Dark Hollow

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

As I drove to the house of the old man known as John Barley, the image of Stritch impaled on a tree returned to me. He couldn't have known about Caleb Kyle, couldn't have suspected that he was being hunted on two sides. He had reckoned on killing Louis and me, avenging his partner while simultaneously ending the contract on his life, but he had no inkling of Caleb.

It seemed certain to me that Caleb had killed Stritch, although how he had learned of his existence I didn't know. I guessed that he might have encountered Stritch when both of them were closing in on Billy Purdue. In the end, maybe it came down to the fact that Caleb Kyle was a predator, and predators are attuned not only to the nature of their prey but also to the nature of those who might prey upon them in turn. Caleb hadn't survived for over three decades without a highly developed ability to sense impending danger. In this case, Stritch had posed a potentially lethal threat to Billy Purdue, and Caleb had sniffed him out. Billy was the key to Caleb Kyle, the only one who had seen him and survived, the only one left who could describe what he looked like. But as I approached the road to John Barley's shack, I knew that Billy's description might prove unnecessary. When I stepped from the car, my gun was already in my hand.

It was early evening when I reached the old man's house. There was a light burning in one of the windows as I ascended the hill that sloped gently upward to his yard. I came from the west, against the wind, keeping the house between me and the dog in its makeshift automobile kennel. I was almost at the door when a sharp yelp came from the car and a blur moved fast across the snow as the dog at last caught my scent and tried to intercept me. Almost immediately, the door of the house swung open and the barrel of a shotgun appeared. I grabbed the gun and yanked the old man through the gap. Beside me, the dog became frenzied, alternately leaping at my face and nipping at the cuffs of my pants. The old man lay on the ground, winded by his fall, his hand still on the gun. I lashed out at the dog and put my gun to the old man's ear.

"Ease off the shotgun, or I swear to God I'll kill you where you lie," I said. His finger lifted from the trigger guard and his hand moved slowly away from the stock of the shotgun. He whistled softly and said: "Easy, Jess, easy. Good boy." The dog whined a little then moved away a distance, contenting itself with circling us repeatedly and growling as I hauled the old man to his feet. I gestured at a chair on the porch and he sat down heavily, rubbing his left elbow where he had banged it painfully as he landed.

"What do you want?" asked John Barley. He didn't look at me, but kept his gaze on the dog. It moved cautiously over to its master, giving me a low growl as it did so, before sitting down beside him where he could rub it gently behind the ear.

I had my Timberland pack over my shoulder and I threw it at him. He caught it and looked dumbly at me for the first time.

"Open it," I said.

He waited a moment, then unzipped the pack and peered in.

"You recognize them?"

He shook his head. "No, I don't believe I do."

I cocked the pistol. The dog's growling rose an octave.

"Old man, this is personal. You don't want to cross me on this thing. I know you sold the boots to Stuckey over in Orono. He gave you thirty dollars for them. Now you want to tell me how you came by them?"

He shrugged. "Found 'em, I guess."

I moved forward and the dog rose up, the hairs on its neck high and tight. It bared its teeth at me. I kept the gun on the old man then, slowly, moved it down to his dog.

"No," said Barley, his hand reaching down to hold the dog back and to cover its bared breast. "Please, not my dog."

I felt bad threatening his dog, and the feeling made me wonder if this old man could possibly be Caleb Kyle, if he could have some hidden reserve of strength that might have made him a match for Stritch. I thought that I would know Caleb when I found him, that I would sense his true nature. All I got from John Barley was fear: fear of me and, I suspected, fear of something else.

"Tell me the truth," I said softly. "Tell me where you got those boots. You tried to get rid of them after we spoke. I want to know why."

He blinked hard and swallowed once, his teeth worrying his bottom lip until he seemed to reach a decision within himself, and spoke.

"I took 'em from the boy's body. I dug him up, took the boots, then covered him again." He shrugged once more. "Took me his pack too. He didn't have no need for 'em anyways."

I resisted pistol-whipping him, but only just. "And the girl?"

The old man twice shook his head, as if trying to dislodge an insect from his hair. "I didn't kill 'em," he said, and I thought for a moment that he might cry. "I wouldn't hurt nobody. I just wanted the boots."

I felt sick inside. I thought of Lee and Walter, of times spent with them, with Ellen. I did not want to have to tell them that their daughter was dead. I once again doubted that this raggedy old man, this scavenger, could be Caleb Kyle.

"Where is she?" I asked.

He was rubbing the dog's body methodically now, hard sweeps from the head almost to its rump. "I only know where the boy is. The girl, I don't rightly know where she might be."

In the light from the window, the old man's face glowed a dim yellow. It made him look sickly and ill. His eyes were damp, the pupils barely pinholes. He was trembling gently as the fear took over his body. I lowered the gun and said: "I'm not going to hurt you."

The old man shook his head and what he said next made my skin crawl. "Mister," he whispered, "it ain't you I'm afraid of."

He saw them near the Little Briar Creek, he said, the girl and the boy in front and a figure, almost a shadow, in the backseat. He was walking with his dog, on his way home from hunting rabbits, when he saw the car pull in below him, harsh noises like stones grinding coming from the engine. It was not yet evening, but darkness had already fallen. He caught a glimpse of the two young people as they passed before the headlights of the car, the girl in blue jeans and a bright red parka, the boy in black, wearing a leather jacket that hung open despite the cold.

The boy lifted the hood of the car and peered inside, using a pocket flashlight to illuminate the engine. He could see him shake his head, heard him say something indistinguishable to the girl, then swear loudly in the silence of the forest.

The rear door of the car opened and the third passenger stepped out. He was tall, and something told John Barley that he was old, older even than Barley himself. And for reasons that, even now, he did not fully understand, he felt a chill cross him and, from close by, he heard the dog give a low whine. Beside the car, the figure stopped and seemed to scan the woods, as if to ascertain the source of the unexpected noise. Barley patted the dog lightly: "Hush, boy, hush." But he could see the dog's nostrils working quickly, and felt the animal shivering beside him. Whatever he scented, it spooked him badly and the dog's unease communicated itself to his owner.

The tall man leaned into the driver's side of the car and the headlights died. "Hey," said the boy. "What're you doing? You killed the lights." His flashlight beam moved and illuminated first the face of the man approaching and then the gleam of something in his hand.

"Hey," said the boy again, softer now. He moved in front of the girl, forcing her back, protecting her from the blade. "Don't do this," he said.

The knife slashed and the flashlight fell. The boy stumbled back and Barley heard him say, "Run, Ellen, run." Then the old man was upon him like a long, dark cloud and Barley saw the knife rise and fall, rise and fall, and heard the sound of its cutting against the noise of the trees gently swaying.

And then the figure moved after the girl. He could hear her stumbling, awkward progress through the woods. She did not get far. There was a scream, followed by a sound as of a blow heavily falling, and then all was silent. Beside him, the dog shifted on the ground, and gave a low, soft keen.

It was some time before the tall figure returned. The girl was not with him. He lifted the boy beneath the arms and hauled him to the rear of the car, where he bundled him into the trunk. He opened the driver's door and slowly, surely, began to push the car down the dirt road that led to Ragged Lake.

Barley tied his dog to a tree and gently wrapped his pocket handkerchief around its muzzle, patting it once and assuring it that he would be back. Then he followed the sound of the car as its wheels crunched on the trail ahead.

About half a mile down the road, just before Ragged Lake, he came upon a clearing next to a patch of beaver bog, dead trees fallen and twisted in the dark water. In the clearing, a pit had been dug and newly excavated earth lay in piles like funeral mounds. There was a slope at one end of the pit, and the old man used it to push the car into the earth. It came to rest almost level, the right rear wheel slightly raised. Then the figure climbed onto the roof and, from there, made its way to the lip of the hole. There was the sound of a spade being removed from the earth and then the soft shifting as it plunged deep once again, followed by a scraping as the first load hit the roof of the car.

It took the old man two hours, all told, to bury the car. Soon, snow would cover the ground and the drifts would hide any subsidence in the earth beneath. He lifted and threw methodically, his pace never varying, never once stopping to take a breath, and, despite all that he had seen, John Barley envied him his strength.

But just as the old man had finished circling the area to make sure that he had done his job well, Barley heard a bark from nearby followed by a long howl and he knew that Jess had managed to remove the binding from his muzzle. Below him, the figure stopped and cocked its head, then swung the spade hard into the beaver bog and began to move, his long legs eating up the incline, heading toward the sound of the dog.

But Barley was already moving, quickly and silently. He picked his way over fallen logs, following deer paths and moose trails so that he might avoid alerting the man behind by breaking new branches. He reached the dog to find it pulling from the rope, its tail wagging, emitting gentle yips of joy and relief. It struggled a little as he restored the binding, then he untied it, took it in his arms and ran for home. He stopped once to look back, certain almost that he had heard sounds of pursuit from close behind, but he could see nothing. When he got back to his cabin, he locked his door, reloaded his shotgun with lethal number-one shot and sat in a chair, never resting until dawn broke, when he fell into a bad, fitful sleep, punctuated by dreams of earth falling into his open mouth.

"Why didn't you tell someone what you saw?" I asked him. Even then, I was not sure whether or not to believe him. How could I believe that he was who he said he was, that such a story could be true? But when I looked in his eyes there was no trace of guile, only an old man's fear of approaching death. The dog now lay beside him, not asleep, its eyes open, sometimes casting glances at me to make sure that I had not moved during the telling of the old man's tale.

