“Your list? Does everyone in this town keep a damn list? It’s the mob, right? All the people who killed your mother.”

Mallory was staring at him. “Who else keeps lists?”

“Well, Henry has a list. The sheriff keeps one, too. Henry didn’t tell you that?”

“We haven’t had much time to talk. I’ve been busy.”

“I can see that.”

She touched his hand to prompt him. “The sheriff’s list?”

“Jessop never stopped investigating your mother’s murder. He’s been torturing his suspects. Well, actually, only two that I know of – Alma Furgueson and the deputy.”

“Travis? The sheriff thinks Travis was in that mob?”

“Yes. And he’s been making the man pay for it all this time.” And now he thought he saw a regret in Mallory’s eyes. But he had never seen it there before, and he was uncertain. “You didn’t know he never gave up, did you?” No, she hadn’t known; he was sure of it. “Well then, you’re both on the same side really. You don’t have to hide. You could – ”

“Charles, he’s a cop, and I’m not. I left my badge in New York. I thought you understood that.”

“What are you planning, Mallory? A little vigilante justice? Henry tells me there were nearly thirty people in that mob. You can’t get them all.”

“Oh, sure I can.” And in the same tone, she said, “Hand me those pliers, will you?”

He picked up the pliers from the crossbeam and held them out to her. “I would think the next logical step would be to find out who killed Babe Laurie. Then once you’re clear of suspicion – ”

“Why should I care who killed Babe Laurie?”

“But don’t you wonder why Babe was killed?”

“No. It doesn’t matter.” Her voice was in the irritation mode. But she quickly shifted out of it with a sudden change of subject. “So what did you think of the show tonight?”

“Yours or Malcolm’s?”

“The circus, Charles.”

“Well, the magic act needs work. It’s a little crude for my tastes.”

“Not up to Max Candle’s standards?”

“Not at all. Too much flash. Malcolm has no polish.” And now Charles looked down again and remembered that he was on top of a telephone pole. The earth seemed to shift, or was that his stomach?

“Did your cousin ever dabble in icons and religious miracles?” Her tone was so offhand he might have taken it for small talk, but she never did small talk.

“Well, no, but Max knew the trade.” He looked down at his shirt again as she flashed through an array of diagrams, finally settling on one she liked.

“Could you give Henry a few pointers for a small-scale religious miracle?”

And now he beheld a Mallory miracle. She touched the keyboard and then there was light in Owltown.

“This interference with the electricity, won’t they trace that back here and -?”

She looked up at him, affronted. “The power company will send a crew out to check the lines. Ten miles down the road, they’ll find the problem on a main line. Then they’ll figure the backup circuits kicked in. I left a squirrel on the exposed section. He’s burnt to a crisp.”

“You didn’t – ”

“Charles, would you feel better if I told you the squirrel died of natural causes before I fried him?”

Her sarcasm was light, but it exposed a nerve. He knew he must seem like a clown in her eyes. “I was about to say, you didn’t overlook a thing. And now if you’ll excuse me, it’s been a long day, and I’m tired of playing the fool.”

He was climbing down when he felt her hand on his arm.

“Stay,” she said.

He hesitated.

Well, it was not quite the command she would give to a dog. The inflection was slightly different. In fact, coming from Mallory, that single syllable could almost be construed as an apology.

Her hand tightened on his arm, as if she needed force to restrain him. She didn’t – she never did. He had a sudden clarity of sight, a hyper-awareness of Mallory. She leaned across the dangerous cluster of exposed wiring. The electrical meter in her hand was aglow with pulsing red lights. Her lips grazed his cheek, his ear, and she whispered, “I won’t kill another squirrel – I swear.”

Before he could be insulted anew, she covered his mouth with her own. He was very still, not wanting to lose this connection with her. Had he been standing on knife points, he would not have moved. He could hear the humming in the phone lines, and feel the vibrations where his legs embraced the pole, throbbing in time to a blinking red light, an electronic heartbeat. His eyes closed to the computer-blue wash of her skin.

It was all too brief. She pulled back, but only a little. As the euphoria ebbed away, he wondered if she fully understood the effect she had on him; he thought she might. He would lose sleep wondering why she had kissed him, toward what ulterior motive. No, actually, he wouldn’t.

He didn’t care why she had done it. And he would cheerfully fly down from the pole and kill a score of squirrels for her if she asked. He knew she would ask something.

“I want you to go back to New York, Charles. Go tonight.” Why couldn’t she want something simple like every last drop of his blood? He had no problem with dying for Mallory. But he could never abandon her. She mustn’t expect that. Going back to New York without her was unthinkable. He was shaking his head.

“Henry can help me with everything. Okay? I don’t need you, Charles.”

“Well, thank you very much.”

“You don’t know this place. You can’t – ”

“Good night.” He began climbing down the pole. The metal spikes were cold under his hand. He fixed his eyes on the pole and strengthened his resolve not to look at her again. If he didn’t see her tensing for the strike, then she had no power over him. Yeah, right – as Mallory would say.

“Where are you going?” Her tone rebuked him for the temerity of going away without being dismissed.

Well, tough – another Malloryism. He had learned a lot of them over the years of abuse at her hands; the abuse mainly consisting of him loving her, and Mallory loving no one. “Charles? Where are – ”

“I’m going to find out who killed Babe Laurie.”

“Charles.” Her voice was faint in the growing distance between them.

He was doing so well. He made his way along the dark road and didn’t look back. As he approached the artist’s cottage, it was dark. Mallory sitting on her telephone pole, tapping at her computer, turned on all the lamps in the house, all at once, to light his way.

After a quiet hour of housebreaking, Mallory returned to the woods with a shovel from her mother’s garden shed. She wondered what the sheriff would make of her recent visit to his empty house, and what she had left behind. The tool case was slung on a shoulder strap and thumping against her side as she moved through the trees, guided by a narrow golden beam. The penlight exposed every root and rock lying in wait for her. When she brushed a fern away from her face, the penlight shone on one hand, and she froze.

Her long red fingernails were torn and broken, and the polish was flaking away. The flesh showed scratches, raw red knuckles and blue bruises. She stared at this damage for a moment, incredulous, as though such things as chipped nails were inconceivable in her universe. And this was true.

From the age of ten, she had been compulsively neat, never suffering any chips in her facade, nor one thing out of place in her environs. Her foster mother, the late Helen Markowitz, had prized a neat, clean house. Young Kathy had worshipped Helen and made this ethic part of her religion, which did not include God, but certainly every type of mop and brush, every solvent and powder known to God and professional cleaning women. Back in her New York condo was a pantry, where each can, each bottle and jar stood at attention in the perfect formation of little soldiers in the service of the obsessively tidy Mallory, who was marred only in the places where it didn’t show.