Treadle stayed in the car. Ribbon walked toward Corde. They nodded greetings. "How's that lead of yours panning out, Bill?" he asked with no interest.

"Slow but we're making progress."

Ribbon said, "How about we walk over that way?" He pointed to a shady spot of new-cut grass beside an enormous oak.

Something familiar here. Haven't we done this before?

Corde walked along under the tree's massive branches, studying Ribbon's expression then focusing on Treadle's. He fished a nickel out of his pocket and did the coin trick.

There were many things to think about but the one concern he settled on was purely practical: how he was going to break the news to Diane that he'd been fired.

3

"We could sell the car."

Diane Corde had been cleaning out the cupboards. There were cans and boxes covering the counters and tabletop. Corde pulled off his shoes and sat at the kitchen table. A pork-and-beans can rolled toward him. He caught it as it fell off the table. He read the label for a moment then set it down again.

"The car?" he asked.

Diane said, "You got the axe, ain't the end of the world. We can sell the second car, don't need it anyway, and that'll save us the insurance and upkeep."

He looked back at the bottle. "Why you think I got fired?"

"You looking as mournful as you do presently got something to do with it."

Bill Corde said, "They offered me the job of sheriff."

After all these years of marriage there were still a few times when she couldn't tell when he was joking. She put away two cans of pinto beans, reached for a third then stopped.

Corde said, "I'm serious."

"I'm guessing there'd be a little more to it."

"They bailed Steve Ribbon out. He blew the case bad but he's in tight with Bull Cooper and Jack Treadle so they're moving him up to some plush job with the county. I'm sheriff. Jim Slocum takes over on felony investigations. T.T. got fired. With this new witness, we know that Philip was innocent. They needed somebody to blame for the boy's death. T.T. took the hit."

"But I thought there was an inquiry?"

"He's not been charged with anything. He's just been fired."

"That's too bad. I always liked him. He's a good man."

"He's a damn good man," Corde said vehemently.

She sat on the kitchen chair that Corde held out for her. They'd refinished these chairs themselves. A memory smell of the sulfury Rock Magic stripper came back to him.

She said, "And it's T.T.'s the reason you're upset?"

"Partly. And I'd have to give up investigating."

"So what you're worried about is sitting behind a desk?"

"Yeah," Corde said. Then figuring he shouldn't be lying to her at least when it was so clear a lie: "No. What it is is Slocum'd take over the Gebben case."

"Well?"

Corde laughed. "Honey, I've worked with Slocum for years. God bless him but Jim could catch a killer liming the body with the victim's wallet in his hip pocket and the murder knife in his teeth and he'd still screw up the case."

Diane stared at the groceries for a long moment as if looking for something good about the deputy. She said, "I guess."

"I'm not inclined to let go of this one."

Diane said, "You won't like my question but I suppose they'd be paying you more money."

"Some."

"How much?"

"Five."

"Hundred?"

"Thousand."

"Ah." There was enough reverence in her voice to send a bristle of pain all the way through Corde. Diane stood up. The third bean can joined its siblings on the shelf and then she started on the spices. "You haven't eaten. What should we have for dinner? You interested in burritos?"

"I don't want this fellow to get away."

"Slocum taking the case doesn't mean he's going to get away. Jim won't be the only one working on it, will he be?"

"There'll be some rookie from the county probably. The case's an embarrassment now. They just want it to go away."

Diane gave up on the packaged goods. "Just let me ask you. Say this fellow hadn't left those pictures of Sarrie for us. Would you still be this hot after him?"

"Maybe not."

"That hadn't happened you'd take the job?"

Corde said, "I always wanted to be sheriff."

"Well, he didn't do anything to Sarrie and he's gone now. He's scooted, hasn't he?"

"Maybe. Not necessarily."

Diane paused for a moment. "You've wanted this for a long time. Everybody in town thinks more of you than Steve Ribbon. You could get yourself elected as often as you want."

"I can't tell you I don't want it bad… And I better say it: With Steve gone, they need a new sheriff. It'll be either me or Slocum. We're senior."

Diane said, "Well, honey, I don't think you should pass it up. You can't be working for Jim. I just can't see that at all."

Corde smiled in frustration. "It'd be hard to do that to New Lebanon. Believe you me."

She ripped open a cello pack of beef chuck cubes. They fell out glistening and soft on the cutting board. She picked up a knife and began to slice the cubes smaller. She wished she could talk to Ben Breck about this. Not ask his advice but just tell him what she felt. Without looking at her husband she said, "I've got to be honest with you, Bill…" She rarely used his name. Sometimes in connection with expensive presents he'd just given her, more often in connection with sentences like that one.

"Jamie's coming up on college age in a few years and you know all about Dr. Parker's bills."

"Five thousand'd go a long way," Corde said.

They were silent for a long time. Diane broke the stillness. "Okay, I've said what I wanted to. Why don't you go talk to Jamie? He's got to call if he's going to be out past suppertime. He just came back then went into his room without saying hello or anything and he's listening to some gosh-awful rock music that's got screams and howling on it."

"Well, maybe that means he's feeling better."

"He could celebrate feeling better by getting home when he's supposed to and listening to the Bee Gees or Sinatra."

"I'm not in the mood for giving him a talking-to tonight. Maybe tomorrow I will."

She wiped her hands, full of dust and old flour. Corde was studying the ingredients of Budweiser and didn't see her wrench her lips into a narrow grimace or tighten her hand into a fist.

He doesn't want to do anything at all for those two girls dead by the pond – who wouldn't be dead if they hadn't been where they shouldn't've, campus sluts both of them. No, no, he wants to save those cops he thinks he laid out on the concrete floor of Fairway Mall, laid them out like the broken dolls they seemed to be on the front page of the Post-Dispatch.

Well, it's too late for them, Bill. It's too late.

Diane said to her husband, "Quit looking so glum. You think about it tonight and whatever you decide we're still going to have my special burritos for dinner. Then we'll watch that Farrah Fawcett movie and I'll let you guess who the killer is. Now go water that new strip of lawn, whatever the birds've left."

And she turned back to the sink, smiling brightly and scalded with anger at herself for this complete cowardice.

At eight-thirty in the morning Bill Corde walked into the Sheriffs Department and hung up his blue jacket and his hat. Then he went into Steve Ribbon's office where he saw assembled the whole of the department except for the two deputies on morning patrol. They all nodded to him. He paused in the doorway then sat down among them – across the desk from Jim Slocum who was sitting in Ribbon's old high-backed chair.

Resting on the desk prominently was that morning's Register. The headline read: "Sheriffs Dep't Reopens Auden Slay Case". A subhead: "Youth's Death Termed 'Tragic Accident'."