The land's so dry they're checking for fires. So I asked them to look for Bodine's truck."

"The phone call said they'd found it."

Altick pointed toward the trees he'd come through, motioning for Slaughter to follow. They hiked up through the underbrush and stopped where the ground eased onto a level before sloping sharply upward again. There were fir trees, boulders, and a small streambed that wound down the slope. The pickup truck was before them, its blue paint scratched from the trees it had squeezed past, one wheel in a sinkhole, both doors open, covered with dust.

The helicopter pilot joined them. "I almost didn't find it. I was looking for it out on the range."

"What made you even think to look here?" Slaughter turned to Altick.

"Just a guess," Altick said. "I thought that Sam had maybe taken his family on a trip. That appaloosa mare of his, though. It's won half a dozen trophies. No one came around to feed it. So I knew something had happened to him. I checked all the traffic accident reports. When nothing turned up there, I figured he was out on the range in some trouble and we'd better take a look. This pilot is something. He wasn't out here half the morning before finding this."

Slaughter walked toward the pickup truck. He circled it, then glanced at where the streambed angled toward the flat-land. "Looks like Sam was in a hurry. He chose the only route that he could follow, rammed up the streambed until he couldn't go much farther, then jumped out, and ran."

"Not just him."

Slaughter squinted at Altick.

"Both doors are open, don't forget," Altick said. "We haven't touched a thing. Sam and someone else. It's my guess his wife and son were with him. Otherwise, where are they?"

Slaughter slumped against the truck. The shade in here was welcome, cooling him. He tried to think. "It could be nothing's wrong. Maybe he just drove up for the hell of it. The truck got stuck, but they were going camping, something like that, so he left it until he'd come back. Then he planned to get help to move the truck."

"Why would he leave the doors open?"

"I have no idea."

"There's something else." Altick pointed up past Slaughter.

When Slaughter turned, he saw a patch of brown and red among the fir trees. His apprehension increased as he straightened and breathed and walked up toward it. He heard someone, likely Altick, walking behind him. But he didn't look in that direction. He only stopped and kept on staring.

Sure, he thought. The freshly mangled carcass of a steer, its mutilated guts protruding, flies swarming over them. What else did you think it would be? He felt dizzy.

"When we started searching, we also found this," Altick said. "The fifth one we've had news about today."

Slaughter leaned his head against a tree. "Better make that six."

"What?"

"Bodine found one like this Thursday, but we only learned about it Friday morning." 'Jesus."

"That's not all," Slaughter said. "We've had some animal attacks in town. A man's been killed. At first we figured it was wild dogs from the hills, but now we're worried about rabies." Altick paled.

"That's right. Now you feel the way I do," Slaughter told him. "We've got trouble." He pointed toward the mountains. "What's up there?"

"Nothing. Wilderness. The forestry department lists this as a recreation area." Altick suddenly understood. "Rabies? Christ, what if people are camping up there?"

Slaughter's forehead throbbed. "Let's assume wild dogs are what did this. Bodine saw them on the range. He chased them into these foothills."

"I'd better get the helicopter looking for them." Altick turned, scrambling down the hillside, followed by the pilot.

"And for anybody else up there. Check the lakes, the likely camping spots." Slaughter hurried after Altick. "Look, I know this is your jurisdiction, but we'd better work together on this. Leave a man to watch the carcass and the pickup truck. Get some other men out here with rifles. Have them search the hills as far as they can go today."

They reached the bottom, Altick turning toward him, and for just a moment Slaughter thought that Altick would be angry, that Altick would tell him not to interfere, to keep his opinions to himself. But Altick only nodded, saying, "I'll go you one better. Dogs. We'll get some bloodhounds out here. We'll pick up Bodine's trail."

TEN

"Warren!"

She heard him screaming and ran from the living room to the kitchen. Staring out the screen door, she saw him racing through the backyard toward her.

"Warren!"

He was clutching his hand. She saw the blood, the mangled flesh, and she was pushing at the screen door, rushing out to meet him.

He kept screaming.

"Warren! Tell me what it is that happened!"

