"You've been driving for twenty minutes without saying a word," said Rigby. "And you didn't stop in East Aurora for coffee. You want some from the Thermos? It's still hot."

"No thanks," said Kurtz. He thought. What are you up to, woman?

"I didn't mean what I said yesterday," said the cop.

"What's that?"

"About you… you know… going to Iran with me and killing my ex-husband."

Does she think I'm wearing a wire?

"I'd like the son of a bitch dead," continued Rigby, "but all I really want is my son back."

"Uh-huh," said Kurtz. She's not going to give me any department information. This ride with her is for nothing.

They rode in silence again for a few minutes. The sunlight ignited the color in the hills, where about half the trees still showed bright foliage. The grass was still green, the woods very thick. The four-lane highway had ended not far past East Aurora, and now they were headed south on Highway 16, a winding old two-lane road that slowed for such ten-house towns as Holland and Yorkshire and Lime Lake. The hills on either side were getting steeper and clouds covered the southern horizon. A constant wind was blowing from the west, and Kurtz had to concentrate on keeping the Pinto from wandering.

"Do you remember the night in the choir loft?" said Rigby. She wasn't looking at him, but was staring out her window at the passing, empty fruit stands and dilapidated old farms with their broad yards and big satellite dishes.

Kurtz said nothing.

"You were the only boy at Father Baker's who didn't tease me about my big tits when I was seventeen," continued Rigby, still looking away. "So that night I brought the flashlights and walked through the Catacombs over from the Girl's Hall—it was almost two blocks away, you remember? — I knew it was you I was coming to find in the Boy's Hall."

Shadows of clouds were moving across the hills and valley now. Leaves skittered across the road. There was little traffic except for a pest control truck that had been behind them for quite a while.

"You weren't sure you wanted to follow me into the Catacombs," continued Rigby. "You were tough as nails, even when you were… what?… fifteen that year? But you were nervous that night. They would have beat the hell out of you if you'd been found AWOL from bunk check again."

"Fourteen," said Kurtz.

"Jesus, that makes me even more of a pedophile. But you were a big fourteen." She turned and smiled at that, but Kurtz kept his eyes on the road. It was more shadow than sunlight ahead.

"You liked the Catacombs," said Rigby. "You wanted to keep exploring them, even with the rats and everything. I just wanted to get up into the Basilica. Remember that sort of secret passage in the wall and the narrow, winding staircase that went right up into the sacristy?"

Kurtz nodded and wondered what she was up to with this story.

"We found those other stairs and I took your hand and kept leading you up that other winding staircase, up past the organ loft where Father Majda was practicing on the organ for Saturday's High Mass. Remember how dark it was? It must have been about ten o'clock at night and there was only the light of the votive candles down below, and Father Majda's little lamp above the keyboard as we tiptoed past his loft and kept climbing—I don't know why we were so frightened of being heard, he was playing Toccata in Fugue in D-minor and wouldn't have heard us if we'd fired a gun at him."

Kurtz remembered the smells—the heavy incense and the oiled wood scent of the pews and the scent of young Rigby's clean sweat and skin as she pushed him down on the hard pew in the upper choir loft, knelt straddling him, unbuttoned her white blouse, and pulled it off. She'd worn a simple white bra and he'd watched with as much technical interest as teenaged lust as she reached behind her and easily undid the hooks and eyes. He remembered thinking I have to learn how to do that without looking.

"Do you know what the odds were against us having a simultaneous orgasm like that on our first try, Joe?"

Kurtz didn't think she really wanted an answer to that, so he concentrated on driving.

"I think that was my first and last time," Rigby said softly.

Kurtz looked over at her.

"For a simultaneous orgasm, I mean," she said hurriedly. "Not for a fuck. I've had a few of those since. Though none in a choir loft since that night."

Kurtz sighed. The pest control truck was falling farther behind, although Kurtz was driving under the speed limit. It was cloudy enough now that cars coming the other way had their headlights on.

"Want some music?" said Rigby.

"Sure."

She turned the radio on. Scratchy jazz matched the buffeting wind and low-hurrying clouds. She poured the last of the Thermos coffee into the red mug and handed him the mug.

Kurtz looked at her, nodded, and sipped.

Following the pathetic Pinto south on Highway 16, the Dodger ran through all the reasons he hated this playing-spy bullshit. He wasn't a spy. He wasn't some fucking dork private eye like this idiot he had watched all night and was tailing now. The Dodger knew very well what he was and what he was good at doing and what his goal was in life right now—the Resurrection—and it had nothing to do with following the clapped-out Pinto with this clapped-out man and the big-tit brunette south toward Neola and the bruised sky down there.

The two goombahs the night before had been no problem at all. Since they were bodyguards, they were arrogant and unobservant, sitting there in their Lincoln Town Car with all the doors unlocked. The Dodger had opened the back door and slipped into the backseat with his 9mm Beretta already raised, the suppressor attached. The Dodger had known that the man named Sheffield in the passenger seat up front would react the fastest—and he had, ducking and reaching for his gun the second the door opened—but the Dodger had put three slugs through the thick seat into the man and, when he reared up in pain, a fourth one through his forehead. The driver had just sat there, mouth open, staring, and the Dodger could have taken time to reload if he'd had to. He didn't have to. The fifth shot caught the driver in the right eye, exited the back of the big man's head, and punched a hole through the windshield. No one on Chippewa Street noticed.

The Dodger had removed the suppressor and slipped the Beretta back in its holster before grabbing first Sheffield and then the driver by their hair and pulling them up and back over the seats. Leaving the bodies sprawled on the floor and upholstery in the back, limbs intertwined, the Dodger had gone around front and driven the Lincoln a block, turning into a dark alley. He walked back, brought up the Mazda, dumped the bodies in the trunk, and then drove the Town Car a few more blocks to park it near a popular restaurant. He'd walked back to the Mazda whistling, gloved hands in his pockets.

The Boss always called Gonzaga or the Farino woman to tell them about the hit and where to find the bodies—using one of his military-intelligence electronic voice distorters and location scramblers—so the Dodger e-mailed him that the job was done. But this night, the Boss had another job for him. He ordered the Dodger to go wait for the private eye whose office the Farino woman was in right then—not at the man's office, but at someplace called The Harbor Inn way over in the mill area on the Island. The Boss e-mailed the address as the intersection of Ohio and Chicago Streets.

The Dodger was not pleased with this assignment. He was tired. It had been a long day, starting with that teacher he'd missed out in Orchard Park. He should be free now to go back to his hidey hole and get a good night's sleep, transporting the corpses to the Resurrection Site the next morning. Now he had to go down past the black projects and spend the night… watching. That's what the Boss had said. Just watch. Not even harvest this stupid private eye.