"Walk up there and get in the trunk of the car," the man said. The voice was flat, mechanical, clotted with rust.

"Fuck that," Terry said.

The man slapped Terry on the ear, so hard Terry thought the drum was broken. He jerked Terry's line from his hand and threw it into the river, and, by his belt, dragged him stumbling up the embankment and pushed him headlong into the trunk of a small car and slammed down the hatch.

A half hour later Terry was sitting in a heavy wooden chair inside a batting cage, his wrists roped to the chair, staring at an automatic pitching machine loaded with scuffed baseballs. The cage was located inside a closed barn, and motes of dust and wisps of hay floated in the haze of the electric lights that ran the length of the horse stalls.

The man who had kidnapped him had not spoken a word since removing him from the car trunk.

"You work for that doctor? Is this over Maisey?" Terry said.

But the man did not answer.

A side door opened and a man in a cutoff baseball jersey and blue jeans that were new and stiff from the box stepped inside the barn. His hair was black and combed, his skin olive-toned, his eyes brown like a deer's.

He leaned over in the shadows and picked up a remote-control button that was attached to the pitching machine.

"You did a one-bit in North Carolina?" the man said.

Terry ran the tip of his tongue along his lips. Don't give a smart answer, he thought.

"Not exactly. I was in the reformatory. I bashed a fudge packer who came on to me," Terry said.

"I can respect that. Now, all you got to do is tell me and Frank the truth about a couple of things, and we'll take you home. This machine pitches up to seventy miles an hour. You getting the picture on this?"

"No," Terry said, then realized he'd just given the wrong answer.

The man's right thumb moved and the mechanical arm of the pitching machine fired a ball into Terry's chest, then reset itself for another pitch. Terry felt as if someone had driven an auger into his breastbone.

"I know, it hurts. I been hit by it," the man said.

"You're Nicki Molinari," Terry said.

"What's in a name?" Molinari said.

Terry started to reply, but Molinari held a finger up for him to be quiet.

"Two years ago, on July Fourth, a man and a little boy were killed on the Clearwater National Forest. Who you think did that?" Molinari said.

"How am I supposed to know?" The machine clanked and Terry leaned sideways, straining against the chair, but the ball caught him on the collarbone. He tried to eat his pain, but he couldn't bite down on the groan that welled out of his chest.

"Was it Lamar Ellison?" Molinari asked.

"Lamar? He was a snitch for the ATF."

"So?" Molinari said.

Terry knew he needed to provide an answer, but he couldn't think, couldn't sort out all the wise remarks and insults that he had always carried around like a sheaf of arrows.

"Ask Wyatt. He celled with Lamar," he said, and realized how afraid he actually was.

"The rodeo clown? You think I go to clowns for my information? That's what you're telling me?" Molinari said.

"No."

"You think anybody's-fuck from a state reformatory can lie and call me stupid on my own property, in front of a business associate, and just walk out of here?"

Terry was drowning in Molinari's words.

"I was fishing. I turn around and a guy who looks like Frankenstein locks me in his car trunk. I don't deserve this."

"I don't think you should call Frank names, kid. You want to apologize to Frank for that?" Molinari said.

Terry hung his head and shut his eyes and waited for another ball to hit him. But nothing happened.

"I'm gonna fix a sandwich. Then I'll be back. Search your memory about that deal on the Clearwater National Forest," Molinari said, and went out the side door of the barn.

It was quiet a long time, then Frank stood up from the sawhorse he had been sitting on and folded his huge palm around the trigger for the pitching machine. Terry remembered thinking his jaws looked like dirty sandpaper, his recessed eyes like those of a man whose moment had come.

A HALF HOUR LATER the side door opened again and Molinari entered the batting cage and reached down out of a red haze and lifted Terry's chin with one knuckle.

"You gonna make it?" he asked.

Terry's face felt as if it had been stung all over by hornets.

"Wyatt's gonna-" he began.

"The clown again?" Molinari said.

"Wyatt-" Terry said, but could not clear the blood from his mouth to speak.

Molinari looked at Frank, who shook his head negatively. Molinari chewed on the ball of his thumb and gazed thoughtfully into the shadows, then spit a piece of skin off his tongue.

"Spread some raincoats on the car seat and get him out of here," he said.

"He called you a dago and greaseball," Frank said.

"I've answered to worse. Call Phoenix and L.A. and tell them I want everything they got on this militia guy, what's-his-name, Hinkel."

He picked up a baseball that had rolled out on the floor and tossed it into an apple basket.

"This valley used to be a nice place. Now we got half the riffraff in the United States moving here," he said.

Just before 11 P.M. that night, at the end of what had probably been the longest day of Terry Witherspoon's life, he was stopped by a Ravalli County sheriff's deputy only two hundred yards from the entrance to Carl Hinkel's compound. The moon was high and yellow over the mountains, the upside-down American flag popping on the metal pole in Carl's yard.

Terry was almost home free. Don't wise off, he told himself. Turn into an ice cube. Tell him you fell off a truck. Let Wyatt deal with Molinari.

In minutes Terry had forgotten all his resolutions and was cuffed and in the backseat of the cruiser and on his way to the county jail.

Chapter 28

The next day was Saturday. A turnkey walked me down to the holding cell where Terry Wither-spoon had spent the night.

"Have you been spit on lately?" he asked. "Can't say that I have," I replied. "Don't stand too close to the bars." The turnkey walked back down the corridor and sat at a small table and picked up a newspaper.

The cell was splattered with food from a serving tray that Terry had thrown against the wall. He stood under a barred window, wrinkling his nose under his glasses.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

"The sheriff in Missoula told me you were in the slams. I thought I'd drop by for a chat," I said.

"I should be in a hospital. They put me in jail."

"You stuck your finger in a deputy sheriff's eye?"

"It was an accident. He grabbed my arm. It hurt."

Then I watched a phenomenon to which I had never seen the exception in dealing with sociopathic behavior. Terry threw a temper tantrum, his voice hissing with spleen. He was the victim, not others. It was he who had been wronged by the world, the fates, the cosmos, maybe even by his own genes. It was my obligation to be an attentive and sympathetic listener. Never mind the fact he had buried a friend of mine alive. Nothing was of consequence to him except his own pain and the unfairness with which he had been treated by a pair of greaseball humps like Molinari and Frank and now a bunch of Montana hillbillies with badges they probably got out of cereal boxes.

"I might watch what I said to these guys, Terry."

"Why?" he asked. "They don't like you."

Then, as though I were supposed to fix the situation for him, he said, "Wyatt and Carl aren't home. I got a five-hundred bond. Somebody's got to go a bond for me."

"You think Wyatt Dixon gives a shit what happens to you?" I asked.

He pushed up his glasses and looked at me, uncomprehending.