Sheriff Dan Rhodes knew it was going to be a bad day when Bert Ramsey brought in the arm and laid it on the desk.

The arm was neatly wrapped in a sheet of clear plastic, which was circled in three places with plastic strapping tape, the kind with fibers running through it. The arm was pale and bloodless and had been cleanly severed from the torso at the shoulder.

“Got another one out in the truck,” Bert said around the wad of snuff he had tucked between his cheek and gum on the left side of his mouth. “Got a couple of legs, too, but they don’t match up with each other.”

Bert Ramsey was a short, wiry man with a sun- and wind-burned face. Rhodes had once seen a briefcase made of industrial belting leather. Ramsey’s face looked as if it were made of the same material.

Hack Jensen got up from his broken-down swivel chair by the radio and walked over to Rhodes’s desk. He was a tall, thin old man, who had always reminded Rhodes of the comedian Bud Abbott, though he certainly didn’t sound like him.

“Good Lord,” Hack said. “Where’d you find that thing?”

Ramsey reached out and touched the arm, making the plastic crackle. “Down to the old Caster place,” he said. “I been clearing brush down there.”

Bert did odd jobs all over Blacklin County, preferring to work outside and with his hands. He strung and stretched barbed wire, roofed houses, built sheds, baled hay, painted, cleared brush, and generally did whatever came to hand.

Rhodes sighed and leaned back in his chair, causing the spring underneath it to make a high-pitched squeal. “Who owns the Caster place now?” he asked.

Hack answered. “Some folks named Adams. Bought it a couple years ago.”

“That’s right,” Ramsey said. “They live down in Houston. Called me last weekend to ask about me clearing the brush.”

Rhodes slid his chair back and stood up. “I guess we better have a look in your truck and then go on out there,” he said. He walked over to a scarred hat rack that had been there since long before he had taken office and took down his hat.

“You want me to let Buddy or the new deputy know about this?” Hack asked.

“No,” Rhodes said. “Not yet. Let’s go, Bert.”

After a hamburger and a Dr. Pepper at the Blue Bonnet café, Rhodes drove back to the jail. The arm was still on his desk.

“I’ve got to take that thing over to Ballinger’s,” he told Hack. “Any trouble while I was out?”

“Miz Thurman called,” Hack said.

Rhodes waited. Hack told things at his own rate and in his own way. There was no need to rush him. He worked for the county practically free, and he did a fine job. Rhodes was willing to put up with his approach to reporting on calls.

“Said she was goin’ blind again,” Hack finally said.

“Who’d you send to change the bulb?” Rhodes asked. Mrs. Thurman was nearly ninety and lived alone. Every now and then a light bulb burned out in her kitchen or her living room. When it happened, she called the sheriff’s office and said that she was going blind, that everything was getting dark. After the first call, Rhodes had begun sending over someone with a bulb.

“Sent the new deputy,” Hack said. The new deputy was a sore point with Hack.

“You know,” Rhodes said, “I think that new Wal-Mart is having a sale on those long-life bulbs. I ought to buy a few and keep them in reserve for Mrs. Thurman.”

“You ask me, you spoil that old woman,” a new voice put in. It was the jailer, Lawton, coming in from the cell block.

“Who you callin’ old?” Hack asked. “Miz Thurman’s not much older’n you, you old buzzard.”

Lawton was seventy, but he didn’t look it. In fact, if Hack Jensen resembled Bud Abbott, Lawton looked a lot like Lou Costello, his face still almost baby-smooth, round, and chubby. “Maybe so,” he said, “but she ain’t got so much on you, either.” Then he happened to look over at Rhodes’s desk. “Godamighty,” he said. “What’s that?”

“Just what you think it is,” Rhodes said. “That’s all I know, though.”

“What’s the county comin’ to, I wonder?” Lawton said. “I ain’t never seen anything like that on a sheriff’s desk before.”

“There’s more where that came from,” Hack said. “Ain’t that right, sheriff?”

“That’s right,” Rhodes replied. “But that’s something you’ll have to keep to yourselves.”

“I guess we know how to do that,” Hack said.

“I’m going to take that thing over to Ballinger’s,” Rhodes said. “Send the new deputy”-now he was doing it, he thought-”Send the new deputy over there with a fingerprint kit. I don’t expect we’ll find anything, but we’ve got to give it a try.” He carefully picked up the arm and carried it out to the car.

He drove toward Ballinger’s, thinking about the new deputy. He thought she was working out fine, but Hack and Lawton didn’t approve. The idea of a woman deputy was almost too much for them, and they couldn’t even bring themselves to call her by her name, which happened to be Ruth Grady.

Rhodes had been surprised when she applied for the job, but she was certainly qualified for it. She’d been to a community college near Houston and gotten an associate degree in law enforcement, which required her to work for a local law enforcement agency twenty hours a week for two semesters. Then she’d worked for a little police department in South Texas for a couple of years. The climate had been too humid and disagreeable for her, however, and she’d moved to Clearview to live with her bedridden father. Her father had died a few weeks before the episode that had involved Rhodes’s former deputy, Johnny Sherman. When she found out about the vacancy on Rhodes’s staff, she had applied.

Rhodes himself had been skeptical at first, but she was qualified for the job, certainly more qualified than anyone else who had applied, and he had hired her. Hack and Lawton were not pleased.

Rhodes left the arm at the funeral home with the others, told Clyde that Ruth Grady would be the one coming to do the fingerprinting, and drove home. Saturday afternoon was generally a slow time for the forces of law and order in Blacklin County. The business people were hard at work trying to earn a few dollars, and those who had the day off were at home relaxing and having a beer or taking a nap-maybe watching a little television. Saturday night was a different story, but for the time being things were quiet.

Rhodes pulled up in his driveway and called Hack on the radio to let him know where he’d be. “Have the new. . have Ruth call me if she finds anything at Ballinger’s,” he said.

“I’ll do it,” Hack said. “She took care of Miz Thurman, and she’ll be over to Ballinger’s pretty soon.”

Rhodes got out of the car. Thanks to the August heat and the lack of rain, his yard was covered with brown, dry grass. He figured that he’d let nature take its course; if it rained, the yard got water. Otherwise, it didn’t. The grass would have to fend for itself. Rhodes hated yard work. Besides, if the grass died, that meant he didn’t have to mow it. The appearance of the yard had gone downhill considerably since his daughter, Kathy, had taken a teaching job in Richardson. She had left three weeks before to find an apartment and get settled, and the yard missed her already.

For that matter, Rhodes missed her, too. Since his wife, Claire, had died, Kathy had more or less taken care of him, not that he wasn’t capable of taking care of himself. But her involvement with Johnny Sherman and his own involvement-if that’s what it was, he thought-with Ivy Daniel had combined to make her decide that it was time to leave. Rhodes was glad, in a way, because she had a lot to offer the teaching profession. Still, the old house was empty without her.

He wandered into the living room and turned on the television set. John Wayne was just returning Natalie Wood to her family, after having searched relentlessly for her for years. Everyone in the family embraced and went inside their cabin, leaving John Wayne to stand alone on the porch outside. Rhodes knew how he felt. Then his mind drifted to the catch-phrase that the Duke had spoken throughout the movie: “That’ll be the day.” He thought about the Buddy Holly song that phrase had inspired and immediately felt better. One of these days he was going to dig out all his old 45 rpm records and play them for Ivy Daniel.

He thought about Ivy for a minute and wondered if she was old enough to remember Buddy Holly. He thought she probably was, but her age was something they’d never discussed. He decided not to bring it up when he played the records.

He remembered that the records were in the back of the hall closet in a cardboard box. He was moving coats and sweaters out of the way when the telephone rang.

It was Ruth Grady. “I’m over at Ballinger’s, Sheriff,” she said. “I think you’d better come over here if you can.”

“I’ll be there in a minute,” Rhodes said. The records could wait.

People who had never been to Texas were often surprised by places like Blacklin County. They thought of Texas in terms of the densely populated Houston and Dallas/Fort Worth areas, never dreaming that within a few hours’ drive of either city there could be an entire county of an approximately 150-square-mile area that was home to a mere twenty thousand or so people. It seemed impossible, but there it was. And Blacklin County was not a rarity.

What was rare in the county was murder. In Houston, folks were disappointed if their nightly news didn’t inform them of a murder or two every day, but then Houston’s population was considerably larger than that of Blacklin County. More than one hundred times larger, in fact.

There was crime in Blacklin County, of course. That very Saturday night, there were people arrested for speeding, for driving while intoxicated, and for disturbing the peace. Someone drove away from a convenience store without paying for a tank of gas. Someone spraypainted the concrete sides of a railroad underpass only a mile from the city limits of Clearview with the words SENIORS FOREVER 1988. There was nothing unusual about things like that.

Murder was unusual. But at ten o’clock that Saturday night, no one knew that murder was being committed. No one, that is, except for Bert Ramsey and the killer.

Rhodes didn’t find out the time until later, after an autopsy had been performed on what was left of Bert Ramsey. The time wasn’t exact, but it was as close as the doctor could come.

When he thought about it later, Rhodes wondered what he might have been doing at ten o’clock. He’d called Ivy Daniel, who’d agreed to have supper with him, and he’d picked her up about seven.

They went to the Taco and Tamale, a Mexican food café that had recently opened in what had been an old house. Rhodes liked the hot sauce especially, because it was just hot enough without burning all the skin off the inside of his mouth. They had tacos and tamales.

Then they went to Rhodes’s house to listen to the records. Ivy admitted that she dimly recalled Buddy Holly, and Rhodes was pleased that she remembered “Rave On” and “Not Fade Away,” two of his own favorites. For his money, Elvis wasn’t really the king. Buddy Holly was. But then, Holly hadn’t lived to get fat and turn into a Las Vegas entertainer.

“What else have you got in that box?” Ivy asked after he played both the “A” and “B” sides of all the Buddy Holly records.

Rhodes pulled out a handful of records. “Have a look,” he said.

Ivy took the flat 45s. “Fats Domino,” she said. “The Everly Brothers. Elvis. Gene Vincent. This is quite a collection you have here. Play some of these.”

Rhodes put on Fats Domino, stacking up “Blue Monday,”“Valley of Tears,” and “Ain’t That a Shame.”

“Let’s dance,” he said, and then couldn’t believe he’d said it. He hadn’t even been much of a dancer when the records were popular, and he certainly hadn’t been doing much dancing in the nearly thirty years since.

It was too late to say anything, though, because Ivy was in his arms and moving around the floor. He tried to lead, and to his surprise he found that he was actually dancing. Or at least doing a pretty fair imitation.

When Rhodes had met Ivy about four months before, he hadn’t really thought anything would come of it. She was running for justice of the peace in the May primary, and he was running for sheriff. They had been brought together again by a case that Rhodes had been working on, and he had found her quite attractive. He knew that she was nearly as old as he was, old enough to remember Buddy Holly, but her china-doll face made her look younger. It was also misleading, because she was not nearly as fragile as she appeared.

Rhodes had won the primary election and would be running unopposed in November, much to his surprise considering the events just before the voting. Ivy, however, had not won, a fact that both she and Rhodes attributed to male prejudice against women justices, something that the county just wasn’t ready for yet.

Ivy had a good job in an insurance office and didn’t take her defeat too badly, but she was disappointed. She made it clear that she would try again.

On his side, Rhodes was just grateful that they had met. Since his wife had died, he had not developed an interest in any woman. Not that a few hadn’t tried. Ivy had changed all that, however. He was definitely interested in her. He was sure she was interested in him, too, but he wasn’t being pushy about it. He’d grown up before the sexual revolution and had no interest in participating in it at this late date. Or at least that’s what he kept telling himself. Dancing with Ivy was beginning to change his mind.

Then “Ain’t That a Shame” dropped onto the turntable, and the dancing came to a halt. “No way,” Rhodes laughed. “No way. That fast dancing is too much like work.”

They put a few more of Rhodes’s records on the spindle and then sat on the couch. “So what’s new in the law and order business?” Ivy asked.

Rhodes laughed. He had become quite comfortable with Ivy and often discussed the cases he was working on with her. Most things were like Mrs. Thurman’s light bulbs, so she was hardly expecting to be told about boxes of arms and legs.

“But that’s terrible,” she said after Rhodes had finished the story. “And no one will bury them?”

“Not Clyde Ballinger, anyway,” Rhodes said. “I think he’s afraid of a lawsuit.”

“But surely they ought to be disposed of decently!”

“I agree,” Rhodes said. “But now they’re evidence, I think.”

“You think!”

“Well, we’re not sure a crime has been committed. I mean, if all those limbs are legitimate amputations, then there may not be anything wrong with dumping them. I’m going to try to get in touch with the state Health Department, but there’s not a hope of doing that until Monday.”

“Of course there’s something wrong with dumping them!” Ivy said. There was a spot of color high on each of her cheekbones, now. “It’s. . it’s indecent.”

Rhodes didn’t have anything to say to that for a minute. In the background the record changer clicked and dropped another disc. Ricky Nelson started singing “Hello, Mary Lou.”

“I admit it’s indecent,” Rhodes finally said. “But indecent and illegal aren’t always the same things. Still, I would like to know who put those boxes there, and why.”

Ivy wasn’t satisfied with that, he could tell, but she dropped the subject. He took her home shortly after eleven o’clock. By then, Bert Ramsey had been dead for nearly an hour.

Rhodes drove the county car across Long Bridge, a rickety wooden structure that really wasn’t very long at all. It had gotten its name from a certain Mr. Long, who had built the original bridge at this crossing nearly a hundred years ago. Rhodes knew this because he’d once read a book on the history of Blacklin County. He doubted that there was anyone else in the county-well, maybe there were two or three others-who either knew, or cared. Most of them didn’t even know the bridge was there.

The Kersey place was a quarter of a mile past the bridge. There was a barbed wire fence with what people called a “gap” in it, a gate made of barbed wire that looked like part of the fence. Off the road twenty or thirty yards was a house.

Rhodes got out of his car and opened the gap, then got back in and drove through. He didn’t bother to close it.

The house was old and weathered. It had been painted once, no doubt, but that had been many years ago. No trace of the original color remained. The boards were weathered a uniform light gray. The roof looked to be in pretty fair shape; it was probably no more than thirty or so years old. Nearly all the windows that Rhodes could see had glass in them, except for one on the front corner, which had a pane missing.

The house was small, probably four rooms, Rhodes guessed, and small ones at that. Out back there was another very small house, which Rhodes recognized immediately as the privy. It was made of the same weathered boards as the main house.

Beside the house, under the scanty shade of a huge mesquite tree, there was a black motorcycle. Rhodes knew nothing at all about motorcycles, but he could see the Nighthawk on the gas tank, along with the word Honda. From what he recalled of The Wild One, Marlon Brando had ridden a Harley-Davidson.

The house sat up on wooden blocks, and as Rhodes stepped toward the porch, a brownish dog that must have had a Collie in its ancestry came out from the cool shadows beneath the house. It gave a half-hearted growl and its fur ruffled slightly, but that was all. It looked at Rhodes incuriously for a moment, then turned around, got down on its belly, and crawled back under the house. “Mighty fine watchdog I got myself there,” said a voice from the front doorway. Rhodes, whose attention had been on the dog, looked up. A man pushed open a half-collapsed screen door and looked back at him.

