"You're not serious."

"I swear on the Bible. She says it's better for the kids to think I'm dead than gone off to leave them."

"But you're not leaving them, Carson."

"Try telling that bitch that!" Barnett screamed, coming up out of his chair. "Goddamn it, I'm sorry, Andy. Sometimes I get so damned frustrated, I could just…"

"What?"

"I don't know."

Rusk let the silence stretch out. Now that Barnett's anger had reached critical mass, it wasn't going to cool anytime soon.

Rusk stood up and rolled his chair around his desk, then arranged Barnett's chair so that it faced his-very close, too. The big oilman stared at him with obvious curiosity, even suspicion, as though wondering if Rusk might be queer.

"Please sit down, Carson. I want to talk to you, man-to-man."

This was a language Barnett understood. He turned his chair around and straddled it, his big forearms inches from Rusk's face.

"What I'm going to say may shock you, Carson."

"No, you go right ahead."

"I'm guessing that a man like you has come across some unusual situations in your business."

"How do you mean?"

"Well…difficulties."

"That's for sure."

Rusk nodded soberly. "Some difficulties, I've found, are solvable by conventional methods. While others…others take some creative thinking. Extraordinary measures, you might say."

Barnett was watching him carefully now. "Go on."

"I've handled a lot of divorces. Hundreds, in fact. And a few of those cases had some similarities to yours."

"Really?"

Rusk nodded. "And some of those cases, well, they just broke my heart. More than once I've watched a liberal-biased judge take away half a man's lifetime earnings-or more-and then stop him from seeing his own children to boot-the children he brought into the world! When you see that…well, it feels almost un-American, Carson."

"You're right!"

"I know I'm right. And after I'd seen enough of those cases, after fighting down in the trenches for a client and watching it all come to nothing…well, a thought would come to me."

"What was it?"

"I thought, 'God forgive me, but how much of a mercy would it be for this man-and for these kids-if one of the parties to this goddamn court battle was to just disappear?'"

Barnett's mouth was open like that of a teenage boy watching a stolen porn film, and his eyes were gleaming. Rusk could almost see the idea sinking into the slow gray cells behind those eyes. He dared not look away from Carson Barnett; he held his eyes with almost evangelical fervor.

Barnett swallowed and looked down at the carpet between them. "You mean-"

"I mean what I said. No more, no less. If a vicious and unforgiving person was doing their utmost to stop a person they supposedly loved-a person with whom they had had children-from even seeing those children, and also trying to take away everything that person had worked for all his life…well, then, it just seemed like almost divine justice if some force-fate, maybe-were to intervene to stop that from happening."

"Jesus," Barnett said quietly. "You said a mouthful there."

"I don't say this to many people, Carson. But you're in a desperate situation."

The big man looked up with dark animal intelligence. "Has something like what you talked about ever happened? I mean, has the other person just…disappeared?"

Rusk nodded slowly.

Barnett opened his mouth to speak again, but Rusk stopped him with an upraised hand. "If that idea intrigues you, you should never come back to this office again."

"What?"

"You should go to the Jackson Racquet Club the day after tomorrow at two p.m. and ask to take a steam bath."

"I ain't a member," Barnett said awkwardly.

Rusk smiled. "A ten-dollar guest fee will get you in."

"But-"

He put his left forefinger to his lips, then stood and offered Barnett his right hand. "Carson, if you want to get a divorce, I'll be happy to represent you. Given Luvy's attitude, it could take a year or more to resolve everything, but I promise I'll do my best for you. And as you said, you could give her twenty-five million dollars, and you'd still have a lot of money."

Barnett was opening and closing his mouth like a man in mild shock.

"A guy like you, a guy who's made and lost several fortunes, money probably doesn't mean the same as it does to a guy like me."

"I ain't as young as I used to be," Barnett said softly.

"That's true." Rusk smiled. "Time works on us all." He rolled his chair back behind his desk.

Barnett was watching him like a man who had thought he was sharing space with a dog, then discovered that his roommate was a wolf.

"You take it easy now," Rusk said. "Don't let her get you down."

"The Jackson Racquet Club?" Barnett murmured.

"What's that?" Rusk said. "I didn't hear you."

Barnett's eyes flickered with comprehension. "Nothing. I was just mumbling."

"That's what I thought."

The oilman looked at Rusk a moment longer, then turned to go. When he reached the door, Rusk called after him, "Carson?"

When Barnett turned back, he looked exhausted.

"I don't think you ought to share this with your future bride." And then, in the truest moment of their meeting, Rusk added, "You never know how things will go down the road."

Barnett's eyes widened, then he hurried out of the office.

Chris pedaled past the Little Theater, then turned his Trek onto Maple Street and pumped hard up the long slope toward the Natchez Cemetery. Soon he would break out onto the bluff, with miles of open space to his left and the pristine cemetery on his right.

Chris had prescribed a lot of antidepressants in his career, but he had never experienced depression. He'd read deeply on the subject and asked the most penetrating questions he could to patients, but until today he'd had no true inkling of the condition those patients had described to him. Plath's metaphor of a bell jar seemed strikingly apt: he felt as though all the air had been sucked out of his life, that he was moving in a vacuum, and that his actions, whatever he might choose to do, would have no meaning or positive consequence in the world.

Tom Cage, as perceptive as ever, had noticed Chris's dazed mental state and told him to take the afternoon off. Since Thora had left for the Delta before daybreak (despite having promised to take Ben to school), his only remaining obligation-barring evening rounds-was to deliver Ben to the birthday party at the bowling alley at 4 p.m. And even that could be handled by Mrs. Johnson with a single phone call.

After leaving the office, Chris had driven home, suited up, and without really intending it had begun a ride from Elgin to the Mississippi River. He'd covered fifteen miles in thirty-six minutes-a record time for him-yet he felt neither tired nor elated. He felt like a machine endowed with the capacity for thought. Yet he did not want to think. With a rogue wind blowing out of the west, he wanted only to crest the hill and hit the breeze shooting up the face of the two-hundred-foot bluff that lined the Mississippi River.

Ten seconds after he hit Cemetery Road, the vast river valley opened up on his left. He knew then that he would not sidetrack and ride the cemetery, as was his habit, but rather continue past the shotgun shacks that lined the road beyond the cemetery and ride on to the Devil's Punchbowl, the deep defile where notorious outlaws had dumped the bodies of their victims in past centuries. He was staring so intently over the endless miles of Louisiana cotton fields on his left that he almost slammed into a car that had turned broadside across the road.

Chris braked so hard that he nearly went over the handlebars. He was about to start screaming at the driver when she jumped out and started screaming at him. He stood with his mouth hanging open.