She was holding him, the blood across her sleeve now. She could feel his frantic tears drop off his cheek to wet her blouse.

He just kept screaming.

"Warren! Please! You've got to-"

"It's the glass!"

"But-"

"Broken glass!"

"You've got to show me, Warren!"

She stared at him, at the blood. She wasn't certain what to do. She knew she had to stop the blood. But what had caused it? How bad was the cut?

She tried to lead him. "Show me, Warren."

He pointed toward the backyard. She squinted past the backyard toward the metal barrel in the old man's yard across the lane. She saw the blood across the rim, and she was running. "Oh, my God."

The blood covered everything, the rusty cans, the broken glass, the ashes from the garbage fires that the old man used to set before the town denied him permission. Warren must have climbed up on this cinder block and reached in there for something, but he lost his balance, and he cut himself.

She swung around. Warren was clutching his hand, running toward the back door, and she called to him, but he was in the house already. She scrambled toward him, across the lane and past the bushes, the back door getting larger as she reached it, fumbling at the handle, charging in. She saw the blood across the floor, and she was racing down the hallway toward the bathroom, but he wasn't in there. Where? She doubled back. He sat in his bedroom, crying, blood across the sheets. She hurried to grab him, wrapping a sheet around his hand and guiding him into the bathroom. "No!"

"I have to wash it. I have to see how bad it is." "Don't touch it!"

Warren kept crying as she freed the bloody sheet and pushed his hand down into the sink. She turned the tap on. He wailed again.

Too hot. She turned the other tap, and now the water felt lukewarm, and she was brushing at the bleeding flesh. She saw the wound, but blood kept oozing out, and she was brushing at it, freeing all the dirt and black clots, and Lord, the hand was mangled. Deep and wide and jagged. Oh, my baby, she was thinking as she felt his weight against him, and she knew before she looked that he had fainted.

ELEVEN

Warren smelled something strange, something like the powder that his mother put inside the washer when she did the clothes. His eyes fluttered. He winced from the light all around him, and he saw the strange man in the white coat leaning close. He started wailing.

"Warren, it's all right."

His mother's voice. His father close beside her. They looked angry.

"Mommy, I-"

"It's all right, Warren. Please don't be afraid. You're with a doctor."

Back now to the man, his white coat flecked with red spots down his arm. The man was holding something like a plastic pill that he had broken open, and the strange smell seemed to come from it. Warren kept on crying. This man was much younger, thinner, than the doctor he always went to, and the freckles on his face looked like the blood specks on the white coat, and Warren couldn't stop from crying.

"Ssshhh, it's all right, son. We're here now. You're just fine."

Then Warren slowly understood that they had him on a table, that his hand felt numb and awkward. He was raising it. The hand was like a white club, bandaged so he couldn't even see or move his fingers.

"He's still suffering from shock. He'll take a while to get adjusted," he heard the doctor saying.

Someone dried his eyes. His mother. She was smiling. So she wasn't angry, after all.

"Warren, can you tell us how it happened?"

He turned toward the doctor, trying to remember what the plan was.

"Yes, the glass," he told them slowly.

"In the barrel?"

"Yes, I cut myself."

His father clenched his fist. "I'm going to sue that old man."

"Harry. Please, not here," his mother said.

So I got away with it, Warren thought.

"Warren, let me tell you what I did for you," the doctor said. "You have to make sure you keep the bandage on. I sewed you up. I gave you stitches. Do you understand that?"

"Yes, like Mommy when she makes a dress."

They smiled a little.

"Something like that," the doctor said. "You were cut too deeply to let the wound heal on its own. I took some string like this, except it wasn't string. It's more like what we used to call a piece of catgut, and I sewed the cut together."

"Will the string stay in there?"

"No. A week or so from now, I'll take the stitches out, and you'll be like before, although you'll maybe have a scar," the doctor said. "But you've got a lot of growing to do, and most of the scar will disappear. What you've got to understand is that you can't put much weight on your hand. If you try to pick up heavy things or make a fist or anything like that, you'll risk the chance of pulling out the stitches too soon. Take things easy. Let your mother or your father do the lifting for you."

