A Wasteland of Strangers

Trisha Marx

I couldn’t sleep.

I lay there in the dark, listening to the rain patter on the roof and whisper at the windows. The house was quiet otherwise. Too quiet. It was after twelve and Daddy still wasn’t home and that meant he wouldn’t be until morning. Playing poker at the Brush Creek casino like he did one or two weekend nights a month. Every time, he’d get into a tournament and be out all night — come home around eight or nine, bleary-eyed and grumpy unless he’d won for a change, and fall into bed and sleep most of the day. I didn’t mind it when I was hanging with Anthony and Selena and Petey and the others, because then I could stay out all night myself. (That one Saturday I let Anthony stay over, sleep right here in my bed... we’d done the nasty three, no four times, bam bam bam bam, and he ran out of condoms after the second or third time. That must be the night he got me pregnant.) Tonight, though, I wished Daddy’d stayed home. Tonight I didn’t like being alone.

Anthony... he was one of the reasons I couldn’t sleep. Calling up, saying he had to see me. I hung up on him. Then, right after Daddy left, like Anthony’d been outside waiting and watching for him to go, there he was knocking on the door. As if I’d let him in. He only wanted to talk, he said. About our problem, he said. Problem! Like it was some dinky little hassle you could make go away by rapping about it. Like when we could just kiss and make up and everything’d be the way it was before. He stayed on the porch for about ten minutes, pleading and sweet-talking — “Trish, baby, you know how I feel about you, you got to know I love you” — before he finally gave up and went away.

I felt low after he was gone and I still feel low. Why’d he have to start in again with the love crap? He didn’t love me, all he’d wanted was to fuck me. Why’d he have to come around and make things worse by pretending he really cared?

Then there was Ms. Sixkiller. She knew it was me broke into her house and used her boat, all right. Her coming over and talking to Daddy proved she did. When he told me about it I said it wasn’t anything important and he didn’t need to call her, I would; but I didn’t. I’d have to talk to her pretty soon, though. I didn’t think she’d call the cops until she talked to me first, and if I waited until tomorrow afternoon to see her, Lori would already have taken John away someplace safe. Then it wouldn’t matter if the cops came and started ragging on me. I wouldn’t tell them anything. They couldn’t prove I’d been guilty of aiding and abetting a fugitive, could they?

The rain stopped and then started again. (Wow, that rain. If it’d been coming down like that this morning, the wind howling the way it was now, I’d never have been able to take Ms. Sixkiller’s boat across to Nucooee Point and back. No way.) The house creaked, made groaning sounds like John’s when I found him. I tried lying on my back, my stomach, one side and the other. I tried counting backward from one hundred. I tried a couple of other tricks. Nothing worked. I kept right on tossing and turning, wide awake.

I thought about John over there alone in the old lodge.

I thought about Lori with her banged-up face (that guy she was married to must be a real asshole) and how good she’d been to John and how I didn’t really mind sharing him with her. I’d never tell on her no matter what.

I thought about Daddy and what he’d say when I told him I was pregnant.

I thought about the Bitch and how she’d probably laugh her dyed blond head off when she found out.

I thought about the baby growing down there inside me.

And it was funny because then, thinking about the kid, I started to feel sleepy and not quite so alone. Well, I wasn’t alone, right? A baby was somebody else, even a half-formed baby. It was a life. First time I’d looked at it that way, and it was like a whole new perspective, not just on the kid but on me, too, as if maybe my life wasn’t such total crap after all. John had said if you hurt, you cared, and he was right. I hurt every time I thought about the baby, so that must mean I cared about it. I mean, I’m not gung ho on being a mother and I’m not one of those antiabortion types; I believe a woman has a right to choose what she does with her own body. But now there was this thing growing in my body, a part of me, and the choice was mine, not somebody else’s.

Just before I drifted off I knew I wasn’t gonna go to a clinic. My choice, and it didn’t matter what Daddy said or the Bitch said or Anthony said or anybody said. I was gonna have it and I was gonna keep it.

Audrey Sixkiller

Consciousness returned slowly, in a series of awarenesses. Of a sore throat and a swelling headache, first, as if my head had been pumped full of fluid. Then of motion under and around me. Then of suffocating darkness that stank of wool and dirt. Then that I was lying on my stomach on something hard but yielding... car seat... with my arms and hands drawn up behind me. I tugged and couldn’t separate them. Taped together at the wrists, the tape pulling and tearing at my skin. Ankles bound, too. And another piece of tape tight across my mouth.

I’m not afraid. I won’t panic.

Roughness along my cheek, and the wool-and-dirt smell. Filthy blanket. Thrown over the length of my body, covering my head, too. I managed to twist over onto my right side — movement that, even though I did it carefully, increased the pressure in my temples and behind my eyes.

Sounds: tires whispering on pavement; things whooshing past outside. From up front a faint gurgling, a satisfied, hissing breath, an explosive belch.

I snagged the blanket with the toe of my shoe, worked it down until I could ease my head free. Darkness thinned by the pale reflected glow of the dash lights. All I could see of the man driving was the shape of his skull above the seat back.

Other smells: beer, the sweetish animal stench from the garage — sweat and Old Spice. My stomach churned. I couldn’t seem to swallow; I locked my jaws instead, shut my eyes, and lay very still. If I vomited with the tape sealing my mouth I would strangle.

The nausea passed. I squirmed onto one hip, swung my legs off the seat, and then lowered them to the floor—

“Hey! You stay down back there.”

I froze. His voice... not as raspy as before. He wouldn’t be wearing the ski mask while he drove.

“Give me any trouble, you’ll wish you hadn’t. Hear me? I’ll use your own gun on that pretty face of yours. Yeah, that’s right, I found it in your purse. Blow your fuckin’ head off with it, maybe, like you tried to do to me the other night.”

Familiar voice. Listen, put a name and a face to it...

“Won’t be long now, bitch. We’re almost there.”

Almost where?

“Then I’ll give it to you like you never had it before. My cock first and then your gun. How’d you like that, huh? Fucked with your own gun.”

He laughed, and in the darkness his laughter was a Huk sound, a death sound.

But I was not afraid. I felt a cold fury, nothing more. No matter what he said, no matter what he did, I would not give him the satisfaction of making me afraid.

Richard Novak

Lori Banner was in a bad way. Disoriented, face all bruised and swollen and caked with dried blood. She’d wet herself, too; the urine odor was strong in the cold room. And she kept saying things like “I put that third eye in his head” and “I fell asleep in my chair. Can you believe that? What kind of person kills her husband and then goes to sleep for hours in the same room?”

Seeing her, listening to her brought back the images of Storm last night; the hurt started all over again, inside and out. I turned the questioning over to Mary Jo Luchek, the first officer on the scene, and walked out into the cold, wet night to watch for the ambulance, Doc Johanssen, the civilian photographer Nichols.

A small clot of citizens had gathered in spite of the rain and the late hour; they seem always to sprout like toadstools at the scene of any violent occurrence. Here they were huddled under porch roofs and umbrellas and inside cars. A few were reporters, homegrown and leftovers from last night; they converged on me as soon as I appeared, hurling questions like stones ahead of them.

“Chief, is there any connection between this killing and Storm Carey’s murder?” Dietrich, the kid who works for the Advocate.

“What kind of question is that? No, there’s no connection.”

“None with John Faith, either?”

“No. Domestic incident, that’s all.”

“What about Faith? Anything new on him?”

I didn’t answer that. The ambulance from Pomo General was approaching now, no siren but its flasher lights staining the night. I chased Dietrich and the rest back out to the sidewalk, told Mary Jo’s partner, Jack Turner, to keep them there. I spoke briefly to the attendants, showed them inside to where Mary Jo was talking to Lori Banner in the kitchen. Johannsen arrived a couple of minutes later and I took him in to where Earle Banner’s corpse was sprawled in a beat-up recliner.

“Deceased several hours,” he said when he’d had his preliminary look. “Advanced rigor and lividity.”

“She didn’t report it right away. His wife.”

“Why not?”

“Said she fell asleep, slept for five or six hours. Possible?”

“Quite possible,” Johanssen said. “Heavy, druglike sleep is not an uncommon reaction to severe stress. I remember one case during my residency—”

“Paramedics are with her now,” I said, “but maybe you’d better have a look at her, too.”

“Of course. You’re not done with the deceased yet, I take it?”

“Not yet. Nichols still hasn’t shown up.”

He gave me a look as if it was my fault we had to make do with a not always reliable civilian photographer, and went off to the kitchen. I returned to the porch. A couple of minutes later Mary Jo came out and joined me.

“Hospital case?” I asked her.

“Afraid so. She’s calm enough now; doesn’t look like they’ll need to medicate her here. If not... okay if I take her? She shouldn’t have to ride in the ambulance.”

“As long as Johanssen has no objections.”

“Do I read her her rights?”

“Depends on the details of the shooting. She tell you?”

“Most of it. Banner’d been drinking all day, out and at home both. Trashed a bunch of her personal possessions, and when she got back from shopping he started smacking her around. Then he got his handgun and threatened to shoot her like a horse. Can you believe that? She managed to knock the weapon out of his hand, pick it up, and when he came after her again she popped him in self-defense. Happens like that sometimes, right? In the heat of the moment.”

“Yeah,” I said, “it happens like that. What started the abuse this time?”

“Same as usual. He accused her of being with another man.”

“Was she?”

“No. She swears she was faithful. I believe her.”

“About the shooting, too?”

“Absolutely,” Mary Jo said. “Justifiable homicide, as far as I’m concerned. I’ll write it up that way.”

“Your call.”

“Will you back me, Chief? With the D.A.? I mean, Earle Banner was a pig and everybody in town knows it. She shouldn’t have to go to prison for shooting an animal that kept mauling her.”

I was silent. I trusted Mary Jo’s judgment; she may have been the youngest officer on the Porno force, but she had a good head on her shoulders and a solid grasp of police work. The silence had nothing to do with her or Lori Banner. It had to do with Storm, and Faith, and suffering and retribution.

“It’s not like she’ll get away with anything,” Mary Jo said. “She has to live with it the rest of her life. Punishment enough, isn’t it?”

“For some people.”

“For Lori Banner?”

I said, “For Lori Banner. No formal charges, Mary Jo. And don’t worry, I’ll back you all the way with Proctor.”

Audrey Sixkiller

For what seemed like a long time the car slithered along a mostly smooth, winding road, the tires hissing through rain glaze and puddles. No more laughter poured out of him, no more filthy threats; he seemed to be concentrating on his driving, on whatever thoughts crept and crawled through his sick mind. The windshield wipers clacking, the beat of the rain on the car’s roof, the clogged, nasal rasp of my breathing were the only sounds.

I did not let myself think about anything except a brick wall. A very old wall, the adobe bricks rough and chipped in places, the mortar holding them together, thin but strong. Moss growing in patches, tangles of ivy at one end, and over it all, bright and warm, splashes of late-afternoon sunlight that gave the wall the appearance of glowing, as if with a pale inner fire. William Sixkiller’s trick for inducing sleep or getting through any difficult static situation. Imagine something warm and pleasant. Focus on it, distinguish every detail, until it expands to fill your mind. I chose a wall, solid and unyielding, as a barrier against the forces of darkness massing on the other side.

Finally the car slowed and we turned off the smooth, paved road onto rough and muddy ground. The reflected shine of the headlights dimmed, but the dash lights remained on: driving now with just fog or parking lights. The car bounced, lurched, slid; something wet slapped against the passenger side, brushed along the window glass, and was gone. I watched the wall, the sunlight glowing on the waxy, stippled green of the ivy leaves. One of the tires thumped into a hole or deep rut with enough force to rock the car, nearly pitching me off the seat. He said, “Shit!” I continued to watch the bricks, the sunlight, the ivy.

The car stopped. All the lights went out briefly, then the dome light flashed on as he got out. Door slam. I expected him to open the rear door, drag me out or get in with me, but he had something else in mind. Footsteps squishing on grass or leaves, fading. Silence except for the rain.

I counted forty-seven ivy leaves, each a different shade or mixed shades of green. Then he was back; the rear door jerked open and he bent to fill the opening. Wearing the ski mask again, and that was good because if he was still hiding his face, it might mean he didn’t intend to kill me after all. If he did let me live, it would be his second-biggest mistake. I knew who he was now. And knowing made it worse, too; he was a man capable of violent excesses, sexual and otherwise, fueled by power, alcohol, drugs, or a combination of all three. I mustn’t let him know I knew his identity. Whatever he did to me, I must not let him know.

Hands on my body, and his voice raspy again when he said, “Here we go, bitch,” and he dragged me out of the car. Threw the blanket over my head to blot out the sight of him and the dark, dripping night. Lifted me, slung my body over his shoulder. Car door slamming. Moving away from it. Shoes crunching and slithering; a lurch and another sharp epithet. Stopping again. Creaking sound... door on rusty hinges. The whisper of the rain diminishing, the thud of his footfalls on solid wood. Inside a building of some kind. He’d switched on a flashlight: I could see downward through an open fold in the blanket, make out the faint backsplash of the beam as it probed restlessly from side to side.

