The Devil All the Time

47

IT SEEMED THAT THERE MUST BE a wreck up ahead, as slow as the traffic was moving. Arvin had just made up his mind to walk across the bridge when the car pulled up and the fat man asked him if he needed a ride. After selling the Bel Air, he’d walked out to the highway and caught a lift through Charleston with a fertilizer salesman — rumpled white shirt, gravy-stained tie, the stink of last night’s alcohol seeping from his big pores — on his way to a feed and seed convention in Indianapolis. The salesman let him off on Route 35 at Nitro; and a few minutes later, he got another ride with a colored family in a pickup truck that took him to the edge of Point Pleasant. He sat in the back with a dozen baskets of tomatoes and green beans. The black man pointed the way to the bridge, and Arvin began walking. He could smell the Ohio River several blocks before he saw its greasy, blue-gray surface. A clock on a bank said 5:47. He could hardly believe that a person could travel so fast with just his thumb.

When he got in the black station wagon, the woman behind the wheel looked back at him and smiled. It seemed like she was almost happy to see him. Their names were Carl and Sandy, the fat man told him. “Where you going?” Carl asked.

“Meade, Ohio,” Arvin said. “Ever hear of it?”

“We—” Sandy began to say.

“Sure,” Carl interrupted. “If I’m not mistaken, I think it’s a paper mill town.” He took his cigar out of his mouth and looked over at the woman. “In fact, we’re going right by there this trip, ain’t we, babe?” This had to be a sign, Carl thought, picking up a fine-looking boy like this who was headed for Meade clear down here among the river rats.

“Yeah,” she said. The traffic started moving again. The holdup was an accident on the Ohio side, two crumpled cars and a scattering of broken glass on the pavement. An ambulance turned its siren on and pulled out in front of them, barely avoiding a collision. A policeman blew a whistle, held his hand up for Sandy to stop.

“Jesus Christ, be careful,” Carl said, shifting in his seat.

“Do you want to drive?” Sandy said, hitting the brakes too hard. They sat there for another few minutes while a man in coveralls hurriedly swept up glass. Sandy adjusted her rearview, took another look at the boy. She was so glad that she had gotten to take a bath this morning. She’d still be nice and clean for him. When she reached in her purse for a fresh pack of cigarettes, her hand brushed against the pistol. As she watched the man finish the cleanup, she fantasized about killing Carl and taking off with the boy. He was probably only six or seven years younger than she was. She could make something like that work. Maybe even have a couple of kids. Then she closed the purse and started peeling the pack of Salems open. She’d never do it, of course, but it was still nice to think about.

“What’s your name, honey?” she asked the boy, after the policeman waved them on through.

Arvin allowed himself a sigh of relief. He thought for sure the woman was going to get them pulled over. He looked at her again. She was rail thin and dirty-looking. Her face was caked with too much makeup, and her teeth were stained a dark yellow from too many years of cigarettes and neglect. A strong odor of sweat and filth was coming from the front seat, and he figured both of them were in bad need of a bath. “Billy Burns,” he told her. That was the fertilizer salesman’s name.

“That’s a nice name,” she said. “Where you coming from?”

“Tennessee.”

“So what you going to Meade for?” Carl asked.

“Oh, just visiting, that’s all.”

“You got family there?”

“No,” Arvin said. “But I used to live there a long time ago.”

“Probably ain’t changed much,” Carl said. “Most of them little towns never do.”

“Where is it you all live?” Arvin asked.

“We’re from Fort Wayne. Been on vacation down in Florida. We like to meet new people, don’t we, hon?”

“We sure do,” Sandy said.

Just as they passed the sign that marked the Ross County line, Carl looked at his watch. They probably should have stopped before they got this far, but he knew a safe spot nearby where they could take the boy. He’d come across it last winter on one of his drives. Meade was just ten miles away now, and it was after six o’clock. That meant they had only another ninety or so minutes of decent light left. He had never broken any of the major rules before, but he’d already made up his mind. Tonight, he was going to kill a man in Ohio. Shit, if this worked out, he might even do away with that rule altogether. Maybe that’s what this boy was all about, maybe not. There wasn’t enough time to think about it. He shifted in his seat and said, “Billy, my old bladder don’t work like it used to. We’re gonna pull over so I can take a leak, okay?”

“Yeah, sure. I just appreciate you givin’ me a ride.”

“There’s a road up here to the right,” Carl said to Sandy.

“How far?” Sandy asked.

“Maybe a mile.”

Arvin leaned over just a little, looked past Carl’s head out the windshield. He didn’t see any indication of a road, and he thought it a bit odd that the man knew there was one up ahead if he wasn’t from around here. Maybe he’s got a map, the boy told himself. He sat back in his seat again and watched the scenery going by. Except for the hills being smaller and more rounded off, it looked a lot like West Virginia. He wondered if anyone had found Teagardin’s body yet.

Sandy turned off Route 35 onto a dirt and gravel road. She drove past a big farm that sat on the corner. After another mile or so, she slowed and asked Carl, “Here?”

“No, keep going,” he said.

Arvin straightened up and looked around. They hadn’t passed another house since the farm. The Luger was pressing against his groin, and he adjusted it a little.

“This looks like a good spot,” Carl finally said, pointing at the vague remains of a driveway that led to a run-down house. It was obvious that the place had been empty for years. The few windows were busted out and the porch was caving in on one end. The front door was standing open, hanging crooked from one hinge. Across the road was a cornfield, the stalks withered and yellow from the hot, droughty weather. As soon as Sandy shut the engine off, Carl opened the glove compartment. He pulled out a fancy-looking camera, held it up for Arvin to see. “Bet you never would have guessed I’m a photographer, would you?” he said.

Arvin shrugged. “Probably not.” He could hear the hum of insects outside the car in the dry weeds. Thousands of them.

“But look, I’m not one of them jackasses that shoot dumb pictures like you see in the newspaper, am I, Sandy?”

“No,” she said, looking back at Arvin, “he’s not. He’s really good.”

“You ever hear of Michelangelo or Leonardo …? Oh, hell, I’ve done forgot his name. You know who I mean?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Arvin said. He thought about the time Lenora showed him a painting called Mona Lisa in a book. She had asked him if he thought she looked anything like the pale woman in the picture, and he was glad he’d told her that she was prettier than that.

“Well, I like to think that someday people are gonna look at my photographs and think they’re just as good as anything them guys ever made. The pictures I take, Billy, they’re like art, like you see in a museum. You ever been to a museum?”

“No,” Arvin said. “Can’t say that I have.”

“Well, maybe you will someday. So how about it?”

“How about what?” Arvin said.

“Why don’t we get out here and you let me take some pictures of you with Sandy?”

“No, mister, I better not. It’s been a long day for me, and I’d just as soon keep moving. I just want to get to Meade.”

