“Are you going to continue with this?”

I paused before answering. Beside me, the Smith amp; Wesson gleamed dully in the moonlight.

“I think so,” I answered quietly.

She sighed. “Guess I should cancel those tickets, then.”

“No, don't do that.” At that moment I wanted to be with Rachel more than anything else in the world, and anyway, I still had to talk to Ali Wynn. “We'll meet up, as arranged.”

“You're sure?”

“Never been more sure of anything.”

“Okay, then. You know I love you, Parker, don't you?” She had taken to calling me Parker sometimes, simply because nobody else close to me ever called me that.

“I love you too.”

“Good. Then take care of your damned self.”

And with that she hung up.

The second message on the machine was distinctly unusual.

“Mr. Parker,” said a male voice, “my name is Arthur Franklin. I am an attorney. I have a client who is anxious to speak with you.” Arthur Franklin sounded kind of nervous, as if there was somebody standing in the shadows behind him brandishing a length of rubber hose. “I'd appreciate it if you'd call me as soon as you can.”

He'd left a home telephone number, so I called him back. When I told him who I was, relief burst from him like air from a punctured tire. He must have said “thank you” three times in as many seconds.

“My client's name is Harvey Ragle,” he explained, before I had a chance to say anything further. “He's a filmmaker. His studio and distribution arm is in California but he has recently come to live and work in Maine. Unfortunately, the state of California has taken issue with the nature of his art and extradition proceedings are now in train. More to the point, certain individuals outside the law have also taken some offense at Mr. Ragle's art, and my client now believes that his life is in danger. We have a preliminary hearing tomorrow afternoon at the federal courthouse, after which my client will be available to talk to you.”

He came up for air at last, giving me an opportunity to interrupt.

“I'm sorry, Mr. Franklin, but I'm not sure that your client is my concern, and I'm not taking on any new cases.”

“Oh no,” replied Franklin. “You don't understand. This is not a new case, this is in the nature of assistance with your current case.”

“What do you know about my caseload?”

“Oh dear,” said Franklin. “I knew this wasn't a good idea. I told him, but he wouldn't listen.”

“Told whom?”

Franklin let out a deep breath that quivered on the verge of tears. Perry Mason he wasn't. Somehow, I got the feeling that Harvey Ragle was going to be getting some California sunshine in the near future.

“I was told to call you,” continued Franklin, “by a certain individual from Boston. He's in the comic book business. I think you know the gentleman to whom I am referring.”

I knew the gentleman. His name was Al Z, and for all intents and purposes he ran the Boston mob from above a comic book store on Newbury Street.

Suddenly I was in real trouble.

THE SUN SHONE BRIGHTLY through my windows when I awoke, the thin material of the curtains speckled with thousands of tiny points of light. I could hear the buzzing of bees, attracted by the trilliums and hepaticas growing at the end of my yard and the pink buds of the single wild apple tree that marked the start of my driveway.

I showered and dressed, then took my training bag and headed into One City Center to work out for an hour. In the lobby I passed Norman Boone, one of the ATF agents based in Portland, and nodded a hello. He nodded back, which was something, Boone ordinarily being about as friendly as a cat in a bag. The feds, the U.S. marshals, and the ATF all occupied offices at One City Center, which was the kind of knowledge that made you feel pretty safe and secure while using the gym, as long as some freak with a grudge against the government didn't get it into his head to make his mark on the world with a van load of Semtex.

I tried to concentrate on my workout but found myself distracted by the events of the past days. Thoughts of Lutz and Voisine and the Beckers flashed through my mind, and I was conscious of the Smith amp; Wesson, in its Milt Sparks Summer Special holster, which now lay in my locker. I was also acutely aware that Al Z was taking an interest in my affairs, which, on the “Good Things That Can Happen to a Person” scale, registered somewhere between contracting leprosy and having the IRS move into your house.

Al Z had arrived in Boston in the early nineties, following some fairly successful FBI moves against the New England mob involving video and tape surveillance and a small army of informants. While Action Jackson Salemme and Baby Shanks Manocchio (of whom it was once said that if there were any flies on him, they were paying rent) ostensibly jostled for control of the outfit, each dogged by surveillance and whispered rumors that one or both of them could be informing for the feds, Al Z tried to restore stability behind the scenes, dispensing advice and impartial discipline in roughly equal measures. His formal position in the hierarchy was kind of nebulous, but according to those with more than a passing interest in organized crime, Al Z was the head of the New England operation in everything but name. Our paths had crossed once before, with violent repercussions; since then I'd been very careful where I walked.

After I left the gym I headed up Congress to the library of the Maine Historical Society, where I spent an hour going through whatever they had on Faulkner and the Aroostook Baptists. The file was close at hand and still warm from the latest round of media photocopying, but it contained little more than sketchy details and yellowed newspaper clippings. The only article of any note came from an edition of Down East magazine, published in 1997. The author was credited only as “G.P.” A call to Down East's office confirmed that the contributor had been Grace Peltier.

In what was probably a dry run for her thesis, Grace had gathered together details of the four families and a brief history of Faulkner's life and beliefs, most of it accumulated from unpublished sermons he had given and the recollections of those who had heard him preach.

To begin with, Faulkner was not a real minister; instead, he appeared to have been “ordained” by his flock. He was not a pre-millenarian, one of those who believe that chaos on earth is an indication of the imminence of the Second Coming and that the faithful should therefore do nothing to stand in its way. Throughout his preaching, Faulkner had shown an acute awareness of earthly affairs and encouraged his followers to stand against divorce, homosexuality, liberalism, and just about anything else the sixties were likely to throw up. In this he showed the influence of the early Protestant thinker John Knox, but Faulkner was also a student of Calvin. He was a believer in predestination: God had chosen those who were saved before they were even born, and it was therefore impossible for people to save themselves, no matter what good deeds they did on earth. Faith alone led to salvation; in this case, faith in the Reverend Faulkner, which was seen to be a natural consequence of faith in God. If you followed Faulkner, you were one of the saved. If you rejected him, then you were one of the damned. It all seemed pretty straightforward.

He adhered to the Augustinian view, popular among some fundamentalists, that God intended his followers to build a “City on the Hill,” a community dedicated to his worship and greater glory. Eagle Lake became the site of his great project: a town of only six hundred souls that had never recovered from the exodus provoked by World War II, when those who came back from the war opted to remain in the cities instead of returning to the small communities in the north; a place with one or two decent roads and no electricity in most of the houses that didn't come from private generators; a community where the meat store and dry goods store had closed in the fifties; where the town's main employer, the Eagle Lake Lumber Mill, which manufactured hardwood bowling pins, had gone bankrupt in 1956 after only five years in operation, only to stagger on in various guises until finally closing forever in 1977; a hamlet of mostly French Catholics, who regarded the newcomers as an oddity and left them to their own devices, grateful for whatever small sums they spent on seeds and supplies. This was the place Faulkner chose, and this was the place in which his people died.