Though he was off to a late start this morning, Ferris Monty drove his yellow Rolls-Royce into town at the leisurely pace of a longtime Coventry resident. He had sacrificed a night's sleep to review his abandoned notes and false starts, reams of words written many years ago. Fortunately, all the landmarks and most of the people were right where he had left them on the pages of his unfinished opus.

He parked at the curb in front of the public library, a one-room brick building made ludicrous by grand marble pillars and a lintel that overshot the roof. A hundred years ago, when Coventry's only employer had been the sawmill, this building had been the lofty donation-call it a joke- of the town founder, a man who believed that only a handful of his workers could read or have need of more than a few books.

Ferris stepped out of the car, and a small woman with mouse-brown hair caught his eye. She stood on the sidewalk and gaped at him as he turned onto the flagstone path that led to the door. Her hands flew up, fingers fluttering a warning. Ah, but now her eyes turned toward a front window, Perhaps in fear of a watcher, for she thought better of reminding him that no one in Coventry ever goes to the library. He envisioned twitching whiskers when she scurried away, as mice will do when they are in the neighborhood of a cat-or worse.

Oh, definitely worse.

The library door opened onto a room filled with rows of bookshelves, and he walked into a wall of stink. Although the librarian was nowhere to be seen, he knew she was here. The smelly epicenter could only be Mavis Hardy. Her body odor was formidable, even mythic; it was said to have permeated the pages of every book. However, he could hardly neglect to interview a town icon as important as a murderess at large.

He rounded the first bookcase, getting closer-the stink was stronger now-and he resisted the urge to cover his nostrils with a handkerchief. According to legend, Mrs. Hardy took her annual bath on the eve of the birthday ball, but she had not attended one for twenty years. Apparently, the attendant bathing had been allowed to slide.

Ferris Monty still had hopes of going to this year's ball, though the gala's gatekeeper might pose a problem. Well, certainly there would be some fancy tap-dancing around his most recent bad behavior. Addison Winston might wonder why his chosen envoy to the media had sicked reporters on Oren Hobbs-a clear conflict with the lawyer's intentions. But betrayal was mere technicality to an author turned zealot, a born-again writer of real literature. Ferris saw himself as an aging come-back kid and a ruthless Cinderella; he would find a way to go to the ball.

Turning down a narrow aisle of books, he walked slowly, creeping actually, following the sound of heavy breathing. The aisle ended at the center of the room, an open area of tables, chairs and a hulk of flesh wearing a cotton housedress. Ah, there she was in all her smelly unwashed glory, graying brown hair hanging to her shoulders in oily strings. She grunted and glistened with sweat.

What a prize.

He had been told that, though she went barefoot winter and summer, she had always been properly shod for the early birthday balls. It was doubtful that she had worn anything as delicate as high heels. Her well-muscled legs had the girth of tree trunks.

Oh, and now she was turning his way.

His visit to the library-perhaps any visitor at all-must come as a shock. One clue was the woman's slackening jaw. He had never been so close to her, and now he was near enough to count the missing teeth by the gaps in her open mouth-but he had to look up to do it. Mavis Hardy's size was impressive, more muscle than fat, as evidenced by the barbells tightly gripped in her hands. There were other items of bodybuilding equipment on the floor behind her. This argued against the rumor that she was dying, and it gave credence to a theory, oft repeated by the locals, that she could not be killed except by supernatural means.

"Mrs. Hardy, I wonder if I could speak to you?"

"You just did." She held the barbells high above her head.

Did she have it in mind to smash him out of existence? Legs gone to limp noodles, he felt the sudden need for support and sat down at the reader's table. "My name is Ferris Monty."

"I know who you are." The librarian remained standing, lowering and lifting her weights as she counted aloud. "Sixteen. You don't look like the author photos on your book jackets-that true-crime trash. Seventeen. I know they airbrushed those droopy eyes of yours. Eighteen. But damned if I can figure out how they made you look smarter."

He pulled out his bifocals and donned them. "Is that better?"

"Nineteen. Somewhat." On the count of twenty, she set the weights on the floor, then pulled out a chair and sat down next to him, edging closer until he could smell the rot from her mouth of broken and lost teeth.

"I'd like to ask you about Oren Hobbs and his brother, Joshua." On best behavior today-and fearful-Ferris smiled, as if he were dealing with a normal person, a sane person.

The extreme order of military life had been discarded in a single day. The bedroom floor was strewn with cast-off clothes and cowboy boots. Oren's habit of early rising had also been lost. When he stepped out of the shower, it was almost noon-if he could believe the windup alarm clock on his bedside table-the same old clock.

He glanced at Hannah's homecoming gift, the eight-by-ten portrait of two boys in a silver frame, fruit of the purloined roll of film that had been hidden away in his brother's sock drawer. Even if Hannah had not mentioned taking that last roll to the drugstore for development, he would have known that Josh had not printed this picture. Missing was the magic that his brother performed in the attic darkroom. The quality of this print was no match for the ones on the wall.

And where were the other photographs from that last roll of film?

Dressed in the bathrobe he had worn as a teenager, Oren padded barefoot down the hall and entered his brother's bedroom. The last time he was in here, the coffin had been a distraction. Now that it was gone, the room had a timeless quality, and he was in danger of falling into the judge's state of mind-a scary place where old dogs and young boys never died.

The tripod leaned against the wall where Josh had left it on the last day of his life. A pair of sneakers lay on the floor, so casually arranged, as if the boy had just changed into his hiking boots for a walk in the woods. Oren picked up a jacket that had been draped on the back of a chair twenty years ago. He held it to his breast as he lay down upon his brother's bed and lost an hour there, staring at the ceiling.

When he remembered his purpose for coming here-the one odd feature in the bedroom of a teenage boy-he rose from the bed and opened Josh's closet to a familiar mess. The clothes on hangers were jammed together, and the shelf above was packed with magazines, a broken bicycle pump and stacks of cigar boxes favored for catching the smaller items of junk. The jumble seemed about to fall on Oren's head at any second. But the floor of that chaotic space had always been sparsely covered, so orderly As a teenager, he had never found that odd-and now he did.

He knelt down before the closet and took out two pairs of shoes to expose tool marks on the floorboards. He reached up to pull down a coat hanger and used the stiff wire as a pry bar. The boards did not lift easily

It was a few minutes' work to remove them. He reached into Josh's hidey-hole and brought out a thick photograph album.

Private pictures. People's secrets?