The man was big, that was all Rhodes thought at first. His shoulders were so wide they almost filled the doorway. He was wearing only a pair of black shorts, so that Rhodes could see the full expanse of his chest. He was also handsome, and Rhodes thought he looked a little like Reg Park in Hercules in the Haunted World.

There was a difference, though. This man’s hands were hard and rough, and the calluses and creases were black from ground-in grease and carbon, the way a mechanic’s hands are likely to get. He looked perfectly capable of dismantling an engine with his bare hands and maybe a small screwdriver.

“Your name Buster Cullens?” Rhodes asked.

“That’s right,” the man said, making no move to step out onto the porch. He didn’t appear the least impressed by Rhodes’s badge. “What’s yours?” His voice, instead of the deep bass that would have seemed appropriate to Rhodes, was thin, high and nasal. He sounded like Arnold Stang.

“I’m Sheriff Dan Rhodes. I’d like to talk with you for a minute.”

Cullens stepped onto the porch. “All right,” he said. “Talk.”

“I’d like to talk to Wyneva Greer, too, if she’s here,” Rhodes said.

The man just looked at him. His eyes were black and set deep in their sockets.

Rhodes looked back. He didn’t particularly care for macho games, but he could play them if he had to.

After about a minute, Cullens turned his head and yelled through the screen door. “Wyneva! Come out here if you’re decent.”

The screen door opened and a woman came out. Rhodes wasn’t sure she was decent. She had on a pair of cut-off jeans, cut off so high that they must have hurt her when she walked. She was also wearing a faded denim vest. But she wasn’t wearing a shirt. Rhodes looked down, then to the side. Then, deciding that she was playing a game too, he looked up.

Her hair was long and black, and her face was very pretty in a tough sort of way. She shrugged her shoulders, and her breasts jiggled behind the faded denim.

“So talk,” Cullens said.

Rhodes cleared his throat as quietly as he could. “A neighbor of yours got himself killed last night,” he said.

Cullens laid a proprietary arm on the woman’s shoulders. “Sorry to hear that,” he said. “Who was it?”

“Bert Ramsey,” Rhodes said, looking at the woman, who gave no sign that the name meant anything to her. “I think Miss Greer knew him at one time. I’d like to know if you two saw or heard anything unusual last night.”

Cullens didn’t answer the question. “How’d he die?” he asked.

Rhodes had to admit that Cullens was smart. Either that, or he was completely innocent. He was certainly asking the right questions, the ones that made it appear as if he knew nothing at all about what had happened. Rhodes saw no harm in answering him.

“Someone cut him down with a shotgun,” Rhodes said, cutting a glance at Wyneva Greer out of the corner of his eye. She appeared completely unaffected.

“Too bad,” Cullens said, as if he didn’t feel it was too bad at all. In fact, he said it so casually it was as if death, or at least someone else’s death, was a matter that didn’t concern him in the least. “Naw,” he said then, “we didn’t hear a thing last night.”

“I suppose you were both here all evening?” Rhodes asked.

Cullens looked at Wyneva, and for the first time Rhodes saw an emotion flit briefly across her face. It was fear, he was pretty sure of that.

“Yeah,” Cullens said. “We were right here. That right, Wyneva?”

The woman nodded slowly. “That’s right,” she said. Her voice was low and husky. She didn’t meet Rhodes’s eyes.

“How’d you two come to be staying in such an out-of-the-way place, anyway?” Rhodes asked.

Cullens looked as if he might say it was none of Rhodes’s business, but if the thought had crossed his mind, he didn’t speak it aloud. “One of the Kerseys is a cousin of mine,” he said. “When I decided to come up here from Houston, he let me have the loan of it till I could get a good mechanic’s job somewhere. I haven’t found one yet.”

Rhodes looked again at Cullens’s hands. He might not have had a job, but it was a cinch that he’d been doing some mechanic work somewhere.

“Well,” said Rhodes, “I appreciate you all taking the time to talk to me. I might have to come back by in case I think of something else to ask.”

Cullens just looked at him, so Rhodes got in his car, started it, and drove to the gap. After he drove through, he looked back at the house. Cullens was still standing on the porch, watching him, but Wyneva was nowhere in sight. Rhodes closed the gap. The dog came out from under the house again, and Rhodes drove away.

When Rhodes arrived at the jail, the air conditioner was making a peculiar clanking noise.

“Compressor goin’ out,” Hack said gloomily. “I bet it goes out any minute, and we’ll never get anybody in here to fix it on a Sunday. It’ll be a hunnerd and twenty degrees in here by dark.”

“Maybe it’ll wait until Monday,” Rhodes said. He looked over at the radio desk where the remains of a German chocolate cake rested on a paper plate. “What’s that?” he asked.

“That’s a cake,” Hack said.

“I’m a keenly observant lawman,” Rhodes said. “I can see it’s a cake. Where did it come from?”

“Need to improve your interrogation techniques a little, though, don’t you,” Hack said, laughing. “Ru-the new deputy brought it by.”

All right, thought Rhodes. Hack’s not getting soft; he’s just getting softened. But he didn’t comment. “Anything new?” he asked.

“Not except for Bert Ramsey. The drunks’ve all gone home with their wives and lawyers. Last one left about an hour ago. Pretty quiet around here now.”

“And that’s it? Nothing going on at all?” If there was, Hack would tell him, but it sometimes seemed to take forever.

“That’s it.” Hack paused. “Except for the heart attack,” he said finally.

“Heart attack?” Rhodes asked. “What heart attack?”

“Prisoner,” Hack said. “Prisoner had a heart attack.”

Rhodes controlled himself. “Oh,” he said. “I thought maybe you or Lawton had had one.”

“Not us,” Lawton said, as he came through the doorway leading to the cell block. He was carrying a broom. “Me and Hack, why I guess we’re healthy as a pair of mules.”

“Healthier,” Hack said. “I can’t even remember the last time either one of us two had a cold, much less had to take a day off. I think it was in ‘81. Or maybe it was ‘82. I remember it was in October, though, I’m pretty sure of that. . ”

“The prisoner,” Rhodes said.

“Oh, yeah,” Hack said. “Public Safety patrol car brought her in around midnight. Pretty little thing.”

“What was the charge?” Rhodes asked.

“Speeding,” Lawton said. “They lost her when she got that little Porsche of hers up over a hunnerd and thirty-five.”

“Lost her?”

“Yeah, but they found her.”

“Found her?”

Hack shook his head as if Rhodes were being especially dense. “She got a little scared about driving so fast, so she slowed down and turned in on one of the old oil field roads close to town. Must’ve waited in there till she thought the DPS was long gone and then came rollin’ out. So they caught her.”

“Yeah,” Lawton said. “They wasn’t gone at all. They was still patrollin’ in the area, and when she came out of the oil field, they ran right up on her.”

“Brought her in and charged her,” Hack said. “She called a lawyer, and he come down early this mornin’ and put up bond.”

“What about the heart attack?” Rhodes asked.

“Oh, she had that right after she got here,” Hack said.

“Fell right down on the floor and rolled her eyes and kicked a little bit and yelled that her time was comin’. Said she had a weak heart, and the police brutality had done her in.”

“Wasn’t much to it,” Lawton said. “You remember old Billy Lee Tingley? Now, there was a guy who knew how to have a heart attack. I’ve seen him throw one or two right here in this room that would’ve fooled Dr. Denton Cooley his own self.”

Hack smiled a reminiscent smile. “He could sure do it, all right. Whatever happened to him?”

“Got drunk one night and went to sleep on the railroad tracks down near Thurston,” Lawton said. “Train killed him.”

“About this prisoner,” Rhodes said.

“Not much to tell,” Hack said. “Betty Thornton was her name. She ought to have been ashamed of tryin’ to fool two old hands like me and Lawton. I could do a better job myself.”

“Gave that DPS boy a few bad minutes, though,” Lawton said.

“Yeah, I didn’t know him,” Hack said. “He must be a new one. But he’s smart. He caught on pretty quick when you tipped him.”

“Yeah, and that young woman didn’t try to carry it too far,” Lawton said. “She even laughed a little about it. I hated to put her in a cell. It’s not the nicest place in town.”

“You give her the front one?” Rhodes asked. They kept the front cell for women prisoners. It was fairly clean, and it was private, separated from the others by a plywood wall.

“Right,” said Lawton. “We took good care of her, Sheriff. You don’t have to worry about that.”

“Good,” Rhodes said. “Now I’m going to make a phone call. Hack, get on the radio and talk to the DPS, see if that new fella’s on patrol. Ask him if he’s seen any motorcycles around lately. Same thing with Buddy and Bob.”

“OK, Sheriff,” Hack said.

Most of what Rhodes knew about Los Muertos, he’d read in the newspapers or heard from other members of the law-enforcement fraternity. None of it was good. For the more than twenty-five years of the gang’s existence, the members of its various chapters had been more or less at war with the members of any other gangs in the state, as well as among themselves. There had been numerous crimes linked to the gang, and some of them had even been proved and tried in court. Rhodes could recall at least two convictions for armed robbery and one for murder. There were probably plenty of minor convictions for assault that he’d never heard of.

Lately, however, the members of various chapters had settled their differences, formed a rough confederation, and begun making money the new-fashioned way-running dope. Their bikes were fast and easily maneuverable over most terrain. Most of them could travel wherever and whenever they wanted, not being too tied to regular jobs, homes, and families. They were a close-knit group and trusted no one, as most of their secrets stayed within the gang.

No one knew exactly where the dope-mostly marijuana-came from. One theory was that it was grown in Mexico and then smuggled across the border, but Rhodes and many others tended to discount that theory on the grounds that it would involve trusting third, or maybe even fourth, parties, unless Los Muertos crossed the border themselves. Someone would have had to grow the weed, and someone would have had to bring it across. Rhodes didn’t know where they got the dope, but he didn’t think it came from Mexico.

Blacklin County didn’t have a dope problem. Or at least it didn’t have a dope problem that Rhodes knew about. It was true that every now and then one of the deputies would come in with a high school kid who had a little marijuana in a baggie. Usually it was hardly enough to measure. Rhodes doubted that he’d seen anywhere near a pound of marijuana in his whole tenure as sheriff, taking it all together. Maybe he was letting his imagination get the better of him. All because of a little tattoo.

He left Hack and Lawton looking disconsolately at the air conditioner and went out into the late afternoon heat. Soon the inside of the office would be like the inside of a baked potato. He hoped they could get the air conditioner repaired soon. He’d left Hack instructions to call Romig’s Appliance first thing in the morning.

He idly laid his hand on top of the white county car, then jerked it back. The roof had been baking in the afternoon sun and was as hot as an exhaust pipe after the Indy 500.

Then he remembered that he hadn’t eaten lunch. He went back inside and called Ivy Daniel, who agreed to go out for a bite with him. He left again, but this time Hack and Lawton were smirking wisely at one another, forgetting the air conditioner for the moment.

Rhodes wished that he could clarify his thoughts about Ivy. He guessed that in the way of small towns everywhere, it was pretty general knowledge that they were “keeping company” and that they were being closely watched for signs of impending matrimony.

He wasn’t sure that he was ready to let the town rumor him into marriage, however, and he really had no idea how Ivy felt about the subject. It wasn’t something that they had talked about.

When Rhodes’s wife had died, he’d felt an emptiness that he thought would never go away. It had, very slowly, and one of the reasons was Ivy Daniel. He’d begun to feel very strongly for her, and in fact he told himself that that was part of the problem. He never wanted to lose someone and feel that emptiness again. If he got too attached to Ivy, he would be vulnerable.

Ivy, on the other hand, was independently minded. Rhodes told himself that she was quite happy to be going out with him occasionally to eat or visiting at his house when there was time. He told himself that she wouldn’t be happy as his wife-he kept terrible hours, he was on call all day, every day, he never knew when he’d be at home. He also knew what rationalization was.

He picked Ivy up at her house. She was dressed in jeans and a white blouse, and Rhodes realized again how slim and youthful she looked. He tried to suck in his stomach so that his belt buckle would show.

“Where are we going to eat?” Ivy asked as she got in the car.

“Lester’s,” Rhodes said.

“Great,” Ivy said. “I haven’t been to Lester’s in a week or two, and that’s too long.”

Lester’s was just on the outskirts of Clearview. It was not fancy enough to be called a restaurant, or even a café. Lester’s was a barbecue joint, and it looked the part.

When Rhodes and Ivy drove up there were three cars and a pickup parked in front of what looked like an old house in poor repair. It had once been painted green, but that had been years ago. It had a slight list to the left, as if someone very large had given it a shove. In front was a piece of plywood on which someone had printed in black paint, with a very wide brush and an unsteady hand: LESTERS BBQ. As Hack had once told Rhodes, “Lester don’t believe in puttin’ up a front.”

Ivy and Rhodes walked across the dry grass of the yard to the front door. They stepped up on a wooden step and went inside. The inside of Lester’s was dim and permeated by the smell of barbecue. They found an empty table and sat in two rickety chairs.

There was no cloth on the table, which was covered by a worn but spotless piece of linoleum. The menu was hand-printed on a piece of plain white paper. There wasn’t much choice. You could have barbecue with beans or without beans. White bread. Water, tea, or a soft drink.

Lester waited on the tables himself, and he came in shortly after Rhodes and Ivy were seated. He was an old, wrinkled black man, with skin so smooth it looked like polished wood. He’d been making and selling barbecue since Rhodes was a boy.

“How you, Mist’ Rhodes?” Lester asked in his deep, husky voice. “An’ you, Miss Ivy?”

“We’re fine, Lester,” Rhodes said. “How’s the meat today?”

“Nice an’ lean, Mist’ Rhodes,” Lester said. “Hard to find a nice lean brisket these days, but I do it.”

“We’ll both have a plate with beans, then,” Rhodes said. “And I’ll have a Dr. Pepper.”

“Me, too,” Ivy said. “I’m picking up your bad habits.”

“Man ain’t got no bad habits,” Lester said. He went back into the kitchen to slice the meat. He had a one-man operation and intended to keep it that way.

“What’s new?” Ivy said.

Rhodes told her about the conversation with Dr. Rawlings and about Bert Ramsey. It sometimes surprised him how easily he could talk to her.

“Bert Ramsey built the fence around my back yard,” Ivy said. “About five years ago. He seemed like a nice, hardworking sort of a man. Why would anybody kill him?”

Rhodes told her about the Los Muertos tattoo, and about Ramsey’s mother hearing the motorcycles. He went on to tell her about Buster Cullens and Wyneva.

“And you don’t think there’s any connection between Bert’s murder and those boxes he found?”

“There doesn’t seem to be,” Rhodes said. “No one involved in that had any reason to kill Bert. As far as I know, nothing illegal has been done. Adams and Rawlings seemed pretty cooperative.”

“Then all you have there is a mess.”

“Right. Somehow, some way, we’ve got to get those things taken care of.”

They talked quietly, unaware of the other occupants of the room, all of whom were concentrating on their food. The only real sounds were the clicking of silverware against the heavy china plates that Lester provided.