“Oh, come on, son, won’t take but a few minutes. How about this? What if she got naked for you?”

Arvin reached for the door handle. “That’s all right,” he said. “I’m just gonna walk back up to the highway. You stay back here and take all the pictures you want.”

“Now wait up, goddamn it,” Carl said. “I didn’t mean to get you all upset. But shit, wasn’t no harm in me asking, was there?” He laid the camera down on the seat and sighed. “All right, just let me take my piss and we’ll get on out of here.”

Carl heaved his big body out of the car, walked around to the back. Sandy took a cigarette from her pack. Looking over, Arvin watched her hands tremble as she tried several times to strike a match. A feeling, one that he couldn’t quite put a name on, suddenly twisted in his gut like a knife. He was already pulling the Luger from the waistband of his overalls when he heard Carl say, “Get out of the car, boy.” The fat man was standing five feet away from the back door pointing a long-barreled pistol at him.

“If it’s money you want,” Arvin said, “I got a little bit.” He eased the safety off the gun. “You can have it.”

“Being nice now, huh?” Carl said. He spat in the grass. “I’ll tell you what, you little cocksucker, you just hang on to that money for right now. Sandy and me will sort it out after we take my goddamn pictures.”

“Better go ahead and do what he says, Billy,” Sandy said. “He can get pretty excited if things don’t go his way.” When she glanced back at him and smiled with all her rotten teeth, Arvin nodded to himself and shoved his door open. Before it registered in Carl’s mind what the boy held in his hand, the first blast had torn through his stomach. The force of the bullet started to spin him around. He staggered back three or four feet and caught himself. He tried to raise his gun and aim at the boy, but then another round hit him in the chest. He landed on his back in the weeds with a heavy thump. Though he could still feel the.38 in his hand, his fingers wouldn’t work. Somewhere far off, he could hear Sandy’s voice. It sounded like she was saying his name over and over again: Carl, Carl, Carl. He wanted to answer her, thought that if he just rested a minute, he could still straighten this mess out. Something cold began to crawl over him. He felt his body start to sink into a hole that seemed to be opening up beneath him in the ground, and it scared him, that feeling, the way it sucked the breath right out of him. Gritting his teeth, he fought to climb out before he sank in too deep. He felt himself rising. Yes, by God, he could still fix things, and then they would quit. He saw those two little boys on their bicycles riding by waving at him. No more pictures, he wanted to tell Sandy, but he was having trouble finding the air. Then something with huge black wings settled on top of him, pushing him down again, and even though he grabbed frantically at the grass and dirt with his left hand to keep from slipping, he couldn’t stop himself this time.

When the woman started screaming the man’s name, Arvin turned and saw her in the front seat digging something out of her purse. “Don’t do that,” he said, shaking his head. He stepped back from the car and pointed the Luger at her. “I’m begging you.” Black streaks of mascara were running down her face. She cried the man’s name one more time, and then stopped. Taking several deep breaths, she stared at the soles of Carl’s shoes while she quieted down. One of them, she noticed, had a hole in it as big around as a fifty-cent piece. He hadn’t mentioned it the whole trip. “Please, lady,” Arvin said when he saw her smile.

“Fuck it,” she said quietly, just before she drew a pistol up over the seat and fired. Though she aimed directly at the middle of the boy’s body, he just stood there. Frantically, she pulled the hammer back again with her thumbs, but before she could get off the second round, Arvin shot her in the neck. The.22 dropped to the floorboards as the bullet knocked her against the driver’s-side door. Pressing her hands against her throat, she tried to stop the red stream that was spurting from the wound. She began to choke, and coughed a gush of blood out on the seat. Her eyes settled on his face. They grew big for a few seconds and then slowly closed. Arvin listened to her take a few ragged breaths and then one last sticky heave. He couldn’t believe that the woman had missed him. Jesus Christ, she was so close.

He sat down on the edge of the backseat and puked a little in the grass between his feet. A numbing despair began to settle over him, and he tried to shake it off. He stepped out into the dirt road and paced around in a circle. He put the Luger back in his pants and knelt down beside the man. He reached underneath him and pulled the wallet out of his back pocket and glanced through it quickly. He didn’t see any driver’s license, but he found a photograph behind some paper money. Suddenly he felt sick all over again. It was a picture of the woman cradling a dead man in her arms like a baby. She was wearing only a black bra and panties. There was what appeared to be a bullet hole above the man’s right eye. She was looking down at him with a hint of sorrow on her face.

Arvin put the photograph in his shirt pocket and dropped the wallet on the fat man’s chest. Then he opened the glove compartment, finding nothing but road maps and rolls of film. He listened again for any cars coming, wiped the sweat out of his eyes. “Think, goddamn it, think,” he told himself. But the only thing he knew for sure was that he had to get out of this place fast. Picking up his gym bag, he took off walking west through the parched rows of corn. He was twenty yards out in the field when he stopped and turned around. He hurried back to the car and took two of the film canisters out of the glove box, stuck them in his pants pocket. Then he got a shirt out of his bag and wiped off everything that he might have touched. The insects resumed their humming.

48

HE DECIDED TO STAY OFF THE ROADS, and it was after midnight when Arvin finally walked into Meade. In the middle of town, right off Main Street, he found a squat brick motel called the Scioto Inn that still had its VACANCY sign on. He had never stayed in a motel before. The clerk, a boy not much older than himself, was gazing wearily at an old movie, Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, on a small black-and-white TV sitting in the corner. The room was five bucks a night. “We change the towels every other day,” the clerk said.

In his room, Arvin stripped off his clothes and stood in the shower for a long time trying to get clean. Nervous and exhausted, he lay down on top of the bedspread and sipped a pint of whiskey. He was goddamn glad he’d remembered to bring it along. He noticed on the wall a small picture of Jesus hanging from the cross. When he got up to take a leak, he turned the picture over. It reminded him too much of the one in his grandmother’s kitchen. By three o’clock in the morning, he was drunk enough to go to sleep.

He woke around ten the next morning after dreaming about the woman. In the dream, she fired the pistol at him just like she did yesterday afternoon, only this time she hit him squarely in the forehead, and he was the one who died instead of her. The other details were vague, but he thought maybe she took his picture. He almost wished that had happened as he went to the window and peeked out the curtain, half expecting the parking lot to be filled with police cruisers. He watched the traffic go by on Bridge Street while he smoked a cigarette, then he took another shower. After he got dressed, he went over to the office and asked if he could keep the room another day. The boy from last night was still on duty. He was half asleep, listlessly chewing a wad of pink bubble gum. “You must put in a lot of hours,” Arvin said.

The boy yawned and nodded, rang up another night in the register. “Don’t I know it,” he said. “My old man owns the place, so I’m pretty much his slave when I’m not in college.” He handed back the change from a twenty. “Better than getting shipped off to Vietnam, though.”

