'I thought doctors only played golf.'

'My dad played Daniel Boone. He made me help him dress out a deer when I was ten years old.'

'What did you dress it in?' Finley asked.

'A Tipton shirt,' Cora said, and laughed.

'I didn't dress it in anything. I had to cut off its head and gut it and...'

'Jesus,' Helen muttered.

'I can't picture you doing something like that,' Abilene said.

'Well, I puked all over it.'

'That I can picture.'

'He would've fit right in with a crowd of guys who think it'd be laughs to plug a hillbilly. He and his pals were all a bunch of gun-toting assholes.'

'Guys and their guns,' Finley said.

'Anyway,' Helen went on, 'they did end up shooting one of those people.'

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

'It wasn't on purpose, though,' Helen said. 'Three guys from the lodge were out deer hunting. They were over near that lake I mentioned. Something moved in the trees, and they opened fire. Then they went over to it, and what they found instead of a deer was a teenaged girl. Only she wasn't dead. She was hit in the shoulder, is all.'

'Not only assholes,' Finley said, 'but lousy shots.'

'It's not funny,' Vivian muttered.

'One of the hunters wanted to take the girl back to the lodge and get her to a hospital. At least that's what he claims, and there was nobody left to refute him. Henderson. He told the whole story to the police later. He said the girl would've been all right if they'd gotten her some medical attention. But the other two were against it. They said there'd be hell to pay if it got out about them shooting her.'

'It was an accident, wasn't it?' Abilene said.

'Sure. And they figured they'd be all right with the authorities. What worried them was the girl's family.'

'Her kinfolks,' Finley said.

'Right. When something happens to blood relatives, people around here go nuts. They believe in an eye for an eye. They wouldn't rest until they'd gotten their revenge, and they wouldn't be very picky about who they nailed. The hunters were here with their families. Henderson had a wife and two little daughters back at the lodge, and the other two guys told him that nobody'd be safe. Especially daughters. But everything would be all right if the girl they shot could just disappear. That way, nobody would blame people from the lodge. Maybe she just got lost, or ran afoul of some wild animals. One of the other families might even get blamed. Apparently, there was bad blood between some of the clans, and the hunters knew about it.'

'So they're discussing all this,' Cora asked, 'while the poor kid is lying there bleeding?'

'I guess so.'

'What a bunch of bastards.'

'They were hunters,' Vivian said. 'What do you expect?'

'A little decency.'

'Fat chance.'

'The girl couldn't hear them anyway. She was a deaf mute.'

'Terrific,' Vivian muttered.

'Henderson says he told the guys they were talking about cold-blooded murder, and how this eye-for-an-eye stuff was no excuse to kill an innocent kid. She couldn't exactly tell on them.'

'She could point them out,' Abilene said.

'And grunt.'

'You're seriously disturbed, Finley.'

'They told Henderson she had to be eliminated, but he didn't listen. He knelt down and opened her shirt so he could get at the wound. He started to cut off one of her sleeves to use as a bandage, and that's when one of the other guys clobbered him. Hit him in the head with a rifle butt. He says it knocked him out cold, so he didn't have anything to do with what happened next.'

'There's a likely story,' Finley said.

'That's what the cops thought. But they didn't have any evidence against him, so he was never prosecuted. They never found the body. They never found out who she was. They never even found evidence that the murder had taken place, at all. Henderson's story was all they had to go on. So he was never even arrested.'

'But Henderson said they killed her?' Abilene asked.

'Yeah. And they raped her, too.'

'Jesus,' Cora muttered.

'Henderson was pretty sure they did. When he came to, his buddies were both naked. So was the girl. And the girl was dead by then. Her throat had been slashed. And the guys were busy opening her up and stuffing rocks into her. You know, so she'd sink.'

Vivian groaned. 'I knew I didn't want to hear this.'

'I'm surprised they didn't kill Henderson,' Abilene said.

'It's only his word,' Cora said, 'that he didn't go along with the whole thing. He might've had at her, just like his two buddies. Maybe he was even the one who killed her.'

'What he claimed,' Helen explained, 'was that he was afraid they would kill him. Guys get shot all the time in hunting accidents. So Henderson acted as if he'd had a change of heart and approved of what they'd done. They were still afraid he might turn them in, though. So they had him shoot her. That way, if the cops found her body, there might be ballistics evidence that Henderson's rifle had been used on the girl.'

'Pretty smart,' Abilene said. 'Or smart of Henderson, making that part of his story.'

'Well, that was when they stopped being smart. Their idea was to swim out into the lake with the body and let it go. They figured the rocks would sink it, and it'd never be found. But one of them went down to the shore for a look around. They were on the far side of the lake, but apparently it isn't very large. And the guy who went to scout around noticed some people from the lodge swimming off the dock on the other side. They were afraid they might be seen. So what they decided was to hide the body and come back after dark to take care of sinking it. They covered it with some bushes, then went back to the lodge.'