Then Lester arrived with their food. The meat was cooked just the way Rhodes liked it, slowly, all day, over a hickory fire. Lester had not yet given in to the latest fad, that of cooking his barbecue over mesquite wood.

But it was the sauce that Rhodes liked best, and the sauce was Lester’s greatest secret. Not too thick, not too thin, it was a dark, reddish-black in color, spiced just right by whatever secret ingredients Lester cooked into it. It had a bite, but not too much of one. It was slightly sweet, but tantalizingly so. Rhodes loved to dip his bread in it and eat it, with hardly a guilty thought of his waistline. Ivy didn’t mind. She liked it, too. When they finished, their plates were gleaming white.

“Lester won’t even have to wash those if he doesn’t want to,” Rhodes said, though he knew Lester would. The county health inspector had told Rhodes that Lester had the cleanest kitchen in the territory.

Rhodes paid Lester, who had an ancient cash register on a table near the door. A collector would have paid a premium price for that cash register, Rhodes thought.

It was only seven-thirty when they stepped outside, which meant that there was plenty of daylight left. “I thought I’d ride out to Mrs. Ramsey’s,” Rhodes said. “I’ve got to find out about that tattoo. You want to come along?”

“Sure,” Ivy said. “I never pass up a chance to see how the law operates.” She took his arm and they walked to the car.

As they drove slowly down the back roads on the way to town, Rhodes remembered summer nights as a child, riding in the car with his family. There hadn’t been any television sets then, and often his father would drive them around in the family car, touring the dark and peaceful country. The country still looked peaceful, despite the death of Bert Ramsey, but it was no longer dark. Every house and yard and most of the barns were bathed in the eerie blue glow of a mercury vapor lamp.

Rhodes stopped the car in Bert Ramsey’s front yard. “I just want to see what it must have been like,” he told Ivy. “Whoever shot him was in plain sight of the road, what with that lamp lighting everything up. If anybody came by, they would have seen. Somebody took a big chance.”

“Not too many people come by here,” Ivy said. “I’ll bet we could sit here for hours and not see more than one car go by.”

Something in her voice made Rhodes turn and look at her. Her face looked a little strange and unearthly in the blue light, but suddenly Rhodes felt like a teenager, or at least as much like a teenager as a middle-aged man could feel. Here he was, parked in the country, on a lonely stretch of road, with a woman beside him in the car. For an instant, or the briefest part of an instant, he remembered other summer nights and other cars, not the ones his father drove, but the ones he drove. He remembered the girls who had ridden in those cars with him, and he felt a tightening in the back of his throat and in the pit of his stomach.

He put his right arm up on the seat back, and Ivy slid into the curve that it made. They looked at each other, and when he kissed her he knew that he was in real trouble this time.

Hack was on the line. “I’ve had a call about some motorsickles, Sheriff,” he said.

Rhodes had a feeling he’d just saved a few dollars. “You want to check it out yourself, or have somebody else do it?” Hack asked.

“I’ll check it,” Rhodes said. “Who made the call?”

“You sure you don’t want me to put Ruth on this one?” Hack asked. Rhodes noticed that he hadn’t called her “the new deputy,” and he wondered what was going on.

“No,” Rhodes said. “I want to take care of this myself. Now, who made the call?”

Hack didn’t exactly laugh. “Mrs. Wilkie,” he said.

“Oh,” Rhodes said. After a few seconds, he said, “I’ll take care of it anyway. I’ll be going out there now.”

“All right, Sheriff,” Hack said. “You’re the boss.” He hung up.

Rhodes held the phone for a minute, then set it down. He walked back to the dresser, opened the cigar box, and put the ten dollars back inside. He thought that he’d rather have paid out the money than visit Mrs. Wilkie, but there wasn’t really any choice.

It wasn’t that he exactly disliked Mrs. Wilkie; it was just that she had ideas that he didn’t agree with. One of the main ones was that he should marry her. His wife had been dead about a year when Mrs. Wilkie began making what Rhodes considered “advances.” She was at least ten years older than he, though she would never have admitted it, and she had a good ten pounds on him. She also had the most amazing red hair he’d ever seen, or to put it more accurately, the most amazing orange hair he’d ever seen. After Rhodes had become involved with Ivy, Mrs. Wilkie had more or less given up her pursuit, but the thought of having to meet with her made him slightly nervous. It wasn’t beyond her to have concocted some story just to get him out to Milsby, the tiny community where she lived. No wonder Hack had been nearly laughing.

Still, it didn’t seem likely that Mrs. Wilkie would have made up a story about motorcycles. Hardly anyone knew that Rhodes was looking for that sort of information. He’d have to check it out.

Rhodes believed that he was pretty good at reading people, and he read Rapper as a sadistic bully, just exactly the type who might blow away a man with a shotgun, even if the man was standing in his own front door. The fact that Rhodes hadn’t seen a shotgun didn’t mean much. If he’d tried to look into the tent, Rapper would no doubt have caused trouble.

It bothered Rhodes that Rapper had agreed so readily to keep down the noise. Despite his sarcasm, Rapper had meant what he said, or so Rhodes believed. Rapper wouldn’t have given in so easily on that point under ordinary circumstances. Which probably meant that he had something else to hide, something that he didn’t want to jeopardize because of petty hassles. Murder was something to hide, all right.

As the car’s tires rapped across the cattle guard, the radio crackled and Hack came on. Hack didn’t believe much in radio discipline. “You out there, Sheriff?” he asked.

Rhodes picked up the mike. “I’m here. What’s up?”

“Thought you might want to come on by the jail when you get a chance. The new deputy’s here, and she has somethin’ to tell you.” They were back to “the new deputy,” Rhodes thought. At least when Ruth was around. “Clyde Ballinger called, too. Says to tell you that Bert Ramsey’s funeral will be tomorrow at ten o’clock, in the funeral chapel.”

“Got it. That all?” Rhodes said.

“There’s a couple of other little things,” Hack said. “They’ll keep till you get here.”

“Ten minutes,” Rhodes said, and hung up the mike.

Rhodes was sure of two things the next morning. One was that he was not making much progress in finding out who had killed Bert Ramsey. The thought of attending the funeral brought that fact home, hard. So far, Rhodes had talked to Buster Cullens for a few minutes and learned nothing. He had also talked to four members of Los Muertos and learned even less.

Why would Los Muertos want to kill Ramsey, anyway? Rhodes had no idea, and he certainly had no hard evidence that they were involved in any way at all. Mrs. Ramsey had heard motorcycles. That was it.

And what about Buster Cullens? Again, he had Mrs. Ramsey’s story that Buster was now living with Bert’s old girl friend, along with Mrs. Ramsey’s strong feeling that Buster was guilty. And that was all. There was nothing to link the two men in any other way.

What bothered Rhodes most was the money in Bert’s house, along with all the evidence of a lot of spending. Bert hadn’t earned all the money by doing odd jobs.

The other thing that Rhodes was sure of was that he was now an engaged man. Or maybe he wasn’t. He couldn’t remember exactly what he’d said, but it seemed to him that he’d made some pretty definite promises. He was engaged, all right. Of course, they hadn’t set a date or anything like that. He wished he could remember his exact words.

It didn’t really matter, however. Rhodes still felt like a teenager, and he also felt inordinately pleased with himself. He’d have to call Kathy and let her know.

He had a bowl of Grape Nuts, got dressed in khakis, and rode down to the jail. There was not much going on. A nursing home patient was missing, but he had wandered off before, and no one was really worried yet. There had been a bit of vandalism at the high school, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed. Rhodes caught up on his reports and then went to pick up Ivy.

Ivy was dressed in a dark gray suit, and Rhodes was once again impressed with her trim figure. She made no reference to the previous night, and neither did Rhodes. It didn’t seem like the proper time.

The rainfall had settled the dust and greened up the grass, and the northerly breeze that had pushed in behind it had cooled the weather down to an almost bearable temperature. The cemetery would be muddy, but probably not too bad.

They arrived at Ballinger’s. Rhodes parked in front, this time, and they went in. They signed the register and sat in the back of the small chapel. Rhodes didn’t like funerals.

The organist played a series of the slowest, most maudlin tunes imaginable-”In the Garden,” “Sunrise,” “The Old Rugged Cross.” Rhodes was going to make out a list of upbeat numbers for his own funeral and request that they be played at top speed. He was considering “The Uncloudy Day” and “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder” when the rest of the small crowd began to trickle in.

Rhodes recognized some of them, people for whom Ramsey had worked, for the most part, except for old Tink Lindsey and his wife. Attending funerals was their only form of entertainment, and Clyde Ballinger had once told Rhodes that the Lindseys hadn’t missed a funeral at his establishment in the last fifteen years.

The minister came in and stood beside the open casket. Then the family came in and was seated in an alcove just off to the left of the main section of the chapel. There were Mrs. Ramsey and two men. Rhodes didn’t know the men, but he assumed they were uncles or cousins. The minister had just begun to speak about “the dear departed” when Wyneva Greer came in. She was wearing a pair of tight jeans and a faded blue shirt. She walked down near the front and took a seat.

The minister began talking about how he had searched for a scripture appropriate to the life of a man like Bert Ramsey, someone who’d made his livelihood by helping others. “In the course of my search,” he said, “I came across Chapter 4 of Ephesians, in which Paul says. .”

It was at this point that Mrs. Ramsey looked up and saw Wyneva Greer. “Get that woman out of here,” she said, in a stage whisper.

The preacher stopped abruptly in his talk. “Preach on, preacher,” Mrs. Ramsey said. “Get that woman out of here,” she hissed to one of the men beside her.

The preacher, unable to figure out just exactly what was happening, remained silent. “Preach on, preacher,” Mrs. Ramsey said again.

The minister tried to pick up the thread of his talk. “Ah. . now in Ephesians, Paul speaks of how people have different abilities, and of how some are put here for service. .”

Neither of the men by Mrs. Ramsey had made a move, so she hauled her bulk up and squeezed herself out between the narrow pews, heading for Wyneva. The minister stopped again.

“Preach on,” Mrs. Ramsey said over her shoulder. The minister stood with his mouth open, but nothing came out.

Wyneva sat stolidly, watching Mrs. Ramsey approach. Ivy’s elbow touched Rhodes lightly in the ribs. Rhodes had had a bad experience at the last funeral of a murder victim he’d attended, one which he wasn’t eager to repeat. He got up, and he started for Wyneva Greer.

Mrs. Ramsey got there first and reached for Wyneva’s shoulders with her huge hands. Before she could get a solid grip, Rhodes brushed her arms aside, took Wyneva’s arm and pulled her into the aisle.

“I got a right to be here,” Wyneva said.

“You ain’t got no rights at all, you godless hussy,” Mrs. Ramsey said. “Bert wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you. Get on out of here, right now!” She turned back to the minister. “And you get on with your preachin’,” she said.

Rhodes noticed the Lindseys, who were sitting with rapt expressions on their faces. He would have bet that they were enjoying this funeral more than any one they’d attended in the past fifteen years. He increased his pull on Wyneva’s arms, and she reluctantly gave ground. By the time Mrs. Ramsey got turned to face them again, Rhodes had backed Wyneva nearly all the way to the rear of the chapel.

Mrs. Ramsey appeared satisfied. Rather than working her way back to the family section, she sat in the nearest pew. “Get on with it, preacher,” she said.

The preacher cleared his throat, and as Rhodes was pulling Wyneva through the back door the message was beginning again.

Clyde Ballinger, who had come around from his spot near the family, was waiting for Rhodes and Wyneva when they left the chapel. “I swear I never saw anything like that,” Ballinger said. “That old woman was on a real tear.”

Wyneva jerked her arm free of Rhodes’s grip. “Crazy old bat,” she said. “I got as much right as the next person to sit in there.”

“You have a right,” Rhodes said, “but I have a feeling that if you go back in there, there won’t be much of a service.”

“You can walk around with me and listen by the family section,” Ballinger said.

Wyneva shook her head. “That’s all right. I guess it was a mistake for me to come here. I’m going outside for some air.” She started for the big double door in the front of the building. Rhodes followed along.

“Mrs. Ramsey really has it in for you,” Rhodes said when they were outside on the long cement porch. “Do you have any idea why?”

“Sure I do,” Wyneva said. “She thought I corrupted her precious boy. Well, she’s sure wrong about that.” She stopped. “Buster said I wasn’t to talk to you, though.”

“Buster doesn’t have anything to do with this, does he?” Rhodes asked.

“I can’t say.” Wyneva stepped off the porch and started down the walk. When Rhodes followed, she began to run. She was faster than he would have thought, and he really didn’t want to leave Ivy alone. He could talk to Wyneva later, so he let her go.

He went back inside the funeral home, but he didn’t enter the chapel. He’d never liked the end of the service, where everyone had to walk down the aisle and take a last long look at the dead. He’d seen enough of death in its natural state, but he thought that the efforts of morticians did little to improve things. If anything, the distortion of life that they produced repelled Rhodes as much or more than the real thing. Not that he’d ever tell Clyde Ballinger that.

While he waited, he decided to go to the graveside service, which was to be held at the little cemetery by the Eller’s Prairie Baptist Church. After the service, he could go have another talk with Wyneva and with Buster Cullens.

Rhodes walked out to his car and got Hack on the radio. “Call Buddy off the funeral traffic detail,” he said. “I’ll work it myself.”

“Roger,” Hack said.

“What?”

“Roger,” Hack repeated.

“Oh,” Rhodes said. “Over and out.” Hack must have been talking to Ruth Grady again. He wondered if she’d brought in another cake.

The first mourners, if that was the proper term, began to leave the funeral home, and Rhodes went back up on the porch to wait for Ivy. “Did the rest go all right?” he asked when she came out the door.

“As right as those things go,” she said. “Who was that poor woman?”

“I thought Mrs. Ramsey was the one you felt sorry for,” Rhodes said.

“Not anymore. Who was that?”

“That was Wyneva Greer, former live-in girlfriend of the late Bert Ramsey.”

“Oh,” Ivy said.

“I’m going on to the graveside,” Rhodes said. “Do you want me to run you by home first?”

“I have the whole day off,” Ivy said. “I don’t mind spending a little more time with you. It’s never dull.”

“It usually is,” Rhodes said. “Just wait till you’re around me all the time.”

Ivy looked at him closely. “I’m actually looking forward to that a lot,” she said.

Rhodes blushed. “Let’s get in the car,” he said.

While the hearse was being loaded from the rear of the chapel, Rhodes and Ivy drove to the only intersection of Clearview that would need traffic control. Rhodes stopped the car and got out, and as the short funeral procession approached he held up a hand to stop the cars on the side street. There were only three, two on one side of the intersection and one on the other, and they would probably have stopped without Rhodes’s being there.

There were only seven cars in the procession, counting the hearse. When they had passed, all with their lights on, Rhodes got back in with Ivy, turned on his own lights, and followed along.

When they were only about a mile out of Clearview, Rhodes heard the motorcycles. There were four, and they came roaring up behind the procession at more than fifty miles an hour. Rhodes could hear the thunder of their pipes even though he had the windows up and the air conditioner on.