“Yeah, I expect so,” Arvin said. He put the loose bills in his wallet. “Used to be an eating place around here called the Wooden Spoon. Is it still in business?”

“Sure.” The boy walked over to the door and pointed up the street. “Just walk over there to the light and turn left. You’ll see it across from the bus station. They got good chili.”

He stood outside the door of the Wooden Spoon a few minutes, looking across at the bus station trying to imagine his father getting off a Greyhound and seeing his mother for the first time, over twenty years ago. Once inside, he ordered ham and eggs and toast. Though he hadn’t eaten anything since the candy bar yesterday afternoon, he found that he wasn’t very hungry. Eventually the old, wrinkled waitress came over and picked up his plate without a word. She barely looked at him, but when he got up, he left her a dollar tip anyway.

Just as he walked outside, three cruisers sped past going east with their lights flashing and sirens blaring. His heart seemed to stop for a moment in his chest, and then began to race. He leaned against the side of the brick building and tried to light a cigarette, but his hands were shaking too much to strike a match, just like the woman yesterday evening. The sirens faded into the distance, and he calmed down enough to get it lit. A bus pulled into the alley beside the station just then. He watched a dozen or so people get out. A couple of them wore military uniforms. The bus driver, a heavy-jowled, sour-faced man in a gray shirt and black tie, leaned back in his seat and pulled his cap down over his eyes.

Arvin walked back over to the motel and spent the rest of the day pacing the green, threadbare carpet. It was only a matter of time before the law figured out he was the one who killed Preston Teagardin. Taking off from Coal Creek so suddenly, he realized, was the dumbest damn thing he could have done. How much more obvious could he have been? The longer he walked the floor, the clearer it became that when he shot that preacher he had set something in motion that was going to follow him for the rest of his life. He knew in his gut that he should attempt to get out of Ohio immediately, but he couldn’t bear the thought of leaving without seeing the old house and the prayer log one more time. No matter what else happened, he told himself, he had to try to set right those things about his father that still ate at his heart. Until then, he’d never be free anyway.

He wondered if he would ever feel clean again. There was no TV in the room, just a radio. The only station he could find without static was country and western. He let it play softly while he tried to go to sleep. Every once in a while, someone in the next room coughed, and the sound made him think of the woman choking on her blood. He was still thinking of her when morning came.

49

“I’M SORRY, LEE,” HOWSER SAID as Bodecker approached. “This is all fucked up.” He was standing next to Carl and Sandy’s station wagon. It was Tuesday around noon. Bodecker had just arrived. A farmer had found the bodies approximately an hour ago, flagged down a Wonder Bread truck out along the highway. There were four cruisers lined up behind one another on the road, and men in gray uniforms standing around fanning themselves with their hats, waiting for orders. Howser was Bodecker’s chief deputy, the only man he could depend on with anything beyond petty theft and writing speeding tickets. As far as the sheriff was concerned, the rest of them weren’t fit to be crossing guards in front of a one-room schoolhouse.

He glanced down at Carl’s body, and then looked in at his sister. The deputy had already told him on the radio that she was dead. “Jesus,” he said, his voice nearly breaking. “Jesus Christ.”

“I know,” Howser said.

Bodecker took several deep gulps of air to steady himself and stuck his sunglasses in his pocket. “Give me a couple minutes here alone with her.”

“Sure,” the deputy said. He walked over to where the other men were standing, said something to them in a low voice.

Squatting down beside the open passenger door, Bodecker studied Sandy closely, the lines in her face, the bad teeth, the faded bruises on her legs. She’d always been a little fucked-up, but she was still his sister. He pulled his handkerchief out and wiped at his eyes. She was wearing a pair of skimpy shorts and a tight blouse. Still dressing like a whore, he thought. He climbed in the front seat, pulled her close, and looked over her shoulder. The bullet had gone through her neck and come out at the top of her back, just to the left of her spine, a couple of inches below the entry wound. It was buried in the padding of the driver’s-side door. He used his penknife to dig out the slug. It looked like a 9 millimeter. He saw a.22 pistol lying near the brake pedal. “Was that back door open like that when you got here?” he called out to Howser.

The deputy left the men in the road and jogged back to the station wagon. “We ain’t touched a thing, Lee.”

“Where’s the farmer that found ’em?”

“Said he had a sick heifer to tend to. But I questioned him pretty good before he left. He don’t know nothing.”

“You already take pictures?”

“Yeah, just got done when you pulled in.”

He handed Howser the bullet, then leaned across the front seat again, picked up the.22 with his handkerchief. He sniffed the barrel, then released the cylinder, saw that it had been fired once. Pushing the extractor back, five shells fell out into his hand. The ends were crimped. “Hell, these are blanks.”

“Blanks? Why the hell would a person do that, Lee?”

“I don’t know, but it was a bad mistake, that’s for certain.” He set the gun on the seat next to the purse and the camera. Then he got out of the car and stepped over to where Carl lay. The dead man still had hold of the.38 in his right hand, some grass and dirt in the other. It looked like he had been clawing at the ground. Several flies crawled around his wounds and another rested on his lower lip. Bodecker checked the gun. “And this fucker, he didn’t fire a shot.”

“Either one of them holes he’s got in him would account for that,” Howser said.

“Wouldn’t take much to put Carl down anyway,” Bodecker said. He turned his head and spat. “He was about as worthless as they come.” He picked up the wallet lying on top of the body and counted fifty-four dollars. He scratched his head. “Well, I guess it wasn’t robbery, was it?”

“Any chance Tater Brown could have something to do with this?”

Bodecker’s face reddened. “What the hell makes you think that?”

The deputy shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m just throwing stuff out. I mean, who else does this kind of shit around here?”

Standing up, Bodecker shook his head. “No, this kind of thing’s too out in the open for that slimy cocksucker. If he was the one done it, we wouldn’t have come across them this easy. He’d have made sure the maggots got a few days alone with them.”

“Yeah, I guess,” the deputy said.

“What about the coroner?” Bodecker said.

“He’s supposed to be on his way.”

Bodecker nodded over at the other deputies. “Have them look around in that cornfield, see if they can find something, then you keep watch for that coroner.” He wiped the sweat off his neck with his handkerchief. He waited until Howser walked away, then sat down in the passenger’s seat of the station wagon. A camera was lying beside Sandy’s purse. The dash was open. Underneath some wadded-up maps were several rolls of film, a box of.38 shells. Glancing around to make sure Howser was still talking to the deputies, Bodecker stuffed the film in his pants pocket, looked through the purse. He found a receipt from a Holiday Inn in Johnson City, Tennessee, dated two nights ago. He thought back to the day he’d seen them at the gas station. Sixteen days ago now, he figured. They had almost made it home.

