“True enough. Now the police say it was some unruly young man trying to be a NASCAR star that caused the accident, at least according to the paper. Is that the accepted version?”

“It is and I have no cause to doubt it. Still, I want this boy caught, so he won’t do the same again to another man’s daughter. Now the sheriff’s department in this little county is all stretched thin because they’ve got to provide a detail for the big race, that plus Sheriff Wells’s helicopter raids on the meth labs that you’ve read so much about, which seems to be his obsession at the expense of other duties, so I worry this issue may have slid to the back burner. I am poking about to see if there’s any need to hire a private investigator.”

“Tell me how I can help you.”

Bob said he was reconstructing that last day and was curious as to why she had come out here, given the fact a Baptist prayer camp didn’t seem the sort of place to conceal a methamphetamine lab, which was the original intent of her assignment.

“She was just doing her job,” the old fellow said. “She’d evidently heard reports of gunfire from out here and made a connection between guns and criminals and drug lab security, that sort of thing. But I explained to her…here, come with me, Mr. Swagger. Let me set your mind at rest.”

They walked across the yard, then the field, and came at last to a small structure, a kind of open hut. Bob looked inside and saw a robotic-looking electric device that was like something out of an old black and white science fiction movie, with pulleys and fly wheels and an arm along one side; a stack of orange clay disks sat in a kind of magazine assembly up top. Of course he knew what it was; an electric trap for sporting clays, skeet or trap.

“It throws birds. Clay birds.”

The Reverend opened up a cabinet, and inside were three over/under shotguns.

He took one, an old Ithaca, broke it open, and handed it to Bob, who looked at it as if he’d never seen a gun before.

“Many nights the boys gather here and fling birds, then try and hit them as they sail off. It takes skill, concentration, judgment, a steady hand. Philosophically, it expresses endorsement of our beloved Second Amendment, the discipline to master the gun, the wisdom to use it wisely. Discipline and wisdom, exactly what it takes to lead a life in Christ. I’d rather have the boys doing something like this than playing basketball or touch football, where they smack against each other, where strength and size count more than skill, and cliques and grudges are formed. Unhealthy.”

“I see.”

“And when I explained to your daughter that to the locals-we’re not socializers out here, we need the silence to concentrate on the Book-that to the locals the sound of the guns in the twilight was almost certainly what they took as suggestion of some kind of drug activity, she understood in a flash. She smiled, apologized for interrupting, and went on her way.”

“I see,” said Bob.

“Really, that’s all. Here, watch me with the gun.”

He took the gun back, dropped two red cylindrical shells into it, and snapped it shut.

“Used to be pretty good at this. Go ahead, turn on the machine there, it’ll throw a pair and you’ll see.”

Bob examined the gizmo for a switch, found it, snapped it, and the thing clacked and whirred to life; two clays descended from the stack, rolled to the arm and settled in some kind of grip; the arm suddenly unloosed itself with a spring-driven force and flipped the disks in a curving path across the field.

Smoothly, the Reverend brought the gun to his shoulder as he pivoted in rhythm to the rushing saucers in front of him, and he fired twice in the same second. Both birds dissolved in a puff of red dust.

“Ow, that’s loud!” said Bob, clapping his ears.

“Sorry, should have given you plugs or muffs. Yes, the guns do make a bang, though you get used to it. The boys do it over and over. You can adjust the trap to throw birds in an amazing variety of ways.”

“I see,” said Bob. “Now I get it.”

“Yes sir. Would you care to try a pair?”

“Thanks, Reverend, but I don’t care for guns. Haven’t touched one in years.”

“That limp of yours, I guessed it might be from a war.”

“You’d laugh if I told you. Nothing so dramatic. In Japan, a fellow who was demonstrating an old-fashioned sword. He slipped and cut me. Imagine how surprised he was at how his demonstration turned out.”

“I hope you sued him but good.”

“No, there was no point. He learned his lesson. Anyway, that’s all forgotten.”

“So, would you like to see the place? Or stay for supper? Or, I know, the 4 P. M. prayer service? Very calming, serene, a sense of connecting with God’s way.”

“No sir, you have solved that little mystery right swell.”

“Good, sir, I am pleased. Now let me press on you something I give all visitors. It’s a very nice King James Bible. We give them out quite freely. I gave one to your daughter, and she seemed grateful to receive it.”

“Sir, I believe there’s one in my hotel room.”

“But this is a gift, and as a gift you might someday turn to it and find wisdom and succor. You’ll pay no attention to a hotel room Bible.”

“True enough, I suppose.”

The old man trundled off and returned with the black book in his hand. He gave it over to Bob.

“With that, I believe I have made a friend for life,” he said. “I’ll not beg you to read it. But some night on the road, you find yourself hungering for something, I think you’ll find nourishment within its pages.”

“Thank you, sir. I’ll go on now, and try and locate other witnesses to my daughter’s adventures. Then I’ve got to call the hospital to check on her.”

The Reverend walked him to his car, along the edge of the grass, and it was there that Bob noticed that whoever had raked out the dust field had missed a spot at the margins, and at least twice he saw some strange tracks, wheel grooves about twelve inches apart, deep and evenly cut, indicating they had borne something heavy. It rang a bell but didn’t call up an image, and he wondered where he’d seen it.

But then he was at the car.

“Again, Reverend Grumley, thanks for your cooperation and understanding and hospitality.”

“It’s a privilege, Brother Swagger. You’re not a Baptist, I fear?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, you don’t need to be a Baptist to figure in my prayers, sir.”

“I appreciate that, sir.”

Bob headed back to town, but pulled over to the shoulder and stopped the car.

I need to get all this straight, he thought.

Do I have something or is it all coincidence, and my own vanity has got me believing there’s some deep conspiracy here because I’m so damned important?

He tried to think it out, each step at a time.

Attempt at murder by professional driver. But what’s the hard evidence that it’s a “professional” driver? The interpretation of two expert race people on some aerial photos. They’re not professional accident investigators whose word could be trusted. Maybe they sensed my need to believe and without meaning to, fed into it, to make me happy. But they were so convincing on the subject of cornering, and clearly had a mountain’s worth of experience at that arcane art. That is my best evidence.

A second though admittedly unspecific attempt at the hospital. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. The Pinkerton security man, who seemed solid enough, just stated that some “doctors” tried to gain entrance to Nikki’s room. No one ever saw them again, no one had ever seen them before. Still memory and chaos play tricks on people’s minds, and given that it was a big, busy hospital, it’s easy to understand how it could have been legitimate.

The possibly missing pages and the destruction of the recorder and laptop. Also: no Bible. Again, interpretation, not fact. She could very easily have torn the pages out herself, and the electronic items could very easily have been smashed up in the crash. The Bible could have been so generic that it wasn’t recorded as hers, or maybe it was thrown clear of the crash.