"Will they make my bed for me?"

"You bet we will," his father said. "And I'll still pay your full allowance."

Warren grinned then. Yes, he'd gotten away with it, and he was wiping at his tears, trying to sit up.

"Here, let me help you." His mother held him.

"He's going to be all right, I think," the doctor said. "Take him home. Here are pills for when the local anesthetic wears off. Call me if there's any trouble. But I think that all you'll have to do is bring him in a week from Monday."

"What about the bandage?"

"Change it every night. The first few times you ought to soak the bandage before it's removed. I don't want any dried blood tearing at those stitches."

"Dressing?"

"Anything you have around the house. First-aid cream is fine. I gave him an anti-tetanus injection. I don't see any problems coming up."

"Thank you."

"I'm just pleased that you got him here so quickly. He was bleeding quite a lot."

More talk, but Warren didn't listen. He looked around the room, at the cabinets and shiny metal objects, and abruptly he was dizzy. He almost toppled off the table.

"Here, young man. I think we'd better get you home."

Despite an itching, burning pain along his hand, Warren couldn't stop from feeling happy. He had gotten away with it. All night long, he'd tried to figure how to hide the bite. His hand had swollen so much that it scared him. At breakfast time, his mother had come in to wake him, but he'd snuggled in the sheets as if he wanted to keep sleeping. He had stayed there until he knew that she would surely come to wake him. So he'd listened until he heard her in the living room, and he had managed then to dress himself. The pain had been so bad that he shook. He had slipped and smeared some blood across his sleeve. But he had figured what to do by that time, and he'd snuck outside to reach the barrel over there. The worst part had been leaning in to let some blood drip onto the glass. When he had pulled the bloody rag off, he had seen the swollen throbbing ugly cut, caked with dirty blood. He'd shivered, reaching down to touch his hand against a broken bottle. That had been his plan at least. But he had lost his balance, and the cut had burst, not from the glass but from the pressure. He had never felt such shrieking pain. He couldn't stop his screaming.

TWELVE

"Okay then, sure, why not?"

And Slaughter turned up onto the loggers' road. "I've heard so much about this place I guess it's time I had a look myself."

He hadn't planned to do this until tomorrow, but he didn't like the thought of Dunlap's staying any longer than was necessary. It was fine for Parsons to instruct him to be friendly. "Give him all the help he needs." Parsons had been clear on that. But Parsons didn't have to babysit this man. Parsons didn't know about the trouble that was going on.

There wasn't much that Slaughter had to do in town, regardless. He could sit and wait for calls to come in on the police station's two-way radio. Or he could drive out, troubleshooting on the streets. But hell, the compound wasn't even ten miles down the road from Bodine's place, halfway from the ranch to town, and he was out here, going past it. He might just as well drive up and get this nuisance finished. Slaughter saw the road and made his choice, and this would help take Dunlap's mind away from what was happening in town.

Slaughter knew the turnoff, although as he had said he'd never taken time to go up it. There had never been a need to, never been an interest. Back in the sixties, he'd seen freaks enough to last a lifetime. They could smoke dope up here until they couldn't tell their ass from grass for all he cared.

He angled up the loggers' road, if "road" was what it could still be called. No one had come up here for some time. There were bushes in the ruts, pine needles, fallen leaves, young trees growing in the mound between the ruts, and branches dipping down from all the large trees on each side. The place was shadowy, cool, yet strangely humid. Slaughter suddenly was worried that, if he got stuck, he wouldn't have the room to turn around, that backing down would be a problem, given all the ruts and bends, and several times he had to squeeze around some young trees that he couldn't just drive over, narrowly avoiding large trees at the side. He wished he hadn't been impulsive. Hell, I need a Jeep to get up in here. Why'd I do this? But he had no choice now, and he eased his foot off the gas pedal, slowing, bumping, working up this god-forsaken lane to nowhere. "What kind of place is this to build a commune anyhow?"

"I asked myself that several times," Dunlap said.