Eventually he noticed what appeared to be dried vomit in the grass, ants crawling over it. He sat down on the backseat and placed his feet out on the ground, on both sides of the mess. He looked over where his brother-in-law lay in the grass. Whoever got sick was sitting right here in this seat when they did it, Bodecker said to himself. So Carl’s standing outside with a gun and Sandy’s in the front, and somebody else is in the back. He stared down at the puke for a few more seconds. Carl didn’t even get a chance to fire before somebody got three shots off. And sometime in there, probably after the shooting was over, whoever it was got awful shook up. He thought back to the first time he’d killed a man for Tater. He’d nearly gotten sick himself that night. Chances are, then, he thought, whoever done this wasn’t used to killing, but the fucker definitely knew how to handle a gun.

Bodecker watched the deputies cross the ditch and start moving slowly through the cornfield, the backs of their shirts dark with sweat. He heard a car coming, turned and saw Howser start walking up the road to meet the coroner. “Goddamn it, girl, what the hell were you doing out here?” he said to Sandy. Reaching across the seat, he hurriedly removed a couple of keys hanging on the same metal ring as the ignition key, put them in his shirt pocket. He heard Howser and the coroner behind him. The doctor stopped when he got close enough to see Sandy in the front seat. “Good Lord,” he said.

“I don’t think the Lord’s got anything to do with this, Benny,” Bodecker said. He looked over at the deputy. “Get Willis out here to help you dust for prints before we move the car. Go over that backseat real close.”

“What you figure happened?” the coroner asked. He set his black bag on the hood of the car.

“The way it looks to me, Carl got shot by somebody sitting in the back. Then Sandy managed to get one round off with that.22, but, hell, she didn’t have a chance. That fucking thing’s loaded with blanks. And I think, judging from the place where the bullet came out her, whoever shot her was standing up by that time.” He pointed at the ground a few feet from the back door. “Probably right here.”

“Blanks?” the coroner said.

Bodecker ignored him. “How long you figure they been dead?”

The coroner got down on one knee and raised Carl’s arm up, tried to move it around a little, pressed on the mottled blue and gray skin with his fingers. “Oh, yesterday evening, I’d say. Thereabouts, anyway.”

They all stood looking at Sandy silently for a minute or so, then Bodecker turned to the coroner. “You make sure she gets took good care of, okay?”

“Absolutely,” Benny said.

“Have Webster’s pick her up when you’re done. Tell ’em I’ll be over later to talk about the arrangements. I’m gonna head back to the office.”

“What about the other one?” Benny asked, as Bodecker started to walk away.

The sheriff stopped and spit on the ground, looked over at the fat man. “However you got to work it, Benny, you make sure that one gets a pauper’s grave. No marker, no name, no nothing.”

50

“LEE,” THE DISPATCHER SAID. “Had a call from a Sheriff Thompson in Lewisburg, West Virginia. He wants you to call him back soon as possible.” He handed Bodecker a piece of paper with a number scrawled on it.

“Willis, is that a five or a six?”

The dispatcher looked at the paper. “No, that’s a nine.”

Bodecker shut the door of his office and sat down, opened a desk drawer, and took out a piece of hard candy. After seeing Sandy dead, the first thing he had thought about was a glass of whiskey. He stuck the candy in his mouth and dialed the number. “Sheriff Thompson? This is Lee Bodecker up in Ohio.”

“Thanks for calling me back, Sheriff,” the man said with a hillbilly drawl. “How you all doing up there?”

“I ain’t bragging.”

“The reason I called, well, it might not be nothing, but someone shot a man down here yesterday morning sometime, a preacher, and the boy we suspect might have been in on it used to live up in your parts.”

“That right? How did he kill this man?”

“Shot him in the head while he was sitting in his car. Held the gun right up to the back of his skull. Made a hell of a mess, but at least he didn’t suffer none.”

“What kind of gun did he use?”

“Pistol, probably a Luger, one of them German guns. The boy was known to have one. His daddy brought it back from the war.”

“That’s a nine millimeter, ain’t it?”

“That’s right.”

“What did you say his name is?”

“Didn’t say, but the boy’s name is Arvin Russell. Middle name’s Eugene. His parents both died up around there the way I understand it. I think his daddy might have killed himself. He’s been living with his grandmother down here in Coal Creek for maybe the past seven, eight years.”

Bodecker frowned, stared across the room at the posters and flyers tacked on the wall. Russell. Russell? How did he know that name? “How old is he?” he asked Thompson.

“Arvin’s eighteen. Listen, he ain’t a bad sort, I’ve known him for a long time. And from what I’ve been hearing, this preacher might have deserved killing. Seems he was messing with young girls. But that still don’t make it right, I guess.”

“This boy driving?”

“He’s got a blue Chevy Bel Air, a ’54 model.”

“What does he look like?”

“Oh, average build, dark hair, good-looking feller,” Thompson said. “Arvin’s quiet, but he ain’t the type to take no shit, either. And, hell, he might not even be involved in this, but I can’t find him right now, and he’s the only good lead I got.”

“You send us any information you got as far as the tags on the car or whatever, and we’ll keep an eye out for him. And how about you letting me know if he shows up back down there, okay?”

“I’ll do that.”

“One more thing,” Bodecker said. “You got a picture of him?”

“Not yet, I don’t. I’m sure his grandmother’s got a couple, but she ain’t in the mood to cooperate right now. I get one, we’ll make sure you get a copy.”

By the time Bodecker hung up the phone, it was all coming back to him, the prayer log and those dead animals and that young kid had the pie juice smeared on his face. Arvin Eugene Russell. “I remember you now, boy.” He walked over to a big map of the United States on the wall. He found Johnson City and Lewisburg, and traced his finger up through West Virginia and crossed over into Ohio on Route 35 at Point Pleasant. He stopped in the general spot off the highway where Carl and Sandy had been killed. So if it was this Russell boy, they must have met somewhere along in there. But Sandy had told him she was going to Virginia Beach. He studied the map some more. It didn’t make sense, them staying in Johnson City. That was surely taking the long way around to get home. And besides that, what the fuck were they doing packing those guns?

He drove over to their apartment with the keys he’d taken from the ring. The smell of rotten garbage hit him when he opened the door. After raising a couple of windows, he looked through the rooms, but didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. What the fuck am I looking for anyway? he thought. He sat down on the couch in the living room. Pulling out one of the canisters of film he had sneaked from the glove box, he rolled it around in his hand. He’d been sitting there maybe ten minutes when it finally occurred to him that something wasn’t right about the apartment. Going through the rooms again, he couldn’t find a single photograph. Why wouldn’t Carl have any pictures hanging on the walls or at least lying around? That’s all the shutterbug sonofabitch thought about. He started searching again, now in earnest, and soon found a shoe box under the bed, hidden behind some spare blankets.

