“Listen, Homer—” Jimmy began.

“Don’t you Homer me,” McCaslin said. “I don’t like it. I don’t like any part of it. This encephalitis is catchin’, ain’t it?”

“Yes, it’s infectious,” Jimmy said warily.

“An’ you still brought this writer along? Knowin’ she might be infected with somethin’ like that?”

Jimmy shrugged and looked angry. “I don’t question your professional judgments, Sheriff. You’ll just have to bear with mine. Encephalitis is a fairly low-grade infection which gains slowly in the human bloodstream. I felt there would be no danger to either of us. Now, wouldn’t you be better off trying to find out who carted away Mrs Glick’s body—Fu Manchu or otherwise—or are you just having fun questioning us?”

McCaslin fetched a deep sigh from his not inconsiderable belly, flipped his notebook closed, and stored it in the depths of his hip pocket again. “Well, we’ll put the word out, Jimmy. Doubt if we’ll get much on this unless the kook comes out of the woodwork again—if there ever was a kook, which I doubt.”

Jimmy raised his eyebrows.

“You’re lyin’ to me,” McCaslin said patiently. “I know it, these deputies know it, prob’ly even ole Moe knows it. I don’t know how much you’re lyin’—a little or a lot—but I know I can’t proveyou’re lyin’ as long as you both stick to the same story. I could take you both down to the cooler, but the rules say I gotta give you one phone call, an’ even the greenest kid fresh out of law school could spring you on what I got, which could best be described as Suspicion of Unknown Hanky-panky. An’ I bet your lawyer ain’t fresh out of law school, is he?”

“No,” Jimmy said. “He’s not.”

“I’d take you down just the same and put you to the inconvenience except I get a feelin’ you ain’t lyin’ because you did somethin’ against the law.” He hit the pedal at the foot of the stainless-steel waste can by the mortician’s table. The top banged up and McCaslin shot a brown stream of tobacco juice into it. Maury Green jumped. “Would either of you like to sort of revise your story?” he asked quietly, and the backcountry twang was gone from his voice. “This is serious business. We’ve had four deaths in the Lot, and all four bodies are gone. I want to know what’s happening.”

“We’ve told you everything we know,” Jimmy said with quiet firmness. He looked directly at McCaslin. “If we could tell you more, we would.”

McCaslin looked back at him, just as keenly. “You’re scared shitless,” he said. “You and this writer, both of you. You look the way some of the guys in Korea looked when they brought ’em back from the front lines.”

The deputies were looking at them. Ben and Jimmy said nothing.

McCaslin sighed again. “Go on, get out of here. I want you both down to my office tomorrow by ten to make statements. If you ain’t there by ten, I’ll send a patrol car out to get you.”

“You won’t have to do that,” Ben said.

McCaslin looked at him mournfully and shook his head. “You ought to write books with better sense. Like the guy who writes those Travis McGee stories. A man can sink his teeth into one of those.”

THIRTEEN

Ben got up from the table and rinsed his coffee cup at the sink, pausing to look out the window into the night’s blackness. What was out there tonight? Marjorie Glick, reunited with her son at last? Mike Ryerson? Floyd Tibbits? Carl Foreman?

He turned away and went upstairs.

He slept the rest of the night with the desk lamp on and left the tongue-depressor cross that had vanquished Mrs Glick on the table by his right hand. His last thought before sleep took him was to wonder if Susan was all right, and safe.

Chapter Twelve

When he first heard the distant snapping of twigs, he crept behind the trunk of a large spruce and stood there, waiting to see who would show up. Theycouldn’t come out in the daytime, but that didn’t mean theycouldn’t get people who could; giving them money was one way, but it wasn’t the only way. Mark had seen that guy Straker in town, and his eyes were like the eyes of a toad sunning itself on a rock. He looked like he could break a baby’s arm and smile while he did it.

He touched the heavy shape of his father’s target pistol in his jacket pocket. Bullets were no good against them—except maybe silver ones—but a shot between the eyes would punch that Straker’s ticket, all right.

His eyes shifted downward momentarily to the roughly cylindrical shape propped against the tree, wrapped in an old piece of toweling. There was a woodpile behind his house, half a cord of yellow ash stove lengths which he and his father had cut with the McCulloch chain saw in July and August. Henry Petrie was methodical, and each length, Mark knew, would be within an inch of three feet, one way or the other. His father knew the proper length just as he knew that winter followed fall and that yellow ash would burn longer and cleaner in the living room fireplace.

His son, who knew other things, knew that ash was for men—things—like him. This morning, while his mother and father were out on their Sunday bird walk, he had taken one of the lengths and whacked one end into a rough point with his Boy Scout hatchet. It was rough, but it would serve.

He saw a flash of color and shrank back against the tree, peering around the rough bark with one eye. A moment later he got his first clear glimpse of the person climbing the hill. It was a girl. He felt a sense of relief mingled with disappointment. No henchman of the devil there; that was Mr Norton’s daughter.

His gaze sharpened again. She was carrying a stake of her own! As she drew closer, he felt an urge to laugh bitterly—a piece of snow fence, that’s what she had. Two swings with an ordinary tool box hammer would split it right in two.

She was going to pass his tree on the right. As she drew closer, he began to slide carefully around his tree to the left, avoiding any small twigs that might pop and give him away. At last the synchronized little movement was done; her back was to him as she went on up the hill toward the break in the trees. She was going very carefully, he noted with approval. That was good. In spite of the silly snow fence stake, she apparently had some idea of what she was getting into. Still, if she went much further, she was going to be in trouble. Straker was at home. Mark had been here since twelve-thirty, and he had seen Straker go out to the driveway and look down the road and then go back into the house. Mark had been trying to make up his mind on what to do himself when this girl had entered things, upsetting the equation.

Perhaps she was going to be all right. She had stopped behind a screen of bushes and was crouching there, just looking at the house. Mark turned it over in his mind. Obviously she knew. How didn’t matter, but she would not have had even that pitiful stake with her if she didn’t know. He supposed he would have to go up and warn her that Straker was still around, and on guard. She probably didn’t have a gun, not even a little one like his.

He was pondering how to make his presence known to her without having her scream her head off when the motor of Straker’s car roared into life. She jumped visibly, and at first he was afraid she was going to break and run, crashing through the woods and advertising her presence for a hundred miles. But then she hunkered down again, holding on to the ground like she was afraid it would fly away from her. She’s got guts even if she is stupid, he thought approvingly.

Straker’s car backed down the driveway—she would have a much better view from where she was; he could only see the Packard’s black roof—hesitated for a moment, and then went off down the road toward town.

He decided they had to team up. Anything would be better than going up to that house alone. He had already sampled the poison atmosphere that enveloped it. He had felt it from a half a mile away, and it thickened as you got closer.