He carried me through a narrow opening like a doorway, scraping my arm and head against one side of it. Then he halted again, shifted my weight, set me down hard on my feet, and ripped off the blanket. Then he pushed me, hard, so that I toppled backward onto something springy that smelled of must and old leather. I bounced, slid off to the floor. Light danced through heavy darkness, shapes appearing and vanishing again with the suddenness of phantoms; then it steadied on my face, bright enough to cause me to squint and turn my head aside. He’d put the flashlight down on some kind of chair nearby, so he’d have both hands free.

The hands grabbed hold of me again, lifted me roughly off the floor onto the yielding surface, straightened my legs on it. Couch... leather webbed with cracks, stuffing like white blood leaking through holes and tears. Then he ripped the tape off my mouth, viciously enough to take skin with it. I didn’t make a sound. Hurt me far worse than that and I still wouldn’t even whimper.

“Okay, bitch,” he said. He was breathing hard, but not from exertion. Excitement now — lust. His voice wheezed and quivered with it. “Now you get what you been begging for. All night long, just what you been begging for.”

He’d been at the edge of the light; now he came into it, stood at a quarter turn so I could see what he was doing. Unbuckling his belt. Unzipping his fly. Lowering and stepping out of his pants, his underpants. He was already aroused.

“Some hunk of bone, huh?” He came forward a pace, his hand around his sex, stroking it, holding it high like a pagan offering. “Biggest bone you ever had in your mouth. Suck it dry, yeah, suck the bone dry as a bone.”

No, I won’t, I thought, I’ll bite it off. But I knew I wouldn’t. He’d kill me for sure if I hurt him that way, and I did not want to die like this, here, at his mercy. I closed my eyes—

“Look at me, bitch. We both gonna watch this.”

— and I opened them again. He was advancing again, holding his sex, aiming it toward my mouth. I swallowed involuntarily. But only partway, because my throat was still sore, swollen as if with a blockage. If I couldn’t swallow...

I’m not afraid, I won’t be afraid.

The wall. Think of the wall, the bricks, the sunlight, the ivy, each leaf a different shade or mixed shades of green, glowing warm and bright and clean.

And he leaned close, almost touching my lips. The unwashed stench of him caused another upheaval in my belly.

And then—

Sudden sliding, scraping noise. A second light slashed on somewhere behind and to one side of me, this one even brighter, pinning the masked face with such dazzling brilliance that he threw up a startled arm and tried to turn away from it. In the next second something came hurtling through the crossing beams, a short, jagged-ended piece of wood, and exploded against the side of his head with a sound like a melon being split. He screamed, staggered, fell to one knee. A huge, dark shape rushed after him, swinging the length of wood, hitting him again as he groped for his pants. The next swing missed and that gave him time to tear the Ruger automatic out of his pants pocket, but not enough time to use it. The board swished down once more, thudding into the hand holding the gun, knocking the weapon loose and skittering it away across the floor.

He lurched to his feet, turning, still clutching his pants — no longer trying to fight, trying only to get away from the savage blows. His mask had been ripped loose along one side of his face; I had a clear look at the face, all bloody, the ear torn, one eye bulging as if it were about to burst from the socket. Then it was bare buttocks I saw, churning and pumping as he fled.

Confused scrambling after that, swirls and stabs of light. The two shapes coming together for a few seconds, creating a gigantic blob that filled the doorway across the room. Grunts, another thudding of wood against flesh and bone, another screech of pain. The shapes bursting apart, disappearing into the other room, the light forming wild, sweeping patterns and then something heavy hitting a wall or the floor. Running, banging sounds that soon faded into a thick, roaring silence.

I held my breath, waiting.

The flashlight beam steadied in the other room. Swung around and slid back into the one I was in. Man-shape behind it, heavy, uneven footfalls drawing closer. The beam shifted, picked me out, steadied on me but not directly in my eyes, allowing me to see him as he walked unsteadily into the stationary light from the other flash still propped on the nearby chair. Big, naked to the waist, a bandage obscuring part of his massive torso.

John Faith.

I was beyond shock or surprise. Not even capable yet of feeling relief. I lay there staring up at him.

“Son of a bitch got away,” he said thickly. “Almost had him. Would’ve if I was in better shape.”

I licked the inside of my dry mouth. Tried swallowing again, and this time I was able to do it. No crushed cartilage or damage to my trachea. Vocal chords?

“Pretty sure I’ve seen him somewhere before,” John Faith said. “You get a look at his face? Know who he is?”

It took a few seconds and two tries before I was able to speak. My voice was stronger than I’d expected.

“I know him,” I said. “His name is Munoz. Mateo Munoz.”

Harry Richmond

The rain woke me up. Not that I’d been in a deep sleep; I was too depressed to get a decent night’s rest. Damn rain only made it worse.

I could’ve had another full house tonight if it hadn’t been for the weather and the couldn’t-care-less media. Just three cabins occupied on a Saturday night, and none by a newshound. Still a few of them around, but they were all over in the town proper — and they’d be gone, too, soon enough, if John Faith’s body didn’t turn up pretty quick. Well, good riddance. Liars, users, full of phony promises that got a man all stirred up and hopeful and then left him high and dry, with his expectations hanging out limp as a flasher’s cock.

I rolled out of bed and put on my robe and went to the kitchen to find something to eat. Nothing much in the refrigerator appealed to me. Finally I dragged out a couple of powdered-sugar doughnuts I’d bought at Miller’s, poured a glass of milk to wash them down with. Comfort food. That was what Dottie used to call milk and doughnuts. Cake and chocolate eclairs and butter toffee and hot fudge sundaes and every other calorie-rich thing you could think of, too. All that comfort food was what blew her up to two hundred and eighty-seven pounds, what killed her quick that hot July night ten years ago. Quick and comfortable.

Dottie. Wasn’t often anymore that I thought about her, much less missed her, but tonight I wished she were sitting there across the table, helping me eat the powdered-sugar doughnuts. I’m not the kind of man who gets lonely; I like being by myself, doing for myself, not having to answer to anybody else. But sometimes, when I’m down like this, I crave other company besides my own. And I get mad as hell at Dottie for dying hog-fat the way she did, leaving me to run the Lakeside all by myself, put up with ten years’ worth of hassles and frustrations and limp expectations and then for a reward be forced to sell out and go live with an ungrateful, man-crazy daughter and her rotten teenage kids for the rest of my life. She’d gone easy, easy and comfortable; she hadn’t suffered. I was the one who’d suffered, who’d keep right on suffering. And when my time came I’d go hard, sure as God makes little green apples. Hard and uncomfortable.

I wedged half a doughnut into my mouth and the crumbs and sugar spilled down inside my pajama top and that made me so mad I smashed the plate against the wall and the glass of milk after it. Let fat-assed Maria clean up the mess tomorrow. Let it lie there until it rotted, for all I cared.

Those bastards. TV newswoman saying my interview was one of her best, promising it’d be shown today, and not even a whisper of my name much less the interview on the noon or seven o’clock or eleven o’clock news programs. Plenty of other Pomo residents and businesses getting attention, but not Harry Richmond and the Lakeside Resort. Chronicle reporter swearing he’d use my name and give the resort a plug in his story, and did he? Hell, no. Not a word. They wouldn’t show the interview or mention me tomorrow or any other day, either. Not the way my luck was running.

All I’d asked for was one lousy little break, a few seconds in the spotlight, some free publicity. A small businessman fighting to survive, a hardworking, taxpaying citizen, is entitled to that much, isn’t he? Why should others get some good out of what’s happened in Pomo and not me?

It’s not fair. It’s just not fair!

Audrey Sixkiller

“Don’t be afraid.” John Faith had found the Ruger automatic and was tucking it into the waistband of his trousers. “Munoz won’t be back and I won’t hurt you.”

“I’m not afraid.”

He flicked the flash beam over my face. “No, you’re not, are you? Of me or of him. He didn’t do anything to you before he brought you here?”

“Rape me? No.”

“Choked you, though... those marks on your throat. You breathe okay?”

“Yes. I’ll be all right.”

“Where’d he take you from?”

“My garage. Hiding inside when I came home.” Some of the shock was wearing off; I felt relief now, a loosening of the tension in my body which created a tingling weakness in the joints. “My hands,” I said. “They’re numb.”

“Roll over on your side so I can get at the tape.”

When I’d done that he knelt and set the flashlight down. I could feel his fingers at my back, on my upper arms, but I was numb below the elbows.

He asked, “Why’d he bring you here?”

So no one could hear my screams. “I’m not sure where we are.”

“Nucooee Point Lodge.”

“Yes. Of course.”

“He must’ve been here before. Seemed to know his way around.”

“So do you,” I said.

“Be glad I’m alive and I picked this place to hole up in.”

“I am. If you hadn’t been here...”

“Don’t think about it.”

“I can’t think about anything else.”

“Yeah. I wanted to jump him sooner, but I had to make sure I took him by surprise. I’m hurting and I wouldn’t have done you or me any good if I’d lost the fight. But I’d feel better if he was lying on the floor right now with a broken head.”

I said nothing.

“Bad choice of words,” he said. “You probably won’t believe it, but I didn’t kill Storm Carey.”

“All right.”

“Gospel truth. Okay, your hands are free.”

“I can’t feel them.”

“Here, I’ll help you.” He lifted one arm, laid it across my hip. Turned me by the shoulders, gently, and propped me against the couch’s side rest, then lifted the other arm onto my lap. Both hands felt like blobs of dead flesh. He took them in his big fingers and began to massage them. “Tell me when they start to tingle.”

It took three or four minutes.

He kept it up for another minute or so after I told him, then let go and got slowly to his feet. Light from the flash caught his face and upper body; red smears stained the bandage on his chest.

“You’re bleeding.”

“Wounds tore open again during the fight.”

“Bullet wounds?”

“Oh yeah. Good old Chief Novak. His aim was a little off.”

“You broke his nose.”

“Did I? Good.”

“He believes you’re guilty. Really believes it.”

“Sure he does.” John Faith switched off the other torch, sat wearily at the far end of the couch; the beam from his flash lay at an oblique angle between us. “Pomo’s a hell of a deceptive place,” he said then.

“Deceptive?”

“Looks nice and peaceful, but underneath it’s a snake pit. I’ve been in wide-open boomtowns that weren’t as hostile.”

“It isn’t that bad.”

“Wasn’t until I got here, you mean.”

I didn’t answer, and he misunderstood my silence.

“Yeah. Right,” he said. “What the hell, you might as well blame me for what Munoz tried to do to you.”

“I don’t blame you. You’re not one of his kind.”

“What kind is that?”

“The ones who hate and fear women, who use sex as a weapon.”

“That the only reason he went after you? Or was it something personal?”

“Well, I was responsible for him being expelled from school two years ago. Another teacher and I caught him using cocaine in an empty classroom. The other teacher wanted to let him off with a warning. I thought it was too serious for that.”

“Two years is a long time to nurse a grudge.”

“Not for a boy who suddenly decides he’s a man.”

“There was an attempted rape the other night,” John Faith said. “Novak questioned me about it. Guy wearing a ski mask, he said. Was that Munoz after you?”

“Yes. He tried to break into my house.”

“Maybe you’re not his first victim. Maybe he’s the one...” He let the rest of the sentence trail off.

“The one who killed Storm Carey. Is that what you were going to say?”

He nodded. “Didn’t look like she’d been raped, though. Was she?”

“No.”

“But she could’ve fought him and he killed her before he had a chance to do anything else. He’s the kind who’d panic in a situation like that. And then run in a hurry, like he did tonight.”

“He’ll keep on running,” I said. “He must know we saw his face.”

“He knows it, all right.”

“Then we have to notify the authorities right away. Before he can get too far—”

“I let you go and you notify them, and then I give myself up. That’s what you mean.”

“It’s the only way.”

“For me to get off the hook? Uh-uh. If there was any proof Munoz killed the Carey woman, then, yeah, I’d take the chance. But there isn’t any proof. Novak and the rest aren’t looking any further than me.”

“They can make him confess when they catch him—”

“If they catch him. If he’s guilty. No guarantees any way you look at it. Besides, the law’s already got me for assaulting a police officer and unlawful flight, among other things. I’d still go to prison.”

“Extenuating circumstances. The charges would be dropped—”

“Would they? I doubt it. How’re your hands?”

“... My hands?”

“Feeling back in them yet?”

“Yes.” Pins and needles now. “My ankles...”

“We’ll leave them taped. Don’t try to take it off.”

“You’re not letting me go?”

“Not tonight. Neither of us is going anywhere tonight.”

“But Mateo Munoz...”

“Never mind him for now.” John Faith stood again, grimacing. “I have to change these bandages. You stay put.”