There were four bikes, all in a single line. As they zipped by the car, Rhodes had no time to look closely at the riders, but he figured he knew who they were.

The bikes sped by all the cars in the procession, and luckily there was no one coming in the other direction.

When each rider drew even with the long, black hearse, he did a wheelie, gliding past the hearse with the front wheel of the bike in the air. As the front wheel touched the road again, each rider gunned his engine and swung back into the right lane of the road. Rhodes couldn’t see them after that, but the diminishing sound of their exhausts told him that they were rapidly pulling ahead.

“Aren’t you going to arrest those hooligans?” Ivy asked.

“Nope. They saw me just as clearly as we saw them,” Rhodes said. “And they know I’m not going to disrupt this funeral procession to go chasing after them. It’s just their formal salute to a departed member, I guess. Nothing to make a fuss about.”

“It seemed awfully dangerous to me,” Ivy said.

“Dangerous for them, yes. Not for anybody else, as long as the lane was clear.” Rhodes didn’t mention that he suspected the four riders of crimes a lot more serious than reckless driving. “Their day will come. Maybe I can get them for jaywalking.”

“Maybe,” Ivy said, but Rhodes could tell she didn’t like it.

Rhodes had no intention of letting anyone kill him, not with Ivy sitting in the car, not if he could help it. He rolled over on his back, which he hoped wasn’t broken, just in time to see Jayse swinging an axe handle at him. He put up his hands to take the blow and was able to get a grip on the handle. Pulling with the force of the blow, he threw Jayse off balance.

Jayse stumbled and Rhodes kicked upward at his stomach. It wasn’t much of a kick, but Jayse lost his hold on the handle. Rhodes didn’t. He got himself into a sitting position and swung the handle at Jayse’s shins as if he were Reggie Jackson trying for one more long ball. He got the left one.

The sound was horrible, but not as horrible as the scream Jayse let out before he collapsed on the floor. He screamed and cried as Rhodes struggled to his feet and through the door into the back room.

Rapper, Nellie, and the fourth man were there. Buster Cullens was on the floor, a gag around his head. Rhodes couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead. He wasn’t moving.

When Rhodes came through the door with the axe handle, the scene appeared frozen. Obviously, the three men were expecting Jayse. They didn’t know who was yelling in the next room, but they’d thought it was Rhodes. When they realized it wasn’t, they went into motion.

Nellie and the other man charged Rhodes, who swung the handle. It hit the man whose name Rhodes hadn’t learned in the head with a sound like hitting a watermelon with a drumstick. The man dropped like a sack of horse and mule feed, but Nellie caught Rhodes on his follow-through and drove him back into the room where Jayse lay clutching his shin and whimpering.

Rhodes smashed into the wall hard enough to bring a shower of dust and dirt from the ceiling overhead. Pain shot through his already sore back, and he was momentarily stunned, unable to move or even lift the axe handle.

Nellie was looking around the bare room for something to hit him with when his eyes fell on Rhodes’s pistol. He started for it just as Rapper came into the room. “Let me have it,” Rapper said, stooping to pick it up. His face was red and distorted. He looked dangerously out of control.

Rhodes got his breath and stepped up to hit Nellie, who was between him and Rapper. But Rhodes was still stunned, and Nellie had other ideas. He stepped under Rhodes’s feeble swing and hit Rhodes in the stomach. Hard.

Rhodes staggered backward, but this time he missed the wall. Instead, he hit the screen door, which, because it was hinged to swing out, offered no resistance at all.

Rhodes tried to gain his balance, but it was as if his feet were no longer under the direction of his brain. He staggered on to the small porch and over the edge, falling flat on his back in the mud.

Nellie and Rapper were right behind him. Rhodes managed to get his feet under him somehow, but he slipped back in the mud almost at once, which was just as well, since the three shots that Rapper fired zipped over him. Rhodes heard three loud clanking and clanging noises, and the bullets plowed into the grille and radiator and fan and probably the engine block of the county car.

“Goddamngoddamngoddamn!” Rapper yelled, the words running together in his rage. He sounded as if he might be strangling.

Rhodes heard two more shots. The first smacked solidly into the mud beside him. The second shattered glass. Ivy!

There were no more bullets. Rhodes stood up, and Nellie dived on him. As they were going down, Rhodes heard a car door slam. Ivy was all right, he thought. Then he heard her yelling. The door slammed again. Then he and Nellie were wrestling in the mud, rolling around, trying to get a hold or a solid lick. Rhodes had lost the axe handle.

Rhodes and Nellie rolled over and over. They were slick as pond scum, covered with mud. Finally, Rhodes got on top and managed a hard pop at Nellie’s jaw. Then Rapper threw a body block into him and he sailed off.

Rapper jerked Nellie out of the mud and they lurched toward the motorcycles. Rhodes got up and looked toward the car. Ivy opened the door and got out.

The bikes started and Rapper and Nellie roared away, slewing through the mud. They headed across the field rather than toward the road.

“The car’s had it,” Rhodes said. “The radio. . ”

“That man tried to get in and rip out the mike,” Ivy said. “But I slammed the door. Got it locked, too. Then he broke the aerial off.”

“Damn,” Rhodes said. “There’s no way to get them now.” He looked at the other two bikes. “First time I ever wanted to be able to ride one of those things. Never learned how.”

“I did,” Ivy said. “Come on.”

“What?”

“I can ride one. My brother had one. Come on.” Rhodes watched in amazement as Ivy walked over to the nearest motorcycle, hiked her skirt up to her hips, and straddled it. “Come on!” she said again. “They’ll get completely away!”

He walked over, still not sure he wasn’t dreaming. On the way he stooped to pick up his pistol, which Rapper had dropped. The thought occurred to him that Ivy’s legs were even better than he would have guessed. He straddled the bike behind her, and even his thoughts were drowned out by its roar as she started it.

As they sped out of the yard in pursuit of Rapper and Nellie, Rhodes began to think he was living in a bad remake of Born Losers. “Are you sure. .?” he yelled in Ivy’s ear.

“Put your arms around me,” she yelled back. “I’m sure.”

Rhodes did as he was told.

The fields across which they were riding had not been plowed in years, but it was still rough and rutted. At times, the motorcycle seemed to leave the ground by several feet, and every time it landed, Rhodes felt the shock from the base of his spine, right up through his sore back, and on up through the top of his head. He hung on tight.

After only a minute, he could tell that Ivy was actually gaining on Rapper and Nellie. He wasn’t surprised. They were only criminals. They weren’t crazy, which you had to be to drive like Ivy was.

Then the two men came to a barbed wire fence. They made a sharp right turn. Ivy didn’t slow down.

Rhodes closed his eyes. He couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to hit the fence.

“Lean with me!” Ivy yelled. Rhodes felt her weight shift and shifted his own to match it. They made a sharp right turn, throwing up a raft of mud against the fence post which seemed to Rhodes to be within inches of the wheel. As they straightened out and headed down the fence row, Rhodes realized that he had been thinking of the wrong movie. This wasn’t Born Losers. He was in fact hanging on to Steve McQueen during his race for life in The Great Escape. He hoped that Ivy didn’t plan to try jumping the fence.

Rapper and Nellie, however, were planning exactly that. They hooked another right, then another, heading back the way they’d come, except that they were about a hundred yards from the fence. By the time that Ivy had made another turn, they were gunning straight for the fence, or more accurately for a small rise of dirt just in front of it, which they must have spotted earlier.

Rapper’s bike was in the lead. He hit the rise, elevating his front wheel, and took off as if on a ramp. He sailed over the fence, Nellie right behind him. Their bikes hit, slewed wildly through the mud, righted, and took off.

Ivy slowed to a stop. “I can’t make it with two of us,” she said.

Rhodes was quietly thankful. He might have fired after them if he’d had time to load his gun before they were out of sight, but he didn’t. Instead, he said, “Let’s go on back to the house and see what we can find out.”

The trip back was not quite so hectic, and Rhodes had time to marvel at Ivy’s hidden talents. She was also a lot tougher than he’d thought. He should have known better than to judge her.

When they got back to the house, Jayse was still lying on the floor. He was no longer moaning or whimpering, however. He had passed out. Rhodes had broken his leg.

The man in the back room, the one whose name Rhodes hadn’t learned, had returned to consciousness, but only barely.

Buster Cullens lay where he had fallen. He was dead.

Ivy helped Rhodes search the house. The other two rooms contained nearly nothing. There was a bed, surprisingly neatly made up. There was a chest of drawers containing a few changes of clothing for Cullens and Wyneva. That was it. No place to cook. Nothing else. There was no form of identification for Cullens, not even in his pants pockets. There was a little money, about fifteen dollars. That was all.

“They must have eaten out a lot,” Rhodes said.

Ivy looked at him and laughed.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

“You know when that man was trying to get in the car? You were rolling around in all that mud, and all I could think of was the fight scene in North to Alaska. You should see yourself now.”

“You like North to Alaska?”

“Even Fabian.”

Rhodes felt mud crack on his face as he grinned. “I knew you were a woman of taste,” he said. “Now there’s a little favor I have to ask.”

“First the compliment, then the favors,” Ivy said.

“Well, for that matter you aren’t so clean yourself,” Rhodes said.

“Never mind. What’s the favor?”

“Ride that thing down to Mrs. Ramsey’s and call the J.P., the ambulance, and Hack. I’ll stay here and watch things.”

“I could watch.”

“Don’t start,” Rhodes said. “Nobody likes a smart aleck.”

“All right, I’ll make your calls. Anything else?”

“Yeah. Bring back the bike. It’s evidence.”

They went outside. Standing off to one side, his tail between his legs, was the dog. He eyed them with suspicion.

Rhodes knelt on the porch and whistled. The dog came forward a step or two, then stopped. “C’mon, boy,” Rhodes said.

After continued coaxing, he managed to get the dog to come to him. He ran his hand over its head. There was a large lump. “That Jayse sure liked that axe handle,” Rhodes said. He rubbed the dog.

“Is he one of the men you hurt?” Ivy asked.

“Yeah, the one in the front room.”

“Good,” Ivy said. She walked over to the motorcycle. “I’ll be right back.”

“Take your time,” Rhodes said. “I won’t be going anywhere.”

Rhodes did not like to ride in the car with dogs. He insisted that if it would be safe to leave the motorcycles in the country overnight, it would also be safe to leave the dog. “He’s used to it here,” he said.

It didn’t do any good. Neither Ruth nor Ivy would listen to him, and so the dog was riding back to town with them in the county car. The fact that Rhodes had to share the back seat with him didn’t help. “After all,” Ruth told him, “you’re at least as dirty as the dog.”

Rhodes didn’t point out that Ivy wasn’t much cleaner. Probably, Ruth would have put the dog in front if he had. Ruth listened to the radio as she drove, a country station. Rhodes had once liked country music, but now it all sounded to him as if the singers were trying to get a job in a Vegas lounge. Occasionally there would be a song he’d like, but not often. It was the same with rock music. Rhodes had grown up with rock, and he had listened for hours to songs like those he’d played for Ivy a few nights before. But somewhere rock music had taken a turn that he had missed. The road forked, and he had taken the wrong fork. He seldom turned on the radio anymore.

So, what with having to sit in the back seat, the prisoner’s seat, Rhodes thought ironically, and having to share the seat with the dog, and having to listen to Kenny Rogers croon through a forest of syrupy violins and cooing backup singers, Rhodes wasn’t in a particularly good mood. Besides, he was dirty, and his back was sore. On top of everything, Rapper and Nellie had gotten away.

It didn’t improve things when Ruth brought up Clyde Ballinger’s latest telephone call. “Hack said you wouldn’t like it,” she said, explaining that Ballinger wanted to talk to Rhodes. Apparently, there was a hitch in the burial plans.

“Just drive by there right now,” Rhodes told her.

“Now?” Ruth looked at him in the mirror.

Ivy turned in her seat and looked back through the grille that separated them. “Are you sure? I think if you had a bath and something to eat. . ”

“I don’t want a bath, and I don’t want anything to eat,” Rhodes said. “I want to get this mess settled.”

“All right,” Ruth said. “You’re the sheriff.”

For a minute or two, no one spoke. The dog lay quietly in the seat, his tongue hanging out.

“So,” Ruth said finally, “what are you going to name the dog?”

“Don’t start,” Rhodes said. “Just don’t start.”

“It’s a sensible question,” Ivy said. “Are you sulking because I can ride a motorcycle better than you?”

“Of course not,” Rhodes said. But then he wondered if maybe she had a point. “I think I may name the dog Carella.”

“What?”

“Carella?”

“What kind of name is that?”

“Italian, I think.”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” Ivy said. “I meant, what kind of name is that for a dog to have?”

“I think it’s kind of nice,” Ruth said. “It has a nice sound.”

“I like it,” Rhodes said. He could hardly wait to tell Ballinger.

Ballinger liked the name, all right, but it didn’t change his mind. “I can’t bury them,” he said. They were in his office, and he looked at Rhodes as if he wished Rhodes would disappear, or at least go home and change clothes. Ruth and Ivy were looking at the books that lined the shelves and not really listening. Every now and then they would pull one down and read the cover blurbs.

“You took Dr. Rawlings’s money,” Rhodes said. “You’ve got to bury them.”

“I can send the money back,” Ballinger said. “I’ve talked to my lawyer, and he says burying them would be a mistake. What if someone decided to sue?”

Rhodes sighed. It was the modern way. Everybody was suing everybody else. He supposed that even a mortician could be sued. “No one’s going to sue,” he said.

“How do you know?” Ballinger asked. He didn’t ask in a smart way. He really wanted to know.

“Because all those limbs are from people who believe that they’ve already been disposed of.” Rhodes didn’t know if he was telling the truth, but it sounded plausible. “They’re from amputees who paid someone to remove them. They were supposed to be burned. No one will ever know that you buried them.”

“You’re sure?”

“Rawlings hauled them off up here and dumped them in a pasture. You think a doctor would take a chance like that if there was even a remote possibility he could be sued?”

“You’ve got a point there,” Ballinger said. “That lawyer of mine probably isn’t as smart as he thinks. I’ll do it.”

“I hope so,” Rhodes said. “I’m getting tired of thinking about those boxes. So give me an exact time. I want to be there.”

Ballinger thought for a second. “Tomorrow evening, seven o’clock. The north end of the cemetery. No use calling any more attention to this than we have to.” The north end of the cemetery was well back from the road and overlooked miles of open pasture.

“I’ll be there,” Rhodes said.

They left Ballinger and went back to the car, where the dog was waiting quietly. Ruth and Ivy were talking about the books.

“Can you believe there’s really a book called Guerrilla Girls?” Ivy asked.

“How about Backwoods Hussy?” Ruth said.

“Don’t laugh,” Rhodes told them. “Some of those old books are pretty good.”

Both women looked at him, but neither said a word. Rhodes sat in the back seat and rubbed the dog’s head.

Rhodes was not out for long, but when he came to he was in no position to do much. He was lying face down on the ground, his face pressed into the tangy-smelling leaf mold. He couldn’t move his arms, which were locked behind his back, held in place, he was sure, with his own handcuffs. It was embarrassing. His sore back was hurting more than ever, and the side of his head felt as if it had been caved in.