Later, he sat on the couch staring numbly at a hole in the ceiling where the rain had leaked through. Chunks of plaster lay beneath it in a pile on the braided rug. He thought back to a day in the spring of 1960. By then, he’d been a deputy almost two years, and, because their mother had finally agreed with him to let her quit school, Sandy was working full-time at the Wooden Spoon. From what he could see, the job had done little to bring her out of her shell; she seemed as backward and forlorn as ever. But he’d heard stories about boys coming by at closing time and coaxing her into their cars for a quickie, then dumping her off in the sticks to find her own way home. Every time he stopped by the diner to check on her, he looked for her to announce a bastard on the way. And he guessed she did that day, just not the kind he was figuring on.

It was “All You Can Eat Fish” day. “Be right back,” Sandy told him, as she hurried past with another plate piled high with perch for Doc Leedom. “I got something to tell you.” The foot doctor came in every Friday and tried to kill himself with fried fish. It was the only time he ever stopped at the diner. All you could eat anything, he told his patients, was the dumbest idea a restaurant owner could ever come up with.

She grabbed the coffeepot, poured Bodecker a cup. “That fat ol’ sonofabitch is running my legs off,” she whispered.

Bodecker turned and watched the doctor cram a long piece of breaded fish into his mouth and swallow. “Heck, he don’t even chew it, does he?”

“And he can do it all goddamn day,” she said.

“So what’s going on?”

She pushed back a loose lock of hair. “Well, I figured I should tell you before you hear it from someone else.”

This was it, he thought, one in the oven, another worry to pour on his ulcer. Probably doesn’t even know the daddy’s name. “You ain’t in trouble, are you?” he said.

“What? You mean pregnant?” She lit a cigarette. “Jesus, Lee. You never give me a break.”

“Okay, what is it then?”

She blew a smoke ring over his head and winked. “I got myself engaged.”

“You mean to be married?”

“Well, yeah,” she said with a little laugh. “What other kind is there?”

“I’ll be damned. What’s his name?”

“Carl. Carl Henderson.”

“Henderson,” Bodecker repeated, as he poured some cream in his coffee from a tiny metal pitcher. “He one of them you went to school with? That bunch over off Plug Run?”

“Oh, shit, Lee,” she said, “them boys are half retarded, you know that. Carl ain’t even from around here. He grew up on the south side of Columbus.”

“What’s he do? For a living, I mean.”

“He’s a photographer.”

“Oh, so he’s got one of those studios?”

She stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray and shook her head. “Not right now,” she said. “A setup like that don’t come cheap.”

“Well, how does he make his money then?”

She rolled her eyes, let out a sigh. “Don’t worry, he gets by.”

“In other words, he ain’t working.”

“I seen his camera and everything.”

“Shit, Sandy, Florence has got a camera, but I sure wouldn’t call her a photographer.” He looked back into the kitchen, where the grill cook was standing at an open refrigerator with his T-shirt pulled up, trying to get cooled off. He couldn’t help but wonder if Henry had ever fucked her. People said he was hung like a Shetland pony. “Where in the hell did you meet this guy?”

“Right over there,” Sandy said, pointing at a table in the corner.

“How long ago was that?”

“Last week,” she said. “Don’t worry, Lee. He’s a nice guy.” Within a month they were married.

Two hours later, he was back at the jail. He had a bottle of whiskey in a brown paper bag. The shoe box of photographs and the rolls of film were in the trunk of his cruiser. He locked the door to his office and poured himself a drink in a coffee cup. It was the first one he’d had in over a year, but he couldn’t say that he enjoyed it. Florence called just as he was getting ready to have another. “I heard what happened,” she said. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“I know I should have.”

“So it’s true? Sandy’s dead?”

“Her and that no-good sonofabitch both.”

“My God, it’s hard to believe. Weren’t they on vacation?”

“I believe Carl was a lot worse than I ever gave him credit for.”

“You don’t sound right, Lee. Why don’t you come on home?”

“I still got some work to do. Might be at it all night, the way things look.”

“Any idea who did it?”

“No,” he said, looking at the bottle sitting on the desk, “not really.”

“Lee?”

“Yeah, Flo.”

“You haven’t been drinking, have you?”

51

ARVIN SAW THE NEWSPAPER IN THE RACK outside the doughnut shop when he went to get some coffee the next morning. He bought a copy and took it back to his room and read that the local sheriff’s sister and husband had been found murdered. They were returning from a vacation in Virginia Beach. There was no mention of a suspect, but there was a photo of Sheriff Lee Bodecker alongside the story. Arvin recognized him as the same man who was on duty the night his father killed himself. Goddamn, he whispered. Hurriedly, he packed his stuff and started out the door. He stopped and went back inside. Taking the Calvary picture down off the wall, he wrapped it in the newspaper and stuck it in his bag.

Arvin began walking west on Main Street. At the edge of town, a logging truck headed for Bainbridge picked him up and dropped him off at the corner of Route 50 and Blaine Highway. On foot, he crossed Paint Creek at Schott’s Bridge, and an hour later, he arrived at the edge of Knockemstiff. Except for a couple of new ranch-style houses standing in what had once been a cornfield, everything looked pretty much as he remembered it. He walked a bit farther, and then dropped over the small hill in the middle of the holler. Maude’s store still sat on the corner, and behind it was the same camper that had been there eight years ago. He was glad to see it.

The storekeeper was sitting on a stool behind the candy case when he went inside. It was still the same Hank, just a little older now, a little more frazzled. “Howdy,” he said, looking down at Arvin’s gym bag.

The boy nodded, set the bag on the concrete floor. He slid the door open on top of the pop case, searched out a bottle of root beer. He opened it and took a long drink.

Hank lit a cigarette and said, “You look like you been traveling.”

“Yeah,” Arvin said, leaning against the cooler.

“Where you headed?”

“Not sure exactly. There used to be a house on top of the hill behind here some lawyer owned. You know the one I’m talkin’ about?”

“Sure, I do. Up on the Mitchell Flats.”

“I used to live there.” As soon as he said it, Arvin wished he could take it back.

Hank studied him for a moment, then said, “I’ll be damned. You’re that Russell boy, ain’t you?”

“Yeah,” Arvin said. “I thought I’d just stop and see the old place again.”

“Son, I hate to tell you, but that house burned down a couple year ago. They think some kids did it. Wasn’t nobody ever lived there after you and your folks. That lawyer’s wife and her buck boyfriend went to prison for killing him, and as far as I know, it’s been tied up in court ever since.”

A wave of disappointment swept over Arvin. “Is there anything left of it at all?” he asked, trying to keep his voice steady.

“Just the foundation mostly. I think maybe the barn’s still there, part of it anyway. Place is all growed up now.”

