Landry passed a row of post-mounted mailboxes, noticing that the one with the Landry name had the red flag down, as it had been for about five years.

He pulled into the long gravel drive, overgrown with weeds.

The farmhouse was a classical white clapboard Victorian, with porch and gingerbread ornamentation, built in 1889 by Landry's greatgrandfather. It was the third house to occupy the site, the first being a log cabin built in the 1820s when the Great Black Swamp was drained and cleared by his ancestors. The second house had been circa Civil War, and he'd seen a photo of it, a small shingled saltbox shape, sans porch or ornamentation. The better looking the farmhouse, according to local wisdom, the more the husband was henpecked. Apparently, Great-Grandpa Cyrus was totally pussy-whipped.

Landry pulled the Saab up to the porch and got out. The setting sun was still hot, but it was dusty dry, very unlike the Washington steam bath.

Landry stared at the house. There was no one on the porch to welcome him home, nor would there ever be. His parents had retired from farming and gone to Florida five years before. His sister, Barbara, unmarried, had gone to Cleveland to seek career fulfillment as an advertising executive. His brother, Paul, was a vice-president with Coca-Cola in Atlanta. Paul had been married to a nice lady named Carol who worked for CNN, and Paul had joint custody of his two sons, and his life was governed by his separation agreement and by Coca-Cola.

Keith Landry had never married, partly because of the experience of his brother and of most of the people he knew, and partly because of his job, which was not conducive to a life of marital bliss.

Also, if he cared to be honest with himself, and he might as well be, he had never completely gotten over Annie Prentis, who lived about ten miles from where he was now parked in front of his family farm. Ten-point-three miles, to be exact.

Keith Landry got out of his Saab, stretched, and surveyed the old homestead. In the twilight, he saw himself as a young college grad on the porch, an overnight bag in his hand, kissing his mother and his sister, Barbara, shaking hands with little Paul. His father was standing beside the family Ford, where Landry stood now beside the Saab. It was sort of a Norman Rockwell scene, except that Keith Landry wasn't going off to make his way in the world; he was going to the county courthouse, where a bus waited in the parking lot to take that month's levee of young men from Spencer County to the induction center in Toledo.

Keith Landry recalled clearly the worried looks on the faces of his family but could not recall very well how he himself felt or acted.

He seemed to remember, however, that he felt awful, and at the same time, he was filled with a sense of adventure, an eagerness to leave, which made him feel guilty. He didn't understand then his mixed emotions, but now he did, and it could be summed up in a line from an old song: How you gonna keep them down on the farm, after they've seen Paree?

But it wasn't Paree, it was Vietnam, and the recruits hadn't mustered in the village square for a roll call and jolly send-off, nor had they returned marching up Main Street after what would have been called V-V Day. And yet, the net effect of the experience for Landry was the same: He never came back to the farm. He'd come back physically, of course, in one piece, but he'd never come back in mind or spirit, and the farm was never his home after that.

So here it was, a quarter century after he'd stepped off his front porch into the world, and he was standing at the steps of that porch again, and the images of his family faded away, leaving him with an unexpected sadness.

He said to himself, "Well, I'm home, even if no one else is."

He climbed the steps, found the key in his pocket, and entered.

Chapter Two

On the north side of Spencerville, the better side of town, ten-point-three miles from the Landry farm, Annie Baxter, nee Prentis, cleared the dinner dishes from the kitchen table.

Her husband, Cliff Baxter, finished his can of Coors, barely suppressed a belch, looked at his watch, and announced, "I got to go back to work."

Annie had gathered as much from the fact that Cliff had not changed into his usual jeans and T-shirt before dinner. He wore his tan police uniform and had shoved a dish towel in his collar to keep the beef gravy off his pleated shirt. Annie noted that his underarms and waist were wet with perspiration. His holster and pistol hung from a peg on the wall, and he'd left his hat in his police car.

Annie inquired, "When do you think you'll be home?"

"Oh, you know better than to ask me that, honey buns." He rose. "Who the hell knows? This job's gettin' crazy. Drugs and fucked-up kids." He strapped on his holster.

Annie noticed that the gun belt was at the last notch, and if she had been mean-spirited, she would have offered to fetch a leather awl and make a new hole for him.

Cliff Baxter noticed her looking at his girth and said, "You feed me too damn good."

Of course it was her fault. She remarked, "You might ease up on the beer."

"You might ease up on your mouth."

She didn't reply. She was in no mood for a fight, especially over something she didn't care about.

She looked at her husband. For all his extra weight, he was still a good-looking man in many ways, with tanned, rugged features, a full head of thick brown hair, and blue eyes that had a little sparkle left. It was his looks and his body that had attracted her to him some twenty years before, along with his bad-boy charm and cockiness. He had been a good lover, at least by the standards of those days and this place. He'd turned out to be a passable father, too, and a good provider, rising quickly to chief of police. But he was not a good husband, though if you asked him, he'd say he was.

Cliff Baxter opened the screen door and said, "Don't bolt the doors like you did last time."

Last time, she thought, was nearly a year ago, and she'd done it on purpose, so he'd have to ring and knock to wake her. She was looking for a fight then but had gotten more than she'd bargained for. He'd come home that time after four A.M., and since then and before then, it was always around four, once or twice a week.

Of course his job required odd hours, and that alone was no cause for suspicion. But through other means and other sources, she'd learned that her husband fooled around.

Cliff trundled down the back steps and howled at their four dogs in the backyard. The dogs broke into excited barking and pawed at their chain-link enclosure. Cliff howled again, then laughed. To his wife he said, "Make sure you give them the scraps and let them run awhile."

Annie didn't reply. She watched him get into his chief's car and back out of the driveway. She closed the kitchen door and locked it but did not bolt it.

In truth, she reflected, there was no reason to even lock the door. Spencerville was a safe enough town, though people certainly locked their doors at night. The reason she didn't have to lock the door was that her husband had assigned police cars, nearly around the clock, to patrol Williams Street. His explanation: Criminals know where we live, and I don't want nobody hurting you. The reality: Cliff Baxter was insanely jealous, possessive, and suspicious.

Annie Baxter was, in effect, a prisoner in her own house. She could leave anytime, of course, but where she went and whom she saw came to the attention of her husband very quickly.

This was embarrassing and humiliating, to say the least. The neighbors on the neat street of Victorian homes — doctors, lawyers, business people — accepted the official explanation for the eternal police presence with good grace. But they knew Cliff Baxter, so they knew what this was all about. "Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater," Annie said aloud for the millionth time, "had a wife but couldn't keep her. He put her in a pumpkin shell, and there he kept her very well." She added, "You bastard."