He walked away, his light picking out another abandoned couch at an angle across from the one I was on. Candles in tin holders sat on a pair of folding chairs at either end; he struck a match and lit one candle, then the other. He brought the second over and set it on the chair near me, positioning the chair so I would be visible in the flickering glow.

Several items were piled on the other couch: blankets, clothing, food, medical supplies. I watched him sit among them, wedge his torch between two cushions so its beam was fixed on his chest, and then peel off the bloody bandage and apply some sort of ointment to the wound. Now and then he glanced up to make sure I hadn’t moved. When he was done taping a fresh bandage in place he repeated the process, with greater difficulty, with another wound in back, under his arm.

Sweat oiled his bare skin when he’d finished. He shut off the flashlight, I suppose to conserve its batteries; took a long drink of bottled water. For a time he sat limply, resting. Then he stood again, brought the bottle to me.

“Thirsty?”

I nodded.

“Use your hands all right now?”

“Yes.”

He let me have the water. And another, smaller bottle: aspirin for my sore throat and the pulsing ache in my temples. Swallowing the water was painful enough; getting four aspirin down, one at a time, hurt even more. The skin was so tender around my Adam’s apple it felt as if a layer of it had been scraped away.

When I could speak again I asked him, “How did you get here, John Faith?”

“Half the name’s enough. Take your choice.”

“How, John? All the way to Nucooee Point?”

“Same way I managed not to drown last night. Strong survival skills.”

“You couldn’t have made it here by yourself. Someone helped you. Brought you over in a boat.”

“Wrong. I brought myself.”

“Trisha Marx. In my boat.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The food and medical supplies — she got those for you, too.”

“You think so? Is this Trisha a doctor or a nurse?”

“Of course not.”

“You saw the bandages I had on before. Much more professional than the ones I put on myself, right?”

“Are you saying someone else besides Trisha helped you?”

“Someone else, period. Doctor, man you don’t know.”

“I don’t believe that,” I said. “There isn’t a doctor in Pomo County who would give aid and comfort to a fugitive.”

“Don’t be too sure about that.”

“Trisha can get in a lot of trouble, you must know that.”

“Not if you don’t start throwing her name around. Tell the cops about Munoz, tell them about me, tell them I had help if you want to, but don’t mention Trisha Marx’s name. Give the kid a break.”

“How do you know she’s a kid unless—”

“I met her last night, on the Bluffs. Gave her a ride home before I went out to Storm Carey’s place. Her old man knows about it, among others.” He paused. “You going to keep her out of it?”

“Yes. But you have to let me go.”

“I will. Just not yet.”

“When?”

“In the morning. Before noon, when I leave.”

“Hours from now. We just sit here until then?”

“Sit, talk, sleep — whatever. You’ll be comfortable enough.”

“Is Trisha coming for you? With a car?”

“No. That’s enough about her. My ride out of here has nothing to do with Trisha Marx, I swear that to you. All right?”

I believed him. He was too vehement, too fiercely protective of her. He’d let Trisha help him once, at considerable risk to both of them, because he’d had no other choice. But it hadn’t set well with him. The second person... I didn’t understand that, or have a clue as to who it might be. Not a doctor; that part I didn’t believe.

He said, “You won’t see who it is. And you won’t see me leave.”

“Tape my hands again? Blindfold me?”

“Tape your hands, but in front where you can get at them with your teeth. It’ll take a while for you to get loose and flag down a car on the highway. By the time you make it to a phone I’ll be long gone.”

“Gone where? A man wanted for murder... there’s no place that’s safe.”

“I know it. But it’s better than rotting in jail.” He laughed, a humorless bark. “Me and Richard Kimble.”

“You’ll never have a minute’s peace. Have you thought about that?”

“I’ve thought about it.”

“And it doesn’t bother you?”

“More of the same, that’s all. I’m used to it.”

“Used to what?”

“Running,” John Faith said. “I been doing it, one form or another, most of my life.”

Anthony Munoz

Fingers on your window in the middle of the night, man, it can’t be nothing good. Rap, rap, rap, and I was off the bed and rubbing my eyes. But I couldn’t see nothing at the window, just rain patterns on the glass and the black night beyond. I got hold of my aluminum Little League bat and drifted over there slow in the dark.

Rap, rap, rap. Then he must’ve seen my shape, because the fingers quit and he called out, “About time, Anthony. Open up, for Chrissake. Lemme in.”

Mateo. What the hell, man?

I flipped the catch and hauled the window up. Rain and cold blew in. I backed off as Mateo climbed over the sill, laid the bat on the card table I use for a desk, and then flicked on the lamp there.

“Shut that freakin’ light off!”

I snapped the room dark again, quick, but not before I got a straighton look at him. It bugged my eyes. Clothes all wet and torn, whole left side of his face a piece of raw meat. Scraped, swelled up, bloody. And half his ear torn away, rest of it hanging there dripping red. And his eyes... wild, man, half bugfuck. Scared. That was the worst thing of all, the thing that chilled my guts. I’d never seen Mateo scared before. Never.

“Man, what happened to you?”

“No time for that. Listen, get your—”

“Fight, man? Some dudes jump you?”

“I said there ain’t no time!” The scare was in his voice, too. It shook like an old woman’s. “Get your shit together, make it fast. We got to move.”

“Mateo, what’re you talkin’ about?”

“Clothes, cash, whatever else you need.”

“Need for what?”

“Travelin’, man. Don’t be thick.”

“Where to?”

“What’d we talk about this morning, huh? L.A.”

“Now? Just pick up and split in the middle of—”

“Yeah, now, yeah. Haul ass.”

“You in trouble, man?”

“Keep your voice down! Wake up the old man and old lady, for Chrissake?”

“You got to tell me what happened.”

“I don’t have to tell you squat. You comin’ or not?”

“I don’t know—”

“Don’t know, don’t know, that’s all you know how to say.”

“I’m just tryin’ to find out—”

“You with me or what?”

“Always with you, man. But give me a clue what’s goin’ down here. Cops? Heat on you?”

“Yeah, all right, I’ll be hot as hell pretty soon. The bitch saw my face, man. Her and the dude busted me up like this.”

“What bitch? What dude? Jesus, Mateo, what’d you do?”

“iCagon de mierdas! Quit asking stupid questions!”

“Hey, man, don’t dis me. You’re the one—”

“I got no more time to waste with you, Anthony. Comin’ or not? Yes or no, spit it out.”

It was in me to say yes. He was my brother, man, I looked up to him all my life. But he done something real raw this time — the way he was beat up said so, the scare in his eyes said so, my chilled guts said so. Cops after him... I didn’t want a piece of that. I’m no outlaw. I never saw nothing cool in being an outlaw.

“I’m no outlaw, man,” I says.

“It ain’t gonna be like that.”

“Yeah it is. I wouldn’t be no good at—”

“How much cash you holding?”

“What?”

“You heard me. How much you got stashed?”

“Not sure, man. Fifty, sixty bucks...”

“Give it to me. The whole wad and no more crap.”

I went and got my stash from behind the loose board in my closet. When I gave it to him, up close like that, I could smell him, and he stank. He stank of the fear that was crawling in him.

“Last chance, bro. You gonna go to L.A. with me or stay here and rot in this hole?”

I flashed on Trisha, the kid she had in the oven — my kid. My brother, man! Yeah, but he’d crossed the line, done something raw this time, turned outlaw, and I couldn’t get past the stink of his fear. I couldn’t get past it, man.

“I can’t do it,” I says. “You’re my brother, I’d do anything for you, you know that, but this—”

“You ain’t my brother. I ain’t got a brother no more.”

“Hey, Mateo—”

“Fuck you, Anthony,” he says. “Vaya a la chingada,” and he went out fast through the window into the rain and dark.

But he left the stink of his fear behind. I couldn’t chase it even with the window up and the cold wetness blowing in. It hung there, heavy, and I kept smelling it, and the more I smelled it, the sicker I felt. It wasn’t like the stink of a brother, not anymore. It was like the stink of somebody I didn’t even know.

Audrey Sixkiller

Time passed in a seemingly endless series of ticks and slow sweeps and frozen moments. For long periods it was as if I could hear the passage of each second — now like the faint pulsing of a clock just outside the range of hearing, now like the slow, steady beat of a heart. Then it would seem suddenly to stop. Then it would start again, lurch along, and then settle into the same methodical tempo as before.

William Sixkiller: “Patience is the great virtue of cats and Indians.” Yes, but I had lost that virtue tonight. In its place was a restless need to be gone from this place, a frustrated sense of urgency even though Mateo Munoz was far away by now. Patience disappears from cats and Indians both when they are held against their wills.

Now and then John Faith would get up from the other couch and pace for a while, back and forth, back and forth. Once when he did that I complained that my legs were growing numb, and he did me the favor of unwinding the tape, rubbing circulation into the ankles, helping me stand and letting me walk awhile. I thought then of trying to run from him, hiding in the trees once I was outside, but it was a hollow scheme. Even if I could get my hands on one flashlight, he still had the other; and I didn’t know the way out of the lodge and he must know it. I thought, too, of telling him I had to relieve myself and asking for privacy and taking advantage of that. But then I would not even have a chance at the flashlight and I couldn’t hope to escape by blundering around in the dark. Besides, at some point I really would need to relieve myself and it would be an embarrassment to both of us if I forced him to stand watch over me when that time came.

When my ankles were taped again he returned to the other couch and I drew the wool blanket he’d given me to my chin. It was still raining steadily, the dampness intensifying the cold in there. For the third or fourth time, upstairs, there were faint chittering cries and leathery flutterings. Bats. They didn’t like the wet weather any more than I did; it made hunting difficult for them.

Except for the rain and the night sounds, we sat in a monotony of silence. We had said all there was to say on the subjects of Mateo Munoz and Storm Carey and the fugitive status of John Faith, and there was little else to talk about. But when the silence began to drag intolerably—

“John, there’s something I’d like to know.”

“... What’s that?”

“Earlier you said you’ve been running most of your life. What did you mean?”

“Nothing. Another bad choice of words.”

“They sounded true to me.”

Silence.

“Has the law been after you before?”

“Once or twice. Minor violations, if it matters.”

“Who else?”

Silence again.

“John? Please talk to me.”

“People like you,” he said.

“Like me? I don’t understand.”

“Ordinary people. Average.”

“You think I’m average? A Native American woman?”

“You are as far as I’m concerned.”

“I still don’t understand,” I said. “Why would you run from ordinary, average people?”

“I don’t run from them. That’s the wrong word, run — makes me sound like a coward. I don’t back down from anybody. And I don’t run unless I’ve got no other choice.”

“Like last night.”

“Like last night. I suppose Novak said I was running away when he showed up, but it wasn’t because I’m guilty. I would’ve reported what I found. Anonymously, yeah, because I knew what’d happen if I called from the house and identified myself. Exactly what did happen — I got blamed.”

“You only made things worse by assaulting him, trying to escape.”

“Maybe. But I wasn’t thinking too clearly at the time. You get pushed around enough, backed into enough corners, you figure your only chance is to push back.”

“Has it really been that bad for you?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you how bad. Pomo’s the worst by far, but there’ve been other times, other places...” He shook his head, as if shaking away memories. “The hell with it,” he said.

“So that’s why you shy away from people.”

“Shy away? Let’s say I’m better off with my own company.”

“Isn’t there anyone you’re close to? Someone in your family—”

“I don’t have a family.”

“Friends?”

“No friends, either. And no woman, if that’s your next question. I made the mistake of getting married once. I won’t make it again.”

“What happened? Or don’t you want to talk about it?”

“No, I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s just say she decided big and ugly wasn’t as exciting as she thought it’d be.”

“You’re not ugly, John.”

“The hell I’m not. I look in the mirror, I see what everybody else sees. Big, ugly, mean-looking... dangerous. Face and body like mine, I must be some kind of monster.”

“There’s nothing that awful about the way you look.”

“Nothing a team of plastic surgeons couldn’t fix. Don’t patronize me.”

“I wasn’t patronizing you, and I didn’t say it to get on your good side. I mean it.”

“Okay, you mean it. Some people don’t judge a book by its cover. But ask most of your friends and neighbors what they think, what they thought the minute they laid eyes on me. Ask the guy who wrote the newspaper editorial, ask Novak, ask Trisha Marx’s father.”

“That’s the poison talking,” I said.

“The what?”

“Poison. Indians believe there’s poison everywhere, in all things. Each person is born with some, and we can be infected with more, by others and by ourselves. Poison is the handmaiden of hate — my father said that. Together they can sour our hearts, eventually destroy us.”

“I get the point, teacher. So there’s poison in me, plenty of it. But I can’t get rid of it without getting rid of myself. Simple fact is, I wouldn’t be sitting here with a couple of holes in me and a murder charge hanging over my head if I looked like the frigging boy next door. And if you don’t believe it it’s because you don’t live inside this body.”

“No, but I live inside an Indian woman’s body. I’m not a stranger to mindless prejudice.”

A few seconds trickled away before he said, “I don’t doubt it. So you ought to be able to understand how it is with me.”