Arvin stared out the big plate-glass window up toward the church while he finished the pop. He thought about the day his father ran the hunter down in the mud. After everything that had happened the last couple of days, it didn’t seem like such a good memory now. He laid some saltines on the counter and asked for two slices of bologna and cheese. He bought a pack of Camels and a box of matches and another bottle of pop. “Well,” he said, when the storekeeper finished putting the groceries in a sack, “I figure I’ll walk on up there anyway. Heck, I come this far. Is it still okay to go up through the woods behind here?”

“Yeah, just cut across Clarence’s pasture. He won’t say nothing.”

Arvin put the sack in his gym bag. From where he stood, he could see the top of the Wagners’ old house. “There a girl named Janey Wagner still live around here?” he asked.

“Janey? No, she got married a couple year ago. Lives over in Massieville the last I heard.”

The boy nodded and started for the door, then stopped. He turned back and looked at Hank. “I never did get to thank you for that night my dad died,” he said. “You was awful good to me, and I want you to know I ain’t forgot it.”

Hank smiled. Two of his bottom teeth were missing. “You had that pie on your face. Damn Bodecker thought it was blood. Remember that?”

“Yeah, I remember everything about that night.”

“I just heard on the radio where his sister got killed.”

Arvin reached for the doorknob. “Is that right?”

“I didn’t know her, but it probably should have been him instead. He’s about as no-good as they come, and him the law in this county.”

“Well,” the boy said, pushing the door open. “Maybe I’ll see you later.”

“You come back this evening, we’ll sit out by the camper and drink some beer.”

“I’ll do that.”

“Hey, let me ask you something,” Hank said. “You ever been to Cincinnati?”

The boy shook his head. “Not yet, but I’ve heard plenty about it.”

52

A FEW MINUTES AFTER BODECKER got off the phone with his wife, Howser came in with a manila envelope that contained the slugs the coroner had dug out of Carl. They were both 9 millimeter. “Same as the one that hit Sandy,” the deputy said.

“I figured as much. Just the one shooter.”

“So, Willis told me some lawman down in West Virginia called you. Did it happen to have anything to do with this?”

Bodecker glanced over at the map on the wall. He thought about the photographs in the trunk of his car. He needed to get to that boy before anyone else did. “No. Just some bullshit about a preacher. To tell you the truth, I’m really not sure why he wanted to talk to us.”

“Well.”

“Get any prints off that car?”

Howser shook his head. “Looks like the back was wiped clean. All the others we found belonged to Carl and Sandy.”

“Find anything else?”

“Not really. There was a gas receipt from Morehead, Kentucky, under the front seat. Shitload of maps in the glove box. Bunch of junk in the back, pillows, blankets, gas can, that kind of stuff.”

Bodecker nodded and rubbed his eyes. “Go on home and get some rest. It looks like right now all we can do is hope that something pops up.”

He finished off the fifth of whiskey in his office that night, and woke the next morning on the floor with dry pipes and a sick headache. He could remember that sometime during the night he had dreamed of walking in the woods with the Russell boy and coming upon all those decayed animals. He went into the restroom and washed up, then asked the dispatcher to bring him the newspaper and some coffee and a couple of aspirins. On his way out to the parking lot, Howser caught him and suggested they check the motels and the bus station. Bodecker thought for a moment. Though he wanted to take care of this problem himself, he couldn’t be too obvious about it. “That’s not a bad idea,” Bodecker said. “Go ahead and send Taylor and Caldwell around.”

“Who?” Howser said, a frown breaking out on his face.

“Taylor and Caldwell. Just make sure they understand this crazy sonofabitch would just as soon blow their heads off as look at them.” He turned and went on out the door before the deputy could protest. As chickenshit as those two were, Bodecker didn’t figure they would even get out of their cruiser after hearing that.

He drove to the liquor store, bought a pint of Jack Daniel’s. Then he stopped at the White Cow to get a coffee to go. Everybody quit talking when he walked in. As he turned to leave, he thought maybe he should say something, about how they were doing everything possible to catch the killer, but he didn’t. He poured some whiskey in his coffee and drove to the old dump on Reub Hill Road. Opening the trunk, he took the shoe box of photographs out and looked through them one more time. He counted twenty-six different men. There were at least a couple hundred different shots, maybe more, bundled together with rubber bands. Setting the box on the ground, he tore a few stained and crinkled pages from a Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog he found in the trash pile and stuffed them down in the box. Then he dropped the three film canisters on top and lit a match. Standing there in the hot sun, he drank the rest of his coffee and watched the pictures turn to ashes. When the last of them burned up, he took an Ithaca 37 from the trunk. He checked to make sure the shotgun was loaded and laid it on the backseat. He could smell last night’s booze coming out of his skin. He ran a hand over his beard. It was the first morning he’d forgotten to shave since his army days.

When Hank saw the cruiser pull in the gravel lot, he folded the newspaper and set it on the counter. He watched Bodecker tip up a bottle. The last time Hank could recall seeing the sheriff in Knockemstiff was the evening he handed out wormy apples in front of the church to the kids on Halloween when he was running for election. He reached over and turned down his radio. The last few notes of Sonny James’s “You’re the Only World I Know” ended just as the sheriff came in the screen door. “I was hoping you’d still be around,” he said to Hank.

“Why’s that?” the storekeeper asked.

“You recall the time that crazy Russell bastard killed himself up in the woods behind here? You had his boy with you that night. Arvin was his name.”

“I remember.”

“That boy come through here maybe last night or this morning?”

Hank looked down at the counter. “I was sorry to hear about your sister.”

“I asked you a question, goddamn it.”

“What did he do? Get in some trouble?”

“You might say that,” Bodecker said. He grabbed the newspaper off the counter, held the front page up in front of Hank’s face.

The storekeeper’s brow wrinkled as he read the black headlines once again. “He ain’t the one done that, is he?”

Bodecker dropped the paper on the floor and pulled out his revolver, pointed it at the storekeeper. “I ain’t got time to fuck around, you dumb bastard. Have you seen him?”

Hank swallowed and turned his eyes toward the window, watched Talbert Johnson’s hot rod slow down as it passed the store. “What you gonna do, shoot me?”

“Don’t think I won’t,” Bodecker said. “After I splatter your little bit of brains all over the candy case, I’ll put that butcher knife in your hand you got laying over there by your scroungy meat slicer. It’ll be an easy self-defense. Judge, the crazy sonofabitch was trying to protect a killer.” He cocked the gun. “Do yourself a favor. It’s my sister we’re talking about.”

“Yeah, I seen him,” Hank said reluctantly. “He was in here a little while ago. Bought a bottle of pop and some cigarettes.”

“What was he driving?”

“I didn’t see no car.”

“So he was walking?”

