“That’s absurd. He’s a very gentle man.” A man who kept a grisly list and cheerfully entered into a plot to torture residents of Dayborn, but still, a gentle soul. He shook off Riker’s hand. “I can’t see Henry killing – ”

“Ease up, Charles. I’m just asking. If you were thinking straight, you wouldn’t be looking at me as the enemy. You know it and I know it. This is Mallory’s work.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t spoken to her since you came to town. You think you know her so well, and here you are maligning her on – ”

“Yesterday, you asked me if I knew she could play the piano. I heard her play once. It was a surprise party for Lou Markowitz. The musicians had gone home, and so had the families. It was only cops in the hall, and the party wasn’t slowing down any.”

Charles knew he was being softened up, suckered into a warm moment of shared intimacy. But Riker told stories so well, he fell for this, time after time.

“So Lou calls out, ‘I want music.’”

This was when life was still good to Louis Markowitz. His wife, Helen, had not yet been killed by the cancer. Louis was a family man with a cop for a daughter. His father and grandfather had been cops, and that tradition was going to continue. The old man was in high spirits that night. “He wanted the party and the music to go on and on. He was standing by the piano, yelling, ‘Can’t any of you bastards play?’ ”

Mallory sat down at the piano and began a child’s study piece. “It was a tune my niece played when she was taking lessons. Just a simple little song, pretty and sweet. And now a hall full of drunken cops quiets down – no noise at all – only the music.”

But what Riker remembered best was the look on Louis’s face. He had raised her from a child of ten and never knew she could play the piano. She had always been so secretive about her past. But that night, Mallory played for him. This was a gift for her father. It was an elegant gesture, for she only played that one time, only played for him, and never again.

“Lou Markowitz really pissed me off when he got himself killed. Now I’m afraid for his kid. I lose a lot of sleep worrying that she’ll spin out of control if there’s nobody to care about her and keep her grounded. I know how you feel about her, Charles, and so did Lou. I think her old man was counting on you to give his kid a little ballast in the wind. But you screwed up. She’s here to hurt a lot of people, and you’re helping her.”

“That’s unfair, Riker.” It was unfair, wasn’t it?

“I was at the hospital last night. I wanted to see the deputy, but he couldn’t have visitors. You remember that woman who crawled out of the cemetery yesterday? Her name was Alma Furgueson. They were bringing her in the door as I was leaving. The ambulance driver told me she slit her wrists.”

“My God.” Charles kissed his soul goodbye as it was edging away from him, trying to avoid association by proximity.

“They got her to the hospital in time. She’s gonna pull through. But what if she’d died? You came real close to killing a woman for Mallory. How much further will you go?”

How far was he prepared to go for Mallory? Oh, straight down to the center of the earth, where he imagined hell must be. He anticipated being barred from heaven because of what he had done to Alma.

Before he could answer to Riker, the sheriff’s car came spinning out of the trees and across wet ground from the direction of Henry’s cottage. It stopped in a wide lake in the grass and spun its wheels, then freed itself and pulled to a stop twenty feet from Riker and Charles. The car was splattered with mud and fresh scratches from low branches.

The sheriff leaned out the window and yelled. “Riker, if you still want to talk to Travis, you better come quick. He wants to make a confession. The doctor says he’s not gonna last all day.”

“We’ll talk later,” said Riker in a low voice.

“Maybe I’ll see you at the hospital,” said Charles. “I think I’d like to visit Alma Furgueson.”

“Good idea.” Riker walked across the grass toward the sheriff’s car. The passenger door was hanging open.

When the car was out of sight beyond the trees, Charles heard the basement door open and close behind him. He turned around, not really surprised to see Mallory standing there. But he was unsettled by the changes in her. The running shoes had been replaced with boots, and she wore a flowing white blouse from another era. A dark bandanna covered her throat. There was nothing to cover her gun. A heavy belt dipped low on her right hip with the weight of the revolver – in the best tradition of a gunslinger.

When they had cleared Augusta’s yard, the sheriff’s car pitched into a lake of rainwater flanked by trees. The wheels turned while the car went nowhere.

Riker leaned over to light the cigarette dangling from the sheriff’s mouth. “You don’t think it would have been easier to leave the car at Roth’s place and walk to Augusta’s?”

They were rolling forward again.

“Yeah, but I do like to annoy that old woman. She thinks she’s got her place locked off from the rest of the world. So I come through in the car every now and then, just to thumb my nose at her. Most days she yells at me, and it’s a lot more fun. You know small towns. We’re all so easily amused.”

Yeah, right. “How’d you know where to find me?”

“Oh, my deputy tailed you out to Augusta’s.”

“The deputy was on my tail?”

“Well, yeah. Real early, she caught on that you’d seen her, so she started to follow Henry instead, just to throw you off. Then she let Henry lose her so she could double back and pick up on you again. Don’t let it bother you, Riker. She did say that for a city boy, you did a good job of staying with Henry. I understand he took a real snaky route.”

Now Riker had to wonder if the deputy’s act in the bar had been a double blind. The sheriff was that convoluted.

“So Travis is dying,” said Riker. “You’ve been waiting for this a long time, haven’t you?”

“Seventeen years. I thought that little bastard’s heart would never give out. Glad to have you with me, Riker. I need a witness if that deathbed confession is gonna carry weight in court.”

The car turned onto the wide highway.

“Oh, by the way, Riker.” The sheriff was grinning. “When you see your old friend’s foster daughter, you tell Detective Mallory she can have her pocket watch back anytime she wants to come and get it.”

Riker slumped down in his seat and stared out the window. “Okay, you got me.”

They rode in silence for another mile. There was a comforting monotony in the endless fields of sugar cane, the flat landscape with nothing higher than a tree. No surprises out there.

“Professional courtesy, Riker, cop to cop? Is Kathy a good detective?”

“She’s as good as it gets. You’re not half bad yourself, Sheriff. I suppose you ran Markowitz through the back door – a warrant call on a New York car registration?”

“Yeah, but that only told me he was a dead cop. I got the rest from Jeff Mckenna in Missing Persons. You know him?”

“Sure. That old bastard’s been around for a hundred years.”

“I met him eighteen years ago when I was hunting a runaway. I knew the boy was in New York, so I called Mckenna. He found him a month later when the kid got picked up in a drug sweep. I met the man when I went up north to fetch the boy home.”

“So you called Mckenna and asked after your old friend, Louis Markowitz, who you never met in your life.”

“That I did. And Mckenna breaks the news that old Lou is dead. Then I asked what became of Mallory, and he says she’s still on the force, and she’s got a detective’s shield now.”

“And then you asked about me?”

“Oh, he had a lot to say about you, Riker. Yeah, good old Mckenna – memory like an elephant. He even remembered the name of the boy he tracked down for me. We were lucky to get the kid back as quick as we did. He was sick as a little dog, but no holes in him bigger than a needle, thank God. Interesting town you got there, Riker. Children getting stoned on drugs, people pissing on the walls, perverts cruising Forty-second Street, looking to buy little boys. Must get you down after a while.”