“Hey! I found the body! I knew she weren't creekfolk, I called you guys…"

“We appreciate your cooperation,” Nevins said, “but it's better you leave it to us now. We'll take care of her. I promise you."

The sheriff shuffled off to another part of the house. I looked at the water for a few moments, waiting for Nevins to continue his story. But then an assistant investigator-Fieldman, I think his name was-approached with a clipboard. “You were right,” he told Nevins. “Blood type matches Larsen. Wit Protec number 2-3-3-oh."

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You haven't found Larsen's body yet?"

“His blood's all over the deck,” said Fieldman. “We think he's in the drink, but nobody's spotted him yet. We found another blood type, too-probably our suspect."

“Aw, fuck a duck,” Nevins said. “Okay. Call in the cleaners, take our samples, then strip the house. Leave nothing but a shell. And have some guys out to check the creek already. I know they don't like getting their Thom McCann specials all wet, but it's part of the job."

Fieldman nodded.

“And another thing,” Nevins said. “We're not going to file a report today."

“Sir?"

I asked myself a similar question: What the hell was going on?

Nevins enunciated each word: “We. Don't. File. Which part of that did you fail to comprehend?"

Fieldman didn't breathe for a moment. Then he ventured: “Don't you want to-"

“You want to be the one to tell the world this program can't be trusted?” Nevins said. “That some of our esteemed colleagues sell addresses to hired guns? That the fabric of our judicial system is routinely ripped open like the panties of a Louisiana whore?"

Fieldman looked around to see if anyone else was catching this. When he saw we were alone, he turned to me. I kept my face blank. This was not something I wanted to be in the middle of-at least not right now. Finally, Fieldman turned back to his boss. “No sir,” he said.

“Fine then. Raze the house. And take care of the sheriff. His name is…” Nevins glanced at his notebook. “Daniel Alford."

“Daniel Alford,” Fieldman repeated.

I looked over the creek again. It looked like the water in a backed-up bar toilet.

As Fieldman was walking away, Nevins called out to him, “Shoot the bastard if you have to."

Now that was gratuitous. But so what? Everything was gratuitous this morning.

I turned to follow Nevins back into the house, and my foot bumped against something. A book. John Donne, the spine read. Standard Edition. I picked it up, flipped through a few pages. Daubs of dried blood speckled the orderly lines of verse.

Damn. Nobody should read poetry right before they die.

Twenty minutes later, when nobody else was looking, I walked back outside and climbed over the porch railing. Hanging on the framework below, I swung hand over hand until my legs dangled over the choppy, muddy ground. I let go and miraculously landed on both feet.

I took the time to breathe, then listened to make sure nobody had stepped out onto the deck. I started along the shit-mud bank as quietly as possible. It was not much of a creek-not much to feed it except freak storms and floods. When I got further out, I stretched my head up to look back at the house. The deck was still empty. I turned around and headed downstream.

Why bury this thing? According to the F.B.I.'s own files, Brad Larsen was the “key to exposing organized crime in the greater Las Vegas area.” Unless… well, unless, of course, the Association's influence had pushed its way upstairs, all the way to Special Agents in Charge. But it didn't make sense; not from what I'd heard about Nevins. He was too much of a Boy Scout to be in somebody's pocket.

Finally, after a quarter mile of wading, I found Larsen's body, tucked behind a small pale bush and half-submerged in an eddy. The poor bastard looked like he'd been dead for no more than half a day.

Perfect.

My name is not actually Special Agent Kevin Kennedy. My name is Del Farmer, and I'm a soul collector.

Not that this is a bad thing. I don't collect souls to torture them, or to steal their essence of life or something depraved like that. I'm no vampire. I use the souls for informational purposes only, to perform acts of mercy and justice. Or at least, acts my moral compass told me were merciful and just. The souls I collect are damned anyway. Like Brad Larsen's.

I looked down at his body, which lay twisted in the muddy water. Clearly, he'd been trying to fight his way down the creek. Going to call for help? Probably. Trying to pull it together so he could march back up and kick the shit out of whoever killed his wife? Maybe. There wasn't much to help him along in either direction. At least he was safe from the neighborhood kids back here.

I scooped him under his arms and dragged his body to semi-dry ground. I touched his neck. It felt like a slab of ribeye right out of the refrigerator. “It's going to be all right, buddy,” I told the corpse. The meat couldn't hear me, but I knew Larsen could. His soul was still nearby.

Collecting a soul is a fairly simple procedure. If the soul is still somewhere near its body, that is. If you wait too long, the link between body and soul is severed and it's tough to locate the soul. It is possible, depending on the circumstances and a bit of afterlife detective work-which I would have been forced to do, had Larsen expired more than a day ago. (After 24 hours or so, souls start to figure out they should get going into the next plane of existence.) And sometimes, if you go poking around in the afterlife too much, it can suck you right in. German philosopher Fredrich Neitzsche was perfectly on-target about that “looking into the abyss, the abyss looking into you” thing.

But I would have gladly done it. Brad Larsen was extremely important to me. I had tracked him down this far, and wasn't about to give up now. I knew he was a hot-dog witness, important enough to the Association to warrant a hit, important enough to the government to keep him protected. Larsen knew something.

But what? And why hadn't he coughed it up yet? That's what troubled me. Usually, spilling your guts was the requirement for receiving a new name and house in the middle of suburban nowhere, courtesy of the U.S. Government. If he had, I would have heard about it. After all, I am a Special Agent with the Las Vegas branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Okay, not exactly. I collected the soul of the real Kevin Kennedy-and glommed his credentials-seven months ago, and have been playing the part ever since. Before that, I kept an office as a private investigator in Henderson; before that, I was a county clerk in Reno. The jobs had to change. After a while, even the best cover story will fall apart. You will be found out. It will be time to move on, to adopt a new identity. The point remains: I would have heard.

The first step was to lure Larsen's soul back into his body. I knew he was still around, hanging onto this earthly plane by his astral fingernails. The vibe was strong; stronger still when I moved close to his corpse. The link hadn't been severed yet.

I won't go into the technical details of luring a soul; let's just say it's a cross between a birdcall and a sleight-of-hand card trick. Besides, if I told you, you might be tempted to try it. God forbid you try it in an old house or graveyard. You never know what's gonna answer your call.