But, no, of course not. The blood. The.357 hollow points would cause a lot of damage. Some forensic technician was sure to examine the Cadillac’s trunk.

After a moment of debate Owen concluded that he’d simply leave the car here. Hrubek was crazy. He’d become scared of driving and had abandoned it, continuing on foot to Ridgeton. It occurred to him too that he probably shouldn’t kill Hrubek here-the coroner might be able to determine that he’d died an hour or so before Owen claimed he had.

He decided that he’d just immobilize Hrubek now-shoot him in the upper arm and in the leg. Owen would lug him into the back of the Cherokee and drive on to Ridgeton.

And there the patient would be found, in the Atchesons’ kitchen. Owen would be sitting in the living room, staring numbly out the window, staggered by the tragedy of it all-having fired two shots to try to stop him and finally a third, a lethal, bullet, when the big man would not heed Owen’s orders to halt.

The blood in the Cherokee? Well, that was a risk. But he’d park it behind the garage. There’d be no reason for any investigators to see it, let alone have a forensics team go through the truck.

He analyzed the plan in detail, deciding that, yes, it was chancy but the risks were acceptable.

Cocking the pistol he made his way closer to the looming shape of Hrubek, who’d now finished his business and was staring up at the turbulent sky, listening to the sharp hiss of the wind in the tips of the pine trees and letting the rain fall into his face.

Owen got no further than five steps toward his prey before he heard the distinctive double snap of a pump shotgun and saw the policeman aim the muzzle at his chest.

“On the ground, freeze!” the young man’s trembling voice called.

“What are you doing?” Owen cried.

“Freeze! Drop your gun! Drop that gun!”

Then Hrubek was running, a thick dark mass fleeing toward the Cadillac.

“I’m not going to tell you again!” the cop’s voice was high with panic.

“You fucking idiot,” Owen yelled, his temper flaring. He stepped toward the cop.

The trooper lifted the shotgun higher. Owen froze and dropped the Smith & Wesson. “Okay, okay!”

The sound of the Cadillac firing to life filled the clearing. As the car sped past them, the trooper glanced in shock at the sound. Owen easily shoved the shotgun muzzle to the side and drove his right fist into the side of the trooper’s face. The young man dropped like deadweight and Owen was on him in a minute, slugging the trooper again and again, anger exploding within him. Gasping, he finally managed to control himself and looked down at the bloody face of the unconscious cop.

“Fuck,” he spat bitterly.

The sudden crack sounded some yards behind him. It seemed like a gunshot and Owen dropped into a crouch, snatching up his pistol. He heard nothing else other than the wind and the drumming of the rain. The distant horizon lit up for a moment with huge sheets of lightning.

He turned back to the cop and handcuffed the man’s wrists behind his back. He then stripped off the regulation patent-leather belt and bound the officer’s feet. He stared in disgust for a moment, wondering if the trooper had gotten a good look at him. Probably not, he concluded. It was too dark; he himself hadn’t seen the cop’s face at all. He’d most likely figure that Hrubek himself had attacked him.

Owen ran back to his truck. He closed his eyes and slammed his fist on the hood. “No!” he shouted at the wet, breezy sky. “No!”

The left front tire was flat.

He bent down and noted that the bullet that had torn through the rubber was from a medium-caliber pistol. A.38 or 9mm probably. As he hurried to get the jack and spare, he realized that in all his plans for this evening this was something that he’d never considered-that Hrubek might be inclined to defend himself.

With a gun.

They stood side by side, holding long-handled shovels, and dug like oyster fishermen beneath the brown water for their crop of gravel. Their arms were in agony from filling and lugging the sandbags earlier in the evening and they could now lift only small scoops of the marble chips, which they then poured around the sunken tires of the car for traction.

Their hair now dark, their faces glossy with the rain, they lifted mound after mound of gravel and listened with some comfort to the murmuring of the car’s engine. From the radio drifted classical music, interrupted by occasional news broadcasts, which seemed to have no relation to reality. One FM announcer-sedated by the sound of his own voice-came on the air and reported that the storm front should hit the area in an hour or two.

“Jesus Christ,” Portia shouted over the pouring rain, “doesn’t he have a window?”

Apart from this, they worked silently.

This is mad, Lis thought, as the wind slung a gallon of rain into her face. Nuts.

Yet for some reason it felt oddly natural to be standing in calf-high water beside her sister, wielding these heavy oak-handled tools. There used to be a large garden on this part of the property-before Father decided to build the garage and had the earth plowed under. For several seasons the L’Auberget girls grew vegetables here. Lis supposed that they might have stood in these very spots, raking up weeds or whacking the firm black dirt with hoes. She remembered stapling seed packets to tongue depressors and sticking them into the earth where they’d planted the seeds the envelopes contained.

“That’ll show the plants what to look like, so they’ll know how to grow,” Lis had explained to Portia, who, being four, bought this logic momentarily. They’d laughed about it afterwards and for some years vegetable pinups had been a private joke between them.

Lis wondered now if Portia too recalled the garden. Maybe, if she did, she would take the memory as proof that going into business with her sister might not be as improbable as it seemed.

“Let’s try it,” she called through the rain, nodding toward the car.

Portia climbed in and, with Lis pushing, eased her foot delicately to the gas. The car budged an inch or two. But it sank down into the mud almost immediately. Portia shook her head and got out. “I could feel it. We’re close. Just a little more.”

The rain pours as they resume shoveling.

Lis glances toward her sister and sees her starkly outlined against a flare of lightning in the west. She finds herself thinking not about gravel or mud or Japanese cars but about this young woman. About how Portia moved to a tough town, how she learned to talk tough and to gaze back at you sultry and defiant, wearing her costumes, her miniskirts and tulle and nose rings, how she glories in the role of the urbane femme lover.

And yet… Lis has her doubts…

Tonight, for instance, Portia didn’t really seem at ease until she discarded the frou-frou clothes, ditched the weird jewelry and pulled on baggy jeans and a high-necked sweater.

And the boyfriends?… Stu, Randy, Lee, a hundred others. For all her talk of independence, Portia often seems no more than a reflection of the man she is, or isn’t, with-precisely the type of obsolete, noxious relationship that she enthusiastically denounces. The fact is she never really likes these excessively handsome, bedroom-eyed boys very much. When they leave her-as they invariably do-she mourns briefly then heads out to catch herself a fresh one.

And so Lisbonne Atcheson is left to wonder, as she has frequently, who her sister really is. Is she truly the stranger she seems?

Lis just doesn’t know. But she’s decided to find out. If not through the nursery business, then in some other way. For a thought occurred to her recently-not long after Indian Leap, in fact. A thought she just can’t shake: that the only way the dark heritage of the L’Aubergets can be redeemed-if it can be redeemed at all-is through the two surviving members of the family.