The cycle banished that. It buried it. So much sensation, so much freedom, so much beauty, so much damned fun. What’s better than to be racing across the wide-open prairie with your child, who makes you so proud, and the sense that once again, you survived.

Then he’d come back and it would be Miko’s turn and they’d work with her on the horse in the ring. He’d think, Never got rich in money but got rich in daughters, and that’s even better.

He put it down when it was too much for him, and quickly called his wife.

“I’m here,” she said. “We’ve got a room in a hotel across from the hospital, and I’m here with her now. So is Miko.”

“Is there any change?”

“It’s looking good, the doctors say. She could wake up any minute. She stirs a lot, more like she’s asleep. It helps her, they say, to hear our familiar voices. So I’m very optimistic.”

“Did you-”

“Yes.”

“Good. I’m in Mountain City. I’ll try and get over there soon. I don’t think it’ll be tonight but tomorrow sometime.”

“I’ll be here all day,” she said.

“How’s the security?”

“They’re good people.”

“Okay, good.”

“Love you.”

“Love you.”

Next, he turned to Nikki’s cellphone, particularly to the CALLS DIALED folder. But somehow the thing was frozen up. None of the functions yielded information. But hadn’t she called the cops from the wreck before she slipped off? He made a note to check with some phone expert to see if that indicated something or if it was a common occurrence when phones were damaged.

Then, at last, he turned to her Reporter’s Notebook, a standard 3 x 6 pad held together by spiral rings. At first its pages were densely covered, and he saw that it was her interview with the sheriff. Then a page or so documented the raid, mostly scattered impressions like “rush of air…helicopter lands just as team hits…kid cops seem to be having time of their life. Pathetic suspect, Cubby something, sad little mutt.”

He paged through it carefully, reading items from her later interviews:

Jimmy WILSON, 23, Mtn C. Drug Rehab Clin, “It’s so hard, it’s everywhere and it ain’t no more expensive, don’t know why.”

Or

Maggie CARUTHERS, Carter Cnty, didn’t get address, “Used to come to Johnson for drugs, pushers everywhere. Then all the busts, stopped coming, but head price was same, came over and it was still everywhere, maybe even cheaper.”

“SUPERLAB???” Nikki had written. “Where is SUPERLAB?” in another place.

But it petered out, with no next step, no list of appointments. He could glean a little. She’d started at the sheriff’s department in the morning, gone on the airborne raid with the sheriff, then gone to the drug abuse center and spoken to three people, then the rehab center and spoke to four, including a supervisor. Then…nothing. But how long would that have been? Would it have taken up the whole afternoon? The accident was at 7:35 P.M., according to the clock in the Volvo.

Where had she gone, where had she been?

He looked carefully at the notebook, trying to determine if there was any sign of tampering, but there was nothing apparent. Then it occurred to him to count the pages.

Very carefully, he turned the leaves over and came up with exactly seventy-three.

Hmm, seventy-three?

Now it’s possible all Reporter’s Notebooks have seventy-three pages. But that struck him as odd, wouldn’t it more likely be an even number, like seventy-five? He looked into the spirals for signs of, what were they called, hanging chads, little nuggets of paper residue left from some kind of tearing operation? Nope, nothing.

He went to the last page with writing on it, guessing that if pages had been removed, they’d have been at the back. He found nothing. Well, maybe nothing, maybe something. He found a light set of inscriptions, the tracks of a pen against a paper that had gone through and recorded on the next sheet. He couldn’t make it out, but took it into the bathroom, where the light was stronger, and holding it a variety of ways to capture the right proportion of light and shadow, came across something interesting. It seemed to say:

PINEY RIDGE BAPTIST PRAYER CAMP

And it also said…“gunfire”?

The Grumleys were the Special Forces of southern crime. The Reverend raised them, homeschooled them, taught them the ways and means of crime, strong arm, grift, con, theft, and murder, exactly as they had been handed down through generations to him. He kept them sequestered on the mountaintop compound halfway between Hot Springs and Polk County in Arkansas, while preaching hellfire and damnation on Sundays to keep his religious education accreditation and as excellent camouflage. He only trusted family; family was the magic bond that made the Grumleys invulnerable. No Grumley had ever snitched out another Grumley or a client, as was well known and part of the Grumley magic. But to keep the enterprise going, the Reverend had to procreate heroically. His real product was progeny. Fortunately, he was a man who had found his true calling, and with women he was dynamic. He had had seven wives and none had ever left him. The divorces were pro forma to keep the law at bay, and some of the girls may not even have known they were divorced. He had children by all of them, by most of their sisters and a ma or two. He even had a thing for a bit with Ida Pye of Polk County, and out of that got his spectacular boy, Vern. Though Vern, for all his skills, had issues of pridefulness as demonstrated by his refusal to take the Grumley name. Alton’s brothers contributed their own seed, and the result of all the crossbreeding and the endless nights of bunny-fucking was a tribe of criminals higher by far than scum, more disciplined by far than trash, and, perhaps best of all, not the brightest of all the boys in the trade. It was a Grumley breeding principle to eschew intelligence, and when a boy or a girl was born with an uncommon mind, he or she was sent to private school far off, then college, then exile. Those kids had prosperous, if lonely, disconnected lives, and never knew they were damned by IQ. Their superior intelligence was known to beget inferior criminality, because they had imagination, introspection, questing natures, and occasionally the worst attribute of all for criminals, irony. They were poison.

It was known among the crime bosses of the South that a Grumley on the team meant success. Grumleys were hard, tough, loyal mercenaries. Grumleys could kill, rob, swindle, beat, intimidate anybody. If a snitch had to be found and eliminated for an Atlanta mafia family, a Grumley could get the job done. If a bank had to be tossed in Birmingham, a Grumley team took it down. If an issue of enforcement came up in New Orleans, a Grumley fist settled the issue. If a loan was past due in Grambling, Louisiana, a white Grumley was dispatched, and it was known that he would be fair and honest in his application of force, would never use the word “nigger” and therefore ruffle no hard feelings. He would come, beat, collect, and move on. It was only business, and everybody appreciated that high level of professionalism.

It was known too that Grumleys didn’t go easily, and that was part of their reputation. If he had to, a Grumley would shoot it out with the whole FBI. He’d go down with a gun in each hand, hot and smokey, just like an old-timer from the golden age of desperados; he didn’t mind shooting, he didn’t mind taking fire, and he didn’t mind the odds against him heaping up to a thousand to one. He wouldn’t be one to negotiate. This of course meant the cops stayed away if at all possible, but if not possible, they treated Grumleys roughly, out of their deep fear. No love was lost, no sentimentality attached, no nostalgia generated. Cops hated-hated-Grumleys and Grumleys hated right back, hard and mean.