“I say we kill him right here.” That was Nellie’s voice. “Just shoot him in the back of the head with his own pistol and toss him in the tank. They’ll find him if it ever dries up, if the turtles don’t eat him first.” Rhodes was beginning to develop a real dislike for Nellie.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Rapper said. “Someone knows he came here, and why he came here. If we kill a lawman, even one as sorry as this one, they’ll hunt us forever. We’d never get a minute’s rest.”

Nellie laughed. “What we’ve done already ain’t enough? Who’s the idiot now? Look at him, trussed up like a pig.”

“I hate to admit it, Nellie, but you may have a point,” Rapper said in the voice of a man who really did hate to admit that someone else might have a better thought than his own. “Well, let’s let him look at us when we do it. May as well get a little fun out of it.”

Rhodes tensed himself. He didn’t think he had a chance, because he didn’t think he could move, but he wasn’t going to lie there and let Rapper shoot him, that was for sure.

As Rapper’s steps approached, Rhodes lurched to his knees, then threw himself forward at what he hoped would be Rapper’s softly bulging midsection. He was off, but not too far, and he had managed to take Rapper by surprise. His head hit Rapper in the side and staggered him backward.

Rhodes tried to gain his feet, but Nellie landed in the middle of his back. Rhodes rolled over, but that didn’t help. Now Nellie was beneath him, but he had a strong grip around Rhodes’s chest and was squeezing.

Rhodes rolled over again. Now Nellie was on top. No advantage there, either, except that Rapper, who was now on his feet, couldn’t shoot for fear of hitting Nellie.

“Get off him, Nellie!” Rapper screamed, the thin edge of dementia in his voice. “Get off, or I’ll shoot you too!”

Nellie tried to get up and Rhodes followed along, running backward with Nellie, who was trying to get away. Rhodes dug his feet into the ground, driving backward as hard as he could. Nellie, caught up in the rush, went along.

Things came to a sudden stop when they hit a tree. All the air went out of Nellie, and Rhodes tried to keep his balance.

Rapper fired the pistol, but the shot went wild in the darkness. So did the second one.

Rhodes tried to find cover. He got behind a tree trunk that wasn’t quite thick enough and tried to think of what to do next. Pain was shooting up and down his arms and pulsing in his head.

A shot thudded into the tree trunk. Rapper was getting better in the dark, or luckier.

Then suddenly, as if it were right on him, Rhodes heard the wail of a siren. Headlights flooded through the trees, and there was the flashing of a light bar.

“Freeze, sucker!” It was Ruth Grady.

Quite a few things happened then, and Rhodes never remembered if they happened in any particular order or if they all happened at once.

No one froze. Rapper whirled around and fired two shots at the lights. Rhodes heard glass shatter. Ruth Grady began firing at the muzzle flashes. Nellie got up. Rhodes hit the dirt. There were more shots. Rhodes heard the motorcycles start and speed away.

Then Ruth was kneeling by him. “Got the keys to these cuffs, Sheriff?”

“Right pocket,” Rhodes said, rolling into a position where she could reach them. She took them off, and Rhodes rubbed his wrists as he sat up.

“Too many trees,” Ruth said. “I don’t think I hit anybody. Should we go after them?”

“Not much chance of catching them,” Rhodes said. “How many were there?”

“Three. One in the tent.”

“Thought there had to be another one.” Rhodes winced as the blood began to flow freely in his arms and hands once again, sending needles into his skin. “I’d like to say I had ‘em where I wanted ‘em, but you’d probably see right through that, wouldn’t you.”

Ruth laughed. “Probably.”

“How’d you happen to show up here, anyway?”

“Hack called me, said you might need some backup.”

“Hack’s beginning to exceed his authority,” Rhodes said. “All the same, I don’t think I’ll call him down for it this time.” He stood up. “How much damage to the car?”

“Smashed a headlight, I think.”

“I hope that’s all,” Rhodes said. “I’m beginning to feel like a one-man disaster area. Let’s get on back to town while I can still walk.”

As they walked to the car, Rhodes saw that one of the low-beam lights was out. There didn’t seem to be much damage, otherwise. He got in and called Hack, telling him to send Buddy out to go over the tent and surrounding area. He didn’t think there’d be anything to find, but he didn’t want to pass up the chance.

Rhodes had never been in a helicopter before. What really amazed him was the noise. Whenever Malvin had anything to say, he had to put his head right next to Rhodes’s ear and speak very loudly, almost in a shout. Cox had stayed behind. The pilot hadn’t been introduced.

They had had to drive over to the next county to get the chopper, which was being looked after at the National Guard headquarters there. “It’s not that we didn’t trust you,” Cox said as they drove over in the navy blue car that matched the navy blue suits. “It’s just that we had to be sure. You know how it is. . you find a huge marijuana field growing in a man’s back yard, so to speak, and you have to wonder if he knows something about it.”

“No,” Rhodes said, “I don’t know.” And it was the truth. Rhodes knew himself, knew that he would never have dreamed of cashing in on something like marijuana, knew that such a thing would have been impossible for him. And nearly anyone who knew him knew that about him. Of course, he would have thought that it would have been impossible for Bert Ramsey to grow and sell dope, too.

“No hard feelings, I hope,” Cox said. “After Ramsey was killed and you started questioning Cullens, he was convinced you were straight.”

“Sometimes it’s hard for us to trust anyone,” Malvin said from the back seat. “Sometimes we don’t even trust each other.”

“Which brings us to Wyneva Greer,” Cox said. He steered the car along at exactly the legal limit. He even wore his seat belt and shoulder harness, as required by law.

“How does that bring us to her?” Rhodes asked.

“It’s a matter of trust,” Malvin said. “We sent Cullens up here not long after we made a flyover of the county. He had a good cover. We arranged for him to live in a house on land owned by someone supposed to be his cousin, and anyone checking with the cousin would get the same story. So what was he doing with Wyneva Greer? How come he’s dead?”

“He was living with Wyneva, that’s for sure,” Rhodes said. “But that’s all that’s sure. Why he was living with her, whether it was his idea or hers, that’s something we’ll have to find out. When I walked into that house, Rapper and his goons were there, and one of them had an axe handle. We’ll know more about that when we hear what killed Cullens.”

“Maybe we should have stopped by that hospital before we did this flyover,” Malvin said.

“Rhodes needs to see this,” Cox said. “Those guys will keep.”

Rhodes had made sure they would keep. He had called Ruth Grady from the jail and put her on guard at their adjoining rooms, not that he was really worried. Any stranger would have been noticed and called down immediately in the Clearview Hospital, especially a stranger that looked like Rapper or Nellie. Besides, Rhodes wasn’t at all sure there was any urgency about talking to the two men. They weren’t the type to tell their life stories at the drop of a hat.

“If those men don’t talk, then what?” Malvin asked, echoing Rhodes’s thoughts.

“I don’t know,” Rhodes told him. “It may be that Rapper and Nellie have split the scene entirely. They could be in Houston by now, for all we know.

“But you don’t really think that,” Cox said.

“No,” Rhodes said. “I don’t. I think they’re still around. I’m not sure why, but I think they’re still around.”

“It’s either the dope or the money,” Cox said. “You can bet on that.”

“Could be,” Rhodes said. “But you haven’t had any run-ins with Rapper. I have. I think he’s crazy. Oh, maybe not crazy enough to be put away, but bad enough.”

“How bad is that?” Malvin asked.

“Bad enough to stay around just because he wants to get back at me,” Rhodes said. “I’ve messed his playhouse up. If you could have seen the way he acts, you’d know what I mean.”

“I guess that’s another one of those things we’ll find out about later on,” Cox said.

It wasn’t a particularly comforting thought.

While the pilot warmed up the helicopter, Rhodes stood by the car and looked at it. Cox had called it a Jet Ranger, but he had assured Rhodes that it wasn’t jet propelled. “Carries four people in comfort,” Cox said. “Comfort’s relative, of course. Anyway, it’s just right for the kind of jobs we do.” Even as far away as they stood, he had to raise his voice almost to a yell for Rhodes to hear him.

Then Malvin tugged at Rhodes’s arm and they went to get on board. They bent from the waist as they passed under the whickering blades. Rhodes wasn’t sure just how tall he was, or just how high the blades were, but he’d seen people on TV duck when they went under them, and he wasn’t going to take any chances.

There was hardly any wind at all, and the lift-off was smooth and effortless. Rhodes had carefully strapped himself in, but the open sides still gave him a distinct feeling of discomfort.

The feeling soon wore off, however, as Rhodes was caught up in the new view he had of Blacklin County. This was nothing like flying in a plane; they seemed so close to the ground that it was almost as if they could jump down.

“Give him the scenic route,” Malvin yelled to the pilot, and that’s what they got.

They went over the courthouse and jail, and Rhodes was even able to pick out his own house.

“You’d be surprised at how some people keep their back yards,” Malvin said in Rhodes’s ear, and it was true.

Protected from everyone’s eyes by wood fences, the back yards of some homes were littered with everything from old, rusting auto bodies to broken toilets. Some of the homes that had immaculate front yards might have a back yard that looked like a dog run, or was filled with piles of trash consisting of everything from bathtubs to oil drums. It all surprised Rhodes a little, but at least it made him feel better about his own back yard.

Then they were out of Eller’s Prairie. As they coasted past Bert Ramsey’s house, Rhodes noted the tops of the trees that formed the line at the back of the property. They gained a little altitude, and he could see where the trees had been cleared out. Then he could see into a clearing, where the marijuana plants were growing.

They circled around three times. After Rhodes had seen enough, they headed back to the National Guard Armory.

Rhodes thought that his house had never seemed quite so empty. It was one of those times when he almost wished that Ralph Claymore had won the primary election, one of those times when being sheriff seemed to be a job that someone else could do better.

It wasn’t just the empty house-Rhodes had gotten nearly used to that, though that was probably part of it. It was mainly the fact that he couldn’t quite get a handle on what was happening. Rapper had gotten away from him twice, and unless Jayse talked, the chances for finding Rapper again looked dim. There was a chance that Ruth Grady’s contact would get Rapper the word that Jayse had talked and thus smoke Rapper out, but Rhodes couldn’t count on that.

To top it all off, there wasn’t even any bologna for a sandwich. Rhodes wondered briefly just how many bologna sandwiches he’d eaten since Claire’s death, but it wasn’t something that he wanted to think about for too long. He wondered if Ivy liked bologna. He needed to talk to her, having failed to call her last night. After his tussle with Rapper, he hadn’t felt like talking to anyone.

At least he had something for Speedo to eat. He went outside and got the sack of Ol’ Roy out of the pickup and carried it into the back yard. Speedo was there, sleeping in the shade of a native pecan tree. He heard the crackling of the dog food sack, or maybe Rhodes’s footsteps, and raised his head.

Rhodes put down the sack and went into the house to look for a bowl. He found an old Tupperware salad bowl in one of the cabinets and brought it out. Then he ripped the top off the bag of dog food. Speedo’s ears perked up at the ripping sound. He got to his feet, shook himself, and trotted over to Rhodes.

Rhodes poured some of the food into the bowl. He had intended to carry it over to the shade, but Speedo immediately poked his nose in and started eating. Rhodes set the dog food bag in the garage and rummaged around until he found an old watering dish. He filled it at a faucet and set it by the food. Speedo stopped eating and slurped the water noisily.

“Sorry I forgot about the water,” Rhodes said. “It’s been a while since I had a dog.”

Speedo didn’t seem to mind. He finished drinking, then turned back to the food. Rhodes stood watching him eat. The day had gotten hot, and Rhodes could feel the heat soaking through his clothes. A droplet of sweat ran down his ribs.

“You had the right idea, staying in the shade,” he said to the dog. “You go on and eat. I’m going back in.”

Talking to Speedo had cheered Rhodes up some, but not enough. He didn’t even feel like watching the Million Dollar Movie, a Hammer gem called Prehistoric Women. Any other day he would have watched it with amazement, but he had too much on his mind to be amazed or amused by an inept movie.

Who killed Bert Ramsey? Rapper? Why? The crop hadn’t been harvested, and Ramsey was growing more all the time. To kill him was to cut off the source. Cullens? Surely not. A government agent wanted information, not a man’s death. Wyneva Greer? She hadn’t even been living with Ramsey for months. Yet Rhodes felt that they were all somehow involved.

As for Cullens, Rapper could easily have tortured him for information and killed him either by accident or design. Or he could have watched cheerfully while one of the others tortured him. Rapper was that kind of man. The best thing that Rhodes could say for Rapper was that he’d never seen either Rapper or one of the others with a gun.

And that was another thing that really bothered Rhodes. He hadn’t found his own pistol the night before, and neither had anyone else. Rhodes had another pistol, and he was wearing it, but now he was pretty sure that Rapper had a pistol, too. That didn’t cheer Rhodes up at all.

He stepped outside and looked in the flat, black mailbox, remembering that he hadn’t checked the day before.

There was a circular advertising a sale at Wal-Mart, and another circular offering him siding for his house ABSOLUTELY FREE!!!!! if he would consent to being a “Showcase Home.” He decided to decline. There was also an envelope with a cartoon drawing of Ed McMahon on the outside, promising to Mr. Dan Rhodes that he had (if he was lucky) a prize of TEN MILLION DOLLARS!!!!! awaiting him. Rhodes put that envelope carefully aside. He always responded to sweepstakes letters, even though he never bought any of the products and figured that his chances of winning were nil. He also figured that the twenty-two cents he spent on the stamp was a small price to pay for the ten or fifteen minutes of pleasure he got from thinking about what he would do with TEN MILLION DOLLARS!!!!!

The last item was a letter from Kathy, written on some kind of card that folded into its own envelope and sealed with a gold foil circle. He peeled off the circle and read the neatly penned letter.

Kathy had settled in to her new apartment, and while she hadn’t really met anyone yet, she was sure she was going to like it. She missed her father, of course, and she hoped that he was eating something besides bologna sandwiches for lunch. Rhodes laughed. So far he hadn’t eaten anything.

Kathy went on to say that she hoped Ivy was doing well, and she wondered if he had any news for her about himself and Ivy. Rhodes knew that she strongly approved of the idea of his getting married again, and he knew that he should write her and let her know of the recent developments. He wasn’t much on writing. Maybe he could call.

Then he thought about the “recent developments,” something he hadn’t really allowed himself to do. He still wasn’t able to devote his full attention to the matter, but he decided to think about it anyway.

Except that he still didn’t know what to think.

On the one hand, there was obviously strong feelings between himself and Ivy Daniel. He liked to be with her, and he could tell that she enjoyed herself in his company. And, of course, there was something more than that, as he’d discovered a couple of nights ago. Not that things had gotten out of hand. Far from it. But still, they had kissed, and there was certainly an electricity in it that he’d been pretty sure that he’d never feel again. He was too old for that sort of thing. But there it was. To tell the truth, it scared him a little.