“Up to a point.”

“What point? The amount of violence I’ve had to deal with? I’m a man, oversized and ugly, and that makes me a target.”

“A small young woman isn’t a target?”

“Sure she is. But her odds, your odds against it are a lot better than mine. You haven’t had much violence in your life before tonight, I’ll bet.”

“Not directed at me, no. But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen again. Or that if it does, I’ll survive it. There are as many men in this county who hate women and Indians as there are who hate big white strangers. The same men, many of them.”

“Look, I don’t want to argue with you. Maybe you’re right, maybe we’re more alike than I think and it’s only the kind and amount of crap we have to deal with that makes us different.”

“There’s another difference, too. You keep dwelling on your crap, your poison. You let it rule your life.”

“And you don’t? No sourness or anger in your heart? Well, then, you’re a better person than me. Or else you’ve got a thicker hide.”

“I didn’t say I have no bitterness or anger. I’m angry right now. My skin is thick enough, but I can still be poisoned.”

“You don’t show it.”

“Indians learn to mask their emotions,” I said. “And I channel mine into teaching, volunteer work.”

“So you are a better person. Can’t be easy to keep a mask on or to turn the other cheek in a place like Pomo.”

“Easier than it would be if I drifted from place to place, always alone. I was born in Pomo, it’s my home.”

“Right,” John Faith said. “And that’s the biggest difference between you and me.”

“What is?”

“I’ve never had a home.”

That was all he would say; after the words were out he seemed to retreat inside himself again. It’s the only place he feels comfortable and secure, I thought. Within his own skin.

I watched him for a time, sitting motionless and staring into the cold shadows beyond the candle glow. Swaddled in my thermal blanket, he seemed not nearly so large, but aged, shrunken somewhat, like an old man waiting quietly for his spirit to leave and enter the Abode of the Dead. But the illusion was false. I remembered him as he’d been earlier, when he’d finished changing his bandages: his bare torso sweat-oiled, the candlelight giving it a burnished look so that he resembled a life-size figure sculpted in bronze; shadows altering the rugged contours of his head and face without softening them. In that aspect, huge and dark and stoic, he might have been one of the People — a warrior marked by spear and arrow wounds after battle. One of the legendary chiefs, perhaps. Konocti, Kah-bel...

But that, too, was illusion. When he’d gotten up to bring the water bottle to me, he’d become again what he really was: another big, unfathomable white man. That was what I’d thought at the time, anyway. Now I wondered if there might not actually be something of the warrior in him, a man different from other men, strong, and big in ways other than size. I was not sure I liked him, or would care to know him well; but I did understand and feel compassion for him, and I sensed that he was an honest person, a good person, and most if not all of what he’d told me tonight was the truth. How can a wounded fugitive who risks his own safety to save a woman he barely knows from sexual assault be either a cold-blooded murderer or a threat to any community?

But the way I felt didn’t change the fact that I was his prisoner and would remain his prisoner for several more hours. Nor did it help the time pass any more quickly. Nor did it prevent my body from protesting the treatment it had been subjected to tonight, or exhaustion from creeping through me until my limbs felt as heavy as pepperwood logs. My eyelids were heavy, too. Yet it seemed important to stay awake and alert; to give in to sleep was a kind of betrayal.

I dozed in spite of myself. And jerked awake.

What time was it? I fought the urge to look at my watch.

So cold in here. I snuggled down deeper under the blanket.

Had Mateo Munoz killed Storm? If John Faith was innocent, then Munoz must be guilty. Suppose he ran all the way into Mexico? He had family there. Could the authorities find him, bring him back...?

Dozing again. Wake up! Stay awake.

But I was so tired...

Richard Novak

It was nearly three before I went home again. Details to clear up, my recommendation on the shooting death of Earle Banner to bolster Mary Jo’s report. Two cups of coffee and some pointless talk with Verne Erickson. And still no word on John Faith. It was the frustration of that, more than weariness and throbbing pain, that finally prodded me out of the station and back to the house.

Audrey wasn’t there. Just Mack, and my bed neatly made. I was relieved at first, but when I popped another codeine capsule and crawled into the sack, it seemed cold and empty. Audrey’s scent lingered, and I remembered the warmth of her nearly nude body pressed against mine. A feeling of loneliness and isolation welled up, the kind a castaway on a sand spit that was shrinking away around him might feel. Much as I didn’t want to admit it, I needed someone now more than ever, someone who cared — I needed Audrey.

The painkiller knocked me out before too long and I slept another five hours and woke up just as tired, just as empty. Audrey was on my mind as I showered and shaved and dressed. Audrey and Storm, intertwined, like some sort of two-headed creature. I’d treated her shabbily, not only last night but for most of the time I’d known her. She cared so much; couldn’t I care just a little?

I put the leash on Mack and took him for a short walk in the thin, cold rain. By the time I came back I’d built up a strong urge to see Audrey, apologize to her. Nothing more than that; I wouldn’t tell her I needed her because I was afraid the need was surface, temporary, and I wouldn’t hurt her with false hopes. Just let her know that she mattered to me, even if I hadn’t shown it before.

I drove to her house. Her garage door was all the way up, her car slotted inside, but I didn’t think anything of it until there was no answer to my doorbell ring. I went around back, knocked on the door there and called her name; still no answer. Why would she go away and leave the garage door wide open? And where would she go in weather like this without taking her car? Not off somewhere in her boat; I could see the Chris-Craft, tarp-covered, on the lift inside the dock shed.

An uneasy feeling began to work inside me. The attempted break-in Thursday night, the threatening phone call yesterday morning... somebody stalking her. The feeling worsened when I found the piece of cardboard taped over the broken bathroom window. What’d happened here? I punched out the cardboard, climbed through, and took a quick look through the house.

No sign of her. Except for her car in the garage, there was no indication she’d been here at all last night after leaving my place. The furnace was off; the interior was chill and damp.

I climbed back through the window and went into the garage. The car’s hood was cold, too; it hadn’t been driven in several hours. The sense of wrongness was so strong now it was like a squeezing pressure in my chest and groin. I opened the driver’s door, checked the front seat, then the backseat. Nothing to find. I slammed the door, started to turn, and stepped on something. I looked down at the floor. Lipstick. I bent to pick it up, saw something else, and dropped to all fours to peer under the car.

Her purse was there, open, her wallet another of several items that had been spilled out of it. The one thing that wasn’t there was the Ruger automatic she’d told me she was going to carry for protection.

Douglas Kent

I woke up at dawn’s early light, but there wasn’t much of same, just gloom and rain, so I went back to sleep. I was awake again at nine, feeling fine, feeling fine. No hangover this a.m., whoop-de-doo. And some Good Samaritan of a sneak thief seemed to have made off with my heavy bag of sticks, whoop-de-dee. Walking unburdened, walking tall, I padded into the bathroom, shook some dew off the old lily, and had a squint at the Kent phiz in the mirror.

Amazing. I actually looked alive this morning. Doubly amazing, in fact, considering my morbid contemplations of last night. Eat your heart out, Richard Cory, you gentleman from sole to crown, you imperially slim rectal aperture. You may have put a bullet in your puddin’ head one fine night, but I didn’t and won’t be a copycat. My demons are better than your demons, my demons can lick your demons any old day of the week.

Out to the kitchen. More rain and gloom at the windows, but ’twas of no import, for I was bright and sunny inside. Keep your sunny side up, eh, Kent? Oyez, oyez.

One glass, relatively clean, plucked from the cupboard. Splash in approximately two inches of ice-cold, delicious orange juice. Add approximately six inches of crystal-clear, delicious salve. Stir lightly with index finger. Over the lips and over the gums... ahh! Quaff again until glass is empty. Ahh! Repeat process, once immediately and then as often as needed.

Had I remembered to turn on my answering machine before doddering off to the sack? Wonder of wonders, I had. No messages, however. So. Nothing new on the fate of Faith or young Jaydee would’ve rung up as promised. Too bad, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles. Heigh-ho! One thing at a time. All in due course, everything in its proper order. The Faith will be kept when the time comes to keep the Faith.

I chuckled. Kent really was in fine fettle this a.m.

“Yes you are, pal. In fine fettle, and for less we’ll not settle.”

I turned around. Pa Kent’s .38 was sitting in the center of the table where I’d left him. Old enemies? Hell, no. New friends. Bosom buddies. My pal, Roscoe. I winked at him; he winked back.

“We had a gay old time last night, didn’t we, pal?”

“Gay, of course, meaning lighthearted and carefree.”

“Of course.”

“Then we certainly did, pal.”

“Shall we reopen lines of communication? Shall we talk of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings? Shall we discuss the imminent collapse of Western civilization?”

“No,” Roscoe said.

“Why not?”

“Guns can’t talk.”

“Damn right they can’t,” I said.

We both laughed until my sides hurt.

Oyez, I hadn’t felt this cheerful since Pa Kent took his last late-night dive.

Harry Richmond

My mood wasn’t any better in the morning. The media cheating me the way they had kept right on rankling. I managed to be civil to my few Saturday-night guests when they checked out, but Maria was late again because of church. Missed the early Mass or something, some damn excuse that I didn’t pay attention to, and then instead of just skipping it altogether or putting her praying on hold until evening and coming to do her maid’s work on time, she went to the nine o’clock Mass and didn’t show up until quarter to eleven. I laid into her pretty good. More than I would have if I’d been in a better mood, probably, but those Indians have a way of setting me off. Say they’re sorry but they don’t mean it. Look at you with their big liquid eyes and you just know that behind them they’re thinking about how much they’d like to cut your throat or lift your scalp. Savages, the lot of them, and no amount of education or religion or government handouts will ever civilize them.

Maria knew better than to argue with me. Just stood there and took what I dished out and then went and did her work and left again without saying a word. I walked around after she was gone and checked up on her, to make sure she hadn’t sloughed off or done something else to get back at me, like stealing or damaging property, but there was none of that. And there better not ever be any of that if she wanted to keep her job and her fat ass out of jail.

Nothing much for me to do on a rainy Sunday except watch the morning NFL game on TV. In the middle of the first quarter Ella called. First time she’d bothered in a month. She’d been reading about the murder and everything, did I know any of the people involved? Gossip hound, like her mother. I cut her short on that subject, so then she started in with the kids’ lives and her own. Jason said this, Kim did that, she’d heard this really funny story at the salon but it was kind of risque so maybe she’d better not tell me over the phone, and all the while she was jabbering I could hear an unfamiliar male voice in the background, jabbering with my granddaughter. Somebody she’d just met, no doubt, and he’d spent the night like all the rest. My daughter, the slut. Try to raise your only kid right and this was what you got, a slut who was raising her daughter to be the same and her son to be a dope fiend. Jason had already been arrested once on a marijuana charge. I didn’t even ask her about “the new man in my life,” as she’d have put it; I said I got to go, the Packers were about to score another touchdown, and hung up on her.

The Packers scored, all right, and no sooner did they kick off to the Cowboys than I had another interruption. Chief Novak, to pester me again. I heard the bell go off on the front desk and thought it might be an early guest and went out to find him and his bruised and bandaged face. Nobody with him today. And looking about as hangdog as I felt. Tense, too, as though there’d been some new development that hadn’t set well with him.

“What’s up, Chief?”

“I’m looking for Audrey Sixkiller.”

“That so?”

“Have you seen her last night or today?”

“Nope.”

“Any idea where she might be?”

“Nope.”

“Anyone mention her name to you recently?”

“Nope. You think we have mutual friends, Chief?”

“I don’t think anything,” he said. “I’m grabbing at straws. I’ve been trying to find her all morning, all over town.”

“How come? She do something?”

“Personal matter.”

“Uh-huh. Well, you know how Indians are.”

“... What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Never around when you want ’em, always off doing what pleases them. They’re not the same as us.”

That touched off a scowl. He said snottily, “Don’t like Indians much, do you, Harry? Or anybody with a different skin.”

“You saying I’m a racist? Me?”

“Oh hell no, not you.”

“Look here, you don’t have any call to insult me just because you can’t find your woman.”

“She’s not my woman.”

“No? Somebody’s woman, that’s for sure.”

He laid his hands on the counter and leaned toward me, so suddenly that I couldn’t help stepping back. “Don’t play games with me. You have something to say, spit it out.”

I spit it out, all right. Might not have — might not’ve even thought of it — if I hadn’t been in such a low-down mood and if he hadn’t started throwing his weight around and accusing me of being a racist. As it was, I felt like sticking it to him a little. Sticking it to somebody the way it’d been stuck to me by the media. So I did. And I put a little twist on it, too, that hadn’t even crossed my mind until that minute.

“You been over to Nucooee Point?” I asked him.

“Nucooee Point? No, why?”

“Might be where she’s at. Her and her somebody.”

“What the hell’re you getting at?”

“She landed that boat of hers at the Point yesterday morning. I happened to see her, and that’s sure enough where she went. Nothing down there but the old lodge and a lot of privacy. No reason for her to go there all by herself unless she was meeting somebody, now is there, Chief?”

