Meg and Pellam walked a short distance down the road, Meg glancing back every few minutes to keep Sam in view. She said, "The doctor told me if I'd see a physical therapist and get some exercise the limp would go away in a month."

"And?"

"I see all these young professional gals on TV, running and doing aerobics and lifting weights… it all looks so silly. I'll wait till it goes away by itself."

"How's the brokerage business?"

"Sold a house last week. Got a couple of maybe-but-let-me-ask-my-wife. Nobody said it's easy."

"How's he doing?" Pellam's head swivelled back toward Sam.

"We keep talking about it. I don't want to, but I think it's for the best. That's what the therapist says. Get it out, get everything out. Maybe it's best for me too. Sam'll say, 'Tell me again about Daddy.' And we have our talk and he understands or he says he does. I don't, of course."

"What do you hear from him? Keith?"

"Trial's next month."

Pellam nodded. "They're going after your house?"

"It's a possibility. My lawyer says there's a chance we'll lose it. But that also means there's a chance we won't."

He felt her eyes turn toward him. A pause then she said, "I'm seeing my friend again."

"Ambler?"

"He was real good after I got hurt."

"He seems like a nice guy."

For a neo-Bircher, rampant capitalist bigot.

"I didn't really want to at first. I mean-"

"You don't have to explain," Pellam said.

She looked at the horizon. "I know I don't." She smiled. "Pellam, you think…" Her voice faded.

He had. A great deal.

And concluded that the answer was pretty clear and they both knew it. He didn't answer or look at her and she didn't repeat the question.

They came to a sign'on the edge of the road, facing away from the shooting.

Welcome to Simmons.

In the Beautiful Catskills.

Population 6300

"What was it when you grew up here?" Meg asked. "The population, I mean."

"Oh, I don't remember. I think maybe the same as Cleary."

"How come they're shooting here?"

"It's a dirty little town. That's what I needed for the story."

"They liked your screenplay after all, huh?"

"Most of it. Of course, the director's ignoring my camera directions."

"Why don't you tell him?"

"Writers don't tell directors where to put the camera. Except euphemistically and only after they get paid."

"Why didn't you set the movie in Cleary?"

"We've got a better cemetery here." He nodded back toward the actor. "For the shooting scene. And the funeral later. When Janice confronts Shep."

"Better cemetery than Cleary's? I'm insulted."

Pellam looked at her hair, now cut short (revealing a good dusting of freckles on the back of her neck), the country-girl jeans, a blue Saks work shirt, brown suede boots.

"Tonight," he said, "Let's have dinner at the inn, okay? Just the two of us?"

"She won't mind?" Meg nodded up the road, toward Pellam's childhood home, three miles away. Meaning Pellam's mother.

"She's seen more of me in the past week than she has in the past five years. She'll be glad to get rid of me. She doesn't cotton to men who drink whiskey. We'll loan her Sam for the evening."

A film crew assistant, a young woman in jeans and a brushed-denim jacket, a fringe of curly hair crowning her forehead, patrolled the road like an Israeli soldier. A huge walkie-talkie bounced on her hip.

He asked Meg, "When are you going back to Cleary?"

"Tomorrow. We can only stay the night. I don't want to keep Sam away from home too long. It's better, I think."

Meg was looking down at the long grass. In the coming dusk the day was taking on a sepia atmosphere. Very still. Quiet.

He motioned her to follow and walked slowly into the graveyard. He pointed to a grave, ten years old.

Meg looked at it. "Your father's name was Benjamin?"

"After Benjamin Franklin, he said."

Meg said, "I'm surprised he didn't name you William."

"William?"

"After Wild Bill, your ancestor."

Pellam gave an exaggerated sigh. "His name was James, not William. James Butler Hickok."

"Oh, right. You told me."

They heard the assistant director call through the bullhorn, "Quiet, everybody, quiet down!"

Pellam and Meg paused and watched the scene begin again. The actor stalking slowly through the tombstones, ready to murder.

Meg said, "So you're a writer now?"

"Nope. Still unemployed. Lefkowitz's gotta give me a writer's credit but that's only because of the Guild. I'm just here in case they need to doctor it. I'm still canned. I'm guilty of the worst crime in Hollywood. Aggravating a producer's ulcer."

"So write more scripts."

Pellam laughed and looked at his watch. "When the mood takes me. I've got a free-lance scouting job in Utah."

They heard the rise and fall of the actors' voices.

Then the director's staticky shout in the bullhorn. "Cut, cut! Somebody… you, yes you! Get that effing squirrel out of here. I don't believe it, I do not believe it."

They returned to the camper and sat down in the lawn chairs-slowly. Meg, because of the gunshot. Pellam, because of the popped shoulder.

"Any chance you'd get back east?"

"Lots of movies to be made."

Meg said, "If you do, why don't you come upstate for a visit? Sam'd like it."

Pellam stretched his legs out in front of him, the sharp tips of his stained Nokonas pointed up toward the gray sky.

"Suppose it's a possibility," he said, and they watched the crew fan out into the cemetery to adjust the grass, pluck up leaves, fix makeup, straighten cuffs, chase a squirrel toward the trees. Everyone serious, everyone rushed, trying to get one more take in the can before the November darkness fell.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

John Pellam's comment about fire, embers, and smoke comes from one of his favorite authors, Reynolds Price, whom he was not, under the circumstances, inclined to attribute.

About the Author

Former attorney and folksinger Jeffery Deaver is the best-selling author of a dozen suspense novels and numerous short stories. He has been nominated for an Edgar Award three times and is a two-time recipient of the Ellery Queen Readers’ Award for best short story of the year. The London Times has called him the “best psychological thriller writer around.” He makes his home in Virginia and California. The Bone Collector, the first Lincoln Rhyme thriller, is soon to be a feature film from Universal Pictures.