“Eric,” Ig said, stepping back from the desk. “How are you?”

“Happy,” Eric Hannity said. “Happy to see you. What about you, Ig? How you doing? Kill anyone this week?”

Ig said, “I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine. You look like you forgot to take your pill.”

“What pill?”

“Well. You must be sick with something. It’s ninety degrees out, but you’re in a windbreaker and you’re sweating like a hog. Plus, you’ve got horns growing out of your head, and I know that’s not normal. Course, if you were a healthy person, you never would’ve beat your girlfriend’s face in and left her in the woods. The little redheaded twat,” Hannity said. He regarded Ig with pleasure. “I’ve been a fan of yours ever since, you know that, Ig? No shit. I’ve thought your rich-bitch family was due to come down a couple pegs for years. Your brother especially, all his fucking money, on TV with swimsuit models sitting in his lap every night, like he ever worked an honest day in his life. Then you go and do what you did. You shoveled shit all over your family name, and they aren’t ever going to scrape it off. I love it. I don’t know what you can do for an encore. What will you do for an encore, Ig?”

It was a struggle to keep his legs from shaking. Hannity loomed, outweighing him by a hundred pounds, towering over him by six inches. “I’m just here to pass a word with Lee.”

“I know what you do for an encore,” Eric Hannity said, as if Ig had not replied. “You show up at a congressman’s office with a head full of crazy and a weapon hidden in your windbreaker. You’ve got a weapon, don’t you? That’s why you’re wearing that jacket, to hide it. You’ve got a gun, and I’m going to shoot you and be on the front page of the Boston Herald for bagging Terry Perrish’s mentally ill brother. Wouldn’t that be something? Last time I saw your brother, he offered me free tickets to his show if I ever got out to L.A. Rubbing it in my face about what a big shit he is. What I’d like is to be the guy who heroically shoots you in the fucking face before you can kill again. Then, at the funeral, I could ask Terry if he can still help me out with tickets. Just to see his expression. Come on, Ig. Step up to the metal detector so I can have an excuse to blow your mentally deficient ass away.”

“I’m not going in to see anyone. I’m going to wait outside,” Ig said, already backing away for the door, conscious of a cool flop sweat under his arms. His palms were slippery. As he nudged the door open with one elbow, the flare slipped, and for one terrifying moment he thought it was going to slide out in front of Hannity and fall to the floor, but he was able to grab it with his thumb and hold it in place.

Eric Hannity watched with an almost-animal look of hunger on his face as Ig backed out into the sunlight.

The transition from the chill of the office to the baking heat of the afternoon made Ig briefly dizzy. The sky brightened, then dimmed, then brightened again.

He had known just what he was doing when he drove to the congressman’s office. It had seemed simple, had seemed right. He saw now, though, that it had been a mistake. He was not going to kill Lee Tourneau with a highway flare (itself a comically absurd idea). Lee wasn’t even going to come out to talk to him.

As he crossed the lot, Ig’s stride quickened, along with the beat of his heart. The thing to do was leave, take the back roads to Gideon. Find a place to be alone, to be quiet and do some thinking. Get his head right. After the day he’d been through, he desperately needed to get his head right. Coming here was an act so thoroughly reckless and impulsive that it frightened him to think he’d allowed himself to do it. There was a part of him that thought there was a good chance Eric Hannity was already rallying backup and that if Ig didn’t go soon, he wouldn’t be able to go at all. (Another part, though, cooed softly, In ten minutes Eric won’t remember you were here. He was never even talking to you. He was talking with his own devil.)

Ig tossed the flare into the back of the Gremlin, slammed the hatchback. He had made it around to the driver’s-side door before he heard Lee call to him.

“Iggy?”

Ig’s internal temperature changed at the sound of Lee’s voice, fell by several degrees, as if he had too quickly swallowed a very cold drink. Ig turned and stared. He saw Lee through the wavering heat rising off the blacktop, a rippled, distorted figure, flickering in and out of existence, a soul and not a man. His short golden hair burned hot and white, as if he were aflame. Eric Hannity stood next to him, his bald pate throwing glare, his arms crossed over his barrel chest, hands hidden beneath his armpits.

Hannity remained by the entrance to the congressman’s offices, but Lee started toward Ig, seeming to walk not on the ground but on air, to be flowing like liquid through the smothering heat of day. As he got closer, however, his form became more solid, so that he was no longer a streaming, insubstantial spirit, a thing shaped out of heat and distorted sunlight, but finally only a man, with his feet on the ground. He wore jeans and a white shirt, a blue-collar costume that had the effect of making him look more like a carpenter than a political shill. He removed a pair of mirrored sunglasses as he came close. A thin gold chain glittered at his throat.

The blue of Lee’s right eye was the exact shade of the burnt August sky above. The damage to the left eye had not resulted in the usual sort of cataract, which appeared as a creamy white film across the retina. Lee had developed a cortical cataract, which manifested itself as a sunburst of palest blue-a terrible white star opening in the black ink of his pupil. The right eye was clear and watchful, fixed upon Ig, but the other was turned slightly inward and seemed to gaze off into the distance. Lee said he could see through it, if unclearly. He said it was like looking through a soap-covered window. Lee seemed to take Ig in with his right eye. Who knew what the left eye was looking at.

“I got your message,” Lee said. “So. You know.”

Ig was taken aback, hadn’t imagined that even under the influence of the horns Lee would admit to it so bluntly. It disarmed him, too, the shy, half-smiling look of apology on Lee’s face, an expression that seemed almost embarrassed, as if raping and murdering Ig’s girlfriend had been a graceless social faux pas, like tracking mud onto a new carpet.

“I know everything, you fuck,” Ig said, his voice shaking.

Lee paled; spots of color bloomed in his cheeks. He held up his left hand, palm out, in a wait-a-minute gesture. “Ig. I’m not going to make excuses. I knew it was the wrong thing to do. I had a little too much to drink, and she looked like she needed a friend, and things got out of hand.”

“That’s all you have to say for yourself? Things got out of fucking hand? You know I’m here to kill you.”

Lee stared for a moment, then glanced over his shoulder at Eric Hannity and back to Ig. “Given your history, Ig, you shouldn’t joke. After what you’ve been through over Merrin, you want to be careful what you say in the presence of a lawman. Especially a lawman like Eric. He doesn’t get irony.”

“I’m not being ironic.”

Lee picked at the golden chain around his throat and said, “For what it’s worth, I feel lousy about it. At the same time, a small part of me is glad you found out. You don’t need her in your life, Ig. You’re better off without her.”

Ig couldn’t help himself, made a low, agonized sound of rage in his throat and started toward Lee. He expected Lee to back away, but Lee held his ground, just pointed another glance back at Eric, who nodded in return. Ig shot a look at Eric himself-and went still. For the first time, he saw that Eric Hannity’s holster was empty. The reason it was empty was that he had the revolver in one hand, and he was hiding it in his armpit. Ig couldn’t actually see the gun but sensed it there, could feel the weight of it as if he held it himself. Eric would use it, too, Ig had no doubt. He wanted to shoot Terry Perrish’s brother, get in the paper-HERO COP SLAYS ALLEGED SEX KILLER-and if Ig put his hands on Lee, it would be all the excuse he needed. The horns would do the rest, compelling Hannity to fulfill his ugliest impulses. That’s how they worked.