Slaughter glanced at him. "Not too happy where they sent you, huh?"

"I've had a little trouble. But I'm working on it. This is what you'd call my penance."

"I can see that from the way your hands are shaking." "It's a bumpy ride." "But wouldn't a beer go good now?" Dunlap stared at him. "I said I'm working on it." "Hey, I don't mean to rile you. I'm just making conversation."

Dunlap's stern gaze weakened. "All right, I apologize."

"It's my fault. I was mixing in your business."

"But the fact is, you're right. I shouldn't be so jumpy when somebody says the truth. You really like it here?"

"Love it."

"I find that baffling."

"It's simple. Back east in Detroit, things got out of hand. I got so I couldn't keep control. My wife divorced me. I was fed up with my work."

"You were a cop?"

"That's right, and finally I simply quit. I didn't know what else to do. I couldn't keep doing what I had, however. So I spread a map out on my kitchen table, and I asked myself where I'd rather be."

"And you chose here?" Dunlap looked incredulous.

"Sure. Because I'd never been here. I was having daydreams. Mountains. Horses running free. I'd never really seen those things, never been around them. What they represented were the things I wanted, though. I knew that much. So I came here."

"Just like that."

"I left the next day, and I loved it. Oh, I had some hard times at the start. I tried my hand at raising horses, but I made a mess of it. The next thing I was in police work again. But I was talking earlier about control, and that's the point. My life here is exactly what I want to make of it. Things aren't so complicated that I have to give in to them. I have freedom."

Slaughter looked ahead and eased the cruiser past a clump of bushes. He didn't see the pothole just beyond them and felt the cruiser jolt down into it. "Now it's me I'm being personal about. I'd better watch it."

Dunlap rubbed his forehead. "I think I'll soon be divorced as well."

"Who wants it? Her or you?"

"Oh, she's the one who'll do it, I suppose."

"Is that why you drink so much?"

"It's that obvious, is it? No, I started drinking long before. It could be I caused the problem with her. But you know, a person has ambitions in his work. He wants to prove how really good he is, and I just never lived up to my expectations."

"Or you maybe liked the booze so much that it distracted you."

Dunlap shrugged. "The chicken or the egg. What difference does it make? I ended here. No matter how it happened, I know where it got me. Nowhere. Nothing personal."

"Well, why not just give in then? Maybe settle in a place like this?"

Dunlap started laughing.

"No, I mean it," Slaughter told him. "Things could be a whole lot worse. Sometimes we end up exactly where we should be."

"Or deserve to be."

Slaughter gave up trying to convince him.

"They were all idealists," Dunlap said.

"Who? What are you talking about?"

"Quiller and the others up here," Dunlap said. 'They truly thought that, if they left the world and went up in here, they could live the kind of life they'd always wanted. They were fools."

"It's worked out fine for me."

"I wonder how it all worked out for them, however," Dun-lap said. "This Quiller. Do you know about him?"

"Just from talk I pick up now and then."

"Well, he was evidently something. Six foot eight. Thin beyond grotesqueness, and that maybe helped him. Newsmen who were near him said he wasn't real. You know, as if they couldn't quite believe that he was there. It's like he radiated something holy. Charismatic like the best of that type, and those newsmen saw the best, believe me. If this way of life had any chance, Quiller was the man to do it."

"He was rich, I hear."

"An understatement, and that money would have helped as well."

They squeezed up past a fallen pine tree. Its needles were dead, dried and scattered across the road, the branches skeletal, and Slaughter looked up past them toward a wall of vines and bushes, slats of brown that showed through, and he knew that they were almost there. He slowed around a curve and, before he even stopped the cruiser, said to Dunlap, "See if you can budge that gate."

But Dunlap only stared ahead. "I said-"

"I'm going." Dunlap stepped from the cruiser. First he viewed the wall of vines from several angles, took several photographs; then he left the camera in the cruiser, and he walked up to the weed-shrouded gate.

Slaughter watched him through the windshield. With the filtered sun, the frame around his windshield, Slaughter sensed that Dunlap was much farther than he really was. Sitting here, the motor idling, Slaughter was abruptly conscious that there weren't any other sounds around him in the forest. Sure, the noise we made has frightened everything away, he guessed.

