"Aim for his chest," Bello said, interrupting, "with the crosshairs on the middle of the widest part of him. Forget about taking a head shot at this distance."

"When he's down," Barnum continued, stepping on Bello's words, "we wait an hour, keeping the body in the scope and checking for movement. If we don't see any, you'll go down and drag him into the river. I'll stay back and keep watch down the road."

Bello listened intently, his eyes on Barnum, making sure the ex-sheriff had everything correct. Barnum didn't like being looked at that way, and didn't make a secret of it in his rehearsed delivery.

"Okay, then," Bello said, turning and walking down the middle of the two-track. Barnum followed.

There were problems with Bello's plan, Barnum thought. He'd reviewed it the night before, turning it over again and again, and finally figured out what was wrong with it: He was being set up. When Bello double chirped and Barnum fired, Bello would deliberately miss, so the only slug to be found in Romanowski's body would be the.270 round. Everyone knew Barnum hunted with a.270, and a ballistics check would tie the slug to the rifle.

Barnum was well known as a drinker and a talker, and the whole town was aware of his humiliation at the Stockman's. If Romanowski's body was found, and it would no doubt wash up somewhere downriver, Barnum would be a suspect.

By then, Bello would be long gone.

Of course, Barnum would implicate Bello. But, Barnum had realized, what did he really know about the man from Virginia? Was his name even Randan Bello? Barnum had never seen an ID. Was he even from Virginia, or were those stolen or counterfeit plates on his car? The man had been meticulous since arriving about leaving no records by paying for everything with cash. He had spilled everything out to Barnum so easily about the agency, and his son-in-law, and his intentions. Bello didn't seem like the kind of man to expose himself that way. The only reason he had done so, Barnum concluded, was because he saw in the ex-sheriff a way to pin the murder on someone else.

But that wasn't going to happen, Barnum said to himself while he walked. When that double chirp came, the ex-sheriff was going to swing his rifle around and shoot Bello in the head.

Thatwould give the morning men at the Burg-O-Pardner something to talk about.

"I went to the sheriff with my concerns," Barnum would say, widening his hound-dog eyes, looking at each community leader in turn, "but he practically threw me out of his office. So I had to take care of things myself."

"Sounds like we need a new sheriff," someone would say, shouldsay, perhaps the mayor. And they would all look to him.

"I don't know, fellows," Barnum would say humbly. "I was just getting used to being retired."

Bello stopped and gestured at the sky. Barnum squinted, seeing the black speck of a falcon streaking across a pillowy cumulous cloud.

"His birds are out, which means he's in the open," Bello whispered over his shoulder, his back to Barnum. "This will work perfectly."

"Yup," the ex-sheriff said absently, seeing something in his peripheral vision. He turned, and learned he could actually see a bullet coming when it was aimed straight at his head from a quarter of a mile away, even before he could hear the shot.

They're getting to me somehow,Will Jensen wrote on the last page of his notebook. They're inside my head and inside my body. They know where I'm going and they track my movements. I know it sounds crazy, and it IS crazy. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think so. They figured out a way to screw me up.

Joe sat at the table in the statehouse and reread the last few pages of the notebook again. He wished Will had been more specific.

Who were "they"? What did he mean "they" were inside his head? If Will was right, how could "they" track his movements, as he claimed?

Then he read the next passage, the one that had chilled him in the cabin:

There is something so wrong with me. I'm not alone anymore. There is somebody inside my head. I've lost everything and my mind is next to go. Maybe it already has. I do things as if someone else were doing them. I watch myself say and do things, I know it's my body, but it isn't me. Dear God, will you help me? Will anyone? Nobody else will except Stella.

Joe's eyes left the page and settled on an envelope on the table, the invitation to Don and Stella Ennis's party. Stella was the only person Will trusted. She was the connection. Was she close enough to Will in the end to report his movements? And how, exactly, could she facilitate "them" getting into his head, as he wrote?

Joe couldn't make himself believe it was Stella, not after the way she had looked at him across the table. No one, he thought, could fake that kind of concern in her eyes, act thatwell. She had been on Will's side in his struggle; he had trusted her. But during breakfast, when Joe had mentioned the traces of drugs the doctor said were in his system, she reacted unpredictably. The information clearly triggered something in her mind. But he knew one thing-he had to make a decision about Stella that had nothing to do with Will. And he had to do it tonight.

Joe rubbed his eyes. His head was full of questions about Will, but as of yet, he had no answers. He felt tired and frustrated and mainly just wished he had a beer. Forgetting about his stitches, he pushed back from the table and felt a sharp stab of pain. As the day wore on, his wound hurt more. Dr. Thompson had given him a prescription for Tylenol 3 to dull the pain, and he decided to take one.

As he filled a glass from the tap on the refrigerator, he looked absently out the window at Will Jensen's old pickup in the driveway. Along the sidewalk, a neighbor wearing a tam was walking his dog, glancing furtively toward the house the way nosy neighbors do.

Suddenly, Joe froze, the tablet on his tongue, the water glass an inch from his lips, several thoughts hitting him at once.

Traces of drugs.

Will's pickup.

The intruder in his yard that night, clunking against the house.

He knew how they had done it.

And they were doing it to him.

He lowered the glass, spit out the tablet, and opened the front door. The neighbor looked up, his eyes widening for a moment, then his face broke out into a relieved smile.

The neighbor said, "Goodness, for a second there I thought you were-"

"I know,"Joe said.

Puzzled, the man continued down the sidewalk.

Joe threw open the pickup door and shone a flashlight into the entrails of colored wires under the dashboard. It took a moment before he found what he was looking for. Even as he touched it with the tips of his fingers, he was chilled how they had pulled it off.

He climbed out of the truck shaking his head.

"Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?" Joe yelled to the neighbor, who was halfway down the block.

"Me?" the neighbor asked, pulling on his dog to turn it.

Joe waited until the man came back. "You've lived here for a long time, right? You knew Will Jensen?"

"Yes," the man said cautiously.