“Yeah, you’re right. But now I’ve found the Lord in Louisiana.”

The sheriff smiled. “I heard you were drinking with the New Church roadies in Owltown. Pick up anything useful?”

Riker pulled a crumpled pamphlet from his pocket, held it out at arm’s length and read from it. “ ‘You are on a long journey over perilous ground. You can take the tortuous road, or buy a miracle and fly.’ ” He wadded the pamphlet and tossed it to the floor of the car to join the debris of empty beer cans. “I don’t get it. A religion based on fortune cookies and airline commercials?”

CHAPTER 20

The walls had been painted the color of an orange Popsicle in a cheerful attempt to brighten the hospital room. But the framed pictures of budding spring flowers were a bad joke on Deputy Travis, who lay dying. Yet he seemed to play the good sport. His mouth was set in a grimace of pain that passed for a bizarre smile.

His skin was sallow and filmed with sweat. The tubes in his nostrils tied him to an oxygen unit in the wall. More tubes were plugged into his body, running down from an IV pole where Riker counted six hanging plastic bags of fluids. The lead wires for the pacemaker were sutured to the man’s skin. His breathing was labored, and his erratic heartbeat was graphically displayed by three waveforms on a monitor screen. Cross-wired machines were gathered near the bed like consulting physicians in discussions of lights, beeps and lines.

The smell rising off the body was earthy and dank. Decay prevailed over the medicinal smells from the collection of bottles on the bedside table. Over the past thirty years, Riker had become something of an expert on the smell of death.

On the opposite side of the bed, a young man with a stethoscope and a white coat was talking in an arrogant, high-pitched Godspeak, explaining to the sheriff that this interview was against his professional advice. He had counseled Travis to cancel it. He was sworn to protect his patient at all cost, and his authority superseded the law’s. So he must insist that the sheriff collect his friend and go. Now. That was an order.

The sheriff moved closer to the doctor, who was a smaller man with narrower shoulders and no gun. Tom Jessop explained, in a somewhat larger voice, that the younger man had best back off. Now. That was a suggestion. Or they might need to roll Travis over to make room for the doctor on that hospital bed.

Riker watched the doctor’s face go slack and noted the general shakiness in the younger man’s stance – all the signs of a virgin mugging victim. The doctor glanced at his patient, reconsidered his oath and backed off to the far side of the room to slump against a friendly orange wall.

Riker checked Travis’s chart for recent doses of painkillers which might void his confession. Rules of evidence demanded lucidity. He also scanned the dates and times for a series of resuscitations by violent shocks from a crash cart. And now Riker wondered if the young doctor had ever read this chart. Above another physician’s signature was a shaky scrawl that must be Travis’s own hand. It said, ‘No more.’ And another doctor had signed her name after the words ‘no code,’ the instruction not to resuscitate one more time.

The sheriff leaned over the deputy’s bed and read from a card. “Travis, do you make this confession in the full knowledge that you are about to die?”

Travis looked up at the sheriff, stunned. He had clearly not expected this, despite the six times he had already died and his own written plea not to interfere with his next death. The deputy’s wide eyes had suddenly taken on the fixed and dulled aspect of a corpse, and so Riker was disturbed by the tears.

Tom Jessop repeated the question, and Travis slowly moved his head to indicate that he believed it now.

The sheriff’s face had no emotion as he crumpled the card in one fist, dispensing with formality. “Were you in that mob? Did you murder Cass Shelley?”

“I threw a rock at the dog. He was coming for me. I don’t even know where that rock came from. It was just in my hand, and the dog was coming for me.”

“You were there when she died.”

“I didn’t go there to hurt anybody. Cass was going to accuse me of – ”

His hand rose to make weak circles in the air. “It was all in the letter – the lab tests. She was gonna hang me with science. I knew it was a mistake, and I was gonna tell her that. I never hurt a kid in my life. And I didn’t want to hurt Cass. But Christ, you just whisper a thing like that in a small town – ” He stopped with a look of sudden pain.

An alarm went off, and a line on the monitor broke into jagged spikes. The doctor approached on cat’s feet, and the sheriff pushed him away without needing to touch him, only nodding him back to the wall.

Now a nurse appeared at the bedside. She was a large woman, dark and round. One pudgy hand held up a syringe and squirted fluid into the air. Now she bent over her patient to probe him for a likely vein among the bruises on his arm.

“What’s that?” Jessop demanded.

“Morphine for the pain,” she said, looking up at him as though he had just crawled out of a roach trap. And now her glare included the doctor at the wall in the same sentiment.

“You can’t give him that!” Jessop shouted at her, moving forward. “Drugs invalidate the – ”

“Fuck off,” said the nurse. And then she shot the needle home.

Riker gave the sheriff points for recognizing the voice of ultimate authority in this room, and for having the grace to know when to quit. The man kept his silence for all the minutes it took the nurse to satisfy herself that the drug was doing its work on her patient and destroying a prime piece of evidence.

Riker marked the nurse as a class act when she refrained from spitting on the doctor as she majestically sailed out of the room.

Travis’s face was relaxed. His mouth sagged open and his words came slowly. “Then the rocks were flying, and the dog was coming for me.”

“Tell me about the letter.”

“That’s all I know about the letter.”

“Who else was there?”

“Ira’s father. Then I had a rock in my hand, but I never picked one up from the ground till after I threw that first one at the dog. I never – ”

“Who else? Was Babe Laurie there?”

Travis nodded.

“You saw him throwing rocks?”

“No. He could’ve, I guess. I was busy with the dog.”

“Malcolm and Fred Laurie?”

“Not Malcolm. Fred was there, and I did see him chucking rocks. Malcolm had walked off before Jack Wooley threw the first one. I picked up more rocks to hit the dog. He was still coming at me.”

“Forget that dog. What about Alma Furgueson?”

He was drifting for a moment. The sheriff grabbed his shoulder to call him back, and then Travis nodded.

Riker leaned in and asked softly, “Did Babe Laurie ever threaten you? Did he have anything to do with your heart attack? Were you in a fight with him the day he died?”

“I had nothing to do with that. I never killed a living thing in my life. I stoned the dog, but the dog lived.”

“What brought on the heart attack?” asked Riker.

“I was out at the Shelley house to pick up Good Dog and take him to the vet. Henry Roth always helps me with that, but he wasn’t there yet. And the dog was jumping up and beating his head into the window glass. Then I had the pain in my chest. I was driving back to town, when I saw her walking in the road.”

“Mallory?” asked Riker.

“Kathy,” said Travis. “She looked just like her mother. Then I felt like I’d been stabbed by lightning, and I ran the car off the road. Kathy saved my life. She should’ve let me die.”

“You got that right,” said the sheriff. “Why did that mob murder Kathy’s mother?”

“I don’t know. It was me Cass was after. But it was a mistake – I swear to God. She barged into the meeting and said – ” His hands were rising, flailing about.