He watched as Dunlap stopped and looked at all the vines and weeds that wound around the gate posts. Dunlap reached out. Then he brought his hand back.

"Poison ivy?" Dunlap called.

Slaughter laughed. "A city boy. No, I don't know exactly what they are, but they're not poison ivy."

Dunlap nodded. Then he turned back to the vines and almost touched them before looking at him again. "You're sure?"

"For Christ sake."

"Never mind. I'll do it."

Dunlap tugged some vines away. He did it cautiously at first, and then he used more strength against them. He was pushing at the gate.

"We'll maybe have to clear the whole bunch," Slaughter leaned out, saying.

"More than that. We'll have to break the lock here."

"What?"

"A rusted chain and lock."

"Tug at it. The chain might be so old you'll break it."

"That's what I've been doing."

"Hell, I thought that was more weeds."

"You'd better have a look."

Slaughter thought about all the time they were wasting, thought about the town, and shut the motor off. He stepped from the cruiser, walking toward the gate. "I should have known they'd have fixed the gate once Wheeler drove up through it," Dunlap said.

Slaughter didn't understand the reference.

"I'll tell you later. But they fixed it, all right. Christ, they really did. Just look at those thick timbers. They'd stop any pickup truck."

The two men stood in the shadowy, cool, yet humid forest that was close around them, grass and fallen pine tree needles underfoot, and they were silent for a moment.

"Here, let me try it," Slaughter said. He put his full weight against the gate and pushed, but nothing happened. Oh, a little creaking in the wood and some slight movement as the chain went taut, but nothing else, and Slaughter felt the awkward pressure in his shoulder, stepping back and rubbing at it. "What about the hinges?" he asked.

But although rusted, they were large and solid, and the screws were sturdy in the timber.

"Well, that does it," Slaughter said.

"You don't mean we're leaving."

"No. I came up this far, and I don't intend to waste time coming back. We're going to have to climb the fence and walk."

They looked at one another.

"Wait a second while I get my camera." Dunlap went down to the cruiser for it. When he came back, Slaughter waved for him to climb up first, and Dunlap put his shoe on one thick timber, grabbing at another timber, easing over. Slaughter climbed up just behind him, and they stepped down into the compound, on the edge of Quiller's fifty acres. "Something wrong?" Slaughter asked. "No, I'm just shaky," Dunlap answered. "You were right. I need a drink."

"Well, you'll be done with this before you know it." They walked along the next part of the loggers' road, which was as overgrown as the first part. Slaughter heard a noise in the bushes and turned, but there was nothing he could see. He kept walking.

"Are there any people up here yet?" Slaughter wondered.

"I meant to ask you that myself. Parsons says there might be two or three."

"Oh, swell. Some commune."

"In its day, it was," Dunlap said. "I read that Quiller started with a couple thousand. Then he cut them down to just five hundred."

"Even so. If only two or three are up here."

"Yes, it isn't hard to measure Quiller's failure."

"What's the point then? I don't see your story?"

"That's the story. How it failed, and more important, why."

"Well, you must know your business."

They kept walking. Once again, Slaughter heard a noise behind them. He turned, but there was nothing. "Now who's jumpy?" Dunlap asked him. Slaughter had to laugh then. But the laughter echoed through the forest, and he quickly stopped.

The loggers' road disappeared a hundred feet ahead of them.

"Or could be that the forest just reclaimed it," Slaughter said.

They reached the dead end of the lane and glanced at the maze of trees around them.

"What now?" Slaughter asked.

"Well, the road was going straight up, and the clearing I suppose was somewhere near it. Let's just keep on through these trees."

"We could end up walking in a circle. We'll have to pay attention to our landmarks." That big boulder up ahead, Slaughter thought. And then that line of cliffs below the ridge. They veered through the pine trees, the needles lancing at them. Dunlap stumbled, falling on his camera, and he groped up, clutching at his chest, staring at the camera that was dangling from his shoulder.