"I didn't want no trouble," he replied. "But I went back to see if there was any trace of the girl, and for those boots. They were fine boots and maybe, maybe I wanted to be sure that I hadn't imagined what I saw. I'm an old man, and the mind plays tricks. But I didn't imagine nothing, even though the girl was gone and there wasn't even blood on the ground to tell where she might have been. I knew that I hadn't imagined it as soon as I saw the dip in the ground and the spade hit metal. I was going to keep the boots and the pack, maybe had half a notion to take them to the police so they wouldn't think I was crazy when I told them the story. But…" He stopped. I waited.

"The next night, after what happened, I was sitting here on the porch with Jess and I felt him trembling. He didn't bark or nothing, just began to shake and whine. He was staring out into the woods, just there."

He raised a finger and pointed to a place where the branches of two striped maples almost touched, like lovers reaching out to each other in the dark. "And there was someone standing there, watching us. Didn't move or nothing, didn't speak, just stood watching. And I knew it was him. I could feel it deep in me, and I could sense it in the dog. Then he just seemed to fade into the woods, and I didn't see him again.

"But I knew why he had come. It was a warning. I don't think he knew for certain what I might have seen, and he wasn't going to kill me unless he knew, but right then and there I wished I'd never gone back for them boots. And if I said anything, he'd find out and he'd come for me. I knew that. Then you came around asking questions and I thought for sure I had to get rid of them. I emptied the pack and sold it and the boots to Stuckey and I was glad for what he gave me. I burned the boy's clothes out back. There was nothing else for it."

"You ever see this man before?" I asked.

Barley shook his head. "Never. He wasn't from around these parts, else I'd have recognized him." He leaned forward. "You didn't ought to have come here, mister." There was a tone almost of resignation in his voice. "He'll know, and he'll come for me. He'll come for us both."

I looked out into the gathering night, into the shadows of the trees. There were no stars visible in the sky and the moon was obscured by cloud. The forecast was for more snow; twelve inches were promised over the next week, maybe more. And suddenly I was seized with a fearful regret that my car was back down the road, and that we would have to walk through the darkness of the woods to get to it.

"You ever hear the name Caleb Kyle?" I asked him.

He blinked once, as if I had struck him on the cheek, but there was no real surprise in it. "Sure I heard it. He's a myth. There was never a man by that name, least not around these parts." But just by asking him I had sown doubts in his mind, as I could almost hear the tumblers falling into place, as I watched his eyes widen in realization.

So Caleb had tracked Ellen and Ricky, had wormed his way into their trust. He was the one who had advised them to visit Dark Hollow, just as the hotel manager had told me, and I didn't doubt that it was Caleb who had sabotaged the engine of their car and then told them where to pull in, close by Ragged Lake where there was a grave already waiting. What I couldn't understand was why he had done this. It made no sense, unless…

Unless he had been watching me all along, ever since I began helping Rita Ferris. Anyone who sided with Rita would automatically be perceived as taking a stand against Billy. Did he take Ellen Cole, maybe even kill her as he killed her boyfriend, to punish me for interfering in the affairs of a man whom he believed to be his son? If Ellen was still alive, then any hope of finding her now rested on understanding the mind of Caleb Kyle, and perhaps finding Billy Purdue. I thought of Caleb watching me as I slept, after he had killed Rita and Donald, after he had placed the child's toy on my kitchen table. What was he thinking then? And why didn't he kill me when he had the chance? Somewhere, just beyond my reach, lay an answer to these questions. I tightened my fists in frustration at my inability to grasp it, and then it came to me.

He knew who I was, or, more importantly, he knew whose grandson I was. It would appeal to him, I thought, to torment the grandson as he had tortured the grandfather. More than thirty years later, he was beginning the game again.

I motioned to John Barley. "Come on, we're leaving."

He stood slowly and looked out at the trees, as if in expectation of seeing that figure once again. "Where are we going?"

"You're going to show me where that car is buried, and then you're going to tell Rand Jennings what you told me."

He did not move, but remained staring fearfully into the trees. "Mister, I don't want to go back there," he said.

I ignored him, picked up his shotgun, unloaded it and tossed the empty gun back into the house. I motioned him to go ahead of me, my gun still in my hand. After a moment's hesitation, he moved.

"You can bring your dog," I said, as he passed me. "If there's something out there, he'll sense it before we will."

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The first snow began to fall almost as soon as we lost sight of the old man's house, thick, heavy concentrations of crystal that covered the road and added their weight to the earlier falls. By the time we reached the Mustang our shoulders and hair were white, and the dog gamboled beside us, trying to catch snowflakes in its jaws. I sat the old man in the passenger seat, took a pair of cuffs from the trunk and cuffed his left hand across his body to the armrest on the door. I didn't trust him not to take a swing at me in the car, or to run off into the woods as soon as he had a chance. The dog sat on the back seat, leaving muddy paw prints on my unholstery.

Visibility was poor as I drove and the windshield wipers struggled to remove the snow. I stayed at thirty at first, then slowed to twenty-five, then twenty. Soon, there was only a veil of white before me and the tall shapes of the trees at either side, pine and fir standing like the spires of churches in the snow. The old man said nothing as he sat awkwardly beside me, his right hand holding on to the dashboard for support.

"You better not be lying to me, John Barley," I said.

His eyes were blank, their gaze directed inward, like those of a man who has just heard his death sentence pronounced and knows that it is fixed and inalterable.

"It don't matter," he said, and behind him the dog began to whine. "When he finds us, won't matter what you believe."

Then, perhaps fifty feet ahead of us, the driving snow playing games with perspective, I saw what looked like headlights. As we drew closer, the shapes of two cars appeared as they pulled fully into the road, blocking our path. Behind us, more headlights gleamed, but farther back, and when I continued to move forward, they seemed to recede, then disappeared, their glare reflected now from the trees to my right, and I realized the car behind had turned sideways and stopped, boxing us in.

I slowed about twenty feet from the cars ahead. "What's going on?" said the old man. "Maybe there's been an accident."

"Maybe," I said.

Three figures, dark against the snow and the lights, moved toward us. There was something familiar about the one in the center and the way he moved. He was small. An overcoat hung loose over his shoulders and, from beneath it, his right arm protruded in a sling. As he moved into the glare of the car's lights, I saw the dark threads of stitching in the wounds on his forehead, and the ugly twisting of his harelip.

Mifflin smiled crookedly. I was already reaching for the keys to the cuffs with one hand while with the other I removed my Smith & Wesson from its holster. Beside me, the old man sensed we were in trouble and began yanking at the cuffs.

"Cut me loose!" he screamed. "Cut me loose!"

From behind came the barking of the dog. I tossed the keys to the old man and he reached down to free his hand as I slapped the car into reverse and hit the accelerator, my gun against the wheel. We slammed into the car behind us with the sound of crunching metal and breaking glass, the impact straining the belts as we jerked toward the windshield. The dog tumbled forward into the space between the seats and yelped as it hit the dash.

Ahead of us, five figures now moved through the snow in our direction, and I heard the sound of a door opening behind us. I moved the car into drive and prepared to hit the accelerator again, but the Mustang cut out, leaving us in silence. I leaned down to turn the key in the ignition, but the old man was already opening his door, the dog on his lap nosing at the gap. I reached out to stop him-"No, don't"-and then the windshield exploded and a black and red spray, star-studded with glass shards, filled the car, splashing my face and body and blinding my eyes. I blinked them clear in time to see the old man's ruined face sliding toward me, the remains of the dog lying across his thighs, and then I was pushing my door open, staying low as I hurled myself from the car, more shots tearing into the hood and the interior, the rear window shattering as I tumbled onto the road. I sensed movement behind and to my left, spun and fired. A man in a dark aviator's jacket, a stunned look on his face and blood on his cheek, twisted in the snow and fell to the ground ten feet away from me. I glanced at the point of collision where the Mustang had hit their Neon and saw the body of a second man forced upright between the driver door and the shell of the Dodge, crushed by the impact as he tried to get out of the car.

I turned and broke for the side of the road, sliding down the slope and into the woods, bullets striking the road above me and the snow and dirt around me, shouts and cries following me as I found myself among the trees, twigs snapping beneath my feet, branches scraping my face, twisted roots pulling at my legs. Flashlight beams tore through the night and there came the staccato rattle of an automatic weapon, ripping through the leaves and branches above me and to my right. The old man's blood was still warm on me as I ran. I could feel it dripping down my face, could taste it in my mouth.

I kept running, my gun in my hand, my breath sounding harsh and ragged in my throat. I tried to change direction, to work my way back to the road, but flashlights shone almost level with me to my right and left as they moved to cut me off. Still the snow fell, trapping itself on my lashes and melting on my lips. It froze my hands and almost blinded me as it billowed into my eyes.

And then the terrain changed and I stumbled on a rock, wrenching my ankle painfully, and half slid, half ran down a final incline until my feet splashed in icy cold water and I found myself looking out on the dark expanse of a pond, the winter light drowning in its blackness. I turned, trying to find a way back, but the flashlights and cries drew nearer. I saw a light to my far left, another approaching through the trees to the right, and knew that I was surrounded. I took a deep breath, wincing at the pain as I tested my ankle. I drew a bead on the beam to my right, aimed low and fired. There was a cry of pain and the thrashing of a body falling. I fired twice more, straight ahead at the men approaching through the darkness, and heard a call to, "Kill the lights, kill the lights."

Automatic fire raked the bank as I plunged into the water, keeping the gun extended at shoulder level. The pond was not deep, I figured. Even in the darkness, I could see a chain of rocks breaking the water about half a mile out, midway across its width at its narrowest point. But those rocks were deceptive; I was maybe twenty-five feet out from the bank, cutting diagonally across to the far shore, when the bed sloped and I lost my footing with a splash. I surfaced, gasping, and a flashlight scanned across me, then returned, freezing me in its beam. I took another deep breath and dived as shots dashed the surface of the water like raindrops. I could feel the slugs tearing by me as I dived, deeper and deeper, into the black waters, my lungs bursting and the cold so intense that it felt like a burning.

