“Are you saying this woman was stoned to death?”

Jimmy Simms bore the Laurie family resemblance in a girlish delicacy of bone structure. And though he had turned thirty this year, his unshaven face was still spotty with the straggly silken hairs of an adolescent beard.

Jimmy’s father would no longer speak to his small half-finished son, and neither would the man allow him in the house anymore. But over the long years of estrangement, Jimmy’s mother had continued to slip him her husband’s castoff clothes. He could roll up the legs of his father’s long pants, but the shoes were so big, even with newspaper stuffed in the toes, he always limped with a blister on one foot or the other.

He shambled up the path to the Shelley house. The old black Labrador retriever knew his footsteps, despite the alternating limp. The animal raised his regal head in the usual greeting, a look of tolerance but no great interest.

Jimmy reached into the pocket of his oversized windbreaker and pulled out a bulky package. Unfolding the paper wrapping, he displayed the half-eaten fish fillet for the dog’s approval. He had recently retrieved it from the trash bin behind Jane’s Cafe, and now he set it down on the dirt in front of the black Lab. Years ago, he had brought offerings of red meat, but the dog had since lost his chewing teeth, and now Jimmy’s gifts were made of softer foods.

“Babe Laurie is dead,” he said to the dog for the fifth day in a row, as if by repetition he could make himself understood. He sat down in the dirt and stroked the animal’s neck.

The dog only sniffed at the fish, and then rested his massive graying head on his paws.

The sun had set, and the light was going fast. It had been Jimmy’s long habit never to be caught out after dark, but tonight he decided to remain until the moon had risen. There was no telling how much time was left for the ancient dog.

The animal slept for a while. From the low growls and the frantic movement of a hind leg, Jimmy surmised that the old black Lab did not like his dreams. Now the dog snapped awake, raised his head and turned his face upward until the waxing moon was reflected in his eyes. Jimmy jumped in his skin, believing the eyes had begun to glow.

The dog stood up with great effort. He yelped, then crooned, his voice slowly swelling to a full-throated howling.

The old lab still had magnificent moments. One day soon, the animal would die, and Jimmy would miss his company and their common bond of despair, which the dog expressed so eloquently in his song to the moon.

The dog believed his own name was a long high note and two whistling ripples of music from a child’s mouth. No one had called him by this sound since the child went away. She had done the unthinkable. She had left him behind, broken and bleeding. And she continued to do this to him night after night, in every dream, eroding his sanity a little more each time he closed his eyes.

He parted his lips and bared his remaining teeth to the little man beside him, growling low, until the man scrambled to his feet and limped away.

Now the dog began to wail in earnest, sharing his dementia with Alma Furgueson down in Owltown. The dog howled and Alma cried. Her neighbors pretended not to hear. The strange duet went on for hours.

Alma pulled the covers up over her head, but still she could see the rocks flying and hear the sickening sound of their impact on human flesh and bone and teeth. She could hear the sound of Cass’s body breaking.

Alma’s nearest neighbor was long accustomed to this racket. But now he removed the sound-baffling pillow from his head. He woke his wife, and they both listened, for this was something they had never heard before. Alma had begun to harmonize with the dog.

Lying on her bed in the Dayborn jail, Mallory was also listening. She turned her face to the bars that kept her apart from the dog.

One fist rose high in the air and crashed down on her pillow with enough force to burst the case and send the feathers flying all around her cell, like small freed birds. Throwing off the covers, she stood up and walked barefoot to the window, the better to hear her dog’s mad serenade.

After a time, the old black Lab fell into an exhausted silence. Mallory returned to her bed and to sleep, lying under a blanket dusted with feathers and resembling a sheltering wing.

CHAPTER 8

The eary morning sky was an outrageous shade of deep blue. The air was crisp and breezy, filled with ever present birdsong, as Charles passed through the long stand of trees which served as windbreak and borderland between Dayborn and Owltown. He made his way along the well-worn path to join up with a paved road curving into Owltown’s small commercial district.

This main street was lined with simple structures, one and two levels of weathered gray board. Though obviously decades old, they had the temporary character of hastily constructed carnival booths. The telephone poles and streetlamps had a greater sense of permanence. A neon sign in every third storefront window advertised liquor by the shot or the quart.

A car sped by, whipping up trash and dust in its wake. Bottles lay against the curbs; some were shattered, and one was still grasped in the hand of a slumbering drunk. Half of him lay on the walkway, and the rest of him sprawled in the street. Aromas of stale whiskey and vomit hung cloudlike over the man’s body. He snored contentedly as Charles passed him by.

A woman was coming toward him, hobbling as if one leg might be a good three inches shorter than the other. And now Charles could see that it was, for she held a broken shoe in her hand and limped along on one bare foot and one stiletto heel. Her brassy hair had the texture of slept-in cotton candy, and the dress of dark blue sequins threw off a million brilliant sparks of sunlight. She had wept her mascara into a raccoon’s mask.

He was about to ask her if he could help, putting out one hand to hail her when a car pulled to the curb beside him, and a familiar voice commanded, “Don’t touch anything in Owltown, Mr. Butler. You don’t know where it’s been.”

The weeping woman turned abruptly to face the car marked with the official star and legend of the sheriff’s office. Her face was in a panic as she hurried down the street, moving faster now that she had lost her one good shoe in a race to be gone.

The car’s curbside door opened in invitation, and Charles got into the front seat with Tom Jessop. The interior smelled of aftershave and cigarettes. The dashboard was a clutter of loose papers, envelopes and handwritten notes on napkins and matchbook covers. “Good morning,” said Charles.

The sheriff touched the brim of his brown Stetson in a return salutation. “Where you headed, Mr. Butler?”

“I’m hoping to get out to the fairgrounds before the tent goes up.” And he also hoped the sheriff had no time-consuming business with him. Charles had waited all his adult life for this event.

“Yeah, that tent raising is a rare sight.” The sheriff put the car in gear and they glided away from the curb. “You get a great view of the lower bayou from the horseshoe bend. The Lauries cleared that bend by fire – killed every root system on the near shore.”

“Not very sound ecology. Wouldn’t that tend to speed up the erosion of the land?”

“Yeah.” The sheriff smiled. “One day, all of Owltown will be under water. It may take the better part of a century, but I’m a patient man.” And his patience was evident in the slow crawl of the car.

“I take it you don’t care much for Owltown.”

‘Let me give you the tour, and we’ll see how well you like this place.“ They stopped at a cross street. The sheriff pointed to a line of gray shacks along an unpaved road. ”You go that way, and you can see something real nasty at the peep shows.“ He turned to the rear-window view of the road already traveled. ”Go back that way, and you can buy drink, drugs and a woman at the same establishment – one-stop shopping.“ The car began to crawl again. ”When I was a kid, we didn’t have all those good things – there was nothing out here but Ed Laurie’s bar and a pack of owls.“