That Thursday morning was different. Gaines wanted to see Lester about snakes. He arrived and found the pet store closed, the same sign in the window as ever. BACK IN THIRTY MINUTES. If urgent, call 224-5659. Gaines could just imagine it. Hey, Lester, you gotta get back here quick! It’s an emergency! We need three white mice and a talking bird!

Driving out to Cobb’s house had not been on the agenda. Gaines needed to be in the office, needed to get active on the Denton killing, but the riot of barking that erupted from behind the store forced his hand. If he didn’t deal with this, there would be one phone call after another about Lester’s damned noisy dogs. Gaines went around back and looked over the fence. Thankfully, the hound was chained. Gaines vaulted the fence and then he stood there quiet and still until the animal settled. He approached it slowly.

“Hey, boy,” Gaines said, and the dog succumbed to Gaines’s tone of voice. His head went down, and his tail started wagging. He stroked the dog’s head.

Gaines got in through the unlocked rear door, found a sack of dog biscuits and a bowl. He set them down in the yard, fetched a bowl of water, too, and just as he was closing up, he noticed something that caught his eye. Up near the front window, the angle of its placement catching the light through the front window, was a small aquarium. There was no water in it, and a flicker of movement within sent a shudder up Gaines’s spine.

He was right. Garter snakes. Two of them. Bigger than the one found in the cavity of Nancy Denton’s chest, but garters all the same. He’d seen them here before, of course, but in light of recent events, they inspired a very different reaction.

He would have to drive out and see Lester, if only to learn where Lester had gotten them from. Whytesburg was an old town, but still a town that aged only a year for every decade it existed. Maybe someone looking for a garter snake twenty years ago would look in the same places as Lester did now.

Gaines radioed Hagen from the car, said he was taking a trip over to Cobb’s place, that he wouldn’t be long.

“We gotta get on this Denton thing,” Hagen told him.

“That’s what I’m on, Richard,” Gaines replied. “You heard about the snake thing, right?”

“Yeah, sure did. What in God’s name is that all about, John?”

“Well, maybe God knows, but I sure as hell don’t. Anyway, I got a couple of snakes down here at Cobb’s place, same kinda snakes as the one we found. I’m just gonna take a moment to find out where he gets them from, is all.”

The drive from Cobb’s store to Cobb’s house was all of ten minutes, down along the county road that ran parallel to the Pearl River. Gaines pulled up in front of the place, steeled himself for the barrage of abuse that would more than likely come his way, and he went on up to the door.

“Who’s there?” Cobb shouted from within.

“Sheriff Gaines, Lester. You need to get on down to the store and sort out the hound you got tied up in the yard. He’s upsettin’ folk with all his hollerin’ and whatever.”

“I’ll be there shortly.”

“And I need to ask you about snakes.”

There was a moment’s pause and then, “Snakes?”

“Garter snakes.”

“I got some if you want one.”

Gaines shuddered again. He could see that dead snake, its tail in its mouth. “Want you to come on out here and talk to me civil, Lester. Don’t want to spend the next five minutes shouting through your front door.”

“Hang fire there a moment, Sheriff.”

Gaines waited.

Cobb came to the door in dungarees and bare feet. His hair was tousled. He had an enamel mug in his hand. “You want some coffee, Sheriff? Just made it fresh.”

“I’m good, thanks.”

Cobb pushed open the screen door and let Gaines in.

The house—as usual—was a sty. Cobb smiled. “Cleaning woman’s on vacation,” he said, just as he always did.

“Garter snakes, Lester,” Gaines said. “You got two in a tank in the front of the store.”

“You got inside the store?”

“Went to get some biscuits for that damned noisy dog.”

“Much obliged for that, Sheriff. So, the snakes. What about them?”

“Where d’you get ’em?”

“Down at the river; usual place.”

“You see anyone else after snakes when you was down there?”

“Mike is down there. Don’t know if he’s after snakes, but he’s always hangin’ around, crazy old motherfucker that he is. Well, I say he’s old, but he ain’t much more ’an fifty or fifty-five maybe.”

“Mike?”

“Yeah, Mike Webster. He fought the Japs, you know? Guadal-canal. He has some history, man. They call him the luckiest man alive. He wears the army jacket and whatever. He’s always down there. Wears camouflage fuckin’ paint on his face sometimes, you know? Talking to hisself most o’ the time. Says he likes it down there because the devil don’t like running water. Crazy, crazy son of a bitch.”

Coming from you, that’s something, Gaines thought, and then there was another thought, the memory of a comment Judith Denton had made. Was there a Michael? Yes, there was. And hadn’t he been in uniform on the night that Nancy Denton had gone missing?

“And he’s the only one you seen down there?”

“Only one I seen regular. Asked him one time why he was always down there and he said he was waiting for someone.”

“Waiting for someone?”

“ ’S what he said.”

“He say who he was waiting for?”

“Nope. And I didn’t ask. He ain’t the sort of person you feel like you should encourage to converse, if you know what I mean. Kinda creepy. Looks at you like he’s figurin’ out how it would feel to wear your skin.”

“How often’s he down there?”

“He’s been there every time I go. Last time was two days ago, three maybe. I was down there doin’ some fishing, and he came along. We had a smoke. He talks a lot. Most of it I don’t fucking understand. Lot of stuff about the war in Japan.”

“He lived around here long?”

Lester shrugged. “Always been around, ’s far as I know. He came back here after the war, I think. He told me he was in a unit in fuckin’ Japan, and he was the only one who survived. And then there was that thing that happened in the factory back in whenever . . .”

“Factory? What thing?”

“Go see him, man. You go talk to him. Ask him about what happened in Japan, and then ask him about the fire in . . . hell, whenever it was. Fifty-two, I think. You go ask him about all of that. Helluva story, man, helluva story.”

“What’s he look like?”

“Kinda my height, sandy-colored hair, cut longish in back. Denims, army jacket, one of them bush hats like folks wear in the jungle an’ all. Has a beard and whatever. Kinda like a hippy maybe, but he has the mad eyes goin’ on.”

Gaines couldn’t think of anyone fitting that description in Whytesburg. “Where does he live, Lester?”

“Christ knows. I asked him one time, and he just said up the river a while. Was thinking he was from Poplarville, or maybe someplace in between.”

“Okay, Lester, that’s really appreciated. Now, you finish up your coffee and get on down to that store of yours. You got enough complaints going on, you know?”

“Hell, Sheriff, they’s animals. They’s gonna make a noise whatever you do with them. And them folks that complain? If they weren’t complainin’ about me, they’d be complainin’ about someone else. That’s just their nature.”

Gaines said nothing. Cobb was right. Here is a dead child in the arms of her dead mother . . . now let us speak of small and inconsequential things.

Gaines went on back to the car. He turned the way he’d come and headed for the office. Somewhere northwest was a World War II veteran called Mike, a man who had been here forever, and Gaines needed to find him. Whytesburg was a small town, and small-town ways never seemed to change. No matter what happened, people seemed to stay put, as if distrusting and disbelieving of any wider world. In this light, it was not impossible to consider that the Michael mentioned by Judith Denton and the Michael of whom Lester Cobb spoke were one and the same person.