On the other hand, there was his job, which Ivy had at least once expressed a concern about. It could certainly be dangerous, though it usually wasn’t. It usually wasn’t even as physically taxing as it had been for the last few days. It did demand that he be on call twenty-four hours a day, just like a doctor. If something came up that required the presence of the chief law officer of the county, he had to appear, no matter if it was three o’clock in the morning or the middle of Sunday afternoon.

And on the other hand-if I had another hand, Rhodes thought-there was Ivy herself. She had run for justice of the peace once and might want to again. But if she married Rhodes, that would be impossible. Definite conflict of interest, there.

Of course, Rhodes thought, he had more or less proposed to Ivy, and she had more or less accepted. He wished he could remember the exact words, but he couldn’t. Not that he was trying to weasel out of it. In fact, sitting there in the empty house, nobody there but him and the dog, the idea of Ivy being around pleased him quite a bit. She wouldn’t be there during the day, naturally, since she would want to keep her job, but just the thought of her presence would cheer him up.

He wondered if Bert Ramsey had felt that way about Wyneva Greer, or if Buster Cullens had. The more he thought about Buster Cullens, the more he wondered about Wyneva Greer. There really wasn’t much doubt in his mind that Wyneva had been the third person in the woods at Rapper’s tent, though he hadn’t mentioned that to Malvin and Cox. Could it be that they knew something that they hadn’t mentioned to him?

Maybe he was getting cynical. Surely two federal agents, who had decided to be so frank with him about how they hadn’t quite trusted him, were going to level now, weren’t they? Probably not.

They had said that they wanted to know why Wyneva was with Buster, but maybe they knew. Maybe they just didn’t want Rhodes to know that they knew. Maybe they didn’t want Rhodes to know.

When you looked at it, Rhodes thought, it was really pretty obvious. Buster Cullens knew about Bert Ramsey. He didn’t know everything, though. He didn’t know where the dope was going after it was harvested. So he stole Ramsey’s girl and found out from her. Or he tried to find out.

Maybe he made a mistake, slipped up, was too obvious, and Wyneva had caught on. And instead of reporting to Ramsey-after all, she’d left him already-she’d reported to Rapper. Rapper had done the rest, after first trying to find out how much Cullens knew, and after killing Bert Ramsey to shut his mouth permanently. Now there was no one left to tie Rapper and Los Muertos into the dope. It was just there in Ramsey’s backyard, so to speak, with no one to blame except a dead man. And if the federal boys hadn’t come by, Rapper could have harvested it with no one the wiser.

All in all, Rhodes thought, it wasn’t a bad theory. There were a few holes in it, though. For one thing, it seemed to Rhodes that Rapper, though obviously a lunatic, was fairly clever. He would certainly realize that it was much better to be brought in on a dope rap than on a double homicide.

But connecting Rapper to Ramsey’s death would not be easy, and it was only an accident that Rhodes had walked in on Rapper at Cullens’s house. It wasn’t Rapper’s fault that Rhodes had been able to walk out of the latter situation. So maybe it was the way Rhodes had it figured. He thought he would play it that way and see what happened, anyway.

He walked over to the phone and called the Trail’s End motel. “Hey, Gerald,” he said when the desk clerk answered. “You got two guys named Cox and Malvin registered?”

“Sure do, Sheriff,” Gerald answered.

Rhodes was a little surprised that they’d used their real names, but since Cullens was dead and probably exposed anyway, he guessed it didn’t really matter. Besides, he didn’t know how the federal boys preferred to operate, anyway. “Connect me with their room, will you?” he asked.

“Sure thing, Sheriff.” Rhodes heard clicking sounds and then the ringing of the telephone.

Cox answered. “Hello?”

“It’s Dan Rhodes. I’ve got one little question for you.”

“Shoot,” Cox said. “Figuratively speaking, of course.”

“It’s about Wyneva Greer.”

“What about her?” Cox said. No hesitation. No wariness.

“I just have this feeling you know more than you’re telling,” Rhodes said.

The line hummed for a second or two while Cox said nothing. Then there was a sigh. “What makes you think that?”

“It’s just a feeling I have,” Rhodes said. “Plus the fact that I just don’t really believe that an agent of yours could live with someone for months without you knowing quite a bit about what was going on.”

“Is this telephone secure?”

Rhodes laughed. Cox had asked in all seriousness, but Rhodes found it hard to take the question in the spirit in which it had been intended. The idea of a bugged telephone in Blacklin County was almost ridiculous. “It’s secure,” he said.

“I guess it may seem pretty funny that I’d even ask,” Cox said. “Just a habit. Anyway, you’re right. Another little habit we have is holding back a little something. No reflection on you.”

“Of course not,” Rhodes said, not believing a word of it.

“We did have a little information on the Greer woman,” Cox said. “Cullens had evidently met her at some kind of nightclub while she was with Ramsey. So he decided to get to know her a little better, hoping for some inside information. He got to know her a little better than he intended.” There was a note of disapproval in the voice now. “Cullens had been in a little trouble for things like that in the past.”

“Did he learn anything?”

“Not enough,” Cox said. “She was tied in with Los Muertos, that’s definite. She apparently came to the area to find out where Bert Ramsey was and what he was doing. We believe Los Muertos, or at least Rapper, planned to use him in the dope business, which seems to be what happened.”

“Once a dead man, always a dead man,” Rhodes said.

“What?”

“Never mind. That’s pretty much the way I had it figured,” Rhodes said. “Is it possible at all that Cullens made a mistake in dealing with her? That he maybe gave too much away?”

“It’s possible,” Cox said, the disapproval strong in his voice now. “I was against his being assigned to this job. I didn’t like to work with him. He was undependable.”

“Well, you won’t have to worry about that anymore,” Rhodes said.

“True,” Cox said with no apparent regret. “Anything else?”

“Not at the moment,” Rhodes said. “If I think of something, I’ll give you a call.” He hung up the phone. He wished he knew more about Wyneva Greer, and he thought back to the only two times he had seen her. Both times, she had looked afraid. Not that he blamed her for looking that way at the funeral. Mrs. Ramsey was a formidable woman, and even Rhodes might have given way had she been advancing on him. But not Wyneva. She might have looked a bit frightened, but she left only to avoid a scene.

What was it that Mrs. Ramsey had said to her? Rhodes tried to remember. Something like, “Bert wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you.” He wondered if Mrs. Ramsey blamed Wyneva for the death, or if she even thought that Wyneva had something to do with it. Maybe Mrs. Ramsey knew more than he thought. He would have to talk to her again.

Wyneva hadn’t spoken on Cullens’s porch. Rhodes had thought at the time that she was afraid of Cullens, but it could have been that she was afraid of Rhodes, afraid that he was onto the game. Maybe even afraid that he had come to arrest her for the murder.

All of Rhodes’s speculations, however, had led him nowhere. Oh, well, he thought, at least I’ve cleared the air. At least I have some idea of where I stand.

It was strange, but the quiet time of sitting and thinking through what he knew and didn’t know had made him feel much better. If he still hadn’t figured anything out, he at least knew where he stood. And what he didn’t know, he’d thought about. There was the pretense of action, even if no action had been taken, even if no decisions had been made.

He looked at the clock. The whole afternoon had slipped by. Time had a way of doing that to him now, a sign of age, he guessed. It seemed as if the years went by like bullets. No wonder the young seemed to get more done. They had more time. When he was younger, the afternoon would have seemed to him like a week seemed now. There was a certain amount of unfairness there, but he didn’t dwell on it.

He went back outside. Speedo was still under the tree, but he looked much more content. Rhodes picked up the water dish, and the sun-heated water sloshed out over his hand. “Sorry I forgot to put this in the shade,” he said. He carried it and the food bowl over to the tree where Speedo lay. He got the dog food and poured a little more in the bowl, then refilled the water bowl. Speedo watched with a bit of interest, but he didn’t stir himself to get up and eat or drink. There were times when Rhodes envied dogs. Speedo obviously didn’t mind that Cullens was dead. He was getting food and water. He had a shady place to lie down. He had, in fact, just about everything he needed. If he couldn’t be young again, Rhodes thought, he might like to be a dog.

Rhodes went back in the house and walked to the telephone, this time to call Ivy. She would be home from work now.

She answered on the first ring. “Hello?”

“It’s me,” Rhodes said. “Want to go to a funeral?”

The Clearview Cemetery had been located in the same spot ever since the first settler was buried there a little over a hundred years before. It had grown considerably since that first grave, but probably none of those who lay at rest there had ever been to a funeral quite like the one to which Rhodes was taking Ivy.

The cemetery was on the western edge of the town, surrounded by a low fence of iron spikes. There was a wrought iron arch over the main entrance, which was never closed. Every now and then Rhodes would send a patrol through late at night to run out the high school kids who had found it a quiet place to park.

There was not a lot of green grass on the graves; the recent rain hadn’t been enough to help much. Rhodes drove through the entrance and down the winding gravel roads to the north end. There was no one else there yet.

Rhodes and Ivy got out of the pickup. Though it didn’t appear to be so on the approaching drive, the cemetery was located on a hilltop. They could see the pasture land around them, down the slope. At the bottom of the slope and partway across a little valley there was a railroad track heading north and south.

The day had cooled off a little, and Rhodes liked standing there on the hill. There was a late afternoon breeze, and it was very quiet.

“I wonder if they can hear the trains,” Ivy said, looking down at the tracks. “They have to whistle for the crossing, don’t they?”

The nearest crossing was about a half mile away. “Sure they do,” Rhodes said. “Did you ever hear a real train whistle?”

“You mean from a steam engine? I don’t remember. I guess I must have, but if I did it was a long time ago,” Ivy said.

“I heard lots of ‘em,” Rhodes said. “The house I grew up in was less than a mile from the tracks, nothing between the house and them but some mesquite trees. When I was a kid, I’d go to sleep at night listening for the whistle.” He paused. “They can’t hear it, I guess. If they could, the ones that’ve been here long enough would miss the real thing. Diesel’s just not the same. Not very many of those even come through now, anyway.” He shook his head and grinned. “I’m beginning to sound like the old-timer in a B western. How’d we get off on that?”

“I think the place we’re in might’ve had something to do with it,” Ivy said. “Did you really bring me up here for a funeral, or did you have something else in mind?” She stepped over to Rhodes and took his arm, pressing it against her plaid shirt.

Rhodes almost blushed, but not quite. “There’s really going to be a funeral,” he said. “If Ballinger doesn’t show up, I’m going to bury him. He’ll be here.”

Sure enough, in a few minutes they saw Ballinger’s hearse, or one of them, driving along the road. Rhodes hadn’t really given the burial much thought, but trusted Ballinger to do it right, once he made up his mind to do it. Then Rhodes realized that there wasn’t a grave.

The hearse stopped and Clyde Ballinger got out. He had been driving himself. There was another man inside, and Rhodes assumed there were others in the back.

“Where’s the grave, Clyde?” Rhodes asked.

“Don’t worry, Sheriff,” Ballinger said. “It’s dug and ready, back over behind the Walpole plot.” He started walking, and Rhodes and Ivy followed.

The Walpole “plot” was by far the most elaborate area in the cemetery, the Walpoles having gotten rich in oil and being able to afford pretty much what they wanted in the way of final resting places. The area occupied by the graves was semicircular, with the outside of the semicircle being surrounded by Greek columns spaced ten feet apart. Rhodes could never remember just what kind of columns they were, though he’d had to learn in school to distinguish among Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian. It wasn’t the kind of knowledge that tended to stick with a person. The various Walpoles were spaced around the area and located easily by the huge headstones, by a wide margin the largest and most elaborate and gaudy in the county. One was distinguished by five angels standing on it.

Ballinger cut right through the plot. The grass in this plot had been watered all through the dry summer, and there were several flower beds that gave evidence of careful tending. “Walpoles hire all that work done,” Ballinger said, indicating the flower beds. “They have a man who comes out for a couple of hours twice a week.”

At the back of the plot, at the apex of the semicircle, there was an archway, which Ballinger stepped through.

It actually led nowhere, since the Walpoles had located their private burial area at the extreme north end of the cemetery. From this vantage point, Rhodes could see in the distance-about a quarter of a mile-the backs of the houses that faced a paved road leading from Clearview to a major highway. He could also see that there was an open grave.

“Is this legal?” Ivy asked.

“We have the sheriff with us, don’t we?” Ballinger said.

“I think she means that it might not be strictly legal for a burial plot to be located right here,” Rhodes said.

“I know that,” Ballinger said. “Just a little funeral director’s humor there. But it’s legal, all right. Strictly speaking, I guess that we shouldn’t be here, but I bought up this part of the cemetery years ago. It’s part of the cemetery land, all right. It’s just that the Walpole family didn’t want anybody to be buried behind them. They wanted the prime spot, right at the end of the line. Except that you’ll notice the land slopes down just a little bit, here, and they didn’t want to be on that slope. With all the money they had, they should have bought this part if they didn’t want company. But don’t worry, we won’t be putting up any headstones. We don’t even have any heads.” He laughed.

“More funeral director’s humor?” Ivy asked.

Ballinger wasn’t a bit bothered by her tone. “You might say so. I got one more. The Walpoles don’t have to worry, because there won’t be any body buried here. At least not this time.” He laughed again.

Rhodes and Ivy didn’t laugh. They looked around for the hearse, which was making its way to them, having gone around on the road as far as it could and then cut across the grass.

“You know,” Ballinger said, shaking his head, “I’m a little disappointed that all these arms and legs didn’t turn out to be part of a big case. I was reading a book the other day about this killer down in Houston, the Houston Hacker, they called him, and he was really a vicious guy-”

“I don’t want to hear about him,” Ivy said.

“Was this fact or fiction?” Rhodes said.

The hearse arrived, and Ballinger directed it to a stopping place. Then he came back to answer Rhodes. “Fiction,” he said. “It had this weird cover on it, of a knife stabbing through a strawberry. Anyway-”

“Never mind,” Rhodes said. If the Hacker wasn’t real, he wasn’t interested. For a minute there, he’d thought that there might be some far-fetched tie-in with Dr. Rawlings, but obviously there wasn’t. All he wanted to do now was to get what was in the hearse under the ground and forget about it, even if he couldn’t forget what had happened later.

The driver of the hearse got out and opened the back door. Two men who had been riding inside stepped down, and the driver helped them slide a wooden casket box out the back.

“Wood’s all Rawlings left enough to pay for,” Ballinger said.

“But that isn’t even a coffin,” Ivy said. “It’s just a wooden box like they ship coffins in.”

“I know that,” Ballinger said. “I don’t really think it’ll make a difference to anything that’s inside. You want to be the fourth pallbearer, Sheriff?”

“Why not?” Rhodes said. He stepped over to help the other three men unload the plain white wooden box. It really wasn’t very heavy at all.

They carried it over and set it on the muddy earth piled beside the grave. One of the men went back to the hearse and came back with two long ropes, which he laid across the open grave.

“Nothing fancy here,” Ballinger said, “but it’ll get the job done.”

Two of the men held the ends of the ropes while Rhodes and the other man maneuvered the box into place. Then the four of them lowered the box to its rest. “Sheriff,” Ballinger said, “do you think we ought to say any last words now?”