"Is it broken?" Slaughter asked.

Dunlap didn't know. He hurriedly checked the camera, but it seemed intact, and he'd made certain that he kept the lens cap on. "I don't see any damage." "What about yourself?" "Oh, just the wind knocked out of me." "It could be worse. You want to try to walk?" Dunlap nodded. Bent a little forward, limping slightly, he pushed farther through the trees. The forest now was thicker, darker, dead trees fallen among the live ones, intersecting, thick vines growing up around them. Dunlap stopped and took deep breaths. "There has to be a better way. They brought their cars and vans up here. But it's sure as hell they didn't bring them this way."

"Maybe we should go back to the loggers' road and angle right or left," Slaughter suggested.

"And maybe lose our way as you just said? I wish I knew." "Well, let's keep going then. If this gets much worse, we'll have to change direction."

So they pushed up through the pine trees, and the clearing wasn't fifteen steps away, the trees so dense they didn't see it until they stepped free from the forest.

There were stumps that stretched off through young forest, all the growth here up to Slaughter's chest so that he looked out past the new tips of the pine trees toward the compound over there. Slaughter was reminded of a camping trip years ago. He'd gone with his father to a small lake in northern Michigan. They'd pitched their tent and eaten, so exhausted that they soon had gone to sleep. Rain pelting onto the canvas had wakened them, and they had talked and dozed and wakened again as the storm got worse, and in the morning when the storm was finished, they had crawled out from the tent to stare across the lake. A billowing mist hung over it, but they were camped up high enough that they were just above the mist, the pine trees visible along the other bank, and Slaughter now remembered how he'd thought about what he couldn't see below the mist-the fish that would be rising, and the ducks and frogs and other things. It wasn't real. That thought again. Like now. That sense of life around him but unseen. Except the compound was deserted.

They started through the new growth toward the compound. Dunlap took a photograph. "Hope the camera works." They continued walking.

"Sure," Dunlap said. "They used the timber here to build the barracks." He thought that Rettig had been accurate. With the difference that the walls were like log cabins, Dunlap was reminded of a deserted Army camp. Lanes and squares, a parade ground, everything was here. No, not exactly everything. He didn't see a flagpole. Hell, this kind of culture, they'd have called it a Maypole.

The compound loomed as they approached it, wide, the buildings all one story and with slanted roofs. At least the hippies knew enough to compensate for deep snow on the roofs in winter, Slaughter thought. And then he paused as Dunlap took another picture.

"Watch these branches on the ground here," Slaughter told him. "We don't want another accident."

Dunlap nodded, staring toward the compound as they walked around the branches, coming toward the nearest buildings. There were weeds and bushes, young trees growing in the lanes, and vines enmeshed around the shutters. There were broken windows, doors half off their hinges. And the slogans on the walls, the symbols, Day-Gloed green and red and blue, now faded, flowers, flags with rifles for the stripes and bullets for the stars, a skull and crossbones and a down with nixon, the down with slashed out, then to hell with scrawled above it, that too slashed, a simple fuck above it. vietnam will claim our children. Skeletons across a pentagon.

"Sure. They took the time to do all that, but they didn't even think to treat the logs for insects," Slaughter said and pointed. There were tiny holes in all the logs, and down below the holes, thick piles of what seemed sawdust, dirty, flecked with dead leaves from the vines.

Dunlap took more photographs. As they reached the buildings, Slaughter had the odd sensation that he'd been here before. "Is anybody around?" And then he knew what he was thinking of. Sure. Bodine's ranch when yesterday he'd gone there and he'd heard the kettle.

"You look in this building. I'll check the others," Dunlap said, and Slaughter stopped him.

"No, we'd better stay together."

"What's the matter?" Dunlap asked.

"Let's just say I've got a bad feeling. Anybody here?" he called again.

He waited, but no answer.

"No one's been here for quite a while," Dunlap said.

They stepped inside one building. There were bunk beds, wooden slats instead of springs, no mattresses, but many spiders, cobwebs, leaves piled in one corner as a nest for something. The floor-decaying planks-looked unsafe.

