The outcasts of Peck's Roadhouse had formed a loose union of drunks in the parking lot. And two more bars down the road, they had become an ugly crew as tight as family.

Dave Hardy followed their weaving line of cars, trucks and vans. If he had been in uniform tonight-and sober-this would have been an easy twelve tickets for driving under the influence. The parade swelled in numbers with every little Podunk bar these yahoos had been thrown out of, and he was keeping count on the vehicles.

The deputy reached down to the six-pack on the seat beside him, and then pulled back his empty hand. Maybe he should also be counting his drinks tonight. With a glance at the rifle rack above the windshield of his truck, he opened the glove compartment and pulled out a box of shotgun shells.

When the caravan of drunks pulled into the next bar, he waited awhile in the lot, loading his gun. After replacing it on the rack, he followed them inside, where the men were slowly gravitating toward the light of a television set that seemed to draw them by remote control. On screen was the same old film: Sally Polk was answering the same questions, and William

Swahn was still limping. Long after day had turned into night, the sun was still shining in reruns.

The drunks talked back to Sally Polk and saluted her TV image with raised glasses of beer.

Dave wanted to put his fist through the screen.

In another bar on the other side of the county, Hannah was saying, "I can't help but win this game."

Oren agreed. At least no beers had been bet on this round. It would take Hannah another hour to finish nursing her first one.

When all but a few balls had been sunk into pockets, the only ones remaining in play were the white cue ball, the black eight ball and a solid red. Sending that red ball into the corner pocket would be the easiest shot by far. It was so close to the edge, it might drop in of its own accord. And perhaps that was what Hannah waited for as she held her stick an inch from the cue ball. Seconds ticked by. "I can't lose."

"I believe you," he said. "So sink it."

"Now that's not fortune-telling." She lifted her stick and waved it in small circles. "And it certainly wouldn't take any skill." She leaned down once more to line up the white and the red. "You can see the outcome of this game. It's in the way the balls are laid out. But even God Almighty can blow a simple shot now and then."

Apparently, so could Hannah.

The cue ball wandered far from the mark and connected with the black eight ball, nudging it toward the corner pocket where the red ball was hanging. In Hannah's parlance, the sneeze of a housefly could sink it.

Well, that's life," she said. "Hits and misses. There's a reason for everything, but you don't need to know all the answers. So the next time you hear the judge asking your dead mother for another miracle, just let the old man slide."

"You're throwing the game?"

In answer, she stepped back from the table and lifted her glass for a swig of beer. His turn.

Damn. No, she had not thrown the game. Hannah had simply picked a different way to win. The new position of the eight ball was no accident of a bad shot. It gently kissed the red ball hanging over the corner pocket. In every possible scenario of straight shots and bank shots, the eight ball would follow the red one into the pocket on the same stroke-and forfeit the game.

With resignation, Oren aimed his pool cue.

"Wait." Hannah's voice carried a slight tone of alarm.

Her left hand was raised high, and he followed the point of her finger up to the ceiling-where nothing was happening. He winced. He had not fallen for this ploy since he was ten years old. When he looked back at the table, he saw what Hannah's right hand had been up to. The eight ball had vanished, leaving him with an easy shot and a win.

"It's a miracle," said Hannah.

Sure. He laid down his stick, and lifted his beer.

"Don't you want to win?"

"No, I don't think so. Miracles take all the fun out of pool." He turned his eyes back to the table, where the eight ball had reappeared beside the red one. In what split second of distraction had she managed that? Hannah's sleight of hand reaffirmed his theory that, in her distant past, she had been a magician or a pickpocket.

"Some things in life just have to play out," she said. "If Josh hadn't died that day, it would've happened some other time. You know why he died.

Oren was not ready to have this conversation yet. He pretended interest in his empty glass. "And your next trick?"

"You'll see. It won't be long now." She held up her half-finished beer. "My capacity isn't what it used to be." Hannah happened to be facing the door when it opened, and so it appeared that Mrs. Winston had walked into the Endless Bar on cue.

Sometimes the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts. This was the thought of the barmaid in the lounge of a hotel on the coast highway.

Twenty-two men were gathered in front of the television set, and she counted them all as one creature. Her hope was that this angry buzzing thing would take itself out the door before it turned ugly. The barmaid looked up at the TV screen above the shelves of bottles and glassware. The news story of Sally Polk and her suspect had run over and over in short clips of commercial teases. Now it played out in full length for the late evening news.

The drunks were enthralled. Polk was their leader, their queen, though the CBI agent hardly said three words in this updated news story. Celebrity experts and an anchorman now put the words in the woman's mouth.

One studio guest, a man with a book to sell, said to the camera, "This is how Agent Polk will profile the killer. If he's handicapped in some way, his only outlet for sex is prostitutes-and children." The screen image changed to a photograph of a tender boy with a comical smile. And the next shot focused on a man with a rollicking limp and a cane.

The drunks hated the crippled man. They jeered and yelled at the television set.

The barmaid sensed that the thing of many parts was about to swarm as twenty-two faces turned in unison.

So creepy.

They moved toward the door as one giddy insect with many feet. The barmaid reached for the phone, planning to give the driving public a sporting chance to live through the night. But then she recognized a regular at the bar, a man with bleached highlights. This was the sheriff's deputy, the one who took his beer in a coffee cup when he was in uniform. To-night, dressed in blue jeans, he drank from a glass, drained it and walked to the door.

She could hear the sound of many engines starting up outside, the whooping and hollering, the spin of wheels and the spit of gravel. The barmaid walked to the window and watched the deputy climb into a pickup truck. He followed the thing out of the parking lot.

No need to call 9-1-1.

Though the dim light of the Endless Bar was kind to the champagne blonde, that beautiful face was showing damage, and it was more than the ruin that came with age. Mrs. Winston was no longer the calm center of grace in every crowd. She had a startled look about her, eyes turning everywhere.

On the lookout for enemies?

That was Oren's thought, as he racked up the balls for a new game-as if Hannah's next game had not already begun. "You knew Mrs. Winston would be here tonight. I guessed that much."

"Keep your eye on the man tending bar."

The bartender never acknowledged Mrs. Winston, who sat down three stools away from him. He lifted the first hinged mahogany plank to leave the service station, a wheel within the wheel, and then he lifted the second plank to step off the revolving bar.