And then something tugged at my side and a numbness began to spread, slowly mutating into a new, bright red pain that spread fingers of hurt through my body. I twisted like a fish caught on a line as warm blood spilled from my side into the water. My mouth opened in agony, precious oxygen bubbling to the surface, and my gun slipped from my fingers. I panicked, scrambling madly upward, only barely calming myself enough so as not to make a noise when I broke the surface. I took a deep breath, keeping my face almost level with the water, as the pain swept over me. There was numbness in my legs, in my arms and at the tips of my fingers. The gunshot wound burned, but not as badly as it would when exposed to the air.

On the banks, figures moved, but only one light was visible now. They were waiting for me to appear, still fearful of the gun I no longer had. I took a breath and dived again, keeping barely below the surface as I swam, one-handed, away from them. I did not rise again until my hand brushed the bottom of the pond in the shallows by the bank. Keeping my injured side raised, I dragged myself through the shallows, looking for a point where I could safely climb onto land. The automatic spoke again, but this time the bullets struck far behind me. Other shots came, but they were random, unfocused, hoping for a lucky hit. I kept moving onward, my eyes on the deeper darkness ahead where the woods lay.

To my right, I saw a break in the bank and water falling over stones: the river. And that river, I knew, flowed through Dark Hollow. I could have headed for the farthest shore and the woods beyond, but if I fell down among the trees or lost my sense of direction, the best I could hope for would be death from freezing, because no one would know I was there except for Tony Celli's men. If they found me, I would not have to worry about the cold for long.

I found a footing at the mouth of the river, where it flowed from the lake, but I did not stand, preferring instead to keep pulling myself along until an outcrop of trees masked me enough from the men behind to enable me to rise and move into the river itself. My side ached badly now, and every movement sent a fresh surge of pain through me. Water tumbled over a small bank of stones and it took me two attempts to gain a foothold. I pulled myself up and lay, once again, in the water as a flashlight beam moved by and shone in my direction before continuing on past the mouth. I counted to ten, then stumbled for the bank.

The snow had eased a little as the wind dropped. It was less driving now but still falling thickly, and the ground around me was completely white. The pain in my left side grew as I struggled through the deep snow, and I stopped against the trunk of a tree to examine the wound. There was a ragged hole in the back of my jacket, and the sweater and shirt beneath, with a small entry hole around the tenth rib, and a larger exit hole close by at more or less the same level. The pain was bad but the wound was shallow: the distance between the entry and exit holes was little more than two inches. Blood dripped through my fingers and pooled on the snow below. That should have warned me, but I was scared and hurt and was not as careful as I should have been. I reached down, gasping at the pain it caused, and took two handfuls of snow. I packed the snow into the wounds and moved on, slipping and sliding on the bank but remaining close to the water so I would not lose my way. My teeth were chattering uncontrollably and my clothes clung damply to my body. My fingers burned from the icy water. I was nauseous with shock.

It was only when I had traveled some distance, stopping occasionally to rest against a tree, that I recalled where I was in relation to the town. Ahead of me and to my right, perhaps two hundred yards away, I could see the lights of a house. I heard the noise of a set of falls, saw before me the steel skeleton of a bridge and I knew where I was, and where I could go.

A light burned at the kitchen window of the Jennings house as I fell against the back door. I heard a noise from inside and Lorna's voice, panicked, saying: "Who's there?" The curtains at the door parted a little and her eyes widened as she saw my face.

"Charlie?" There came the sound of a key turning in the lock and then the support of the door was taken away from me and I fell forward. As she helped me to a chair, I told her to call room six at the India Hill Motel and no one else, and then I closed my eyes and let the pain wash over me in waves.

Blood bubbled from the exit hole as Lorna cleaned the wound; the skin around it had been wiped down and she had removed some tattered pieces of cloth from within with a pair of sterilized tweezers. She passed a swab over the wound and the burning sensation came again, causing me to twist in the chair.

"Hold still," she said, so I did. When she was done, she made me turn so that she could get at the entry hole. She looked a little queasy, but she kept going.

"Are you sure you want me to do this?" Lorna asked when she was done.

I nodded.

She took a needle and poured boiling water on it.

"This will hurt a little," she said.

She was being optimistic. It hurt a lot. I felt tears spring from my eye at the sharpness of the pain as she put stitches in each wound. It wasn't textbook medical care, but I just needed something to get me through the next few hours. When she had finished, she took a pressure bandage and applied it, then took a longer roll and wound it around my abdomen.

"It'll hold until we can get you to a hospital," she said. She gave me a small, nervous smile. "Red Cross first-aid classes. You should be grateful I paid attention."

I nodded to let her know that I understood. It was a clean wound. That was about the only good thing that could be said for it.

"You want to tell me what happened?" asked Lorna. I stood up slowly and it was only then that I noticed the blood on the tiles.

"Damn," I said. A wave of nausea swept over me, but I held on to the table and closed my eyes until it had passed. Lorna's arm curled around my upper body.

"You've got to sit down. You're weak, and you've lost blood."

"Yeah," I said, as I pushed myself away from the table and walked unsteadily to the back door. "That's what I'm worried about." I lifted the curtain and looked outside. It was still snowing but in the light from the kitchen I could see the telltale trail of red leading from the direction of the river to the door of the kitchen, the blood so thick and dark that it simply absorbed the falling snow.

I turned to Lorna. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have come here."

Her face was solemn, her lips pinched, and then she gave another small smile. "Where else could you have gone?" she said. "I called your friends. They're on their way."

"Where's Rand?"

"In town. They found that man, Billy Purdue, the one they've been looking for. Rand's holding him until the morning. Then the FBI and a whole lot of other people will arrive to talk to him."

That was why Tony Celli's men were here. Word of Billy Purdue's capture would have spread like wildfire through the agencies and police departments involved, and Tony Celli would have been listening. I wondered how quickly they had spotted me when they arrived. As soon as they saw the Mustang, they must have known and decided that it would be less trouble to kill me than to risk my interference.

"The men who shot me, they want Billy Purdue," I said quietly. "And they'll kill Rand and his men if they won't hand him over."

Something flickered on the window, like a falling star reflected. It took me a second to figure out what it was: a flashlight beam. I grabbed Lorna by the hand and pulled her to the front of the house. "We've got to get out of here," I said. The hallway was dark, with a dining room leading off to the right. I stayed low, despite the pain in my side, and peered through the space beneath the window blinds into the front yard.

Two figures stood at the end of the yard. One held a shotgun. The other had his arm in a sling.

I came back to the hallway. Lorna took one look at my face and said: "They're out front as well, aren't they?"

I nodded.

"Why do they want you dead?"

"They think I'll interfere, and they owe me for something that happened back in Portland. You must have guns in the house. Where are they?"

"Upstairs. Rand keeps them in the dresser."

She led the way up the stairs and into their bedroom. It contained a large, country pine bed, with a yellow bedspread and yellow pillows. A matching pine dresser stood across from a large closet. In one corner was a small bookshelf packed with books. A radio played softly in another corner, The Band singing "Evangeline," with Emmylou Harris's vocals snaking in and out of the verse and chorus. Lorna pulled some old T-shirts from a drawer and threw them on the floor, revealing the guns. The first was a Charter Arms Undercover.38 with a three-inch barrel, a real lawman's weapon. There was a speed loader beside it, fully packed. Close by, in a Propex holster, lay a second gun: a Ruger Mark II with a tapered barrel. There was an almost empty box of.22 Long Rifle rimfire cartridges in the corner of the drawer.

"God bless the paranoid," I said. I took the.38, loaded it and tucked it into my belt, then picked up the Ruger and examined it. The bolt was open, the chamber was empty and the safety was on.

"Rand sometimes uses it for target practice," Lorna explained, as I released the bolt, ejected the magazine and began loading it with cartridges. On the bedside cabinet stood a large plastic bottle of water, almost empty now. I steadied myself against the dresser. In the mirror facing me, my skin appeared deathly pale. There were smudges of hurt and exhaustion under my eyes and my face was pockmarked by glass cuts and smeared with sap and the old man's blood. I could smell him on me. I could smell his dog.

"Do you have tape; adhesive tape?"

"Maybe downstairs, but there's a roll of adhesive bandage in the bathroom cabinet. Will that do?"

I nodded, took the plastic bottle and followed her into the yellow-and-white tiled bathroom. She opened the cabinet and handed me the roll of inch-wide bandage. I emptied the last of the mineral water into the sink, inserted the slim barrel of the Ruger into the bottle and held it in place by wrapping the bandage repeatedly around it.

"What are you doing?" asked Lorna.

"Making a suppressor," I replied. I figured that if Celli's men searched the house, I could take one of them out with the suppressed.22 if I had to and buy us five, maybe ten seconds of time. In a gunfight at close quarters, ten seconds is an eternity.

From below came the sound of the back door being kicked in, followed by the shattering of glass and the sound of the front door being opened. I inserted the magazine and pulled the bolt, jacking a cartridge into the chamber.

"Get in the tub and keep your head down," I whispered. She slipped off her sandals and climbed silently into the bathtub. I removed my shoes and left them behind the door, then moved softly onto the landing and back into the bedroom. The radio was still playing, but The Band had now been replaced by Neil Young, his high, plaintive tones echoing around the room.

"Don't let it bring you down…"

I took up a position in the shadows by the window. The gun felt awkward in my hand after the Smith & Wesson, but at least it was a gun. I released the safety, and waited.