"Let's try a little farther on," Slaughter said.

But almost every building was the same. Slaughter glanced around to notice how the compound had been situated in a canyon, cliffs beyond the trees on three sides, and the slope behind them descending toward the loggers' road. A wind came from below there, rustling trees and cooling him. He took his hat off. Then his back felt unprotected, and he looked behind him. "Well, they picked a good spot anyhow. Except they would have needed water, and I don't know where they got it."

"Higher up. Those cliffs might have some streams."

"Could be. But I don't have time to look."

That made his point, Slaughter hoped. He didn't have time. He hadn't thought it would take this long getting up here. While he felt more sympathetic toward Dunlap, all the same he had his job to do, and he was anxious to get out of here.

Because you're thinking of Bodine? he asked himself. That feeling you had yesterday? You're scared. You might as well admit it.

No. Because I have to get back if there's trouble. Sure. And now he followed Dunlap past some bushes toward a larger building. Its door had toppled. The steps were rotted. They looked past the spider webs at what must once have been the dining room. Rettig had been accurate again. Logs made into trestles, tables that went down the whole length of the room. A bird sat in a glassless window, staring at them. Slaughter blinked, the bird flew away, and Slaughter felt that spot between his shoulder blades again. He turned, but there was no one out there.

"Are they hiding?"

"Little children laughing?" Dunlap asked. "What the hell is that?" "It's from a poem. T.S. Eliot."

"I know who he is. That's not what I meant." And Slaughter started running toward the small low building in front of the parade ground. "I saw something moving."

He ran harder, glancing at the buildings on each side, staring toward the trees beyond them, and he had his gun out, lunging past the listing door, finding just a table, spider webs and dirt, more pine needles.

But there wasn't any back door, and he didn't understand what he'd seen moving. Then he did. The wind blew toward him, and he saw the thick, rotted curtain moving. A blanket really. Torn in half and hung up on a branch before a broken window. He was nauseated by the smell that he'd been registering all along: must and crumbling wood, the fetid, sick-sweet smell of buildings left to ruin. Then he saw the hornet's nest in the far right corner. Something moved inside its portal, and he stepped out into the open.

Dunlap. Where was Dunlap? "Over here!"

Now he reads my mind, Slaughter thought as he ran toward the muffled voice inside another building. The emotion in Dunlap's voice worried him.

This building didn't have planks for a floor. Only dirt. There weren't any windows. Two big doors hung open. Dunlap stood in a shadowy corner, staring at dark stains on the ground.

"That's blood?" Slaughter asked.

Dunlap only shook his head.

"Well, what then? Christ, you scared me."

"Did I? Well, I didn't mean to. No." Dunlap picked up the dirt and sniffed it.

Slaughter suddenly was angry. "Tell me what that stuff is."

"Even after all these years, you can still smell the oil. This is where the Corvette would have been."

"Except it isn't."

"Where then?" Dunlap wondered.

"Look, there's no one up here. Quiller drove out years ago. He maybe let the others walk, but he kept the car in case he needed it to leave."

"I hate to say it, but I think you're right. And now my goddamned job is almost over."

"You can still track Quiller."

"No, it's finished. I'll be out of here by Monday. After I talk to Wheeler and see your records."

"And visit Parsons," Slaughter told him.

"Right. I haven't let that slip my mind."

"Twenty-three years? You really thought that they'd still be here?"

"Well, I had my hopes. I needed some big story to impress them."

"In New York?"

Dunlap's face was blank. "You're luckier than you imagine."

"Well, I made my own luck."

Dunlap took a breath and nodded. "Maybe," he said. "Maybe after this I'll have to spread out my own map." He looked all around. "The new republic." He snorted. "It's not all that failed." He started past the sagging doors, and Slaughter thought about the town as he went after him. The sun was descending. The wind had died. The compound felt lonelier than ever. Well, we'd better reach the car before the woods get too dark to see landmarks, Slaughter thought. "Let's get a drink," Dunlap said, and they walked along the lane between the ruined barracks.