'Henderson made up a story about falling down and hitting his head on a rock. He told his family he was still feeling dizzy and sick, and that he thought he'd better check into a hospital. So they all packed up and left. They drove into town. They found an emergency room, and he was being examined right at about the same time that everyone back at the lodge was sitting down in the dining room for supper.

'Nobody at the lodge was alive the next day when a fellow and his wife showed up to register.'

'My God,' Cora said.

'There were twenty-eight bodies, including the owner and his wife and three kids.'

'What happened?' Abilene asked.

'Somebody found the girl, obviously,' Finley said. 'And got pissed.'

'I mean, how the hell do you kill twenty-eight people?'

'Well, there was poison in the Mulligan Stew. Apparently, no one died from the poison, though. Not everyone ate it, for one thing. A lot of the kids were served hot dogs and hamburgers. Mostly just adults ate the stew. The thing is, though, that the killers didn't wait around long enough for the poison to kill anyone. Maybe they just kept watch until people started getting sick so there wouldn't be much of a fight. Then they stormed the place. With guns and knives and hatchets and axes.'

'They killed most of the people right there in the dining room. But some got away, at least for a while. Bodies were found all over the place: behind the registration desk, on the stairs, a few in the upstairs hall. A headless body was even found in there,' she said, nodding toward the archway entrance to the inside pool.

Vivian grimaced. 'In the water.'

'Floating.'

Abilene's skin suddenly felt crawly. 'Oh, yuck.'

Vivian was already on her feet, turning around and climbing out.

'Thanks for telling us,' Abilene said.

'Oh, calm down,' Cora said. 'This was twelve years ago, for godsake. It's not like we got any on us.'

'Even so...' Abilene muttered. The hot water caressing her skin suddenly seemed thick and foul. She saw Vivian standing on the concrete, arms lifted away from her body, head down -inspecting her body as if she expected to find something hideous clinging to her skin.

Abilene was tempted to follow her example. But Helen and Cora were still in the water. And it was ridiculous to think that the pool could still be tainted after all these years. Besides, she'd already spent a lot of time in it. The harm was already done.

'This,' she said, 'is like eating an apple and being told later that it had a worm in it.'

'You're grossing me out, Hickok.'

'You mean you aren't already grossed out?'

'So the pool had a stiff in it. Big deal.'

'I knew we shouldn't have come to this place,' Vivian said.

'Pussies,' Finley said.

'It's ancient history,' Cora pointed out. 'I don't know why anybody's getting upset.'

'I need a shower,' Vivian said.

'Good luck,' Finley told her.

'Why don't you just sit down and relax,' Cora said. 'I want to hear the rest of Helen's story.'

'You mean there's more?' Vivian asked. She didn't sound pleased.

'Well, that's just about it. Guess I should've left out the part about the body in the pool.'

'Wish you had,' Abilene said.

'Ignorance is bliss, Hickok. That must be how come you're always smiling.'

'Take a leap.'

'Maybe I shouldn't tell the rest,' Helen said to Cora.

'Go on. If anybody doesn't want to hear it, they can cover their ears.'

'I imagine we've already heard the worst,' Abilene said. Without saying a word, Vivian sat down on the pool's rim and crossed her legs. She began to flick her hands against her thighs as if brushing off ants.

'Anyway,' Helen said, 'bodies were found all over the place.'

'So we understand,' Abilene muttered.

'A few had been shot. But most of the wounds were in the legs, as if the attackers only used the guns to cripple them. The actual killings were done with sharp instruments. All the bodies were found with their bellies split open. Just like the girl the hunters killed. But it didn't stop with that. They were mutilated and dismembered in all sorts of awful ways. Eyes were gouged out. Heads were split apart down the middle, or cut off at the neck. Arms and legs were chopped off. Same with the genitals of all the guys.'

'Oh, for Godsake,' Vivian muttered.

'There were women whose breasts had been...'

'I don't want to hear this!' Vivian clapped her open hands against her ears. 'Just quit it! You don't have to rub our noses in it. Christ'

'Okay, well...'

'What about the women?' Cora asked. 'Had they been raped?'

Helen, casting a glance at Vivian, nodded. 'And then some,' she said.

'The cops never got anyone for it?' Abilene asked.

'They figured it must've been the girl's family. Or maybe more than one family was involved. I mean, there were an awful lot of assailants. They'd tracked blood all over the place. The cops think there must've been anywhere from twelve to fifteen of them. Including women and children.'

'Some of the killers were kids?'

'A real family affair,' Finley said.

'The problem was, the cops didn't know the identity of the girl who'd been killed by the hunters. So they didn't know who to go after. They went around questioning the locals, but they never came up with anything. So the massacre at the Totem Pole Lodge was never solved.'

'If there were bloody footprints everywhere,' Abilene said, 'there must've been fingerprints, too. All they would've had to do is round up all the people in the area and try to come up with matches.'

'I guess they didn't do that,' Helen said.