"Uh-huh. Say, Sheriff, there's something I wanted to talk to you about."

"What's that?"

"I saw the car my friend was in."

"Your friend? Oh, right-the car got itself blowed up."

"There were two bullet holes in it."

"Bullet holes?" Not one strand of lean muscle in his cheek changed position. "I doubt that, sir."

"I've hunted since I was twelve," Pellam said.

"We went over it real careful and we didn't find any sign of nothing a'tall."

"Two," Pellam said, "by the gas tank."

His face still didn't budge. "Oh, you mean, in the back. Those the holes in the back about three, four feet apart?"

Pellam said, "Believe they were."

The sheriff nodded. "Firemen."

"What?"

"When they got there, the car was still on fire and the trunk was closed. They used this pike, I don't exactly know what it is, a big rod kind of thing with a hook on it to pop the trunk. They do that with a burning car. Open it up as much as they can. They got a lot of good equipment. Always using the Jaws of Life to cut people out of wrecks."

"Oh."

"Where'd you happen to run across this car, sir?"

"Saw it out by the highway. At the junkyard a mile outside of town."

The sheriff looked down at his feet, shoes expertly polished with more Vaseline. "Uh, one of the things I was looking for you for-I wanted to mention: it might not be such a good idea, you doing what you're doing here."

Pellam said, "What would that be?"

"You know, I get the feeling that you don't like the fact your friend got himself killed doing drugs and you're trying to show something else happened."

"Investigation was pretty fast."

"Pardon?"

"The coroner's inquest, your investigation. All happened pretty fast."

The impassive, sunglass-less face nodding slowly. "Maybe you'd be used to city police work. We don't have a thousand homicides a year in Cleary, sir. We get a crime, or an accident, and we take care of it quick."

"I appreciate that. But I doubt my friend was doing drugs…"

"Mr Pellam, we don't have an evidence room, like you see on TV, you know. But we have this file cabinet and sitting inside it right now is a foil package with what must be a couple ounces of hashish. Now, I-"

"But-"

"Let me finish, sir. I was in Nam. I've done some smoking in my day. And I should add I've got no axe to grind with movie people or with you or your friend. We found the dope, we found a lighter, we found a brush fire. You yourself can see where the evidence points."

"I've never heard of a car getting blown up because somebody was smoking nearby."

"Well, you think about that Negro comedian a few years ago, set himself on fire."

"Marty wouldn't be freebasing coke in a state park at noon." A faint smile.

"Oh? Then when would he be?"

Pellam leaned forward. He spotted a cautious flicker in the sheriff's eyes. "Listen, Sheriff, let me line it up for you. And you tell me what you think, okay? My camper's vandalized with threatening messages. Then my friend dies in a pretty curious way. And in forty-eight hours the place where it happened is dug over, the car gets sold to a junkyard and the man who rented the car to him goes off to Miami."

"Clearwater. Fred Sillman goes to Clearwater every year."

"I don't honestly give a shit what his leisure schedule is. My friend didn't die the way everybody keeps saying he did. And if you aren't going to find out what happened I am. Simple as that."

"We did our job, sir. We found some facts about your friend that weren't so nice. I'm sorry about him and I'm sorry about your job but there's nothing to be gained by you staying in Cleary."

"You telling me to leave town?"

"Of course not. You're free to visit, to sight-see, hell, you can even buy yourself a house here-I understand you know a local real estate broker pretty good-all I'm saying is, you're not free to be a policeman. And if you start troubling people I'm going to have to get involved."

"Your concerns've been noted." Pellam tried to imitate the smile. It didn't work too well. He had better luck with: "Have a good day, sir."

Wexell Ambler was going to visit his lover.

He walked out of his house-supposedly on his way to a meeting-and strode toward his big Cadillac, parked in the U-shaped driveway. He was looking forward to sitting with her in the Jacuzzi in the glass-enclosed deck of his house in nearby Claverack, New York, from which they could watch the Catskill Mountains in the distance-now a stunning wash of color. He could look forward to enjoying fresh coffee and tasting some of her cooking.

Thinking about making slow love in the hot tub or in the large Shaker bed he'd bought for her because she'd mentioned that she liked the simple lines. She was a strange woman. He often compared the two of them, his ex-wife and his mistress.

And tried to decide what were the differences and what were the similarities. They both were attractive, dressed well, knew how to carry on a conversation at the country club. His wife was more intelligent but she was also less imaginative; she had no spark, no humor. She let him get away with anything. His lover challenged him (perhaps, he now reflected, this made him feel younger. Uncertainty was a quality brought out by one of the first girls he'd been in love with).

He'd just gotten into the Caddie when his housekeeper ran to the door and signaled to him with a wave.

"It's Mark," she called. "Says it's urgent."

Ambler said, "Have him call on the car phone."

He backed the car out of the driveway and waved to her affectionately once more.

Waiting for the call. He was thinking less about what the beefy young man would have to say and more about the woman he was on his way to see.

Ambler was a religious man (on the executive committee of the First Presbyterian Church), and although he understood that Calvinistic predestination did not absolve him from choosing the right path, the moral path, nonetheless the religion instilled in him a tendency toward helplessness on those moral questions the answers to which he did not like. He tended to throw his hands up and follow his instinct.

So although he knew what he was doing was immoral, he felt an addiction to his mistress, and could more or less successfully conclude that he had no control over the matter.

He packaged the infidelity carefully, though. For instance, he never thought of the word "cheating," which gave the whole matter a blue-collar taint. And he always thought of his paramour as a mistress or lover, rather than girlfriend or "the woman he was seeing on the side." (Dignity was important to Wex Ambler.) He never risked embarrassing his lover just to satisfy his own passion and went to crazy lengths to keep the affair secret.

The one problem, though-one he hadn't counted on-was that he'd fallen completely in love with the woman.

Ambler, who was fifty-two, was not so old that he had forgotten love makes people stupid-and in his philosophy, as well as his profession, stupidity was the number-one sin. He had guarded against love but unlike religion and unlike money and unlike power, love had a mind of its own.

It had nabbed him, but good.

At his insistence, their get-togethers had become more and more frequent. And he now felt his center giving, falling further toward her. He was growing hungrier, even desperate-while she seemed increasingly aloof.

Was there anything more foolish than a middle-aged man in love? And was there anyone who could care less about that foolishness?

Ambler smelled leaf dust and warm air from the Caddie's heater and wished he were already at the cabin.

The phone buzzed. The noise always disturbed him; it reminded him of the alarm a hospital monitor would make when a patient went into cardiac arrest. He snatched up the light receiver.