He found a pot, filled it with water, put it on the stovetop, turned the heat to HI. There were just two eggs left. He settled them into the water and left them to boil. Ig made his way down the short corridor to the bedroom, stepping around a skirt and a pair of panties that Glenna had taken off and left in the hall. The shades were down in the bedroom, too, although that was normal. He didn’t bother with the lights, didn’t need to see. He knew where everything was.

He turned to the dresser, then paused, frowning. The drawers were all hanging out, hers and his both. He didn’t understand, never left his drawers that way. He wondered if someone had been through his things-Terry maybe, his brother trying to figure out what had happened to him. But no, Terry wouldn’t play private detective like that. Ig felt little details connecting to make a larger picture: the front door unlocked, the shades pulled down so no one could see into the apartment, the dresser rifled. These things all went together in some way, but before he could figure out how, he heard the toilet splutter and flush in the bathroom.

He was startled, hadn’t seen Glenna’s car in the side parking lot, couldn’t imagine why she might be home. He was opening his mouth to call to her, let her know he was here, when the door opened and Eric Hannity stepped out of the crapper.

He was holding up his pants with one hand and had a magazine in the other, a Rolling Stone. He lifted his gaze and stared at Ig. Ig stared back. Eric let the Rolling Stone slide out of his hand and fall on the floor. He lifted his pants and buckled his belt. For some reason he was wearing blue latex gloves.

“What are you doing here?” Ig asked.

Eric slid a wooden billy club, cherry-stained, out of a loop on his belt. “Well,” Eric said. “Lee wants to talk to you. You had your say the other day, but he hasn’t had his. And you know Lee Tourneau. He likes to get in the last word.”

“He sent you?”

“Just to watch the apartment. See if you came by.” Eric frowned to himself. “It’s the damndest thing about you showing up at the congressman’s. I think those horns of yours fiddle-fucked with my mind. I forgot right until this minute you even had them. Lee says you and me talked yesterday, but I have no idea what we talked about.” He swung the club slowly back and forth in his right hand. “Not that it really matters. Most talk is bullshit. Lee is a talker. I’m more of a doer.”

“What were you going to do?” Ig asked.

“You.”

Ig’s kidneys felt as if they were floating in very cold water. “I’ll scream.”

“Yeah,” said Eric. “I’m kind of looking forward to it.”

Ig sprang for the door. The exit, though, was in the same wall as the door into the bathroom, and Eric lunged to his right to cut him off. Ig put on a burst of speed, shrinking away from Eric and trying to get out the door ahead of him, and at the same time a shrill, terrible thought flashed through his mind: Not going to make it. Eric had his cherry club back over one arm, as if it were a football and he was about to go long.

Ig’s feet snarled in something, and when he tried to step forward, he couldn’t. His ankles caught, and he plunged off balance. Eric came around with the club, and Ig heard the low whistle of it passing behind his head, then a loud, brittle crunch as it caught the door frame and tore away a chunk of wood the size of a baby’s fist.

He got his forearms up just before he crashed to the floor, which probably saved him from breaking his nose for the second time in his life. He looked down between his elbows and saw that his feet had caught in a pair of Glenna’s discarded panties, black silk with little red devils printed on them. He was already kicking them away. He felt Eric stepping up behind him and knew if he tried to stand, he was going to catch that ironwood club in the back of the head. He didn’t try to stand. He grabbed the floor and pitched himself forward in a kind of mad scramble. The officer of the law put his size-thirteen Timberland in Ig’s ass and shoved, and Ig went down on his chin. He slid on his face across the varnished pine floor. His shoulder batted the oar that was leaned against the wall, and it fell over on top of him.

Ig rolled, grabbing blindly at the oar, trying to get it off him so he could stand up. Eric Hannity came at him, raising the club again. His eyes were blind, and his face was blank, the way a face looked when someone was under the influence of the horns. The horns were good at making people do terrible things, and Ig already understood they were an invitation now to Eric to do his worst.

He moved without thinking, holding the oar up in both hands, almost like an offering. His eyes focused on something written across the handle: “To Ig, from your best pal, Lee Tourneau-here’s something for the next time you’re up the creek.”

Eric came down with the club. It snapped the oar in two, at the narrowest point on the handle, and the paddle flipped into the air and swatted him across the face. He grunted and took an off-balance step back. Ig threw the knotty handle at his head. It struck him above the right eye and bounced off, bought enough time for Ig to push himself up off his elbows and onto his feet.

Ig wasn’t ready for Eric to recover as quickly as he did, but Hannity was at him again, as soon as he was up, coming around with the club. Ig jumped back. The head of the club brushed so close it caused the fabric of his T-shirt to snap. It kept going around and hit the screen of the television. The glass spiderwebbed, and there was a loud crack and a white snap of light somewhere inside the monitor.

Ig had backed right up into the coffee table and for an instant he was dangerously close to toppling over it. But he steadied himself while Hannity twisted the club free from the caved-in television screen. Ig turned, stepped onto the coffee table, across to the couch, and over the back, putting it between himself and Eric. In two more steps, Ig was in the kitchenette.

He turned. Eric Hannity stared in at him by way of the pass-through window. Ig crouched, breathing hard, a stitch in one lung. There were two ways out of the kitchen-he could go left or he could go right-but either way would dump him back into the living room with Eric, and he’d have to get by him to reach the stairwell.

“I didn’t come here to kill you, Ig,” Eric Hannity said. “I really just wanted to knock some sense into you. Make an impression on you, learn you to stay the fuck away from Lee Tourneau. But it’s a goddamn thing. I can’t stop thinking that I ought to smash your lunatic skull in like you did to Merrin Williams. I don’t think someone with horns coming out of their head ought to be allowed to live. I think it’d be a fucking service to the state of New Hampshire to kill you.”

The horns. It was the horns working on him.

“I forbid you to hurt me,” Ig said, trying to bend Eric Hannity to his will, putting all the concentration and force behind his horns that he could muster. They throbbed, but painfully, without any of the usual thrill. They didn’t work that way. They wouldn’t play that song, wouldn’t discourage sin, no matter how much Ig’s life depended on it.

“You forbid shit,” Hannity said.

Ig stared at him through the pass-through window, the blood rushing in him, making a dull roar in his ears like water coming to the boil. Water coming to the boil. Ig looked back over his shoulder at the pot on the stovetop. The eggs floated, while bubbles raced up and around them.

“I want to kill you and cut those fucking things off,” Eric said. “Or maybe cut them off and then kill you. I bet you have a kitchen knife that’s big enough. No one will know I did it. After what you did to Merrin Williams, there’s probably a hundred people in this town who want to see you dead. I’d be a hero, even if no one knows it but me. I’d be someone my dad was proud of.”