Just ahead of me, another driver seemed to be having even more problems seeing than I was. Whoever it was was speeding up and slowing down, hitting the brakes every time the sunlight shifted, and more than once veering across the white line onto the other side of the road. I kept reacting, hitting my own brakes, but finally I got fed up and decided to put some distance between me and him. The road was too narrow for passing, so instead I slowed my car, hoping the person would pull farther away.

But whoever it was did just the opposite. He slowed down, too, and when the distance had closed between us again, I saw the brake lights blinking on and off like Christmas lights, then suddenly staying red. I hit my own brakes hard, my tires squealing as my car jerked to a stop. I doubt if I missed the car in front of me by more than a foot.

That’s the moment, I think, when fate intervened. Sometimes, I wish I’d hit the car, since I would have had to stop and Missy Ryan would have made it home. But because I missed-and because I’d had enough of the driver in front of me-I took the next right, onto Camellia Road, even though it added a little extra time, time I now wish I could have back. The road swung through an older part of town, where oaks were full and lush, and the sun was dipping low enough that the glare was finally gone. A few minutes later, the sky started darkening more quickly and I turned on my headlights.

The road veered left and right, and soon the houses began to spread out. The yards were bigger, and fewer people seemed to be about. After a couple of minutes, I made another turn, this time onto Madame Moore’s Lane. I knew this road well and comforted myself with the knowledge that in a couple of miles, I’d find myself at Rhett’s.

I remember turning the radio on and fiddling with the dial, but I didn’t really take my eyes off the road. Then I turned it off. My mind, I promise you, was on the drive.

The road was narrow and winding, but like I said, I knew this road like the back of my hand. I automatically applied the car’s brakes as I entered a bend in the road. That was when I saw her, and I’m pretty sure I slowed even more. I don’t know for sure, though, since everything that happened next went so fast that I couldn’t swear to anything.

I was coming up behind her, the gap between us closing. She was off to the side, on the grass shoulder. I remember she was wearing a white shirt and blue shorts and not going real fast, kind of gliding along in a relaxed sort of way. In this neighborhood, the houses sat on half an acre, and no one was outside. She knew I was coming up behind her-I saw her glance quickly to the side, maybe enough to catch sight of me from the corner of her eye, and she moved another half step farther from the road. Both my hands were on the wheel. I was paying attention to everything I should have and thought I was being careful. And so was she.

Neither of us, however, saw the dog.

Almost as if lying in wait for her, it charged out from a gap in a hedge when she was no more than twenty feet from my car. A big black dog, and even though I was in my car, I could hear its vicious snarl as it charged right at her. It must have caught her off-guard because she suddenly reared back, away from the dog, and took one step too many into the road.

My car, all three thousand pounds of it, smashed into her in that instant.

Chapter 17

Sims Addison, at forty, looked something like a rat: a sharp nose, a forehead that sloped backward, and a chin that seemed to have stopped growing before the rest of his body did. He kept his hair slicked back over his head, with the help of a wide-toothed comb he always carried with him.

Sims was also an alcoholic.

He wasn’t, however, the kind of alcoholic who drank every night. Sims was the kind of alcoholic whose hands shook in the morning prior to taking his first drink of the day, which he usually finished long before most people headed for work. Although he was partial to bourbon, he seldom had enough money for anything other than the cheapest wines, which he drank by the gallon. Where he got his money he didn’t like to say, but then, aside from booze and the rent, he didn’t need much.

If Sims had any redeeming feature, it was that he had the knack of making himself invisible and, as a result, had a way of learning things about people. When he drank, he was neither loud nor obnoxious, but his normal expression-eyes half-closed, mouth slack-gave him the appearance of someone who was far drunker than he usually was. Because of that, people said things in his presence. Things they should have kept to themselves.

Sims earned the little money he did by calling in tips to the police. Not all of them, though. Only the ones where he could stay anonymous and still get the money. Only the ones where the police would keep his secret, where he wouldn’t have to testify.

Criminals, he knew, had a way of keeping grudges, and he wasn’t stupid enough to believe that if they knew who’d turned them in, they’d just roll over and forget it.

Sims had spent time in prison: once in his early twenties for petty theft and twice in his thirties for possession of marijuana. The third time behind bars, however, changed him. By then, his alcoholism was full-blown, and he spent the first week suffering from the most severe case of withdrawal imaginable. He shook, he vomited, and when he closed his eyes, he saw monsters. He nearly died, too, though not from withdrawal. After a few days of listening to Sims scream and moan, the other man in the cell beat him until he was unconscious, so he could get some sleep. Sims spent three weeks in the infirmary and was released by a parole board sympathetic to what he’d been through. Instead of finishing the year he still had to serve, he was placed on probation and told to report to a parole officer. He was warned, however, that if he drank or used drugs, his sentence would be reinstated.

The possibility of going through withdrawal, coupled with the beating, left Sims with a deathly fear of going back to jail.

But for Sims it wasn’t possible to face life sober. In the beginning, he was careful to drink only in the privacy of his home. In time, however, he began to resent the impingement on his freedom. He began meeting a few buddies for drinks again while maintaining a low profile. In time, he began taking his luck for granted. He began drinking on his way to see them, his bottle covered with the traditional brown paper bag. Soon enough, he was drunk wherever he went, and though there might have been a little warning signal in his brain, telling him to be careful, he was too blasted out of his mind to listen to it. Still, everything might have been okay, had he not borrowed his mother’s car for a night out. He didn’t have a license, but he nonetheless drove to meet some friends at a dingy bar, located on a gravel road outside the town limits. There, he drank more than he should have and sometime after twoA.M. staggered out to his car. He barely made it out of the parking area without hitting any other cars, but somehow he managed to head in the direction of home. A few miles later, he spotted the flashing red lights behind him.

It was Miles Ryan who stepped out of the car.

“Is that you, Sims?” Miles called out, approaching slowly. Like most of the deputies, he knew Sims on a first-name basis. Nonetheless, he had the flashlight out and was shining it inside the car, scanning quickly for any sign of danger. “Oh, hey, Deputy.” The words came out slurred.

“Have you been drinking?” Miles asked.

“No… no. Not at all.” Sims eyed him unsteadily. “Just visiting with some friends.”

“You sure about that? Not even a beer?”