"It's only castles burning…"

I heard him on the stairs, watched his shadow moving ahead of him, saw it stop and then begin to step into the room, following the music. I tightened my grip on the trigger, and took a deep breath.

"Just find someone who's turning…"

He pushed the door open with his foot, waited a moment, then darted fully into the bedroom, his shotgun raised. I swallowed once, then exhaled.

"…And you will come around."

I pulled the trigger on the.22 and the top of the bottle exploded dully with a sound like a paper bag bursting. He stumbled back and I shot him again as I advanced, the light leaving his eyes as he slid slowly down the wall. I caught the shotgun, a pistol-grip Mossberg, as it slipped from his grasp. Dropping the.22, I stepped over his body, my stocking feet soundless on the floor, and moved back into the hallway.

"Terry?" called a voice from below, and I saw a man's hand, a. 44 Magnum held in its grip, then his arm, his body, his face. He looked up and I took him in the head, the noise of the shotgun like a cannon's roar. His features disappeared in a red haze and he tumbled backward. I pumped and was already moving onto the stairs when a bullet struck the wall close to my left ear, a muzzle flashing in the darkness of the dining room. I fired, pumped, fired, pumped: two shots into the darkness. Glass broke and plaster disintegrated, and no more shots came. The front door now stood ajar. What remained of its glass burst and wood splinters flew as more shots came from the kitchen. I stayed on the stairs, jammed the shotgun between the supports of the banisters, turned it and fired the last round.

In the kitchen, a shadow detached itself from the wall and moved to the edge of the long hallway, firing a barrage of shots, sending wood singing from the banisters and yellow dust clouding from the wall beside me as his aim gradually grew closer and closer. I reached for the.38, yanked it from my belt and fired three shots. There was a cry of pain as, from the corner of my eye, I saw movement at the front door. It distracted me and, as I turned, the wounded gunman in the kitchen exposed himself fully and moved into the hall, his gun hand raised, the other hand holding onto his shoulder. He bared his teeth and then a noise came, louder than any gunshot I had ever heard before, and a hole appeared in his torso, big enough for a man to put his fists through if he chose. I thought I could see the kitchen through it, the glass on the floor, the sink unit, the edge of a chair. The gunman remained upright for a split second longer then tumbled to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.

At the door stood Louis, a huge Ithaca Mag-10 Roadblocker shotgun in his hands, the rubber stock still fast against his shoulder. "Man just had himself a 10-gauge handshake," he said. From the back of the house came more shots and the sound of a car accelerating fast. Louis jumped over the corpse, with me close behind. We headed through the ruined kitchen to the back door and looked out on the yard beyond. Angel stood at the gate, a Glock 9mm in his hand, and shrugged at us.

"He got away, the ugly fuck. I didn't even see him until he was in the car."

"Mifflin," I said, wearily.

Louis looked at me. "That freak still alive?" He shook his head in wonder.

"Maybe we could blast him into space and hope he burns up on reentry," mused Angel.

I shivered in the cold, with only the bandages to cover my upper body. They were already soaked with red. My ears rang from the noise of the gunfire in the enclosed space of the house. Louis slipped off his overcoat and put it over my shoulders. Despite the cold, I felt like I was burning up.

"You know," said Angel. "You oughta be more careful. You're gonna catch your death like that."

The three of us started at a noise from behind, but only Lorna stood at the door. I walked up to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. She wrapped her arms around herself, keeping her eyes on me and away from the bodies on the floor behind her.

"What are you going to do now?" she asked.

"We're going back to Dark Hollow. I need Billy Purdue alive."

"And Rand?"

"I'll do what I can. You better call him, tell him what's happened."

"I tried. Our phone is dead. They must have cut the wires before they came in."

"Go to a neighbor's house and make the call. With a little luck, we'll get to Dark Hollow shortly after." All of which assumed that the lines hadn't been cut from outside town, in which case Dark Hollow itself would be cut off. My cell phone had failed to raise a signal here, so I doubted if anyone else would have better luck.

Already there were neighbors appearing at their gates, trying to figure out what all the noise was about. It was time to go, but Lorna raised a hand. "Wait," she said, and went back upstairs. When she returned she had my shoes in her arms, along with a thick cotton shirt, a pair of dark pants, a sweater and a padded jacket from LL Bean. She helped me to put on the clothes, glancing away when I stripped off my wet pants, then touched my hand gently as I prepared to leave.

"You take care."

"You too."

Behind me, Angel started up the Mercury, Louis in the front seat. I climbed in back and we moved off. I looked back to see Lorna standing in her yard, watching us until we were gone from her sight.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The roads were deserted as we drove, the silence around us broken only by the purr of the Mercury's engine and the soft thud of snowflakes impacting on the windshield. The pain in my side burned fiercely, and once or twice, I closed my eyes and seemed to lose a couple of seconds. I caught Louis taking careful glances back at me in the rearview mirror, and I raised a hand to let him know that I was okay. It might have looked more convincing if the hand hadn't been covered in blood.

When we pulled into the parking lot in front of the police department there were two cruisers parked ahead of us, along with an orange '74 Trans-Am that looked like it would take a miracle to start it and a couple of other vehicles that had remained stationary long enough for the snow to blur their lines, including a rental Toyota out of Bangor. There was no sign of Tony Celli, or any of his men.

We entered through the front door. Ressler stood behind the desk, examining the jack on the telephone. Behind him was a second, younger patrolman whom I didn't recognize, probably another part-timer, and farther back again, standing across from the station house's two holding cells, was Jennings himself. In a chair beside the desk sat Walter Cole. He looked shocked at my appearance. I was kind of unhappy about it myself.

"The fuck do you want?" said Jennings, causing Ressler to rise from his position and cast a wary eye first over Louis and Angel, then me. He didn't look too happy at the sight of our guns and his hand hovered near his own side arm. His eyes widened a little as he saw the marks on my face and the blood on my clothing.

"What's wrong with the phones?" I returned.

"They're out," Ressler said, after a moment's pause. "All communications are down. Could be the weather."

I moved past him to the cells. One was empty. In the other, Billy Purdue sat with his head in his hands. His clothes were filthy and his boots were stained with mud. He had the haunted, desperate look of an animal caught in a snare. He was humming to himself, like a little boy trying to block out the world around him. I didn't ask Rand Jennings's permission to talk to him. I wanted answers, and he was the only one who could provide them.

"Billy," I said sharply.

He looked up at me. "I fucked up," he said, "didn't I?" Then he went back to humming his song.

"I don't know, Billy. I need you to tell me about the man you saw, the old man. Describe him to me."

Jennings's voice came from behind me. "Parker, get away from the prisoner."

I ignored him. "You listening to me, Billy?"

He was rocking back and forth, still humming, his hands wrapped around his body "Yeah, I hear you." He screwed his face up in concentration. "It's hard. I didn't but hardly see him. He was… old."

"Try harder, Billy. Short? Tall?"

The humming started again, then stopped. "Tall," he said, during the pause. "Maybe as tall as me."

"Slim? Stocky?"

"Thin. He was a thin guy, but lean, y'know?" He stood, interested now, trying hard to picture the figure he had seen.

"What about his hair?"

"Shit, I don't know from hair…" He went back to his song, but now he added the words, only half forming some of them as if he was not entirely familiar with them.

"Come all you fair and tender ladies

Take warning how you court your man…"

And I remembered the song at last: "Fair and Tender Ladies." Gene Clark had sung it, with Carla Olson, although the song itself was much older. With the recognition came the remembrance of where I had heard it before: Meade Payne had been humming it as he walked back to his house.

"Billy," I said. "Have you been out at Meade Payne's place?"

He shook his head. "I don't know no Meade Payne."

I clutched the bars of the cell. "Billy, this is important. I know you were heading out to Meade. You won't get him into trouble by admitting it."

He looked at me and sighed. "I didn't get out there. They picked me up before I even got into town."

I spoke softly and distinctly, trying to keep the tension out of my voice. "Then where did you hear that song, Billy?"

"What song?"

"The song you're humming, "Fair and Tender Ladies." Where did you hear it?"

"I don't recall." He looked away, and I knew that he did remember.

"Try."

He ran his hands through his hair, gripping the tangled locks at the back as if afraid of what his hands might do if he didn't find some way to occupy them, and began to rock back and forth again. "The old man, the one I saw at Rita's place, I think he might have been singing it to himself. I can't get the damned thing out of my head." He started to cry.

I felt my throat go dry. "Billy, what does Meade Payne look like?"

"What?" he asked. He looked genuinely puzzled. From behind me, I heard Jennings say: "I'm warning you for the last time, Parker. Get away from the prisoner." His footsteps sounded on the floor as he walked toward me.

"That's Meade over there, in that picture on the wall," said Billy, standing up as he spoke. He pointed to the framed photograph of three men which hung on the wall near the front desk, a similar version of that which hung in the diner but with only two faces instead of three. I walked over to it, nudging Rand Jennings out of my way as I went. In the middle of the group was a young man in a U.S. Marines uniform, his right arm around Rand Jennings, his left arm around an elderly man who grinned back with pride at the lens. A plaque below the photograph read "Patrolman Daniel Payne, 1967-1991."

Rand Jennings. Daniel Payne. Meade Payne. Except the old man in the picture was short, about five-six, stooped and gentle-eyed, with a crown of white hair surrounding a bald head marked with liver spots. His face was mapped with a hundred lines.

He was not the man I had met at the Payne house.

And slowly, tumblers began to fall in my mind.

Everybody had a dog. Meade Payne had mentioned it in his letter to Billy, but I had seen no dog when I was out there. I thought of the figure Elsa Schneider had seen climbing the drainpipe. An old man couldn't climb a drainpipe, but a young man could. And I recalled what Rachel had said about Judith Mundy, about her being used as breeding stock.