Audrey Sixkiller

“It’s noon, John,” I said. “Whoever you’re waiting for isn’t coming.”

“He’s coming, all right.”

“Then why hasn’t he been here by now?”

No answer.

“Suppose he doesn’t come. What then?”

No answer.

“You can’t walk away from here, you know that. And the two of us can’t stay here indefinitely. You know that, too.”

“Okay, I know it.”

“Let me go, and give yourself up, John.”

“No.”

“It’s the only way you have a chance.”

“It’s the only way I don’t have a chance.”

“I’ll testify for you. I’ll tell them what you did for me last night—”

“That won’t stop a jury from convicting me of murder.”

“You won’t be tried if Mateo Munoz is guilty. Please listen—”

“I’m through listening, Audrey. I don’t want to hear any more. Either you shut up or I’ll put tape over your mouth. I mean it. You want your mouth taped shut?”

I didn’t; I shook my head.

“All right, then. Be quiet.”

He was pacing again, as he’d done most of the morning. Earlier it had been for exercise and to work off nervous energy; he’d slept some, too, and he seemed stronger. Now the pacing was the result of tension and frustration. As I watched him I thought again of how warriorlike he was at times, even dressed in slacks and shirt and an old corduroy jacket that was too small across the shoulders and chest. The Ruger automatic inside his belt added a renegade touch. John Faith: warrior, renegade, misfit. A man apart, a man shunned.

Nearly five hours of exhausted sleep had renewed my strength as well. The headache and throat soreness were mostly gone; only a stiffness in my legs and lower back bothered me, discomfort that would’ve been worse if John Faith hadn’t let me unbind my ankles and walk for a short time. He’d also given me milk, and bread and cheese to eat. Until these past few minutes, there had been little conversation between us. The night had invited as much intimacy as a man and a woman with too many fundamental differences and too few similarities could share. The pale morning light that seeped into the lodge caused us to pull away from each other. In a sense it was like a one-night stand between strangers: closeness and urgency in the dark, and in the morning, distance and embarrassment at having opened yourself up, even a little, to someone you didn’t know.

“John,” I said, “I’d like to walk again.”

“No.”

“My toes are starting to get numb.”

“Tape’s not that tight. Ankles or wrists.”

He’d bound my hands more than an hour ago, in front of me as he’d promised. I lifted my arms; with my fingers splayed away from one another and the tape joining the wrists, my hands looked like an obscene caricature of the Christian symbol of prayer. I lowered my arms again, clasped my fingers between my drawn-up knees.

Something creaked and scraped in another part of the lodge, the dining room or beyond, at the side. John Faith heard it, too; he stood still with his head cocked, listening. The sounds weren’t repeated. Rats, probably. They were everywhere in the old building, in the walls and under the floors; now and then you could hear them scurrying, gnawing. He’d been wise to put the food up next to him while he slept. The candlelight alone wouldn’t have been enough to keep hungry rats away.

He said, “Going to take another quick look outside.”

“He’s not coming, John.”

“Couple of minutes is all I’ll be gone. Don’t try taking that tape off your ankles.”

“I won’t.”

He moved off through the archway, into the dining room. Enough daylight penetrated so he could make his way without using a flashlight. Only one candle still burned, the one on the chair near where I sat. Through its guttering flame I watched John Faith meld with the shadows beyond the archway. I leaned forward then, reached down to my ankles, but not to try picking at the tape. It would be foolish to disobey him at this point. All I did was rub the insteps in an effort to improve circulation—

A chain of noises jerked my head up. Thumps, scrapes, a sharp thud, and then a muffled, harsh voice that was not John Faith’s — all from the far end of the dining room or in the room beyond. I sat up straight, staring in that direction. Silence again. Then footsteps. And then John Faith reappeared in a slow, stiff walk, his hands out away from his body at shoulder level. He wasn’t alone; somebody moved close behind him, half hidden by his bulk and by shadows.

He was two or three paces into the lobby when I heard him grunt and saw him stagger forward, off balance — shoved hard in the back. The other man was still just a dark shape standing spread-legged, both arms extended in front, objects clutched in both hands, making them seem unnaturally elongated. In the next instant a flashlight beam stabbed out through the gloom, and in its back glow I saw the hard set of the man’s face.

“Dick!”

He didn’t answer or even glance my way. The light held steady on John Faith, who had caught his balance and was turning around, slowly, his hands still out away from his body.

“Go ahead, you son of a bitch,” Dick yelled at him, “make a try for that gun in your belt. Give me an excuse.”

The tone of his voice caused chills to run over me. Implacable, choked with rage. He’d meant what he said.

John Faith knew it too. He stood rigid.

“I ought to do it anyway. If you hurt her—”

“Dick, no! He didn’t do anything to me. It was Mateo Munoz... he’d have raped and maybe killed me if... Dick, John Faith saved my life!”

Silence, clotted and electric. None of us moved; I was not even breathing. The stop-time seemed to drag on and on—

“All right, Faith,” Dick said. Different tone, closer to his normal one. Controlled again. “You dodged a bullet this time. Literally.”

I let out the air burning my lungs and sagged back against the cushions. As relieved as I was that Dick had found us, that there’d been no more violence and the long night was finally over, I felt sorry for John Faith. Very, very sorry for him.

Richard Novak

I ordered faith to take the gun out of his belt, left hand, thumb and forefinger, and set it on the floor — set it, not drop it — and then kick it over to me. He followed orders with such deliberate care, almost like a pantomime, that I wondered if he was mocking me. I couldn’t be sure, so I let it go. I squatted to pick up his weapon, slip it into my jacket pocket — not taking the light off him for an eye flick. Then I told him to lie facedown, hands clasped behind him. And even then I wasn’t taking any chances. I leaned over his body from behind and to one side, laid the muzzle of my service revolver against the back of his skull; held it there while I squatted again, lowered the light, unhooked the handcuffs from my belt, and snapped them around his wrists. He didn’t move the entire time.

A quick frisk — no other weapon — and then I began to relax a little. I went to Audrey and shone the light on her. Bruise marks on her throat, but otherwise she seemed unharmed. She said as I started to strip the tape off her wrists, “How did you find us? How did you know to come here?”

“I didn’t know. I’ll explain later. You tell me about Mateo Munoz. And Faith, how he got all the way over here.”

She told me. I had her repeat some of it so I could get all the facts straight in my mind. Mateo Munoz, for Christ’s sake. Smart-ass troublemaker with a record of minor offenses graduated to the big time now — kidnapping, assault, attempted forcible oral copulation. Made the mistake of bringing her here, where Faith happened to be hiding, and Faith had stepped in on her behalf. All right. Give him that much credit. And Faith had been brought here in Audrey’s boat; his arrival was what Harry Richmond had witnessed yesterday morning. But it hadn’t been Audrey driving the boat and she didn’t know who’d helped him. The only thing Faith had told her was that a person he claimed was a doctor was supposed to come back today, before noon, to take him away, and hadn’t shown.

I finished freeing Audrey’s hands while she talked, began on her ankles. Every few seconds I shifted my gaze to Faith, but he still lay as I’d left him. Lucky to be alive in more ways than one; he was like a cat with extra lives. Lucky for both of us. In those first few seconds after I got the drop on him and prodded him into the lobby, when I’d seen Audrey bound the way she was, I’d come close to blowing him away. Very close. If she hadn’t cried out as she had, I think I would have. It put a quivering in my belly remembering how close I’d come.

I unwound the last strips of tape, lifted Audrey to her feet, and helped her walk until she could do it without support. Then I left her and flashed my light around. On a second couch was a scattering of items that included medical supplies. Might be something there to identify the accessory, I thought. But a quick inspection told me nothing, and there was no time and this wasn’t the place for a thorough examination. Sheriff’s department could handle that; they had lab facilities and the township didn’t. Nucooee Point was their jurisdiction, anyway.

Faith hadn’t moved more than a few inches if he’d moved at all. I drew my revolver again, went over and told him to stand up. He didn’t give me any trouble. The way he raised himself to his feet, the stain of fresh blood on his shirtfront, the bandages I’d felt when I frisked him confirmed that he was wounded and hurting. Medical attention for him first thing; from now on everything would be strictly by the book. I read him his rights and he responded with a grunt, nothing more. Grunts were all I got when I tried to question him, too. His face was tight-pulled and showed nothing of what was going on behind it. I had the feeling he’d put shackles on himself, his emotions, that were as binding as the handcuffs pinching his wrists.

Now we were ready to move out. I told Audrey to lead the way, let her reach the dining-room entrance before I motioned Faith to follow. And I followed him at a distance of several feet, with my weapon and flashlight on him the whole way. The outside door stood open, the way I’d left it, letting in wet, gray daylight. The open door was the second thing that had alerted me to the fact that the lodge was occupied; the first was the fresh tire marks in the muddy ground out front.

In the past few minutes the rain had slackened to a mistlike drizzle. The three of us slogged through wet grass and mud around front, out past the chain barrier to where I’d left the cruiser at the edge of the driveway. I unlocked the rear door, stood off a few paces while Faith folded himself inside, then threw the door shut and went around and flipped the dash toggle that locks the rear doors automatically.

Audrey was standing behind the cruiser. She beckoned to me, and when I joined her, curbing my impatience, she said, “I want to say something before we leave.”

“Go ahead.”

“All the hours I spent with him, we talked quite a bit. He swears he didn’t kill Storm.”

“Sure he does. Did you expect him to admit it?”

“I believe him, Dick.”

“Why? Because he saved your life?”

“That’s part of it.”

“He also kept you there against your will.”

“He thought it was his only chance. Self-preservation is so strong in him, it clouds his judgment in a crisis. That’s why he hit you and ran Thursday night.”

“He ran because he’s innocent, not because he’s guilty.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t buy it,” I said.

“Dick, it could’ve been Mateo Munoz who killed her. You can’t deny the possibility.”

“I don’t deny it. If it was Munoz, we’ll find it out once he’s in custody. But first he’s got to be found, and we’re wasting time standing around here talking about it.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I just wanted you to know how I feel.”

“Okay. Now I know.”

Inside the cruiser I radioed in to Lou Files, who works the desk on Sundays. I gave him a fast rundown and then a series of instructions. Two officers to be dispatched immediately to meet us at Pomo General. Notify Leo Thayer and request deputies to stake out the lodge in case the accessory decided to show up after all, and to gather evidence for lab analysis. Notify Burt Seeley; he could take care of alerting the D.A. Pull the jacket on Mateo Munoz and notify the FBI office in Santa Rosa that he was wanted on a kidnapping charge, then put out a pick-up-and-hold order on him through the Justice Information System’s computer hookup. Lou didn’t waste time with questions; he said he’d handle it and signed off.

I cradled the handset. For a few seconds I sat motionless, feeling suddenly limp. Tension release. It happens like that sometimes, all at once.

Audrey touched my arm. “Are you all right, Dick?”

“Just getting a second wind.”

I reached out to the ignition. She sat back, then turned her head to look at Faith through the steel mesh that bisects the interior. I found myself doing the same in the rearview mirror. He sat in the middle of the seat, ramrod straight; his face was still tight-pulled, expressionless. Pile of stone, I thought. All except for his eyes. They were the only things about him that seemed alive. And I didn’t much like what I saw in them.

Not hate, not anger, not fear — nothing as simple as any of those emotions. They were the eyes of a hunted and trapped animal, the kind of animal that would do anything, even chew off its own leg, to be free again.

Jay Dietrich

There weren’t any other reporters at the police station when Chief Novak radioed in his bombshell. Nothing had happened on the Carey homicide in over thirty-six hours, and with there being no connection between it and the Banner shooting, the newspapers and TV stations had shifted their people elsewhere. The only reason I was at the station was my promise to Mr. Kent to stay on top of the situation. I’d finished my personal account of the Carey murder last night, and this morning I’d made a few improvements and then faxed hard copies to the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat and both the Chronicle and Examiner in San Francisco. So I was just hanging around, waiting for something to happen and watching the 49ers beat the Saints on Jake Maddow’s portable TV. I went to school with Jake and we’re pretty good friends, otherwise he wouldn’t have let me watch the game with him while he was on station duty. The Chief didn’t like his officers lazing around even when things were Sunday slow, but he hadn’t been in all day and Jake didn’t have any work to do, so he figured there was no harm in sneaking his portable in. He’s a big 49ers fan, Jake is.

Anyhow, when Lou Files came hurrying in to tell Jake the news I was right there with my ears flapping. Jake rushed out on orders to meet the Chief and his prisoner at Pomo General, and Mr. Files went to do whatever else he’d been told to. I tried to pry more details out of him, but he wasn’t talking. He said I should keep the news under my hat for the time being, but since I don’t wear a hat and he didn’t wait for an answer, I didn’t feel honor-bound to obey him. News is news, after all. And the public has a right to know when something big breaks. Any good reporter knows that.