Ballinger had gotten awfully pious all of a sudden, Rhodes thought, but maybe it was only a natural reaction. “May they rest in peace,” he said. A terrible pun about pieces occurred to him, but he suppressed it. Ballinger stood with his head bowed for a minute, then looked up.

“I guess that does it,” Ballinger said. “Cover ‘em up, boys.” The three men went to the hearse and came back with shovels. While Ballinger, Rhodes and Ivy watched, the men began shoveling in the dirt.

“Shouldn’t take them too long,” Ballinger said. “I hope you’re satisfied with this, Sheriff.”

Rhodes shook his head. “I guess so. This whole thing has been a real problem, and it’s not one I’d like to have again. Who’d have guessed it would be so hard to get rid of a few legally amputated limbs?”

“The law’s peculiar,” Ballinger said. “You of all people ought to know that.”

“I guess I should have checked to make sure everything was in that box,” Rhodes said.

“Trust me, Sheriff,” Ballinger said. “I wouldn’t make a mistake about something like that.”

“Then that’s the end of that,” Rhodes said. “Let’s go, Ivy. See you later, Clyde.”

Ballinger gave an idle wave as he watched the grave being filled in. Rhodes and Ivy cut back through the Walpole plot and walked to the pickup. The sun was going down, now, and there was a bright reddish glow in the western sky. The breeze felt almost cool, and except for a few insect sounds it was very quiet. Then, from far off to the north they heard a train whistle.

“I guess it might not be so bad to be buried here,” Ivy said. “Even if you couldn’t hear the train whistle.”

Rhodes thought about Claire, who had been buried in her home town. “Let’s not worry about that for a while,” he said.

Ivy shivered slightly. “It was just a thought,” she said. “How about some supper?”

“That’s a better thought,” Rhodes said. They got in the pickup and went to the Bluebonnet for a hamburger. They had left the Bluebonnet and were driving toward Ivy’s house when Rhodes worked himself up to asking the question. “When do you think we ought to get married?”

Ivy laughed. Rhodes liked to hear it, even though he was pretty sure she was laughing at him. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d really asked me,” she said. “Or if you’d remember.”

“I wouldn’t forget something like that,” Rhodes said, trying not to sound defensive. “I’ve been pretty busy.” He briefly brought her up to date on his activities.

“I just hope you’re around long enough and stay in one piece long enough for us to have a wedding,” Ivy said. “Not a very big one,” she added after looking at Rhodes’s face. “Just you and me and the justice of the peace would be fine. And Kathy, naturally.”

“I wouldn’t want to push you into something you didn’t want,” Rhodes said. “I mean. . ”

“I know what you mean,” Ivy said. “You mean you’re really not sure about this. Well, I’m not either.”

Rhodes started to say something, but she stopped him. “You’re sure about the important things. So am I. But you’re thinking about Claire and what happened to her, just like I think about Cal and what happened to him. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you. I wouldn’t want to lose you, too.”

Rhodes sighed and relaxed. Ivy had put into words the thoughts that had been running around in his head without expression for the last few days. He knew exactly what she meant, and more important, he knew for the first time exactly what he’d been thinking. Or trying to think about, and not succeeding.

“I don’t want to do it right away,” Ivy said. “We could both use a little more time to think, don’t you agree?” Rhodes nodded his head affirmatively.

“Good. How about December? I’ve always liked the Christmas season, and I’m sure we could both take a few days off around that time.”

Rhodes started to tell her the Christmas season was definitely not a time of peace on earth, that in fact it was a time of high crime statistics, a time of shoplifting, theft, burglary, and sometimes even suicide. But he didn’t. Instead, he said, “It sounds like a good idea to me.”

Buddy caught up with Rhodes just as he and Ivy arrived at her house. Leaning out of the window of the county car, Buddy looked like anything but a deputy. He was thin and bony, with a head much too large for the broom-straw neck it sat on. His upper torso stuck so far out the window that Rhodes wondered how he was able to sit upright in the car seat when he pulled himself back in. His almost comical appearance sometimes fooled people. Buddy was a good lawman.

“Got a call from Hack,” Buddy said. “He’s tryin’ to locate you.”

“What’s the message?” Rhodes asked.

“He says that Miz Ramsey telephoned a few minutes ago. She thinks someone’s messin’ around in Bert Ramsey’s house. Says she saw lights movin’ around in there. He thought you might want to be the one who goes out to check, seein’ as how you’ve got a personal interest.”

“He’s right about that,” Rhodes said.

“He said to tell you to take a backup this time.”

Rhodes laughed. “I will. We’ll go out together. Just give me a minute to see Ivy to the door.” He and Ivy got out and walked to the house.

“Be careful,” Ivy said.

“Don’t worry,” Rhodes told her. “Buddy can take care of me.”

“Maybe,” Ivy said, giving him a light kiss on the cheek and going inside.

Rhodes got in the car with Buddy, who radioed their destination to Hack. Hack said that he would telephone Mrs. Ramsey to let her know they were on their way.

When they got to within a half mile of Ramsey’s house, Rhodes had Buddy cut the lights and slow down. They eased up to the yard at a crawl, as silently as it was possible for the car to travel. Buddy let the car drift to a stop without putting on the brakes.

The two men sat in the car looking around at the house and yard. There wasn’t much of a moon in the sky, and the mercury vapor lamp in the yard wasn’t burning. Either the electricity was off or the lamp had burned out. Or someone had deliberately put it out. There were no motorcycles to be seen, and there were no lights in the house.

“Reckon we ought to go in,” Buddy said. “Otherwise we ain’t never going to find out what’s in there. If there’s anything in there at all.”

“I guess you’re right,” Rhodes said. “Front or back?”

“I always favored the back door, myself,” Buddy said. “It’s closer to the kitchen.”

“That’s as good a reason as any,” Rhodes said. “Let’s go.”

They got out of the car, Buddy’s gangling limbs making it a somewhat complicated exit. Running low, they reached the wall of the house, skirting the sides below the window level until they came to the back door. There was a screen door set in front of a wooden door. Both were closed, with no signs of a forced entry to be seen in the dim light.

“Who goes first?” Rhodes asked.

“You’re the sheriff,” Buddy said.

“So?”

“So you get to pick.”

“I’ll go first, then. You be ready.” The screen door opened outward, and Rhodes pulled on it gently. It wasn’t locked. He stood up, Buddy behind him, and tried the doorknob of the inner door. It turned easily.

“Reckon Miz Ramsey’d leave that door unlocked?” Buddy whispered.

Rhodes shook his head, no. He knew what was in that house: the ovens, the TV set, the VCR. It was all worth too much money to be left behind an unlocked door. Unless, of course, Mrs. Ramsey was very careless. He didn’t think she was careless. He pulled out his pistol. Buddy followed suit. He gave the door a gentle push and watched it swing open.

There was no movement from inside the house. All the blinds had been drawn shut, and it was very dark. How had Mrs. Ramsey seen lights moving around? Something was wrong. Rhodes was just about to tell Buddy to radio Hack to send Ruth Grady out when he heard Rapper’s voice behind them.

“I was beginning to think you wouldn’t be showing up, Sheriff,” Rapper said. “Don’t bother to turn around. I’m holding a gun on you. Your own gun, as a matter of fact. Why don’t you and your deputy just step on inside and we can get this over with.” Rhodes started to move. “Lay the guns down first,” Rapper said. “Right there on the ground will be fine. Do it!”

Whereas Rapper’s voice had seemed calm at first, the last two words ripped through the night with vicious intent. Rhodes and Buddy lay down their pistols and stepped inside the house. Rapper followed closely behind them.

“Get the shades up,” Rapper said. Rhodes heard rummaging around in the darkness, then the sounds of shades flapping up. There was a little more light in the room, though not much, and he could make out the forms of Nellie and Wyneva. There were two wooden chairs from Ramsey’s table in the middle of the room.

“You two can just sit in those chairs,” Rapper said.

Buddy and Rhodes did as they were told. While Rapper held the pistol on them, Nellie tied their hands and feet with nylon cord. Their arms were tied behind them, but they were not tied to the backs of the chairs.

“Now then, Sheriff,” Rapper said after they were tied and Nellie had stepped away. “I want you to know that I’m going to enjoy this. You’ve caused me a lot of trouble, and we heard tonight that Jayse talked. So I guess you know what’s growing down behind this house. Well, I won’t be getting it now, but that’s not what’s bothering me. Not really. What’s bothering me is the way you’ve been on my case. I don’t like to have to run, not from you or anybody else. But you’ve caught me with my pants down twice. Now I’ve caught you. And you’re going to hurt a lot more than I have.”

“What about my deputy?” Rhodes asked. “He’s never even seen you before.”

“Tough luck,” Rapper said, laughing a little. “He ought to keep better company.”

Rhodes figured it was no use to make idle threats. Hack knew where they were, but it was doubtful that he would send anybody in time to help them. He would never guess that they were dumb enough to have fallen into a trap. And it wouldn’t do any good to mention Cox and Malvin; it appeared likely that Rapper didn’t know about them. But if he didn’t, then why had Cullens been killed? Maybe he had died before he could tell anything, or maybe he had been well trained. Rhodes decided to ask. He didn’t have anything to lose.

“Are you going to kill us like you did Buster Cullens?” he asked.

Rapper laughed again. It wasn’t a pleasant sound in the dark house. “Cullens was sticking his nose in. He got what he deserved. I didn’t do it, though. Me and the boys found him like that.”

“Sure you did,” Rhodes said. “That’s why Jayse had that axe handle in his hands.”

Rapper stepped up and slapped Rhodes across the face with the back of his hand, almost knocking Rhodes out of the chair. “It’s time for the first lesson, Sheriff,” Rapper said, as casually as if he were talking to a clerk in the supermarket. “You don’t crack wise with me. Not when I feel about you the way I do. Now, let’s start over. Me and the boys found Cullens like that.”

Rhodes thought about it. There was something behind Rapper’s words, but Rhodes couldn’t quite figure out what it was. “You know who killed him, though.”

“That’s better,” Rapper said. “That’s a lot better. A little respect, Sheriff, that’s all I want.”

The man was definitely a major lunatic, Rhodes thought. Unfortunately, he was a major lunatic with the upper hand. “So I guess you’re going to do my job for me and tell me who it was.”

“I can do that, if I want to,” Rapper said. “But it seems to me that Jayse would have told you already if he’d talked. I wonder about that. Could it be that you’ve been telling lies, Sheriff? I really hate that. I really do.” He reached out and backhanded Rhodes again, even harder than the first time. Rhodes tasted blood in his mouth.

“You see,” Rapper said calmly, “I don’t like for people to lie to me. People are always lying to me and about me. I don’t like that. Do I, Nellie?”

“No,” Nellie said, sounding a little surprised at being addressed. “You don’t like that, Rapper. I don’t know why people are always doing that. It just gets them in trouble.”

The funny part was, Rhodes thought, Rapper didn’t look crazy. He looked like a short, pudgy little man, like he might be a schoolteacher or a salesman. The meanness was in his eyes, and Rhodes couldn’t see them in the dark.

“Well, enough of this stalling around,” Rapper said. “It’s time to get down to business, so to speak. I think I’ll let you hear about it from Wyneva. Tell them why you killed their friend Buster.”

Wyneva stepped near Rhodes, but not too near. “He killed Bert,” she said. “He never really loved me, and he had to get back at the only man who did.”

Rhodes didn’t know what was going through Buddy’s mind during all of this, but his own thoughts were racing a mile a minute. He was trying to put all the facts together, just on the off chance he ever got to tell a jury about them.

“I don’t understand it,” Rhodes said, honestly enough. He wasn’t stalling. He really couldn’t figure it out.

“Tell him,” Rapper said. “We have time.”

“OK,” Wyneva said. “I guess it won’t hurt.” She paused to organize her thoughts and then began. “I was living with Bert Ramsey for a while. That was Rapper’s idea. He’d heard from somebody that Bert had been a member of Los Muertos, and he thought he could maybe con Bert into growing a little weed for us, Bert having a little piece of land and all. So he sent me to get to know him and see what was what. Me and Bert, we just sort of hit it off, you know? It wasn’t like I was doing a job or anything. We really got along.”

She stopped, maybe thinking about Bert. Rhodes thought he could see where the story was going now, but he wasn’t going to rush it. He wasn’t looking forward to whatever was coming up after it was all told. Nellie had tied them awfully tight, though, and Rhodes was beginning to lose the feeling in his hands. Maybe it would be better if they just went ahead and got it over with.

“Then I met Buster,” Wyneva said. “He was cute, cuter than Bert, but Bert was already making money for us. I wasn’t going to leave him. Besides, like I said, me and Bert really had something going for us.

“But Buster just wouldn’t quit. He knew how to talk, and he knew how to treat a woman. He just kept on. So maybe I gave in a little. I don’t know. That’s when he started with the questions.”

“Wyneva may look dumb, but she’s not,” Rapper said.

“Yeah,” Wyneva said. “I’m not dumb. Guys think that, but I’m not. I knew right off where he was headed, but he fooled me a little bit. I wasn’t sure if he was a single or if there was someone in it with him. I mean, I thought he might just be planning to rip Bert off or something, but there could’ve been more to it than that. Those damn narcs are all around these days.”

Rhodes thought about Cox and Malvin again, and he wondered how much Rapper knew.

“We weren’t worried about you local boys,” Wyneva said. Rhodes was just as glad he couldn’t see her face in the darkness. He could feel her contempt, and that was enough. He’d been fooled like a ten-year-old by Bert Ramsey and Rapper. They could have gone on growing dope in Blacklin County forever, and he’d never have known if Bert hadn’t been killed.

“You fellas were fat and lazy,” Wyneva said. “All Bert had to do was clear off a little land and go into business. Nobody would suspect him, and it was pretty easy to persuade him, really.”

“Easy for Wyneva,” Rapper said. “With a little persuasion from me and the boys. The money didn’t hurt, either.”

“We had it all going our way until that Buster Cullens showed up,” Wyneva said. “So I went along with him to find out what he knew. He was close-mouthed, I’ll give him that. There was no way I was going to find out anything from him.”

“That day I saw you. . ” Rhodes started.

“I thought you’d blown it all that day,” Wyneva said. “And then when you said that Bert was dead, that did it. I really liked Bert.”

“You didn’t kill him, then?”

“Bert? Me?” Wyneva’s voice rose sharply.

“Let’s drop it,” Rapper said. Bert’s death was obviously a subject that he didn’t want to discuss. “Finish up about Cullens,” he said.

“I caught him off guard,” Wyneva said. “I hit him with the axe handle, and then I tied him up. Just about like you two are tied now. And I just worked him over.”

Her voice was cold and level, and it scared Rhodes more than Rapper’s. Rapper was crazy, but Wyneva had an icy control that was truly frightening.

“He told me lots of things,” Wyneva said.

Rhodes could imagine. He thought about an axe handle smacking into his ribs or the side of his head. It wasn’t an experience he looked forward to.

“He said he loved me, but I knew that for a lie,” Wyneva said. “That was at first. He got more truthful as things went on. He was a freelancer, all right, heard a rumor and tried to cash in. Too bad for him.”