Breeding stock.

Breeding a boy.

And I remembered old Saul Mann, his hands moving over the cards, swiftly palming the lady, or slipping the pea from under a soda pop cap to take five bucks from a sucker. He never pushed them, never hailed them or tried to force them to come, because he knew.

Caleb knew Billy would come back to Meade Payne. Maybe he got Meade's name from Cheryl Lansing before he killed her, or it could have come up during Willeford's investigations. However he found out, Caleb knew that if he took away all the obstacles and all the options, Billy would have to turn to Meade Payne.

Because Caleb understood what con men and hunters all understood: that, sometimes, it's best to lay the bait, wait, and let the prey come to you.

I turned to find Jennings with his Coogan in his hand, pointing in my direction. I guessed that I had ignored him for just that little too long. "I'm tired of your shit, Parker. You and your buddies just drop your weapons and get on the ground," he said. "Now."

Ressler, too, drew his weapon and, in the rear office, the younger policeman was already holding a Remington pump to his shoulder.

"Looks like we just crashed a nervous cops' convention," said Angel.

"Jennings, I don't have time for this," I said. "You have to listen to me-"

"Shut up," said Jennings. "I'm telling you for the last time, Parker, put… " Then he stopped suddenly and looked at the gun in my belt.

"Where did you get that gun?" he asked, and menace stepped softly into his voice like a gunman at a funeral. He eased back the hammer on his pistol and took three steps toward me, his gun now inches from my face. He had now recognized the jacket and sweater as well. Behind me, I heard Angel sigh loudly.

"You tell me where you got that gun, dammit, or I'll kill you."

There was no good way to tell him what had taken place, so I didn't even try. "I was ambushed on the road. The old man who lived out by the lake, John Barley, he's dead. He died in my car. I was chased, I got to your house and Lorna gave me a gun. You may find some bodies in your living room when you get back but Lorna's okay. Listen to me, Rand, the girl-"

Rand Jennings let the hammer fall gently, hit the safety and then pistol-whipped me with the barrel of the gun, catching me a hard blow on the left temple. I staggered backward as he drew his arm back to hit me again, but Ressler intervened and caught his arm.

"I'll kill you, you fuck. I'll kill you." His face was purple with rage, but there was grief there too, and the knowledge that things could never be the same again after this, that the shell had finally been broken and the life he had lived up to then was escaping even as we spoke, dissipating into the air like so much stale gas.

I felt blood running down my cheek and my head ached badly. In fact, I ached all over, but I figured that was the kind of day it was. "You may not get the chance to kill me. The men who ambushed me work for Tony Celli. He wants Billy Purdue."

Jennings's breathing slowed, and he nodded at Ressler, who cautiously released his hold on Jennings's arm. "Nobody is taking my prisoner," said Jennings.

Then the lights went out, and all hell broke loose.

For a few moments, the station house was in total darkness. Then the emergency lighting kicked in, casting a dim glow from four fluorescents on the walls. From the cells, I heard Billy Purdue shouting: "Hey! Hey out there, what's happening? Tell me what's going on. What happened to the lights?"

From the rear of the station came the sound of three loud bangs like hammer blows, followed by the sound of a door hitting a wall. But Louis was already moving, the huge Roadblocker still in his hand. I saw him pass Billy Purdue's cell and wait at the corner, where the corridor leading down to the back door began. I felt him count three in his head, then he turned, stood to one side and fired two shots down the corridor. He moved out of sight, fired one more shot, then moved back into our line of vision. Jennings, Ressler and I ran to join him, while the young cop and Angel bolted the front door, Walter beside them.

In the corridor, two men lay dead, their faces concealed beneath black ski masks, both wearing black denims and short black jackets.

"They picked the wrong camouflage gear," said Louis. "Ought to have checked the weather forecast." He pulled up one of the masks and turned to me: "Anyone you know?"

I shook my head and Louis released his hold on the mask. "Probably not worth knowing anyways," he said.

We advanced cautiously to the open door. Wisps of snow flew into the corridor, blown by the wind outside. Louis took a broom and used it to nudge the door closed, its lock splintered by the impact of the blows it had received. No more shots came. He then helped Ressler to carry a desk down the corridor from the office and they used it to block the entrance. We left Louis to watch the door and returned to the main office, where Angel and the young cop were each at one side of a window, trying to catch a glimpse of the men moving outside. There couldn't have been many of them left, I figured, although Tony Celli was still among them.

Walter stood farther back. I noticed he had his old.38 in his hand. I was certain now that I knew where Ellen was, assuming she was still alive, but if I told Walter he would run hell-for-leather into Tony Celli's men in an effort to get to her, and that would serve no purpose at all, apart from getting him killed.

A voice came. "Hey, inside. We don't want nobody to get hurt. Just send Purdue out and we'll be gone." It sounded like Mifflin.

Angel looked at me and grinned. "Just promise me, whatever happens, that you'll finish off that gimpy fuck for good this time."

I took up a position beside him and looked out into the darkness. "He is kind of irritating," I agreed. I turned around to find Louis beside me.

"The door's okay. They try to come in again, we'll hear them before they can do any damage." He took a quick look out of the window. "Man, never thought I'd hear myself say this, but I feel like John Wayne."

"Rio Bravo," I said.

"Whatever. That the one with James Caan?"

"No, Ricky Nelson."

"Shit."

Behind us, Jennings and Ressler seemed to be attemping to come up with a game plan. It was like watching two children trying to hold chopsticks with their toes.

"You got a radio?" I asked.

It was Ressler who acknowledged the question. "We're getting white noise, nothing else."

"They're blocking you, or they've taken out your transmitter."

Jennings spoke. "We stay here, they'll give up. This isn't the frontier. They can't just attack a police station and take a prisoner."

"Oh, but this is the frontier," I said. "And they can do what they want. They're not going to leave without him, chief. Celli wants the money Purdue took from him, or his own people will kill him." I paused. "Then again, you could always give them the money."

"He didn't have any money when we found him," said Ressler. "Didn't even have a bag."

"You could ask him where it is," I suggested. I could see Billy Purdue looking at me curiously. Ressler looked at Jennings, shrugged and moved across to the cell. As he did so, Angel dived sideways while Louis pushed me to the floor. I cried out as my injured side hit the carpet.

"Heads up!" shouted Angel.

The front window of the station house exploded inward and bullets tore into the walls, the desks, the filing cabinets, the light fittings. They shattered glass partitions, blew up the watercooler and turned reports and files to confetti. Ressler fell to the ground, the back of his leg already ragged and red. Beside me, Angel rose and opened fire with the Glock. Louis's Roadblocker thundered as he took up a position beside him.

"We're going to be torn apart here," shouted Angel. The firing from outside ceased. Behind us, there was only the sound of paper settling, glass crunching and water still dripping from the remains of the ruined cooler. When the pain in my side at last began to subside a little, I looked at Louis. "We could bring the fight to them," I said.

"Could do," he said. "You up to it?"

"Just about," I lied. On the floor, Jennings was cutting the leg of Ressler's pants to get at the wound. "You got a window that leads out into somewhere dark, maybe concealed by a tree or something?" I asked.

Jennings looked up at us and nodded. "Window of the men's john, down that corridor. It's right beside the wall, too narrow for anyone to fit through the space but someone could get onto the surrounding wall itself from there."

"Sounds good," said Louis.

"What about me?" said Angel.

"You doing a bang-up job with that Glock," replied Louis.

"You think?"

"Yeah. You actually hit anybody I'll start believing in God, but you sure scaring the hell out of Tony's boys."

"What about me?" said Walter. They were the first words he had spoken to me since the funeral in Queens.

"Stay here," I said. "I think I've figured something out."

"About Ellen?" The pain in his eyes made me wince.

"It's no good to any of us while Tony Celli's men are out there," I told him gently. "When this is done with, we'll talk."

We turned to leave, but it seemed like it was going to be one obstacle after another. Rand Jennings was still kneeling by Ressler. His gun was still in his hand. It was still pointing at me.

"You're not going anywhere, Parker."

I looked at him, but continued walking. The muzzle of the gun followed me as I moved past him.

"Parker…"

"Rand," I said. "Shut up."

Surprisingly, he did.

With that, we left them and headed to the men's toilet. The window was frosted and opened out above a pair of sinks. We listened carefully for movement outside, then slipped the latch, pulled the window open and stepped back. There were no shots, and within seconds we were hauling ourselves over the wall and into a patch of waste ground behind the north wall of the station, the shells in Louis's coat pockets jangling dully as he hit the ground. My side hurt, but by now I was past caring. I reached out for Louis as he prepared to move away.

"Louis, the old man out at Meade Payne's house is Caleb Kyle."

He almost looked surprised. "What you say?"

"He was waiting for Billy. If something happens to me, you take care of it, okay?"

He nodded, then added. "Man, you be takin' care of it yourself. They ain't killed you yet, then they ain't never gonna kill you."

I smiled and we separated, slowly making our way in a pincer movement toward the front of the station house, and Tony Celli's men.

CHAPTER THIRTY

I do not remember clearly much of what happened as I stumbled into the darkness. I recall that I was shivering constantly, but my skin was hot to the touch and my face was shiny with sweat. I had Jennings's gun, and had restocked the speed loader from the box of shells, but it still felt strange and unfamiliar in my hand. I vaguely regretted the loss of the Smith & Wesson. I had killed with it and, in doing so, had killed something inside me, but it was my gun and its history over the previous twelve months had mirrored my own. Perhaps it was for the best that it now lay deep in the water.

Snow was falling and the world was mute, its mouth stifled with flakes. My feet sank deep as I followed the wall, the station house to my left, cold piercing my boots and numbing my toes. On the other side of the station, I knew, Louis was moving steadily, the big shotgun in his hands.

