He stepped back to the house, checked the window again. The man-Elmore

Darling?-was still there, eating. Stadic moved to the back door. The door opened onto a small threeseason porch. He pulled open the aluminum storm door a half-inch at a time. Tried the inner door: the knob turned under his hand.

Nobody locked anything in the country. Assholes. He opened the inner door as carefully as he had the storm door, a half-inch at a time, taking care not to let the shotgun rattle against the door frame.

Inside, on the porch, he was breathing hard from the tension, his breath curling like smoke in the dimly lit air. He could hear the TV, not the words, but the mutter. The porch smelled of grain and maybe, a bit, of horse shit: not unpleasant. Farm smells. The porch was almost as cold as the outside. He eased the storm door shut.

The door between the porch and the house had a window, covered with a pink curtain. He peeked, quickly: still eating. He'd have to move before Darling sensed him here, Stadic thought. He took a breath, reached out and tried the doorknob. Stiff.

All right. He backed away a step, lifted the shotgun to the present-arms position, cocked his leg.

Took a breath and kicked the doorknob.

The door flew open, the screws of the lock housing ripping out of the wood on the inside. Darling, a soup-spoon of macaroni halfway to his face, fell out of his chair and onto the linoleum floor, and tried to scramble to his feet.

Stadic, moving: ''Freeze… Freeze.'' Stadic was on top of Darling, leaning toward him, the barrel of the shotgun following his face. Stadic shouted,

''Police,'' and ''Down on the floor, down on the floor…''

With his dark coat blowing around his ankles, the cold wind behind him, and the black gun, he looked like the figure of death. Darling flattened himself on the floor, his hands arched behind his head, shouting, ''Don't, don't, don't.''

SANDY SPENT AN HOUR WATCHING THE TV NEWS, THE crisis building in the newsrooms.

Murder and terrorism experts arriving at the networks like boatloads of war refugees, looking for life on television. You could tell they liked it: liked the murder, liked the guns, liked having the expertise.

''Bunch of vultures,'' Butters said.

LaChaise and Butters and Martin were drunk. Martin simply got quieter and meaner: he'd stare at Sandy, drinking, stare some more. Butters tended to laugh and lurch around the house, and want to dance. LaChaise talked incessantly about the old days when they rode together with the Seed, and all the things the cops had done to him and his daddy.

''Nothing like what they did to my daddy,'' Butters said once. ''He used to write some bad checks when me and momma got hungry, and they'd be all over him.

Used to beat him up and make him cry. The goddamn sheriff there liked to see a man cry. I was gonna kill him when I got big enough, but somebody else did it first.''

''So what finally happened?'' Sandy asked. ''To your old man?''

''Hung himself down the basement one day, right next to this big old rack of empty Ball jars. I come home from school and found him there, just twisting around. Did it with one of them pieces of plastic electric cable, had a hell of a time getting it unwrapped off his neck…''

The story angered LaChaise-topped him-and he walked around the house kicking doors down. Then he came back and said, ''I don't want to hear no more about your daddy,'' and dropped into the one big chair and into himself, glowering at them, his disapproval rank in the air.

''Well, fuck you,'' Butters said, and Sandy felt like something could happen between them. But LaChaise grinned and said, ''You, too,'' and that defused it.

Then Nightline came on, with the story about Butters, and they listened to the

Nightline reporter list his life record.

''How'd they get that?'' LaChaise roared, and he glared around the room, as though one of them had given Butters up. ''Who'n the fuck is the traitor?''

And then it occurred to him. He swung, the bottle of Jim Beam still in his hand, to Sandy: ''That fuckin' Elmore.''

Sandy backed away, shook her head. ''No. Not Elmore. I warned him to keep his mouth shut, and he said he would.''But she thought, Maybe he did. Maybe he got on a phone and gave them up to Old John.

''I might have touched something,'' Butters said calmly, and LaChaise swung around toward him.

''You had gloves,'' he said.

''Couldn't get the pistol out of my pocket with gloves, so I took them off.

Tried to stay away from things, but… maybe I touched something. My fingerprints would ring bells with the cops.''

LaChaise considered, then said, ''Nah, it's that fuckin' Elmore, that's who it is.''

''If it was Elmore, he would've given them Martin, too,'' Butters said. He was holding a bourbon bottle, and took a swig.

''He's right, Dick…'' Sandy started, but LaChaise pointed at her, a thick forefinger in her face: ''Shut up.''

And he dropped back into his chair. After a moment he said, ''I just fell apart.

I saw the guy and I came apart.''

Three people had gone out to kill, and only LaChaise had failed. He'd been brooding about it.

''There was no way you could know,'' Martin said finally. He was as drunk as

Butters. ''It would have happened to me or Ansel, too. You call, you make the check, who's to know that he's gonna walk in one second later?''

''No, it's my fault,'' LaChaise said. ''I wasn't steady. I coulda took her. I coulda took them both. I coulda shot her, then shot him, let 'em watch each other die. She was right there, but I was gettin' fancy, then this cop pops up behind her. He was fast…''

''Lucky that shot caught you in the side, instead of square in the back,''

Butters said. They knew what he meant, but the word ''back'' seemed to hang in the air. LaChaise had been running when he was hit.

''I gotta get out of here,'' Sandy said. She stood up, butLaChaise pushed himself out of the chair and said, ''I told you to fuckin' shut up.'' And quick-quick as a whip-he caught her with an openhanded roundhouse, and knocked her to the floor, as Martin had earlier in the evening. Butters and Martin sat impassively, watching, as she struggled to her hands and knees.

She could taste blood in her mouth. She looked up at him and thought about getting a gun. She should have killed him the night she found out that he'd murdered the cop. She couldn't do it then. She could do it now.

''You gonna shut up?'' LaChaise asked.

''Let me go home, Dick,'' she said. She wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand.

''Fuck that. You're staying here,'' he said.

But he didn't mention Elmore again that night.

ELMORE TOLD STADIC EVERYTHING HE KNEW, AND only lied in a few spots. ''Sandy's not in it at all,'' he said. ''They showed up, and there wasn't anything we could do. They got all the guns in the world.''

''Who are the other guys?'' Stadic asked.

''Martin, who's like this crazy queer from Michigan who walks around with a bow and arrow, and Ansel Butters. He's from Tennessee and he comes up and goes hunting with Martin.''

''Is Butters a fag?'' Stadic and Darling sat in wooden chairs, across the kitchen table from each other. The shotgun's barrel rested on the table, pointing at Darling's chest. Stadic had closed the outer door, and the house was getting warm again. The kitchen was a pleasant place, with just enough chintz and country pottery to make it homey. Darling had a nice wife, Stadic thought.

''No, Butters is straight, but he takes a lot of drugs,'' Darling said.

''Martin, now, everybody says he's a fag and he'sin love with Dick, but he never does anything homosexual or nothing… it's just a thing.''

''And that's all,'' Stadic said. ''There's just the four.''

''Just the three-you can't count Sandy,'' Elmore said. ''I'd tell you where they were at, but I don't know. I mean, I kinda know…''