“So you killed him,” Rhodes said, thinking that Cox and Malvin would be proud of Cullens if anybody got to tell them about him. He really didn’t expect that he’d be the one.

“I didn’t really kill him,” Wyneva said. “You might say he just killed himself. He could have told me what I needed to know anytime.”

“Why kill him, then?” Rhodes asked. “Why not weeks ago? Or ever?”

“Because of Bert!” The rising voice again.

“But Cullens didn’t have anything to do with Bert’s death,” Rhodes said. “That’s not possible. He-”

“Shut up,” Rapper said. “That’s enough talking. I’m tired of you, Sheriff. Really tired. I looked around Ramsey’s tool shed, but I couldn’t find an axe handle. I think a hoe handle will do nicely, though. Get it, Nellie.”

Nellie moved toward the door.

“Wait a minute,” Rhodes said. “Wyneva. .”

Rapper slapped him across the face again.

Rhodes wasn’t quite sure exactly what happened next because his head wasn’t clear. Buddy, however, had been waiting for his chance, and since Nellie was almost out of the room and Rapper and Wyneva had their attention focused on Rhodes, he took it.

Buddy lurched out of his sitting position, lowered his head, and butted Rapper.

Rhodes, leaning precariously in his chair, let himself fall the rest of the way. When he hit the floor he rolled toward Wyneva, knocking her off balance.

Wyneva fell, and Rhodes tried to get to his feet. He couldn’t make it, so he kept on rolling, hoping that Buddy was all right, that Rapper had dropped the pistol, that Nellie hadn’t gotten the handle yet.

There was a lot of thrashing around in the middle of the floor. Rapper was yelling, but Rhodes couldn’t make out the words. He hit the wall, and using it to brace himself got to his feet.

He could see the outlines of bodies in the middle of the room, but he couldn’t tell who was doing what to whom.

The one he thought was Wyneva was bent over on hands and knees. The rest was a squirming mass made up of Buddy, Rapper, and Nellie. All of them were snorting and gasping. Buddy must have been holding his own, even with his hands and feet tied.

Rhodes didn’t know what to do. He could hop into the kitchen and try to get untied, or he could throw himself into the middle of the melee. He didn’t see much future in either course, but the latter idea seemed like something out of Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Cops, lacking only a few pies in the face. He started hopping toward the kitchen, keeping his shoulder near the wall.

It didn’t take long. He backed up to the counter and, with his back to the drawers, pulled them all out, feeling for knives with his nearly numb fingers. He found them where he should have begun, in the drawer nearest the sink, and managed to get his hands on the handle of a reasonably-sized knife with a slick plastic handle.

Getting the knife blade in contact with the bonds that held his wrists was the next trick. First he dropped the knife.

Bracing himself against the counter, he slid down to the floor and fumbled around for the knife. This time he did better. Bracing against the counter seemed to help. Carefully, he eased the blade up between the rope. Then, as best he could he began sawing. He was pretty sure he was sawing on himself as much as the rope, but that couldn’t be helped.

The noises from the next room were becoming more easy to distinguish from one another, and as he sawed he listened. He was pretty sure Buddy was getting the worst of things. It became pretty obvious when he heard Rapper say clearly, “Hit the sonofabitch with the chair.”

There was a sickening thud. Ramsey’s chairs weren’t movie chairs that splintered on contact. They were real, solid, hardwood chairs that were built to take all sorts of punishment.

“Where’s that goddamn Sheriff?” Rapper yelled.

Rhodes felt the rope part, and he snapped his wrists apart. He bent to cut the rope at his feet.

Then he heard three thunderously loud gunshots.

Had it been physically possible, Rhodes would have jumped several feet in the air. It just wasn’t possible. He did hit the floor flat on his belly, throwing the knife away across the room in the process.

The previous confusion in the other room was nothing to what it was now. There was another shot, and a huge hole was punched through the sheetrock of the kitchen wall. There was a smashing and tinkling of glass. There were yells, and Wyneva screamed.

Over it all was the sound of Mrs. Ramsey’s voice. “I’ll get all you murderin’ scum!” she yelled. There was a fifth shot.

Rhodes staggered up. “Mrs. Ramsey! This is Sheriff Dan Rhodes! Stop the shooting!”

“Don’t you worry, Sheriff! I got ‘em covered. All ‘cept that one that went out the window!”

“Get some lights on,” Rhodes called. “My deputy’s in there. Get him untied. I’m going after the one outside.” He had to trust Mrs. Ramsey to keep things under control. He was pretty sure that Rapper would be the one who got away. He went out the kitchen door, stumbling along, feeling the needles in his hands and feet as the circulation began to return.

He was unarmed, and he hoped Rapper was, but if Rapper got to his bike he would be hard to stop.

As if to taunt Rhodes, the sound of Rapper’s bike came from Ramsey’s shed. Rhodes could see the beam from the headlight. He began looking for something to stop Rapper.

There wasn’t anything, and then Rapper came roaring out of the shed and right straight at Rhodes, pinned there in the headlight beam. Rhodes shifted to the left, and the beam followed him. Rapper intended to run him down.

Rhodes stood his ground, staring right into the headlight, trying to guess if Rapper would really do it. He thought the answer was that Rapper certainly would. At the last minute, just as the bike was about to smash him, Rhodes feinted left and dived to the right.

Rapper went with the feint and went by Rhodes’s diving figure in a rush of sound. Rhodes clambered to his feet to see Rapper doing a sliding 180-degree turn, and then the headlight was coming back again.

Rhodes started forward to meet it, then tripped. He had found the hoe handle that Nellie had been going after earlier. He grabbed the handle and rolled to the left, just in time to avoid being bashed in the head by Rapper’s front tire. Small clods of dirt thrown by the tire stung his cheeks.

Rhodes pushed himself erect with the help of the handle. He’d been taking such a beating lately that his whole body was beginning to feel like one giant bruise.

Rapper spun the bike again, pointing the light at Rhodes.

Rhodes held the handle behind him, waiting for Rapper’s charge. He felt a little like Errol Flynn waiting for the Sioux in They Died with Their Boots On. His rifle was out of bullets, but he could use it as a club. .

It would have been a good idea if it had worked, but Rapper didn’t go with the feint. Rhodes leaned right, but the headlight never wavered. It was too late to jump back to the left, so Rhodes tried to let his body go all the way right. Rapper wasn’t fooled.

He didn’t quite hit Rhodes head-on, however. The last-minute lean had carried Rhodes just beyond the bike, and Rapper, having been fooled once, didn’t want to swerve too far.

For the smallest fraction of a second, Rhodes thought he’d made it, but Rapper stuck out his leg just a little and caught him on the thigh.

If Rapper had been going fast, Rhodes would have been hurt badly. As it was, he felt the solid thunk of Rapper’s booted foot and the equally solid whump of his back meeting the ground. Rapper was coming back at him by the time he got up.

Rhodes ran at him, giving it all he had, the hoe handle straight out in front of him like a lance. Rapper saw it and turned the bike aside. Rhodes swung the handle.

It caught Rapper in the upper arms and on the shoulders, and the effect was almost magical. It was as if Rapper had been lifted off the motorcycle by a giant hand reaching down to pluck him from the seat. The bike continued on across the yard without him, as Rapper landed hard on his back.

The handle was jerked from Rhodes’s grip by the impact, and he jumped on Rapper, trying to subdue him. Most of Rapper’s breath was gone, but he fought back by instinct.

Behind them, the motorcycle hit the side of the shed with a loud cracking of weathered boards and fell on its side, the motor still roaring.

Rhodes, not feeling much stronger than Rapper, got off a few weak punches, which had no effect on Rapper at all. Rapper, sucking great gulps of air, shoved Rhodes aside.

Both men got unsteadily to their feet. Rapper put his head down and made a lumbering charge at the sheriff. Rhodes managed to step aside and hit him in the back of the neck with clenched fists, but Rapper didn’t go down. He turned and threw a wild punch that caught Rhodes a glancing blow on the right cheek and opened up the cut in Rhodes’s mouth.

Rapper looped another punch, which Rhodes blocked with his left. Rhodes then sank a hard right in Rapper’s pudgy stomach. Bad air whoofed out of Rapper’s mouth, and he staggered backward toward the fallen motorcycle. Rhodes followed and hit him again.

It wasn’t much of a blow, but Rapper stumbled on a rock and tumbled back, flailing his arms, trying to regain his balance. He couldn’t quite do it.

Probably the motorcycle should have shut itself off when it fell over, Rhodes thought later, but it didn’t. The chain was still engaged, and the back wheel was still spinning. Rapper’s left hand dropped in among the spokes.

Rapper screamed.

If he’d been thinking, Rhodes might have tried to find the ends of Rapper’s fingers. Maybe the doctor could have done something with them. By the time he did think about it, the next day, it was too late. He didn’t even bother to go and look for them. He’d had too many loose body parts to take care of lately.

The engine of the motorcycle sputtered and died. “Need any help, Sheriff?” Buddy called from the back door.

Rhodes felt a little like someone who’d been run over by a herd of rogue elephants. There was probably somewhere that he didn’t ache, but he couldn’t identify the spot.

Buddy and Mrs. Ramsey had tied Wyneva and Nellie, and then Buddy had yelled for Rhodes. He’d come out and helped Rhodes drag Rapper into the house, where they’d stopped the bleeding and tied him as well.

Mrs. Ramsey was telling her story. “So when the lights never came back on, I figured you all hadn’t come to see about things. I went to the gun cabinet and got my husband’s old thirty ought-six and came to see if I could find out what was goin’ on. A lucky thing, too.”

Rhodes didn’t feel like the time was right for a speech on the dangers of citizens taking the law into their own hands. “Yes, it was,” he said. Buddy was at the car, radioing Hack.

“That woman has caused me grief,” Mrs. Ramsey said. “It’s the dope that’s ruinin’ the nation. People like her have got to be stopped.”

Mrs. Ramsey sat stolidly in one of the wooden chairs where Rhodes and Buddy had been tied. Rhodes sat in the other, his head drooping down on his chest. He was almost too tired to answer. “You’re right,” he said.

Wyneva, Nellie, and Rapper, tied hand and foot, were propped against the wall of the room. Mrs. Ramsey’s rifle was safely out of their reach, and safely out of Mrs. Ramsey’s reach for that matter. Rapper was in even worse shape than Rhodes, barely conscious. Nellie and Wyneva sat quietly, seemingly with little to say.

Mrs. Ramsey was the only one who felt like talking. “She took Bert, and she turned him,” she said, looking malevolently at Wyneva. “He was a fine man, until she turned him. She’s to blame.”

“That’s not so,” Wyneva said. Rhodes looked up. “Bert and me got along,” Wyneva said. “I really liked Bert. More than anybody, ever.”

“Humph,” Mrs. Ramsey said.

Cox and Malvin had even less luck than Rhodes. Rapper refused to talk to them.

“There’s no way we can really tie him to the stuff,”

Cox said. Malvin nodded in agreement. “We all know what he was doing in the county,” Cox went on. “The Greer woman had to get in touch with him and let him know that she was suspicious of Cullens. Otherwise, I don’t think he would have come around until time for a harvest. Apparently, though, Rapper is willing to let her take the fall for Cullens and trust that she won’t implicate him. He may just walk out of this.”

“He might,” Rhodes said. “It’s pretty obvious that we can get him on some assault charge, along with the others, but that might be the extent of things.”

“They have a pretty clever operation going,” Malvin said. “They find these little counties and they grow just a little patch of dope, not enough to call attention to themselves. Then they cut it and sell it somewhere else, never where they grow it. Rapper is just part of the whole operation, not the brains.”

“He’s pretty smart,” Rhodes said.

“True enough,” Cox said. “Smarter that we are, maybe.”

At that minute, the jail door opened and a man walked in. He was dressed in a conservative blue suit with faint chalk-colored stripes in it, a suit that made the suits worn by Cox and Malvin look like something they’d picked up at a local discount store. He wore lots of gold-rings on both hands, and a thick gold watch. He was young, maybe thirty-two, with a smooth, unlined face. His hair had been carefully styled, and though it was not long, it was cut full and carefully layered. “I’m Wayne Gault,” he said. “I believe you have my clients, Mr. Rapper and Mr. Nelson, in custody here.” His rich baritone was carefully modulated, but Rhodes could tell that he could make it boom if he wanted to.

“Show him,” Rhodes said to Lawton, who was sitting by Hack at the radio table.

Lawton got up and led Wayne Gault to the cells.

Cox and Malvin looked depressed. “At least we cut off the supply,” Malvin said. “A lawyer like that, we don’t have much chance of anything else. Looks like Los Muertos can afford the best.”

“We’ll get some indictments when all this comes to the grand jury,” Rhodes said.

“Sure,” Cox said. “But what do you think will happen when-or if-you get to court? How much can we really prove?”

“We can get them on the assault,” Rhodes said. He knew it wasn’t much. It certainly wasn’t enough.

“And the Greer woman,” Malvin said. “Don’t forget her.”

“I’m glad to get her,” Cox said. “Damn her. If Buster had just gotten a little more information.”

“Let’s not speak ill of the dead,” Malvin said.

“Damn,” Cox said.

Later that night, after they had carried Mrs. Ramsey to the jail and gotten Lawton to install her in the “good” cell, Ivy asked Rhodes, “What do you think really happened?”

They were sitting outside her house in the county car. Rhodes wasn’t feeling particularly romantic, and he sensed that Ivy wasn’t either. “I think she’s telling the truth, as she sees it,” he said. “I don’t know that we’ll ever find out exactly what happened.”

Ivy curled one leg up under her and turned to face him in the front seat. “What does that mean?”

“I’m not trying to hide anything,” Rhodes said. “It’s just that what she believes happened and what really happened may not be the same thing. I mean, she really thinks that it wasn’t her fault. It was Rapper’s fault. Or it was Wyneva’s fault. Failing all that, it was Bert’s fault. But it wasn’t her fault.”

“You mean that she can’t admit it to herself, even if it’s true that she went there with the intention of shooting him,” Ivy said.

“Maybe that’s what I mean,” Rhodes said. “I’m just a sheriff, not a psychologist. They have those in cities, but we don’t have one here.”

“You seem to do all right,” Ivy said.

“Yeah, but it’s no fun,” Rhodes said. “I’ll always wonder about a few things.”

“Such as?”

“Such as why she gave me the story about the motorcycles. Had she really heard them? Why try to put the blame on Buster Cullens? He was a likely suspect, in a way, but would she have let him be arrested? And why wait until the next morning to report the murder? That’s the thing that the prosecutor will hammer into the jury, if she’s tried for murder.”

“ ‘If’?.”

“If. Somehow I doubt that anyone will want that. I imagine that she’ll go to trial on a reduced charge and get a light sentence. Probably probated.”

“And do you care?”

Rhodes wasn’t sure how to answer that. If he had known for sure what had happened that Saturday night when Mrs. Ramsey picked up the shotgun and walked out of her house, he could have answered with certainty. But he didn’t know, and he never would. “I care more about Rapper,” he said finally.

“I’m glad you care,” Ivy said. Then, after a minute, “At least one good thing came out of all this.”

“What?”

“You got yourself a dog.”