The sheriff leaned over his spittoon and snipped the end off his cigar.

'Feral hogs, that means undomesticated?' he said.

'That's right,' I said.

'Which kind is it that don't like rolling in slop?'

'I think Jimmy Cole was killed right there on the ranch,' I said.

'Because you found pig shit in a slough and Jimmy Cole had it in his ears?'

'There was a dead campfire inside the house. I think he was hiding out there.'

'And Darl Vanzandt and his pissant friends done it?'

'You tell me.'

He leaned back in his chair and pulled on his nose.

'If you told me Darl Vanzandt was messing with sheep, I might believe it,' he said. Then he stared at me for a long time, his face starting to crease, a private joke building like a windstorm inside his huge girth. 'Is this how y'all done it in the Rangers, searching out pig shit in the woods? Damn, son, if you ain't a riot. Hold on, let me get my deputies in here. They got to hear this.'

He laughed so hard tears coursed down his cheeks.

After supper that night, I stood at my library window and watched the sky turn black and lightning fork into the crest of the hills. I turned on my desk lamp and started a handwritten letter to Jack Vanzandt. Why? Maybe because I had always liked him. Also, it was hard to criticize a man because his love blinded him to the implications of his son's behavior.

But my words would not change the chemical or genetic aberration that was Darl Vanzandt, and after two paragraphs I tore my piece of stationery in half and dropped it in the wastebasket.

It rained hard, blowing in sheets across the fields and against the side of the house. I called Mary Beth's apartment and let the phone ring a dozen times. I had tried to reach her all day, but her answering machine was still off.

I replaced the receiver in the cradle, then glanced out the window into the driveway just as a tree of lightning split the sky and illuminated the face of Garland T. Moon.

He stood motionless in the driving rain, a thick hemp doormat held over his head, his blue serge suit and tropical shirt soaked through.

I turned on the porch light and stepped out the front door. He walked out of the shadows, his flat-soled prison shoes crunching on the gravel. Without invitation, he mounted the porch, his mouth grinning inanely, the raindrops on his face as viscous as glycerin.

'How did you get here?' I asked.

'Walked.'

'From town?'

'They're holding old DWIs over my head so I cain't get a driver's license.'

'You kill your buddy Jimmy Cole?'

The skin of his face seemed to flex, caught between mirth and caution, as though he were breathing with a sliver of ice on his tongue.

'I ain't had to. Somebody else done it,' he said. 'You sent them people after me?'

'Which people?'

'Ones come in my room with a baseball bat.'

'Get off my property, Garland.'

His eyes held on my face, unblinking, his mouth a dry slit.

'Then it's somebody figures I know something. But I ain't got no idea what it is,' he said.

'I read the case file from LAPD. They say you were in that house for three hours. They say you killed them all one by one and made the survivors watch.'

'Then why ain't I in jail?'

I walked close to him. I could smell the deodorant that had melted on his skin, his breath that was like chewing gum and snuff.

'You've got a free pass tonight. You won't get another one,' I said.

His eyes, as blue and merry as a butane flame, danced on my face.

'The one with the bat? I caught him before he could get back to his truck. Check around the clinics. See if they ain't got a man won't be going out in public a lot,' he said.

He stepped back into the rain and darkness and walked out to the road, the doormat above his head, his suit molded like a blowing cape against his body.

The next afternoon Mary Beth answered her phone.

'Is anything wrong?' I asked.

'No. Why should there be?'

'Your machine's been off. I haven't seen you around.'

'Can I call you back later?'

But she didn't. That evening I drove to her apartment. As I walked up the stairs, people were swimming laps in the pool, stroking through the electric columns of light that glowed smokily under the turquoise surface, and the air was tinged with the gaslike smell of chlorine, burning charcoal starter, and flowers heated by the colored flood lamps planted in their midst.

A heavyset man in a tie and business suit came out of Mary Beth's apartment and almost knocked me down. I stepped back from him and felt the place on my chest where he had hit me.

'Excuse me,' I said.

He pushed his glasses straight on his nose and looked into my face, as though he recognized me. His hair was dark and neatly clipped, his part a pale, straight line in his scalp. His chin had a cleft in it and his cheeks were freshly shaved and his skin taut and scented with cologne.

'No problem,' he said.

'No problem?'

'I said I was sorry, pal. I didn't see you.'

'That's funny. I didn't hear you,' I said.

He started to turn away, then his chest expanded and his stomach flattened, as though he were abandoning a useless protocol, and he faced me squarely with his left foot slightly forward, the right foot at an angle behind it.

'You have a reason for staring at me?' he asked quietly.

'Not in the least.'

He glanced back at Mary Beth's closed door. 'Have a good evening. Best way to do that, don't let it get complicated,' he said. He raised his finger and eyebrows at the same time, then walked down the stairs.

She was in her uniform when she let me in. There were pools of color in her cheeks and her voice had a click in it when she spoke. She began straightening couch pillows and magazines that didn't need straightening, her back turned to me.

'I'm sorry to be in a rush. I have to be on duty in twenty minutes,' she said.

'That guy's a fed.'

'What, he threw a badge on you?'

'No, he's a self-important clerk who thinks arrogance and being a cop are the same thing.'

'You don't like them much, do you?'

'He shouldn't be here. If I can make him, other people will, too.'

'I have to go, Billy Bob.' She removed her gunbelt from the closet shelf and began strapping it on her waist. She tucked her shirt inside the belt and kept her eyes on her fingers and the cloth as it tightened under the edge of the leather.

I waited until she raised her eyes again. 'You have a personal relationship going with this guy?' I asked.

'I don't have to tell you these things.' Then I saw her cheeks sink, as though she were disturbed by the severity of her own words.

'He's putting you in jeopardy. I don't like him. That offends you?' I said.

She picked up her purse from the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room. Her face was turned away from me. She pressed her fingers against her temple.

'I'm leaving and I don't have any more to say. Do you want to walk to the parking lot with me or stay here?'

'Somebody's trying to run Garland Moon out of town. Because of something he knows. But he doesn't know what it is.'

She stared at me blankly, her freckled face like a young girl's, suddenly empty of all other concern.

Temple Carrol was sitting in a deerhide chair in my office when I arrived the next morning.

'I found our man,' she said.

'How?'

'He told the guys in the emergency room he fell from a paint ladder through a glass window. They reported it as a knife wound.'

'Why didn't they believe him?'

'Somebody had done a number on him earlier. A paramedic said he looked like he'd been drug by a rope.' She propped her chin on her fingers and waited for the recognition to show in my eyes.