Slaughter turned to see the father leaning toward the back seat.

"I don't… Something's wrong!" the father blurted.

Slaughter watched the mother crying as the father scrambled in. He saw his men, the cruisers, their headlights glaring at the mansion, saw the woman Rettig talked to start to run up toward the mansion. He sensed the moon above him and the medical examiner beside him shaking as he felt his world begin to tumble and a creature in the park below him started howling at the moon. Dunlap stood to one side, taking pictures. Slaughter didn't even have the strength for anger anymore. He let the man continue taking pictures, flasher blinking.

Slaughter was drunk. he hadn't come back home until nearly one o'clock, and he had stayed outside just long enough to check his horses. Then he'd walked back to his house and with the porchlight on had stared down at the cooler filled with tepid water and the beer cans from this morning. There were empties on the porch as well. There hadn't been a chance to clean up. Too much had begun to happen. But he didn't clean up this time either, simply glanced out at the darkness and then turned to go inside where first he flicked the lights on to study another cooler in the kitchen before heading toward the cupboard where he kept the bourbon. That was something that he almost never drank, but this night had been special, oh, my God, yes, and he almost didn't even bother with a glass. He knew that would be too much weakness, though, and since he was determined to be weak to start with, he at least would set some limits. Reaching for the bottle and a glass, he fumbled in the freezer for some ice and poured the glass up to the top and in three swallows drank a third of it.

The shock was almost paralyzing. He put both hands on the sink and leaned across it, choking, waiting for the scalding flood to settle in his stomach. He could feel it draining down his throat. He felt his stomach tensing, and he knew that because he hadn't eaten since this morning, he might easily throw up. But then the spasms ebbed, and he was breathing, trembling. He leaned across the sink a moment longer. Then he poured some water with the bourbon, and he started toward the shadowy living room. Once, years ago, when he had learned that his wife was leaving him, he had felt emotions like this, ruin, fright, discouragement that bordered on despair. He had sensed those feelings building in him until the instant of the divorce, and going to his rented room, his legs so shaky that he didn't think he'd get there, he had stopped at a liquor store where he had bought the cheapest wine that he could find. A quart of Ruby Banquet, some god-awful label like that. And he'd somehow made it to his room where without pausing he had drunk the bottle in thirty seconds. Setting down the bottle, he had scrambled toward the bathroom, and the heave of liquid from him had evacuated more than just the wine. The sickness had been cleansing, purging all the ugliness, the hate and fear and anger. He had slumped beside the toilet bowl, and how long he had stayed there he was never certain, but when he got up and slumped across the bed, he found that it was night and that the slowly flashing neon sign outside his window was the pattern of his heartbeat, measured, weary. There was nothing in him anymore. He had passed the crisis, and he had a sense then of a new beginning. He was neutral.

Now he'd graduated from the cheap wine to the bourbon, and he would have forced himself to throw up, but he understood that this trouble wasn't over. No, his apprehension from the night before remained with him, and he was definitely certain that this wasn't over. First, there'd be the lawsuit. That much he could bet on. Against the medical examiner, and then like ripples in a pond, eventually against himself and against the town council that employed him. Then investigations to determine if the medical examiner and he should lose their jobs.

Hell, the medical examiner might even lose his license. That boy might have died because he was allergic to the sedative. There hadn't been the proper questions, proper cautions. They had let the trouble so distract them that they hadn't thought beyond it. They might very well deserve to lose their jobs.

He didn't want to think about that. He wanted only to shut off his mind and stare down at the bourbon in his hand. Avoiding the light in the kitchen, he sat in a dark corner of the living room and frowned at the darkness past the window. For a moment as he raised the glass, he didn't realize that it was empty. Better have another. So he went back to the kitchen, pouring more but putting ample water with it this time. He would have to talk to lots of people in the morning, and he wanted to be sober. He could recollect as if he still were there the father crying with the mother, cursing, saying that he'd warned them about so much force to catch a little boy. The hardest part had been his struggle with the father. "No, you can't go in to touch him."

"He's my son."

"I don't care. He still might contaminate you. As it is, your wife might be infected from that bite."

It took two men at last to keep the father from the back seat of the cruiser. Dunlap had continued taking pictures. Oh, my Jesus, what a mess. And when he'd finally mustered the energy to talk to Dunlap, there had been no sign of him. The man had sense enough to get away while he was able, likely fearing that his pictures would be confiscated. Slaughter didn't know if he would actually have grabbed the camera, but by then he had been mad enough to grab at something. It was just as well that Dunlap had not been around to serve that function. There wasn't much happening by the time he looked for Dun-lap anyhow. The man might simply have walked into town to get some rest. The mother and the father had been driven home. The medical examiner was going with the body to the morgue. The officers were locking the mansion until they'd come back in the morning to investigate. He himself had stood in the darkness by his cruiser, staring at the mansion, and he'd heard that howling from below him in the park again, but he had been too weary and disgusted to go down there. He had seen enough for one night, and he had the sense that he would see a lot more very soon. All he wanted was to get home and anesthetize himself.

But not too much, he kept remembering as he walked toward the living room and sat again in the corner, staring at the night out there. He'd have to do a lot of talking in the morning. Dunlap, Parsons, and the medical examiner. He didn't know who else, but there'd be many, and he wondered how he'd manage to get through this. All his years of working, and he'd never had this kind of trouble. No, that wasn't true. There was the grocery store. And on one occasion, he'd shot a man. Three, to be precise, but only one had died, and the inquest had absolved him. He'd been bothered by the killing, but he'd never felt like this, and he was grateful that the bourbon finally was numbing him. Even slumped in a chair, he was slightly off balance, and his lips felt strange. Too long without sleep, without a meal, but he was too disturbed to want either.

He was thinking of the medical examiner, the green walls of the autopsy room, the scalpel cutting. That was something else Slaughter hadn't done right. Because the father would no doubt press charges, Slaughter never should have let the medical examiner go with the body. Even if the medical examiner were able to determine that the boy was not allergic to the sedative, the father would maintain that the evidence had been distorted. What was more, the sedative had almost surely not reacted well with the virus. It had helped to produce the fatal symptoms of paralysis, so any way the problem was approached, the medical examiner had been at fault. He couldn't be objective when he examined the body. There'd be accusations from the council. Slaughter wished that he'd forbidden him to do the autopsy.