I stopped where the wall fell suddenly at the edge of the building, becoming instead a three-foot-high surround for the parking lot. I glanced into the lot, saw no movement and made for the cover of a late-model Ford, but my responses were sluggish and I made more noise than I should have. My hands now shook continuously, so much so that I had to reach up with my left and still the barrel of my gun as I went. The pain in my side was unrelenting but, when I looked down, I saw only small bloodstains on the sweater.

The snow was being urged on by a wind that seemed to have gathered renewed vigor as the night drew on. Great swaths of white were swept into my face, and flakes crowded on my tongue. I tried to find Louis's dark form, but could see nothing beyond the lot. I knelt down, breathing heavily, sick to my stomach. For a moment, I felt that I might faint. I took a handful of snow and, crouching carefully, rubbed it into my face. It didn't make me feel much better, but the gesture saved my life.

Above me, and to my left, a shape moved behind one of the cruisers. I saw a black, patent leather shoe rise from the snow, flakes still clinging to the cuff of the dark pants above it, the tail of a blue overcoat dancing and waving in the wind. I rose, and the gun rose with me, up, up, until my head and the gun were above the hood of the Ford. And as the figure turned, registering the movement, I fired a single shot into his chest and watched dispassionately as he fell back into the drift that had built up against the wall. There he remained slumped, his chin resting on his breast, his blood turning the snow black.

And in that instant, something happened inside me. My world turned dark as the blood-drenched snow and my mind began to lose its general focus. The universe blurred at its edges, leaving me with only a pinhole of perspective. And as the world shifted and tilted I seemed to both feel and hear the sound of a blade entering flesh and then a noise like a melon being halved with a single blow. I followed the tiny lens of clarity across the wall and over the road, where a small bank sloped down to the trees. In the snow a man lay in a heap, his body split from chest to navel and snowflakes gathering in his ruined head. There were footprints around his body, deep and firm. The footsteps veered away from the body and headed toward town, following a second trail of prints whose footfalls were distorted by a limp. There was blood between the marks of Mifflin's shoes. As I followed the tracks, more shots came from the direction of the station house, among them the sound of Louis's gun.

I walked south for five, ten minutes, maybe a little more, before I found myself at the end of a residential street. A woman and a man, both elderly and wrapped tightly in overcoats and blankets, stood on their porch, the old man with one arm around the woman's shoulders. There were no more shots now, but still they waited, and still they looked. Then they caught sight of me and both drew back instinctively, the man pulling his wife, or perhaps his sister, back through the open door and closing it behind them, all the time never taking his eyes from me. There were lights on in some of the other houses, and here and there curtains moved. I could see faces haloed with dim light, but no one else appeared.

I reached the corner of Spring Street and Maybury. Spring Street led on into the center of town, but there was darkness at the end of Maybury, and the twin trails of prints moved in that direction. About halfway down the street, they separated, the distorted set moving on into the shadows, the second set veering northwest through the boundary between two properties. I guessed that Mifflin had got there first and found himself a position in the darkness from which he could view the street below him, and his pursuer had veered off to circle him when he guessed what was happening. I turned south and made my way around the backs of the houses until I came to the edge of a copse of trees where the western verge of the forest began. There I halted.

Perhaps thirty feet from me, at the edge of a pool of light shed by the last streetlamp on the road, a cloud formed and then disappeared. Something moved in a startled, frightened gesture. A face scanned to the left, then to the right, and a figure peered from behind a tree. It was Mifflin, one arm still shrouded in a sling. As I drew nearer, shielded by the shadows and my footfalls silenced by the snow, I saw blood drip thickly from his fingers and join a growing pool at his feet. I was almost upon him when some small sound caused him to turn. His eyes grew wide and he rose swiftly, a knife flashing in his good hand. I shot him in the right shoulder and he spun, his feet twisting beneath him, falling on his back and loosing a loud cry of pain as he landed. I moved forward quickly with the gun trained on him. He blinked hard and tried to focus as the light illuminated my features fully.

"You," he said at last. He tried to rise but he had no strength. Only his head moved before the effort proved too much and it fell back into the snow. As I looked at him, I saw that a long gash had been torn across the front of his coat. Something shone wetly within.

"Who did this?" I said.

He tried to laugh, but it came out as a cough and blood sprayed from his mouth and flecked his teeth with red. "An old man," he said. "A fucking old man. He came out of nowhere, slashed me, then took Contorno before we even knew what was happening. I fucking ran, man. Fuck Contorno." He tried to move his head, to look back to the town. "He's out there now, watching us. I can tell."

Maybury was quiet, and nothing moved on the street, but he was right: there was a watchfulness about the darkness as if, somewhere in its depths, someone held his breath, and waited.

"There'll be help here soon," I said, although I was unsure even as I spoke that things had gone our way back at the police department. At least we had Louis, I thought, otherwise we'd all be dead. "We'll get you to a doctor."

He shook his head once. "No, no doctor," he said. He glared at me. "It ends here. Do it, you fuck, do it!"

"No," I said softly. "No more."

But he was not going to be denied. With all the strength left in his body, he reached into the breast of his coat, his teeth gritted with the effort. I reacted without thinking and killed him where he lay, but when I drew his hand from his coat it was empty. How could it be otherwise, when he had only a knife to defend himself?

And as I stood back something seemed to flicker in the darkness across the street, and then was gone.

I headed back to the police department and had almost reached it when a figure appeared to my right. I twisted toward it, but a voice said: "Bird, it's me." Louis appeared from the shadows, his shotgun cradled in his arms like a sleeping child. There was blood spray on his face, and his coat was torn at the left shoulder.

"You tore your coat," I said. "Your tailor's going to shed a tear."

"It was last season's anyways," said Louis. "Made me feel like a bum wearing it." He stepped closer to me. "You don't look so good."

"You are aware that somebody shot me?" I asked, in a pained tone.

"Somebody always shooting you," he replied. "Weren't somebody shooting at you, beating up on you or electrocuting you, you'd be listless. Think you can hold it together?" His tone had changed, and I guessed there was bad news coming.

"Go on," I said.

"Billy Purdue's gone. Looks like Ressler collapsed from his wounds and Billy dragged him by the cuff of his pants over the cell while Angel and the others were distracted. Took his keys from his belt and a shotgun from the rack, then let himself out. Probably left the same way we did."

"Where was Angel? He okay?"

"Yeah, Angel and Walter both. They was helping Jennings to reinforce the back door. Seems like the last of Tony's guys made a second attempt on it after we left. Billy just walked out, clean and free."

"After we'd helped him by clearing the way." I swore viciously, then told him about Mifflin and the eviscerated man in the snow.

"Caleb?" asked Louis.

"It's him," I said. "He's come for his boy, and he's killing anyone who threatens him or his son. Mifflin saw him, but Mifflin's dead."

"You kill him?"

"Yes," I said. Mifflin had given me no choice but to kill him, yet there had been a kind of dignity to him in his last moments. "I have to get out to Meade Payne's place."

"We got more immediate problems," said Louis.

"Tony Celli."

"Uh-huh. It's got to end here, Bird. His car's parked maybe half a mile east, just on the edge of town."

"How do you know?" I said, as we began walking in that direction.

"I asked."

"You must have a very persuasive manner."

"I use kind words."

"That, and a big gun."

His mouth twitched. "A big gun always helps."

A black Lincoln Towncar stood on a side road, its lights dimmed, as we approached. Behind it were two other cars, big Fords, also with their lights dimmed, and a pair of black Chevy vans. In front of the Lincoln, a figure knelt in the snow, its head down, its hands tied behind its back. Before we could get any closer a gun cocked behind us and a voice said: "Put them down, boys."

We did as we were told, but didn't turn around.

"Now walk on."

The driver's door of one of the Fords opened, and Al Z stepped out. As the interior light came on I saw another figure, fat and silver-haired, dark glasses on his eyes and a cigarette in his hand. Then he faded into the gloom again as Al Z closed the door. He walked to the kneeling figure as three other men appeared from the second Ford and stood, waiting. The kneeling figure raised its head, and Tony Celli looked at us with dead eyes.

Al Z kept his hands stuffed firmly in the pockets of his gray overcoat and watched us as we approached. When we were ten feet from Tony Celli he raised a hand, and we stopped. Al Z looked almost amused.

Almost.

"I asked you to stay out of our business," he said.

"Like I told you, it was the 'our business' part that I had a problem with," I replied. I felt myself swaying, and willed my body to remain still.

"It's your hearing you have a problem with. You should have picked somewhere else to start your moral crusade."

He withdrew his right hand to reveal a Heckler & Koch 9mm, shook his head gently, said, "You fucking guys," in his soft, clipped tones, then shot Tony Celli in the back of the head. Tony slumped face first on the ground, his left eye still open and a hole where his right eye used to be. Then two men came forward, one with a plastic sheet over his arms, and they wrapped Tony Celli and placed his body in the trunk of one of the cars. A third man ran a gloved hand through the snow until he found the bullet, then slipped it into his pocket along with the ejected case and followed his comrades.

"He didn't have the girl," said Al Z. "I asked him."

"I know," I said. "There's someone else. He took a blade to two of Tony's men."

Al Z shrugged. The money was now his primary concern, not the ultimate fate of those who had chosen to follow Tony Celli. "The way I figure it, you've done worse than that," he said.

I didn't respond. If Al Z decided to kill us for what we'd done to Tony Clean's machine, there wasn't a whole lot I could say that would make him change his mind.

"We want Billy Purdue," he went on. "You hand him over, we'll forget what happened here. We'll forget that you killed men you shouldn't have killed."