Besides, this story was all mine. My first exclusive. If the capture of John Faith and all the other sensational stuff that went with it didn’t earn me a job on a bigger paper than the Advocate, I might as well give up on a career in journalism and join Pop in his printing business.

I drove straight home and made quick calls to the Chronicle and Examiner and PD and didn’t tell any of the editors I talked to what’d happened until I had a promise from each to run a bylined story by me, either the one I’d already faxed or the next one I wrote on John Faith’s capture. That’s what Mr. Kent would’ve done. He always said to be aggressive, don’t take any junk from anybody. Only, he used a stronger word than junk. He may have a drinking problem and be a curmudgeon and have a cynical outlook on things, but he knows the newspaper business backward and forward. He worked on a lot of sheets in his day, including some major ones like the Houston Chronicle and the Pasadena Star.

I owed him a lot, even if he did treat me like a dumb kid sometimes, so before I headed out again for the hospital, I took the time to ring him up and tell him the news. He didn’t sound too happy about it, but that’s Mr. Kent for you. He never sounds happy about anything. He did say before we hung up that I could write all the news accounts and sidebars on the Carey homicide and Faith capture for the Advocate, so that’ll be one more feather in my reporter’s cap. I don’t care what his problems are or what anybody says about him, underneath it all he’s a great guy.

Douglas Kent

So storm’s murderer was still alive and kicking. John Faith, whose name suited him about as well as a virginal white gown would have suited his victim. The strange beast. The stranger in our midst. Bigfoot. The Incredible Hulk. Frankenstein unbound. The destroyer of beauty, the extinguisher of flames, the slayer of dreams. Alive, alive-o.

I built myself another vodka-with-a-hint-of-orange-juice and returned to the sofa in the parlor, on which I’d been sprawled before the call from Jaydee. Roscoe was on the coffee table, comfortably arranged on a copy of the current Advocate (whose cheap ink was doubtless staining his smooth walnut butt, no sexual connotation intended). As I stretched out again and lit an unfiltered wheezer, he studied me critically with his lone eye.

“You’re glummer than before, pal,” he said. “Bad news?”

“The worst. The son of a bitch is still alive.”

“Which son of a bitch is that?”

“John Faith, naturally.”

“How is that possible?”

“All Jaydee knows is that Chief Novak found him over at the Nucooee Point Lodge and arrested him.”

“Look on the bright side,” Roscoe said. “He’ll probably get the death penalty.”

“Au contraire. Prosecutors need to prove special circumstances to plunk a murderer in the hot squat nowadays.”

“‘Hot squat’ is slang for the electric chair,” he pointed out reasonably. “California’s preferred method of offing the offers is the gas chamber.”

I didn’t feel like being reasonable. “I don’t feel like being reasonable,” I said, blowing carcinogens in his eye, “so don’t give me any bullshit semantic lectures.”

“Bullshit dialectical lectures.”

I sighed. “You’re a gun, for Christ’s sake. Guns aren’t supposed to be the voice of reason.”

“Well, excuse me. Where were we?”

“Special circumstances. Too hard to prove in a case like this. Crime of passion. Twenty years to life, that’s all the cretinous bastard will get in a court of law.”

“Sad but true. Ergo?”

“What the hell do you mean, ergo?”

“Sometimes a great notion, pal.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning I have a great notion.”

“Is that so? What sort of great notion?”

“A name just popped into my head. Or it would have if I had a head. A name out of the past. A flash of history, a name to reckon with.”

“And this name is?”

“Lean over and I’ll whisper it to you.”

“Why can’t you just say it out loud?”

“It’s more dramatic if I whisper.”

I leaned over. He whispered — dramatically.

Kent sat back in awe. “Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.”

“So you see what I’m aiming at.”

“Oyez. You’re right on target, pal.”

“I knew you’d approve.”

“Approve, yes. But there’s many a slip between the notion and the execution. To coin a phrase.”

“You’re interested in theory only, then?”

“I didn’t say that. I’m considering.”

“Consider this: All your problems would be solved.”

“Not necessarily.”

“One, at least. Besides, it’s your last chance for a taste of fame.”

“The old blaze of glory, eh?”

“Well, more like a brief and tawdry spark.”

“My, my. Such eloquence from a death stick.”

“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”

“Fook you, pal.”

“Fook you, pal.”

I drank. He pouted.

Pretty soon he said persuasively, “It’s the American way, after all.”

“It is?”

“One hundred percent all-American. Think about it.”

I thought about it. He was right, so right I imagined I could hear patriotic music playing: “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” A tear formed in my eye.

“Are you with me, pal?”

“I’m with you, pal.”

The nationalistic music was still playing in the cracked and dusty corners of the Kent brain. I felt a near desire to stand up and salute the flag, which would’ve been difficult since I didn’t own a flag. I settled for hustling out to the kitchen and pouring Roscoe and me another drink to seal the bargain.

Brian Marx

The phone rang while I was in the kitchen making a ham sandwich. Wall unit was practically next to my ear and the sudden jangling set my nerves on edge. Damn all-night poker sessions were starting to wear on me. I’d quit at five A.M., earlier than usual, because I was having trouble concentrating. Just as well. I’d been into a bad run of cards and if I’d stuck around sure as hell I’d’ve ended up quitting losers. As it was, I’d won forty-eight bucks at stud and Texas Hold ’Em.

I answered the phone since I was standing right there, and for a change the call was for me. My mood had been pretty good; winning at poker always gives me a lift. But when I hung up five minutes later, I was shaking my head and feeling a sag. Man, oh man, nothing much happens in Pomo for years on end and then all of a sudden everything pops at once, like somebody’d opened up Pandora’s box. I know about Pandora’s box on account of that’s the name Ed Simms gave his bar downtown and he’ll explain the whole myth or legend or whatever it is to anybody who’ll listen.

Trisha came into the kitchen as I was opening a beer to go with my sandwich. She said, “Who was that on the phone, Daddy?”

“Hank Maddow. He just talked to his son down at the police station.”

“Did something happen?”

“Whole lot of somethings. A Pandora’s boxful.”

For starters I told her about Lori Banner blowing away that jerkoff husband of hers, no loss there. Her eyes got big as saucers.

She said, “Did the cops arrest her? Put her in jail?”

“No, they got her doped up in the hospital.”

“Oh, God.”

“That teacher of yours, Ms. Sixkiller, almost bought it last night, too. Kidnapped and nearly raped.”

“What!”

I told her who’d done it and I didn’t beat around the bush. A dose of hard-ass reality’s good for a kid her age who’s running a little wild. Sometimes it’s the only way you can get through to them. “I told you those Munozes were a couple of punk losers. You need another reason to steer clear of Anthony, there it is.”

“He’s not like Mateo.”

“How do you know he isn’t? Maybe he just ain’t shown his true colors yet.”

“Ms. Sixkiller... is she all right?”

“Wasn’t hurt bad. Lucky he took her where he did.”

“Where’d he take her?”

“The old lodge on Nucooee Point. And who do you think was hiding out there, alive after all? John Faith. You’d think he’d be the last guy to play hero, but he stepped in and belted that Mateo punk and chased him off. Cost him, too. Faith.”

Trisha’s face was white now, white as milk. “Cost him?”

“Chief Novak showed at the lodge this morning, nobody knows why yet, and arrested Faith. Took him to—”

I broke off because she wasn’t there anymore; she’d turned tail and run out. Ran upstairs. I followed her up there, and she’d locked herself in the bathroom. I could hear her throwing up and sobbing in there.

Kids. How she could get so worked up over a sleazeball like Mateo Munoz showing his true colors is beyond me.

Audrey Sixkiller

I was at Pomo General about an hour, most of it spent waiting for Dick to drive me home. As soon as we arrived he and the two officers he’d asked for had taken John Faith upstairs to the security wing; I’d gone to the emergency room and submitted to an examination, even though it really wasn’t necessary. My vital signs were normal and there was no cartilage or other damage to my throat.

Afterward, I sat in the waiting room and fidgeted. The young reporter from the Advocate, Jay Dietrich, found me there and wouldn’t leave me alone until I’d reluctantly answered a few of his questions. Then Joan Garcia, who happened to be on duty in the security wing, came down briefly to see how I was doing. I asked her about John Faith’s condition and she said it was stable; no apparent infection, but as a precaution an antibiotic called Cefotan was being administered by IV. She thought that if there were no complications, he would be released for transfer to the city jail later in the day.

Dick came down at last. The strain he’d been under was all too evident in the harsh fluorescent lighting — hunched shoulders, haggard and frayed appearance, pain etched again in his eyes. Now that John Faith was in custody, he had to stop driving himself so hard. If he didn’t stop by himself, someone — Verne Erickson, Mayor Seeley, me — would have to take steps to force him for his own good.

Outside, as we crossed the parking lot, I asked him if John Faith had called a lawyer. He said, “No. Didn’t ask for one. He’s still not talking, not even to the doctors.” The only other thing Dick would say about him was that, to prevent another escape attempt, he was handcuffed to his bed as well as under constant guard.

On the drive to my house Dick was mostly silent. When we arrived I expected a terse good-bye in the car, but he surprised me by walking me to the door. Then he really surprised me by gathering me close, whispering in my ear, “I’m glad you’re safe, Audrey,” and then kissing my mouth, hard.

It was freezing inside the house, but I was warm enough. Warmer than I’d been in a long time.

Richard Novak

Seeley and Thayer were waiting for me at the station. I ushered them into my office, and as soon as the door was shut the sheriff said heatedly, “What the hell’s the idea, Novak?”

“The idea of what?”

“You know what. Nucooee Point Lodge is on county land. You had no right to make an arrest there without consulting me first.”

“I didn’t know Faith was hiding out at the lodge when I went there. I didn’t even know Audrey would be there. All I had was a vague tip from Harry Richmond. Didn’t Lou Files tell you all that?”

“He told me. But that doesn’t change the fact that it was a breach of jurisdiction. You should’ve notified me before you went in, then waited for backup. You could’ve blown it, let Faith get away again.”

“But I didn’t.”

“But you could have.”

“Have it your way. Your people find anything incriminating among the stuff at the lodge?”

“No, and Faith’s helper didn’t show, either. If you’d waited and followed protocol—”

“The same thing would’ve happened. Why don’t you admit the real point of this harangue, Leo?”

“Real point?”

“You’re pissed because my hunch was right that Faith was still alive. And because you didn’t get to arrest him yourself. No glory for Pomo County’s esteemed sheriff.”

“Bullshit! You listen here—”

Seeley said, “That’s enough, both of you. Cool down. The arrest part of it’s over and done with and there’s no sense arguing about it. Faith’s in custody, that’s the important thing.”

“Not to Leo, it isn’t,” I said.

Thayer took a step toward me. The mayor used his porcine bulk to block him off. “I said, cool down! No more infighting, and that goes double out in public. Media gets a whisper of dissension, they’ll blow it all out of proportion. We’ve had enough negative PR as it is.”

Negative PR. That was Seeley for you. Typical small-time political boss: He didn’t give a damn about anything except the status quo and his and Pomo’s image.

He said to me, “Dick, about this Mateo Munoz kid. I wish you’d talked to me before involving the FBI.”

“Why? Notification is standard procedure in a kidnapping case where there’s a possibility of interstate or international flight.”

“Yes, but I don’t like the idea of FBI agents poking around here. More fodder for the media.”

That wasn’t the only reason. He was afraid they might stumble on something by accident that he didn’t want them to see — a little local dirty laundry, maybe. I had an urge to say that to him, put a crack or two in that smooth facade. I curbed it and said instead, “They’ll only send one agent, if they send any. Low-priority case for them. If an agent does show, I’ll see to it he stays out of our hair and in the background.”

“You do that. One more thing about Munoz. Is there any chance he killed Storm Carey, not Faith? I mean, there are similarities between the Carey homicide and the Sixkiller kidnapping.”

“A chance, sure. That’s all it is.”

“You’re convinced Faith is guilty?”

“Until I see something definite to unconvince me.”

“Good. Then maybe we can get most of this bad business finished with tonight. When are you transferring Faith from the hospital?”

“I’ll have to talk to the doctor in charge before I know for sure. But the last estimate was a five o’clock release time.”

“Perfect, if it holds,” Seeley said. “When you bring him over, I want Leo in the car with you.”

“Why?”

“A show of solidarity.”

“For the media’s benefit.”

“For the benefit of every citizen of Pomo County.”

“Whatever you say, Mayor. I don’t want a lot of attention anyway for doing my job. Let Leo have the spotlight.”

Thayer wasn’t mollified. He’d been sulking behind one of his fifty-cent panatelas; he took it out of his mouth and aimed it in my direction. “Damnit,” he said, “it isn’t glory I care about. It’s doing things by the book. Protocol, jurisdiction—”

“You’ve made your point,” Seeley told him. “Dick won’t step on your toes again. Will you, Dick?”

I shrugged. “No. It won’t happen again.”

“Now the two of you shake hands.”

We shook hands like the good little flunkies we were.