“He might have been, I guess.”

“Which way did he go when he left here?”

“I don’t know,” Hank said. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Don’t lie to me. What did he have to say?”

Hank looked over at the pop case where the boy had stood and drank the root beer. “He mentioned something about the old house where he used to live, that’s all.”

Bodecker put the gun back in his holster. “See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?” He started out the door. “You’ll make a good little rat someday.”

Hank watched him get in the cruiser and pull out onto Black Run Road. He placed both hands flat on the counter and bowed his head. Behind him, in a voice faint as a whisper, the radio announcer sent out another heartfelt request.

53

AT THE TOP OF THE FLATS, ARVIN STARTED SOUTH. The brush was thicker now along the edge of the woods, but it took him only a couple of minutes to find the deer path that he and his father had walked on their way to the prayer log. He could see the metal roof of the barn, and he hurried on. The house was gone, just like the storekeeper had said. He set his bag down and walked in where the back door used to be. He continued on through the kitchen and down the hall to the room where his mother had died. He kicked at black cinders and charred pieces of lumber, hoping to find some relic of hers or one of the little treasures he had kept in his bedroom window. But except for a rusty doorknob and his memories, there was nothing left. Some empty beer bottles were arranged in a neat row on one corner of the rock foundation where someone had sat and drank for an evening.

The barn was nothing now but a shell. All the wood siding had been torn off. The roof was rusted through in spots, the red paint faded and peeled away by the weather. Arvin stepped inside out of the sun, and there in a corner lay the feed bucket in which Willard had once carried his precious blood. He moved it over to a spot near the front and used it as a seat while he ate his lunch. He watched a red-tailed hawk make lazy circles in the sky. Then he took out the photograph of the woman with the dead man. Why would people do something like this? And how, he wondered again, did her bullet miss him when she wasn’t more than five or six feet away? In the quiet, he could hear his father’s voice: “There’s a sign here, son. Better pay attention.” He put the picture in his pocket and hid the bucket behind a bale of moldy straw. Then he started back across the field.

He found the deer path again and soon arrived at the clearing that Willard had worked so hard on. It was mostly grown over now with snakeroot and wild fern, but the prayer log was still there. Five of the crosses stood as well, streaked a dull red with rust from the nails. The other four lay on the ground, orange-flowered trumpet vines curled around them. His heart caught just for a second when he saw some of the remains of the dog still hanging from the first cross his father had ever raised. He leaned against a tree, thought about the days leading up to his mother’s death, how Willard wanted so much for her to live. He would have done anything for her; fuck the blood and the stink and the insects and the heat. Anything, Arvin said to himself. And suddenly he realized, as he stood once again in his father’s church, that Willard had needed to go wherever Charlotte went, so that he could keep on looking after her. All these years, Arvin had despised him for what he’d done, as if he didn’t give a damn what happened to his boy after she died. Then he thought about the ride back from the cemetery, and Willard’s talk about visiting Emma in Coal Creek. It had never occurred to him before, but that was as close as his father could get to telling him that he was leaving, too, and that he was sorry. “Maybe stay for a while,” Willard had said that day. “You’ll like it there.”

He wiped some tears from his eyes and set his gym bag down on top of the log, then walked around and knelt at the dog’s cross. He moved away some dead leaves. The skull was half buried in loam, the small hole from the.22 rifle still visible between the empty eye sockets. He found the moldy collar, a small clump of hair still stuck to the leather around the rusty metal buckle. “You were a good dog, Jack,” he said. He gathered up all the remains he could find on the ground — the thin ribs, the hipbones, a single paw — and pulled off the brittle pieces still attached to the cross. He laid them gently in a small pile. With the sharp end of a tree branch and his hands, he dug a hole in the moist, black dirt at the foot of the cross. He went down a foot or so, arranged everything carefully in the bottom of the grave. Then he went over to his bag and got the painting of the crucifixion that he’d taken from the motel and hung it on one of the nails in the cross.

Going back to the other side of the log, he knelt down in the place where he had once prayed next to his father. He pulled the Luger out of his jeans and set it on top of the log. The air was thick and dead with the heat and humidity. He looked at Jesus hanging from the cross and closed his eyes. He tried his best to picture God, but his thoughts kept wandering. He finally gave up, found it easier to imagine his parents looking down on him instead. It seemed as if his entire life, everything he’d ever seen or said or done, had led up to this moment: alone at last with the ghosts of his childhood. He began to pray, the first time since his mother had died. “Tell me what to do,” he whispered several times. After a couple of minutes, a sudden gust of wind came down off the hill behind him, and some of the bones still hanging in the trees began to knock together like wind chimes.

54

BODECKER TURNED ONTO THE DIRT LANE that led back to the house where the Russells used to live, his cruiser rocking gently in the ruts. He cocked his revolver and laid it on the seat. He eased slowly over flimsy saplings and tall clumps of horseweeds, coming to a stop about fifty yards from where the house had once stood. He could just make out the top of the rock foundation above the Johnson grass. The little that remained of the barn was another forty yards to the left. Maybe he would buy the property once this fucking mess was over with, he thought. He could build another house, plant an orchard. Let Matthews have the damn job of sheriff. Florence would like that. She was a worrier, that woman. He reached under the seat and got the pint, took a drink. He would have to do something about Tater, but that wouldn’t be too difficult.

Then again, the Russell boy might be just the thing he needed to win another election. Someone who would kill a preacher for getting some young pussy had to have a screw loose, no matter what that hick cop in West Virginia said. It would be easy to make the punk out to be a cold-blooded maniac; and people will vote for a hero every time. He took another hit off the pint and stuck it under the seat. “Better worry about that stuff later,” Bodecker said out loud. Right now he had a job to do. Even if he didn’t run for office again, he couldn’t bear the thought of everyone knowing the truth about Sandy. He couldn’t put it into words, what she’d been doing in some of those pictures.

Once out of the car, he holstered his revolver and reached in the rear for the shotgun. He tossed his hat in the front. His stomach was churning from the hangover, and he felt like shit. He flicked the safety off the shotgun and started walking slowly up the driveway. He stopped several times and listened, then moved on. It was quiet, just a few birds chirping. At the barn, he stood in the shade, looked out past the remains of the house. He licked his lips and wished he had another drink. A wasp flew about his head, and he smacked it down with his hand, crushed it with the heel of his boot. After a few minutes, he proceeded across the field, staying close to the tree line. He walked through patches of dry milkweed and nettles and burdock. He tried to recall how far he had followed the boy that night before they came to the path that led to where his daddy had bled out. He looked back toward the barn, but he couldn’t remember. He should have brought Howser with him, he thought. That fucker loved to hunt.