"You don't want Billy," I replied. "You want your money, to replace what Tony lost."

Al Z took his left hand from his pocket and moved it in a gesture that indicated: "Whatever." Discussing the circumstances of the money's retrieval was just an exercise in semantics as far as he was concerned.

"Billy's gone. He got away in the confusion, but I'll find him," I said. "You'll get your money, but I won't hand him over to you."

Al Z considered this, then looked to the figure in the car. The cigarette moved in a gesture of disregard, and Al Z turned back to us.

"You have twenty-four hours. After that, even your friend here won't be able to save you." Then he walked back to the car, the men around him dispersing into the various vehicles as he did so, and they drove away into the night, leaving only tire tracks and a smear of blood on the snow.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The station house looked like it had been attacked by a small army. Its front windows were almost entirely shattered. The door was pitted with bullet holes. Angel opened it as we arrived, and glass tinkled to the floor. Walter stood behind him. Behind us, some of the braver locals were approaching from the southern end of the town.

"Now we go find Caleb," said Louis, but I shook my head.

"There are going to be more cops on their way here soon. I don't want you or Angel here when they arrive."

"Bullshit," said Louis.

"No, it isn't, and you know it. If they find you here, no amount of explaining is going to get you out of trouble. Anyway, this part is personal-for me and for Walter. Please, get going."

Louis paused for a moment, as if he was going to say more, then nodded. "Tonto," he called. "We leavin'." Angel joined him and they headed for the Mercury together. Walter stood beside me as we watched them go. I reckoned I had about an hour left in me, maybe an hour and a half, before I collapsed.

"I think I know where Ellen is," I said. "You ready to go get her?"

He nodded.

"If she's still alive, we're going to have to kill to get her back."

"If that's what it takes," he said.

I looked at him. I think he meant it.

"Okay. You'd better drive. It hasn't been my best day behind the wheel."

We left the car a quarter of a mile beyond the Payne house and approached it from the rear, using the trees as cover. Two lights burned inside, one in a front room, the other in an upper bedroom. There was still no sign of life when we reached the verge of the property, where a small hut, its roof fitted with a sheet of corrugated iron, stood decaying slowly. There were footsteps in the snow that were not entirely obscured by the snowfall. Someone had been moving about recently, and the engine of the truck parked close by was still warm.

A smell came from the hut, the desolate odor of decaying flesh. I moved to the corner, reached around and carefully slipped the bolt. It made a little noise, but not much. I opened the door and the smell became stronger. I looked at Walter, and saw hope die in his eyes.

"Stay there," I said, and I slipped inside.

The smell was so strong now that it made my eyes water, and the stink was already clinging to my clothes. In one corner stood a long chest freezer, its corners eaten by rust which had left holes in its structure, its unconnected lead twisted around one support like a tail. I covered my mouth and lifted the lid.

Inside, a body lay curled. It was dressed in blue overalls, its feet bare, one hand behind its back with the rotting fingers splayed, the other obscured by the body. The face was bloated and the eyes were white. They were an old man's eyes. The cold had preserved him somewhat, and despite the ravages that had been visited on his body I recognized him as Meade Payne, the man in the photo back at the diner, the man who had died so Caleb Kyle could take his place and wait for Billy Purdue to come to him. Beneath his body, I saw a tail and black fur: the remains of his dog.

Behind me, I heard the door creak on its hinges and Walter entered slowly and fearfully, his eyes following my stare into the freezer. He could not keep the relief from his features when he saw the body of the old man.

"This the guy in the picture?" he asked.

"That's him."

"Then she's still alive."

I nodded, but I didn't say anything. There were worse things than being killed and I think, in the dark, shuttered places of his mind, Walter knew that.

"Front or back?" I said.

"Front," he replied.

"Okay, let's do it."

The house smelled sour when I opened the front door quietly and stepped into the large kitchen. There was a pine table with four matching chairs, the surface of the table covered with bread, some of it days out of date, and opened cartons of milk that even the temperature in the room had not prevented from going off. There were also some cold cuts, their edges curling and hard, and a dozen empty Mickey's Big Mouths, along with half a bottle of cheap grain whiskey. In one corner stood a black trash bag, from which the worst smells of all came. I reckoned it contained over a week's worth of rotting food.

Through the open kitchen door I saw Walter enter the house, his nose wrinkling at the smell. He moved to his right, his back to the wall and his gun panning across the front dining room, which was connected to the kitchen by a half-open door. I moved forward and did the same with the TV room on the left side of the house. Both rooms were littered with discarded potato chip bags, more beer bottles and cans, and half-eaten food on dirty plates. The TV room also contained a green knapsack, all strapped up and ready to be taken away. I gestured to the stairs and Walter led, keeping to the wall to avoid any creaking steps, his gun high in a two-handed grip.

On the first landing was a bathroom that stank of urine and excrement, with damp, filthy towels lying across the toilet or piled on the floor by the door. Up two steps was the first bedroom, the bed unmade and more scattered food on the floor and dresser, but with no other indication that it had recently been occupied. There were no clothes, no shoes, no bags. It was in this bedroom that the light still burned.

Ellen Cole lay on the bed in the second bedroom, her hands tied to the bed frame with ropes. There was a black rag tied over her eyes and ears, cotton padding stuffed beneath the band to muffle her hearing. Her mouth was taped, with a small hole torn in its center. Two blankets covered her body. On a small bedside table sat a plastic water bottle.

Ellen didn't move as we entered the room although, as we drew closer, she seemed to sense us. Walter reached out to touch her, but she drew away with a small sound of fear. I pulled back the blankets gently. She had been stripped to her underwear, but she didn't appear to be hurt. I left them there as I searched the third bedroom. It, too, was empty, but the bed had obviously been slept in. When I returned to the second bedroom, Walter was gently holding Ellen's head and working the blindfold free. She blinked, her eyes narrowed even in the comparative darkness of the room. Then she saw him and started to cry.

"All empty," I said.

I walked to the bed and cut the ropes holding her hands with my pocketknife while Walter stripped away the tape. He held her in his arms as she cried, her body heaving against him. I found her clothes in a pile by the window.

"Help her to get dressed," I told him. Ellen still had not spoken, but while Walter slipped her feet into her jeans I took her hand and drew her attention to me.

"Ellen, there are just two of them, right?"

It took her a moment or two to respond, then she nodded. "Two," she said. Her voice was strained from lack of use, and her throat was dry. I gave her the water bottle and she took a small sip through the straw.

"Did they hurt you?"

She shook her head, then began to cry again. I held her, then moved away as Walter put her sweater over her arms and drew it down. He put an arm around her shoulders and helped her from the bed, but her legs collapsed almost immediately.

"It's okay, honey," he said. "We'll get you down."

We were about to make our way down when, from below, there came the sound of the front door opening.

My stomach tightened. We listened for a moment or two, but no sound came from the stairs. I indicated to Walter that he should leave Ellen. If we tried to move her again, we would alert whoever was downstairs. She made a tiny, mewing sound as he drew away from her and tried to hold him back, but he kissed her gently on the cheek to reassure her, then followed me. The front door hung open, and snow billowed in from the darkness beyond. As we approached the final steps, a shadow moved in the kitchen to my right. I turned and put a finger to my lips.

A figure moved across the doorway, not looking in our direction. It was the young man I had met on my first visit to the house: Caspar, the man I believed to be Caleb's son. I swallowed hard and moved forward, my hand up to let Walter know that he should hang back near the front door. I counted three and stepped into the kitchen, my gun raised and pointing to my left.

The kitchen was empty, but the connecting door into the dining room was now fully open. I sprang back to warn Walter, just in time to see a shape move behind him and a knife gleam in the dimness. He saw the look on my face and was already moving when the knife came down and caught him in the left shoulder, causing his back to arch and his mouth to contort in pain. He brought his gun across his body and fired beneath his left arm, but the knife rose and caught him again, this time in a slashing movement across his back as he fell. Caspar pushed Walter hard from behind, and his head impacted with a loud smack on the end of the banisters. He fell to his hands and knees, blood running down his face and his eyes heavy and dazed.

The young man turned to me now, with the knife held blade down in his right hand. There was a fresh bullet wound at his hip, staining his filthy chinos a deep red, but he did not seem to notice the pain. Instead, he curled himself and hurled his body down the hallway toward me. His mouth was open, his teeth were bared and the knife was ready to strike.

I shot him in the chest as he ran and he stopped hard, his body teetering on the soles of his shoes. He put a hand to the wound and examined the blood, as if only then would he believe that he had been shot. He looked at me one more time, cocked his head to one side and then made as if to move at me again. I fired a second shot. This time, the bullet took him straight through the heart and he fell back onto the bare floor, his head coming to rest close to where Walter was trying to raise himself onto his hands and knees. I think he was dead before he hit the ground. Above me, I heard Ellen cry out, "Daddy," and saw her appear at the top of the stairs, dragging herself across the steps toward him.

Ellen's cry saved my life. As I turned to look at her, I heard a whistling sound at my back and saw a shadow move on the floor ahead of me. Something caught me a painful glancing blow to the shoulder, missing my head by inches, then the blade end of a spade swept by me. I grabbed at the wooden handle with my left hand, striking back with my right elbow at the same time. I felt it connect with a jaw, then used the momentum of the spade to pull the man behind me forward, using my right foot to trip him as he moved. He stumbled ahead of me, then fell to his knees. He stayed on all fours for a couple of seconds, then rose up and turned to face me, framed against the night by the open door behind him.