Seeley said, “So it’ll be the two of you who bring Faith over. That’s settled. I’ll make sure the media stays here with their cameras and microphones, everyone in one place. Once the prisoner’s been booked and locked up, you’ll both come out and join Joe Proctor and me and we’ll answer questions. As many as we can for as long as it takes. Agreed?”

“If that’s the way you want it,” Thayer said.

“That’s the way it’s best. For everyone.”

Except me, I thought. But I didn’t say that, either.

They went away pretty soon and left me alone with my throbbing face and nose. One of the codeine capsules would probably make me fuzzy-headed, so I ate half a dozen aspirin instead. After a while I went out front for coffee and to ask Lou to order me a sandwich from Nelson’s Diner; I hadn’t eaten all day and the aspirin were like acid in my empty belly. Through the glass entrance doors I could see a white van angled to the curb in front, a man and a woman from it heading into the station, and two more men unloading camera equipment from the rear.

The vultures were already starting to circle.

George Petrie

It was almost six when I finally rolled into dark, rainy Pomo. I’d left Fallon late. Very little sleep last night, yet prying myself out of the motel bed had taken a tremendous effort of will. Delaying the inevitable. I’d driven at a constant fifty all the way; the last things I could afford now were an accident or the attention of the highway patrol. I’d avoided both. The interminable four-hundred-mile trip across Nevada, through the Sierras, across half a dozen California counties had been uneventful.

And now, here I was. Home. George Petrie, failed embezzler, slinking home in the dark. I was depressed and dog-tired, but some of yesterday’s utter despair had left me. Maybe, after all, things aren’t quite as hopeless as they seemed, sitting out there in the middle of nowhere. Maybe I can still salvage something out of the rest of my life, even if circumstances force me to spend my last twenty or thirty years in this backwater town. There have to be ways and means. I might not have the guts to pull off a really bold scheme, but I’m intelligent, shrewd enough; I ought to be able to come up with some way of lightening my load, some way to keep from dying by inches.

But first I’ve got to replace the $209,840 in the bank vault tomorrow morning. That’s paramount. Then I have to cover the $7,000 shortage, even if it means going begging to Charley Horne. Then I can relax, retrench, make new plans. Maybe even convince Storm to give me another tumble in her bed. No more begging with her, though. No, by God. I’m not the same George Petrie who sat with her in the bank on Thursday, the one she accused of currying a pity fuck. You don’t go through what I just had without learning a few things, changing, becoming more of a man. She’ll see it in me once I’m back on my feet. I’ll damn well make her see it.

Another thing I have to do, before very long, is dump Ramona. If I have to live with her, sleep with her, listen to her goddamn screeching and squawking for the duration, I might as well throw in the towel; I’d never get out of the trap. California’s a no-fault state, so I don’t need grounds to file for divorce. Just go ahead and do it. She’d demand support, but in turn I’d demand half of what her Indian Head Bay land brought when it finally sold. Even if I came out on the short end financially, I’d manage to recoup somehow; and in every other way I’d come out on the long end. I’d be able to breathe again.

She was home; the lights were on in the house. As soon as I pulled the Buick into the driveway and saw her waiting in the kitchen doorway, I felt another letdown. Her coming out to meet me, making a pass at kissing my cheek as if she were glad I was back, made it even worse. I pushed her away. “Don’t, Ramona. I’m exhausted and I need a drink.”

“The real-estate deal—?”

“Another dud. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I’m sorry but my God what’s happened around here while you were gone I can hardly believe it.” All in one breath. “You must have heard about it in Santa Rosa?”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“Oh, well, then you’re in for—”

“Not now,” I said, “for Christ’s sake, not now.”

I brushed past her, went through the kitchen and into the living room to the wet bar. Wonder of wonders, the screeching parrot didn’t fly in after me. The first scotch went down quick and hot, like swallowing fire. I coughed and poured another and sank into my chair to drink it more slowly. The glass was half empty when I heard Ramona moving around in the kitchen, then bumping through the door into the living room.

“George.”

The way she said my name made me look up. And all the skin on my back, my neck, my scalp seemed to curl upward. The glass fell out of my hand, splashing scotch over my lap; I barely noticed as I lurched to my feet.

“I opened the trunk of your car,” she said in a voice I’d never heard her use before. “I thought I’d be nice and bring in your bag.”

She was standing there with one of the new suitcases in her left hand. In her right were two of the banded packets of $100 bills.

Richard Novak

When my pager went off I was waiting with Thayer and Verne Erickson at the hospital, the sheriff standing off by himself and being pissed at me again because I’d asked Verne to ride with us on the transfer. Thayer and I were like gasoline and fire; Verne’s presence would keep us from setting each other off. What we’d been waiting for the past fifteen minutes was for Faith to finish his phone call. He was inside the resident physician’s office, visible to us through a glass partition, facing away and holding the receiver tight to his ear.

I left Verne to keep watch on him and called the station from the head nurse’s desk. Della Feldman had relieved Lou Files. She said, “What’s keeping you, Chief?”

“Faith. He demanded his one call as soon as Verne and I walked in. Changed his mind all of a sudden, Christ knows why. He’s still not talking to us.”

“Lawyer?”

“What else. One of the doctors gave him the name of a criminal attorney in Santa Rosa. He didn’t want anybody from Pomo County.”

“Can you hurry him up?”

“Why?”

“Big crowd outside already and getting bigger by the minute.”

“How big?”

“Must be a couple of dozen reporters, photographers, camera people. You’d think you were bringing in the Unabomber’s brother. Lot of citizens out there, too. Lining the street and congregating over in the park.”

“Any trouble?”

“Not so far. But a lot of them are young and restless. I keep remembering how the crowds Friday night almost got out of hand.”

“How many people so far? Rough estimate.”

“Counting the media, over a hundred.”

“You send anybody out to keep order?”

“Sherm and Jake. Nobody else here right now but me.”

“Who’s out on patrol?”

“Mary Jo and Jack.”

“Call them in. If you need anybody else, go down the off-duty roster.”

“Right.”

“I’ll have Thayer put some of his deputies on standby alert. And Della, make sure our people keep everything low-key, same as Friday night. The last thing we need is somebody provoking trouble.”

Trisha Marx

I snuck out and walked down to Municipal Park because I had to see John one more time, even if it’d be from a distance and he’d be in handcuffs on his way to jail. I knew I’d cry when I saw him, and it was what I wanted — to feel even worse than I already did. Sometimes you just have to wallow in your own misery, you know?

I thought maybe Anthony’d be there, too. More reason to feel crappy, seeing him, even if I did feel kind of sorry for him. He must’ve been blown away to find out what a scumbag Mateo really was. Give him a little sympathy, show him I was a better person than he was. Show him I was more miserable than he was. I guess it’s true what they say: Misery loves company.

But Anthony wasn’t there. Home with his people, or else out somewhere getting high. That’s always been his answer to anything wrong or lame — get high, feel good so you didn’t have to think about feeling bad.

Some of the other kids were over by the bandstand, but I didn’t see Selena so I didn’t go over and hang with them. She was about the only one I could’ve stood to hang with tonight. I took a spot by myself under one of the trees near the street, where I could see the front of the police station. All the lights over there were blurry from the mist that was rising off the lake, blowing in in curls and long, ragged streamers. It made the people look sort of blurry, too, like will-o’-the-wisps. Newspaper and TV reporters waiting for John, not because they cared about him but because they thought he was a murderer and murderers are hot news. It was sick and freaky, in a way. If they knew he was innocent and a good person besides, they wouldn’t want anything to do with him, he could drop dead in the street and they wouldn’t even look at him twice. The guilty ones like Mateo, they’d fall all over themselves to get close and stick a microphone in his face and call him Mr. Munoz and feel sorry for him if he said he was a kidnapper and a rapist on account of he’d had a shitty childhood—

“Hello, Trisha.”

Ms. Sixkiller. She’d come right up beside me and I hadn’t even noticed her. Right away I was nervous and wary. But she didn’t start in about John or her boat or anything; she just stood there hunched inside her coat, her arms folded and her breath making puffs in the cold night air.

I could’ve moved away and maybe she wouldn’t’ve followed, but I didn’t. Pretty soon I said, “I, um, heard about what happened last night. I’m real sorry it was you Mateo picked on.”

“So am I. But it’s over now.”

“He’s a pig. Anthony’s not like him at all.” Now, what did I want to defend Anthony for?

“I know he’s not.”

“We broke up. Anthony and me.”

“Because of Mateo?”

“No, it was before that.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Um, no.”

“All right. But we do need to talk about John Faith.”

“... Why would I want to talk about him?”

“He’s why you’re here, isn’t he?”

“He’s why everybody’s here. You too, right?”

“Right. You know he saved me from being raped?”

I nodded. “So maybe you don’t think he’s the lowlife everybody else does.”

“That’s right, I don’t.”

“He didn’t kill Mrs. Carey. I mean—”

“I know what you mean.”

“Maybe Mateo did it. Did anybody think of that?”

“Yes. If he did, it’ll come out when he’s caught.”

“If he’s ever caught.”

“He will be. Trisha, about John Faith.”

“What about him?”

“I know you helped him. All you did and how you did it.”

Oh, God. I didn’t say anything.

“He tried to convince me otherwise, to protect you. He asked me not to give you away to the police.”

Right. That was the way John was. “So?”

“So I’m not going to. I don’t believe in making trouble for people I like. And I think I understand your reasons.”

“Then you have to believe he’s innocent, too.”

“I do. I also believe it’ll be proven eventually.”

“Not soon enough to keep him out of jail.”

“Life and justice aren’t always fair, Trisha.”

“Tell me about it. I figured that out a long time ago.”

We stood there for a while. Then I said, “I owe you an apology, Ms. Sixkiller,” and saying it was easier than I’d thought it would be. “About your bathroom window and your boat and everything. I feel... you know, wrong about messing with stuff the way I did.”

“Can I count on you to use better judgment in the future?”

“Yeah. I won’t do anything like that again.”

“Then your apology is accepted.”

“I’ll pay for the window and fixing the damage—”

“I don’t want your money,” she said. “Tell you what I would like from you, though.”

“What’s that?”

“Three or four hours of your time next summer. You obviously know how to drive a powerboat, but you can use some lessons in how to dock one. Lessons in general boat safety, too.”

I didn’t laugh or smile and neither did she. We stood quiet again, and when the wind gusted and I shivered she put her arm around my shoulders and kind of hugged me. I didn’t pull away. I guess maybe we both needed somebody to lean on, right then.

Zenna Wilson

When Helen Carter and I arrived at Park Street, quite a crowd had already gathered. There must have been more than a hundred people standing and milling around. No wonder we hadn’t been able to find a parking space any closer than three blocks away. I saw four television vans, and there were reflector lamps and handheld spotlights that turned the mist swirling in off the lake white and shiny, like crystallized smoke, and half a dozen men and women carrying portable microphones and those bulky cameras with lights jutting from their tops — Minicams, I think they’re called. I recognized a roving reporter from Channel 5 in San Francisco, too. Everybody was talking in keyed-up voices, but other than that, the crowd was really very well behaved. I’d been concerned about that, the presence of rowdies looking to start trouble, and there was a noisy group of teenagers by the park bandstand, but uniformed policemen and sheriff’s deputies, bless them, seemed to have everything under control.

Still, it was exciting. That was the word for it. You could actually feel the excitement in the air, like electricity. If it hadn’t been the end of a terrible tragedy, I think I might even have been thrilled.

“I wouldn’t have missed this for the world,” I told Helen as we made our way to the parking lot on the near side of the station. She agreed. And if Howard doesn’t like it, I thought but didn’t say, well, that’s just too bad. I’d asked him to come along, but he wouldn’t even consider it. He’d been in such a strange and irksome mood lately — critical, even cruel at times. When I first heard that that evil man Faith was still alive and had been arrested, I took the news straight to Howard and he said nastily, “You must be really disappointed he’s not burning in hell.” I was, yes, as any good Christian would be to find out that one of Satan’s own is still among us, but I didn’t appreciate having it flung at me in a tone that made it sound like an accusation. Well, he could sit home and sulk or whatever. Helen was much more pleasant company. Much more agreeable, too. She’s a member of my church and her worldview is a lot closer to mine than Howard’s.

There was hardly room for one person, much less two, up close to where most of the media people were congregated. But we were determined and we made room. One of the men I accidentally jostled turned and gave me a piercing look. I was about to answer him in kind when I recognized him. Douglas Kent.

I altered my expression to a smile and said to him, “You remember me, don’t you, Mr. Kent? Zenna Wilson.”

He leaned closer, squinting. I drew back. His breath... well, he simply reeked of liquor. He wasn’t very steady on his feet, either. Really quite intoxicated, to the point where he hadn’t bothered to shave today, or, for that matter, to bathe. I find public drunkenness disgusting; uncleanliness, too. There is no excuse for either one. Even so, I decided that Christian charity was called for in Mr. Kent’s case. Everyone knew the poor man had a drinking problem. And after all, he had written that inspiring editorial based on what I’d told him about the stranger in our midst.