He was just beginning to think he must have passed it by when he came upon some trampled-down weeds. His heart revved up just a little, and he wiped the sweat from his eyes. Bending down, he peered past the weeds and brush into the woods, saw the outline of the old deer path just a few feet in. He looked back over his shoulder and saw three black crows swoop low across the field cawing. He ducked under some blackberry brambles and took a few steps, and he was on the trail. Taking a deep breath, he started slowly down the hill, his shotgun at the ready. He could feel himself shaking inside with both fear and excitement, the same as when he’d killed those two men for Tater. He hoped this one would be as easy.

55

THE BREEZE DIED DOWN and the bones stopped tinkling. Arvin heard other things now, small, everyday sounds traveling upward from the holler: a screen door slamming, kids yelling, the drone of a lawn mower. Then the cicadas stopped their high-pitched buzzing just for a moment, and he opened his eyes. Turning his head slightly, he thought he heard a faint noise behind him, a dry leaf cracking under a foot, maybe a soft twig breaking. He couldn’t be sure. When the cicadas began again, he grabbed the gun off the log. In a crouch, he made his way around a thicket of wild roses to the left of what remained of the clearing, and started up the hill. He had gone thirty or forty feet when he remembered his gym bag lying next to the prayer log. But by then, it was too late.

“Arvin Russell?” he heard a loud voice call out. He ducked behind a hickory tree and stood up slowly. Drawing in his breath, he glanced around the trunk and saw Bodecker, a shotgun in his hands. At first, he could just see part of the brown shirt and the boots. Then the lawman took a few more steps, and he could make out most of his red face. “Arvin? It’s Sheriff Bodecker, son,” the sheriff yelled. “Now I ain’t here to hurt you, I promise. Just need to ask you some questions.” Arvin watched him spit and wipe some sweat out of his eyes. Bodecker moved a few feet farther, and a wood grouse flew out of its hiding spot and across the clearing, its wings beating furiously. Jerking the shotgun up, Bodecker fired, then quickly jacked another shell into the chamber. “Damn, boy, I’m sorry about that,” he called out. “Goddamn bird scared me. Come on out now so we can have us a talk.” He crept on, stopped at the edge of the brushy clearing. He saw the gym bag on the ground, the framed Jesus hanging on the cross. Maybe this sonofabitch really is nuts, he thought. In the shadowy light of the woods, he could still make out some of the bones hanging from wires. “I figured this might be where you would come. Remember that night you brought me out here? That was an awful thing your daddy did.”

Arvin eased the safety off on the Luger and picked up a chunk of dead wood at his feet. He tossed it high through an opening in the branches. When it bounced off a tree below the prayer log, Bodecker fired two more rounds in rapid succession. He jacked another shell into the chamber. Bits of leaf and bark floated through the air. “Goddamn, boy, don’t fuck with me,” he yelled. He swiveled around, looking wild-eyed in all directions, then moved a little closer to the log.

Arvin stepped out silently into the path behind him. “Better lay that gun down, Sheriff,” the boy said. “I got one pointed right at you.”

Bodecker froze in midstep, and then let his foot down slowly. Glancing down at the open gym bag, he saw a copy of this morning’s Meade Gazette, lying on top of a pair of jeans. His picture on the front page stared back at him. From the sound of the voice, he judged the boy was directly behind him, maybe twenty feet away. He had two shells left in the scattergun. Against a pistol, that was pretty good odds. “Son, you know I can’t do that. Hell, that’s one of the first rules they teach you in law enforcement. You don’t ever give up your weapon.”

“I can’t help it what they teach you,” Arvin said. “Set it on the ground and step away.” He could feel his heart pounding against his shirt. All the moisture suddenly seemed sucked out of the air.

“What? So you can kill me like you did my sister and that preacher down in West Virginia?”

Arvin’s hand began to tremble a little when he heard the sheriff mention Teagardin. He thought for a second. “I got a snapshot in my pocket of her hugging on some dead guy. You turn loose of that gun, and I’ll show it to you.” He saw the lawman’s back stiffen, and he tightened his grip on the Luger.

“You little sonofabitch,” Bodecker said under his breath. He looked down at his likeness again in the newspaper. It had been taken right after he was elected. Sworn to uphold the law. He almost had to laugh. Then he raised the Ithaca and started to whirl around. The boy fired.

Bodecker’s gun went off, the buckshot tearing a ragged hole in the wild roses to Arvin’s right. The boy flinched and pulled the trigger again. The sheriff gave out a sharp cry and fell forward into the leaves. Arvin waited a minute or two, then cautiously approached. Bodecker was lying on his side looking at the ground. One bullet had shattered his wrist, and the other had gone in under his arm. From the looks of it, at least one of his lungs was pierced. With every heaving breath the man took, another spurt of bright red blood soaked the front of his shirt. When Bodecker saw the boy’s worn boots, he attempted to pull his pistol out of his holster, but Arvin bent down and grabbed hold of it, tossed it a few feet away.

He set the Luger on top of the log and, as gently as he could, pushed Bodecker over onto his back. “I know she was your sister, but look here,” Arvin said. He took the photograph out of his wallet and held it for the sheriff to see. “I didn’t have no choice. I swear, I begged her to put the gun down.” Bodecker looked up at the boy’s face, then moved his eyes to Sandy and the dead man she held in her arms. He grimaced and tried to grab the picture with his good arm, but he was too weak to make anything but a halfhearted effort. Then he lay back and began to cough up blood, just like she had.

Though it seemed to Arvin as if hours went by while he listened to the sheriff fight to stay alive, it really took the man only a few minutes to die. There’s no way to turn back now, he thought. But he couldn’t go on like this, either. He imagined the door to a sad, empty room closing with a faint click, never to be opened again, and that calmed him a little. When he heard Bodecker expel his last, soggy breath, he made a decision. He picked the Luger up and walked around to the hole he had dug for Jack. Getting on his knees in the damp dirt, he rubbed his hand slowly over the gray metal barrel, thought about his father bringing the gun home all those years ago. Then he laid it in the hole alongside the animal’s bones. He shoved all the dirt back in the hole with his hands and patted it down flat. With dead leaves and a few branches, he covered all traces of the grave. He took down the picture of the Savior and wrapped it and put it in his gym bag. Maybe someday he’d have a place to hang it. His father would have liked that. He stuck the photograph of Sandy and the two rolls of film in Bodecker’s shirt pocket.

Arvin looked around one more time at the moss-covered log and the rotting gray crosses. He would never see this place again; probably never see Emma or Earskell either, for that matter. He turned and started up the deer path. When he came to the top of the hill, he brushed aside a spiderweb and stepped out of the dim woods. The cloudless sky was the deepest blue he’d ever seen, and the field seemed to be blazing with light. It looked as if it went on forever. He began walking north toward Paint Creek. If he hurried, he could be on Route 50 in an hour. If he was lucky, someone would give him a ride.