And I knew that this, at last, was Caleb Kyle. He was no longer posing as twisted and arthritic but stood tall and straight, his thin, wiry limbs encased in blue denims and a blue shirt. He was an old man, but I felt his strength, his rage, his capacity to inflict pain and hurt, as almost a physical thing. It seemed to radiate from him like heat and the gun in my hand almost wavered with the impact. His eyes were fierce and glowed with a deep, red fire, and I thought instinctively of Billy Purdue. I thought too of the young women left hanging from a tree and the pain they had suffered at his hands, and of my grandfather, forever haunted by his dreams of this man. Whatever pain Caleb himself had endured, he had visited it a hundredfold on the world around him.

Caleb looked at his dead boy lying close by his feet, then at me, and the intensity of his hatred rocked me on my heels. His eyes shone with a deep, malevolent intelligence. He had manipulated us all, evading capture for decades, and had almost succeeded in evading us again, but it had cost his son his life. Whatever happened after, some small measure of justice had been achieved for those poor, dead girls left hanging from a tree, and for Judith Mundy, who, I believed, had been taken deep into the darkness of Great North Woods by this man.

"No," said Caleb. "No."

It was only then that I began to understand why he had wanted so badly to beget a boy. I think if Judith Mundy had given birth to a daughter then his hatred would have led him to kill the child, and try again for a son. He wanted what so many men wanted: to see himself replicated upon the earth, to see the best part of himself live on beyond him. Except, in Caleb's case, that which he desired to see continue was foul and vicious and would have consumed lives just as its father had before it.

Caleb moved forward a step and I cocked the pistol. "Back up," I said. "Keep your hands where I can see them."

He shook his head, but moved back a few steps, his hands held out from his sides. He didn't look at me but kept his eyes fixed on his dead son. I advanced and stood beside Walter, who had raised himself to a sitting position, his uninjured right shoulder against the wall and blood thick on his face. He held his gun loosely in his right hand, but he was unable to focus and was obviously in severe pain. I wasn't doing so good myself. By now, Ellen was halfway down the stairs, but I held up a hand and told her to stay back. I didn't want her anywhere near this man. She stopped moving, but I could hear her crying.

In front of me, Caleb spoke again. "You'll die for what you did to him," he spat. His attention was now fully directed at me. "I'll tear you apart with my bare hands, then I'll fuck the slut to death and leave the body in the woods for the animals to feed on."

I didn't reply to his taunt. "Keep moving back, old man," I said. I didn't want to be with him in an enclosed space; not in the hallway, not on the porch. He was dangerous. I knew that, even with the gun in my hand.

He retreated again, then slowly moved down the steps until he stood in the yard, snow falling on his exposed head and his outstretched arms, light from the front room bathing him. His hands were held away from his sides and I could see the butt of a gun protruding from the back of his pants.

"Turn around," I said.

He didn't move.

"Turn around or I'll shoot you in the legs." I couldn't kill him, not yet.

He glared at me, then turned to his right.

"Reach around. Use your thumb and forefinger to take the butt of the gun, then throw it on the ground."

He did as I told him, tossing the gun into some pruned rosebushes below the porch.

"Now turn back again."

He turned.

"You're him, aren't you?" I said. "You're Caleb Kyle."

He smiled, a gray, wintry thing like a blight on the living organisms around him. "It's just a name, boy. Caleb Kyle is as good as any other." He spat again. "You afeared yet?"

"You're an old man," I replied. "It's you who should be afraid. This world will judge you harshly, but not as harshly as the next."

He opened his mouth, and the saliva made a clicking sound at the back of his teeth. "Your granddaddy was afeared of me," he said. "You look the spit of him. You look afeared."

I didn't reply. Instead, I tossed my head in the direction of the dead man on the floor behind me. "Your dead boy, was his mother Judith Mundy?"

He bared his teeth at me and made as if to move in my direction, and I fired a shot into the ground in front of him. It kicked up a flurry of dirt and snow, and brought him to a halt.

"Don't," I said. "Answer me: did you take Judith Mundy?"

"I swear I'll see you dead," he hissed. He stared beyond me to where his son lay, the muscles in his jaw tightening as he gritted his teeth against the pain he felt. He looked like some strange, ancient demon, the tendons on his neck standing out like cables, his teeth long and yellowed. "I took it to breed on, after I thought my other boy was lost to me, lost down a shithouse sewer."

It. "Is she dead?"

"Don't see how it's any of your business, but it bled to death after it had the boy. I let it bleed. It weren't of no account anyways."

"Now you're back."

"I came back for my boy, the boy I thought was lost to me, the boy that bitch kept from me, the boy all them bitches and sonsofbitches kept from me."

"And you killed them all."

He nodded proudly. "Them as I could find."

"And Gary Chute, the forestry worker?"

"He had no business being there," he said. "I don't spare them that cross my path."

"And your own grandson."

His eyes flickered for a moment, and there was something close to regret in them. "It was a mistake. He got in my way." Then: "He was a sickly one. He wouldn't have survived, not where we were going."

"You've got nowhere to go, old man. They're taking back their forest. You can't kill every man who comes in."

"I know places. There are always places a man can go."

"No, not anymore. There's only one place you're going."

Behind me, I heard a movement on the stairs. Ellen had ignored me and gone to Walter. I guessed that she would.

Caleb looked over my shoulder at her. "She your'n?"

"No."

"Shit," he drawled. "I saw you, and I saw your granddaddy in you, but my eyes must have deceived me when I saw you in her."

"And were you going to 'breed on her' too?"

He shook his head. "She was for the boy. For both my boys. Fuck you, mister. Fuck you for what you did to my boy."

"No," I said. "To hell with you." I raised the gun and pointed it at his head.

Behind me, I heard Walter groan and Ellen shouted "Bird" in her strange, cracked voice. Something cold buried itself in the soft flesh at the back of my head. Billy Purdue's voice said: "Your finger moves on that trigger, and it'll be the last thing you ever do."

I hesitated for an instant, then released my grip on the trigger and moved my finger away from the guard, raising the gun to show him that I had done so.

"You know what to do with it," he said.

I slipped the safety and threw the gun onto the porch.

"Down on your knees," he said.

The pain in my side surged as I knelt. Billy moved in front of me, Walter's gun tucked into the waistband of his pants and a Remington shotgun in his hand, then stepped back so that he could keep both Caleb and me in view.

Caleb Kyle looked upon him with admiration. After all that had happened, after all that he had done, his son had come back to him.

"Kill him, boy," said Caleb. "He killed your half brother, shot him like a dog. He was kin to you. Blood calls for blood, you know that."

Billy's face was a mass of confusion and harsh, conflicting emotions. The shotgun moved toward me. "Is that true? Was he kin to me?" he said, unconsciously adopting the phrasing of the older man.

I didn't reply. His nostrils flared and he brought the butt of the gun down in a glancing blow across my head. I fell forward and from in front of me I heard Caleb laugh. "That's it, boy, kill the sonofabitch." Then his laughter subsided, and dazed as I was, I could see him move forward a step.

"I came back for you, son. Me and your brother, we came back to find you. We heard you was lookin'. We heard about the man that you hired to find me. Your momma hid you away from me, but I came lookin' for you and now the lamb that was lost is found again."

"You?" said Billy, in a soft, bewildered tone I had never heard from him before. "You're my father?"

"I'm your daddy," said Caleb, and he smiled. "Now you finish him off for what he did to your brother, the brother you never got to meet. You kill him for what he did."

I rose to my knees, my knuckles supporting my weight, and spoke: "Ask him what he did, Billy. Ask him what happened to Rita and Donald."

Caleb Kyle's eyes glittered brightly, and spittle shot from his mouth. "You shut up, mister. Your lies ain't going to keep me from my boy."

"Ask him, Billy. Ask him where Meade Payne is. Ask him how Cheryl Lansing and her family died. You ask him, Billy."

Caleb sprang onto the steps and his right foot kicked me hard in the mouth. I felt teeth break, and my mouth filled with pain and blood. I saw the foot come forward again.

"Stop," said Billy. "Stop it. Let him be." I looked up and the pain in my mouth seemed as nothing to the agony etched in Billy Purdue's face. A lifetime's hurt burned in his eyes; a lifetime of abandonment, of loss, of fighting against a world that was always going to beat him in the end, of trying to live a life that had no past and no future, only a grinding, painful present. Now a veil had been pulled back, giving him a glimpse of what might have been, of what might still be. His daddy had come back for him, and all of the things he had done, all of the hurt this man had inflicted, he had done for love of his son.

"Kill him, Billy, and be done with it," said Caleb, but Billy did not move, did not look at either of us, but stared into a place deep inside himself, where all that he had ever feared and all that he had ever wanted to be now twisted and coiled over each other.

"Kill him," hissed the old man, and Billy raised his gun. "You do as you're told, boy. You listen to me. I'm your daddy."

And in Billy Purdue's eyes, something died. "No," he said. "You ain't nothin' to me."

The shotgun roared and the barrel leaped in his hands. Caleb Kyle hunched over and tumbled back as if he had been struck hard in the pit of his stomach, except now there was only a dark, spreading stain in which viscera shone and from which intestines protruded like hydra heads. He fell over and lay on his back, his hands raised to try to cover the hole at the center of his being, and then, slowly and agonizingly, he hauled himself to his knees and stared at Billy Purdue. His mouth hung open and blood bubbled over his lips. His face was filled with hurt and incomprehension. After all that he had done, after all that he had endured, his own boy had turned on him.

I heard the sound of another shell being jacked into the gun, saw Caleb Kyle's eyes widen, and then his face disappeared and a warm, red hand obscured my vision, winter light dancing through it like thoughts through the mind of God.

From Dark Hollow the sound of sirens came, carrying on the cold air like the howls of wounded animals. I looked at my watch. It was 12:45 a.m., on the twelfth of December.

My wife and child had been dead for exactly one year.