“Ah, Mrs. Wilson,” he said. “Of course I remember you.”

“We’ve spoken several times, but only met in person two or—”

“In tongues, eh?”

“Excuse me?”

“Spoken in viper tongues.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t—”

“Not to worry, dear lady. What’s your opinion of all this?”

“Well, it’s very exciting, isn’t it?”

“Exciting. Oh, yes. But it will be a good deal more exciting once the gladiators arrive.”

“Do you really think so?”

“I know so. Absolutely positive of it. The Romans had the right idea, by cracky.”

“Romans?”

“Death struggles on the floor of the coliseum. All thumbs down. Blood spilled while the hungry legions roar.”

I glanced at Helen. She had no more idea of what he was talking about than I did.

Richard Novak

The ride from Pomo General to the police station takes a little less than fifteen minutes. I talked Thayer into riding up front with Verne, and I sat in back with the prisoner. I kept watching Faith, but for his part, I wasn’t even there. He sat with that ramrod posture, his big, shackled hands between his thighs, and stared straight ahead in stony silence. None of us had anything to say. The quiet in the cruiser had an odd, stagnant quality, like a pocket of dead air just before heat lightning.

When we neared the center of town the media lights were visible from a distance, a wash of brightness against the restless banks of tule fog. I could tell from the cars packing Main and the side streets that the waiting crowd had grown even larger. I tensed as Verne turned down Water Street, toward the municipal pier. The crowd seemed orderly enough, but that didn’t mean it would stay that way.

“Look at that, will you,” Verne said as we reached Park. “Must be a hundred and fifty people, maybe more.”

Thayer muttered, “Damn three-ring circus,” but he didn’t sound worried or unhappy. If anything, he was eager. Anticipating the grinding cameras and exploding flashbulbs, probably.

Faith sat forward, his hands balling into fists. I sensed rather than saw the trapped-animal desperation in him again.

Verne made the swing onto Park. Heads and bodies had swiveled in our direction; arms lifted, fingers pointed. I could see mouths moving as though in an exaggerated pantomime.

“Pull up even with the entrance,” I said to Verne. “You and I get out first and come around front and back. Leo, you stay inside until we’re on your side.”

“You don’t have to tell me procedure, Novak.”

“I’m not telling you anything. I’m reminding you.”

“You’re the one who needs reminders, not me.”

“Don’t start up again.”

“It’s not a dead issue,” he said, “just remember that. I don’t care what Seeley says.”

We rolled past the gawking faces, into the outspill from all the lights. The glare seemed unnaturally bright. Half a dozen Minicams were on us like huge, hungry eyes. Thayer had his head turned toward the window glass, toward the cameras; I couldn’t see his face, but I knew he was wearing his official expression, the one with flared nostrils and upward-jutting jaw.

The cruiser stopped. The door beside me clicked as Verne flipped the toggle to unlock.

We were almost there.

Douglas Kent

Standing close to the front of the gathered rabble, I patted Roscoe on his little hammer head.

“How you doing in there, pal?”

“Same as you’re doing out there, pal.”

“All set to lose the Faith?”

“Knock off the puns. We have serious business here.”

“Very serious business here. Avenging Storm.”

“Not a bad title for a book.”

“I won’t be around to write it.”

“You never know. First-person account of a sodden newspaper hack who goes cunningly bonkers after the murder of his beloved town punchbag, anthropomorphizes his old man’s—”

“Big word for a little gun.”

“—I say, anthropomorphizes his old man’s .38 to the point of holding interior philosophical discussions with it, and the two of them exact their vengeance in front of a couple of hundred eyewitnesses and an eager TV audience of many thousands. Socko stuff.”

“Not really,” Kent said. “All we’re doing is following in giant footsteps — imitators, not innovators. Nobody’d publish it.”

Voices rose around us in an excited roar. I looked and said, “Ah, the cop chariot enters the arena at last.”

“Americans and Romans,” Roscoe said pityingly, “you can’t have your metaphors both ways. How many fuzz with Faith?”

“Three. And only one of you.”

“I’ll still get off first.”

“You’d better. Look, they’re climbing out.”

“I can’t look, I don’t have eyes.”

“Shut your muzzle.”

“Then I can’t get off at all.”

“Here they come. Ready, pal?”

“Ready, pal.”

“Heigh-ho, here we go.”

Roscoe and me, and Jack Ruby makes three.

Jay Dietrich

I was intent on John Faith lifting his huge body from inside the police cruiser, Chief Novak on one side and Sergeant Erickson on the other and Sheriff Thayer standing off a couple of paces with his attention shifting between the prisoner and the TV cameras, when somebody bumped into me from behind, It was a hard, lurching bump, hard enough to nearly knock me down. I glared at the man who’d done it, who was now pushing past me.

Mr. Kent.

I hadn’t even known he was here. Drunk as usual, that was obvious. How he could function with so much—

Hey, what was he doing? Staggering out onto the brightly lit sidewalk, making a beeline toward Faith and the officers. Pulling a shiny object out of his pocket—

Oh my God’

“He’s got a gun!” I yelled it at the top of my voice. “Look out, he’s got a gun!”

Richard Novak

It all seemed to happen at once, everything jumbled and compressed into one long, bulging moment.

I heard the warning yell, saw the man coming toward us, recognized him, saw the handgun he was bringing to bear, heard someone else shout and a woman scream and feet and bodies beginning to scramble out of harm’s way — and on automatic reflex I threw a shoulder into Faith to take him from the line of fire, then lunged to meet Kent. I deflected his arm downward just as he squeezed off. The pistol made a flat crack that was lost in the bedlam around us, the bullet going harmlessly into the sidewalk, chipping pavement but not ricocheting. I battered Kent’s wrist with my right hand, clawing for the weapon with my left. It came loose from his grasp, but I couldn’t hold it; it fell with a clatter and by accident I kicked it with my shoe. Then I had both hands on his coat and I jerked him off his feet, flung him down hard. But I lost my balance as I did that, slipped, fell on top of him. A grunt, the whoosh of his breath, and he went limp under me.

All around us, then, there was a sudden rising hiss and babble — sharp intakes of air, little frightened cries, more shouts, another scream. I pushed up off Kent, swung around on one knee. And stayed there like that, motionless, going cold inside.

Faith had the gun.

And he was pointing it straight at me.

Verne Erickson

There was nothing I could do, any of us could do. Faith was on that pistol as soon as the Chief kicked it, quick as a cat on a piece of raw liver. I had my service revolver half drawn; so did Thayer, a few steps away on my left. But we both froze when we saw Faith come up with Kent’s weapon and throw down on Novak. There might’ve been time to get off a shot at him before he could fire at the Chief, but training stopped me and the sheriff and any other officer close enough to think about trying it. People were milling around, pushing and shoving, but the immediate area was still crowded with those damn-fool TV cameramen and their whirring Minicams, photographers and their popping flashbulbs. You didn’t dare risk a wild shot in confusion like this. It was six kinds of wonder that the round Kent had triggered hadn’t ricocheted and taken some bystander’s head off.

Faith kept us all in place with bellowed words like a series of thunderclaps. “Nobody move! Come at me, I’ll shoot! Try to get behind me, I’ll shoot!”

He was moving himself as he spoke, in a scrabbling crouch to get clear of the individuals clogging the station doors. When he had his back to bare wall he stopped and lowered himself to one knee. His eyes and the Chief’s had been locked the entire time. There was maybe eight feet of wet pavement separating them.

Novak said loudly, “Do what he says. No sudden moves.” If he was afraid, being under the gun like that, he didn’t show it.

More flashbulbs exploded, the Minicams ground away. I could almost hear the reporters gleefully smacking their lips. I felt exposed and foolish and mad as hell — at myself and Thayer and Novak and Faith and most of all at that crazy drunken son of a bitch Kent lying there unconscious behind the Chief. What had possessed him? What in God’s name did he think he was doing?

Faith said, “I didn’t want it like this,” still booming his words. “Let a lawyer handle it, get some more facts before bringing it out in the open. But that bastard trying to shoot me... that’s the last straw. Now I want everybody to hear the truth, my lips to your ears, let the whole damn world know what this town’s done to an innocent man.”

Thayer found his voice. “This isn’t buying you any sympathy, Faith. Surrender the gun before—”

“Shut up. I’ll surrender it when I’ve had my say.”

“Say it, then. Get it over with.”

“Innocent man!” Faith thundered. “Innocent! I’m not a murderer, not some kind of monster. I didn’t kill the Carey woman.”

“Liar!” somebody in the crowd shouted back.

And somebody else: “You killed her, all right, you dirty—”

“No, by God, I didn’t. But I know who did. You hear me out there, all you people? I know who did!”

Audrey Sixkiller

I stood among a crush of others in the middle of the street, trying to see Dick and John Faith, listening to the words that were being flung against the night. But it was as if I were standing there alone, on a mist-shrouded plain, seeing and hearing everything from a great distance. I thought: Don’t hurt him, please don’t hurt him. At the same time I did not believe John Faith would shoot, knew that his cry of “Innocent man!” was the truth. The confusion spawned an intense, irrational desire to run away from here, away from the poison, very fast and very far, like the god Coyote rushing home to his sanctuary atop the dano-batin, the mountain big, that rises high above the south shore.

And when John Faith spoke again I almost did run — I took two faltering steps before the press of bodies stopped me. Then I stood tree-still with his words echoing in my ears, mixing with the frantic voices of the others to create a roaring, near and yet far off, like the mad gabbling of spooks and witches.

“He did it!” Pointing, accusing. “He murdered Storm Carey. Your fine, upstanding police chief, Richard Novak.”

Richard Novak

Verne Erickson answered before I could. He said angrily, “You’re out of your mind, Faith. Nobody believes that. Nobody!”

“I’ll prove it to you, all of you.”

“You can’t prove a lie—”

“The truth. Listen. I didn’t know it was Novak that night. If I had... the hell with that. This afternoon at the hospital, that’s the first time I was able to do any clear thinking. That’s when I put it together.”

He wasn’t talking to Verne, he was talking to me; his eyes never left mine. Hot with fury, those eyes, like red-rimmed crucibles filled with molten silver. But I wasn’t afraid of him or his words or the gun in his hand. The one emotion I no longer felt was fear.

He said, “I passed a car that night, on the way to her house. Just turned out of her driveway. Dark, and I wasn’t paying attention or I’d have noticed it was a police cruiser, Novak’s cruiser. But he recognized my car, all right. And he saw me turn in. He waited long enough for me to find her body and then he came barreling back up there.”

“You call that proof?” Thayer said. “Only your word you passed another car. Even if that much is true... you can’t swear it was Novak’s cruiser.”

“Then how’d he happen to show up just at the right time? Why’d he go there at all?”

I said, “To see her, talk to her. We were friends.”

“Weren’t there before me, Chief?”

“No.”

“Had no idea she was dead before the two of us went inside?”

“No.”

“Then how’d you know she was killed with a glass paperweight?”

I stared at him without answering.

“It was half under her body and covered with blood,” he said. “I couldn’t tell what it was and I looked closer than you did. You stood off fifteen or twenty feet and called it a glass paperweight.”

“I don’t remember saying that.”

“Accused me of seeing red, picking up a glass paperweight and hitting her with it.”

I shook my head.

“Your word against mine? Except I’m not the only one you said it to. When you radioed in you used the same words to whoever you talked to—”

“Me,” Verne said. “I was on the other end.”

“You remember him saying it? Skull crushed with a glass paperweight?”

“I remember.”

“All right,” I said, “then I did say it. She kept it on an end table next to the couch. I must’ve seen it wasn’t there—”

“And assumed it was what killed her? Hell of an assumption, Chief, for a man as upset as you were. Besides, the paperweight wasn’t the only slip you made over the radio. Two blows, you said. Two.” He asked Verne, “Remember that?”

“Yeah.”

“How’d you know it was two, Chief, not one or three or six or a dozen? Her skull was caved in, blood everywhere, you’re not a doctor and you didn’t go near the body. No way you could know she was hit twice unless you did it yourself.”

Verne’s eyes were on me; everyone’s eyes were on me. The combined intensity of their stares was like surgical lasers — cutting, probing, hurting.

“Answer him, Novak.” Thayer’s voice this time, hard and cold. “How’d you know?”

I told myself to stand up, get off my knees and stand up like a man. When I did that, Faith stood, too, in the same slow movements, so that we continued to face each other at eye level.

Thayer: “Answer the question.”

Verne: “Say something, for God’s sake.”

Kent was the last straw, all right. It has to stop, right here and now.

I looked away from Faith for the first time. Didn’t look at Verne or Thayer as I turned around, or at anyone else. I stared out beyond the light into the dark, above all, the laser eyes and all the faceless, buzzing bodies. Easier that way. It wasn’t much different from addressing a roomful of strangers.

“Faith is right,” I said, “everything he said is right. I did it. I killed her.”