He woke to thundering drums. An electric guitar shrieked; Eddie recognized the riff-an old Ozzy tune. Then he heard tires on the pavement nearby, and a car blew past his hiding spot in the woods, taking the music with it down the road.

The sun was high overhead and the air summer-steamy.

Oh no, I slept all morning.

Eddie tried to sit up. Waves of dull pain in his back and neck pushed him back down. He rotated his jaw against a painful stiffness; his fingers explored the swelling under his chin, the left side of his neck, and the back of his head beneath hair matted with tacky blood glue. His hands were scratched and rubbed rough. Eddie swept the blanket of leaves from his chest and gasped. Two dozen scratches decorated his torso. He looked like he had been whipped with a hickory switch. He rolled on his side with a groan, gripped a white oak sapling and hauled himself up.

His pants and shoes were caked with crumbly dried mud. He took a few unsteady steps toward the road, patting himself to inventory his body parts. Everything was still where it was supposed to be. No bones broken. His throat ached, it hurt to swallow and he was sluggish from dehydration and caffeine withdrawal. He felt like a zombie who had misplaced its human soul during an extended tequila bender.

He stumbled onto the road, a country street too narrow to deserve the single yellow line painted down the middle. There were no houses, no sidewalks or utility poles. Just trees. Eddie had no clue where he was. He turned left down the road in the direction the pa.s.sing car had been heading, on the theory that if people were driving that way, it must lead somewhere.

He made lists as he walked of everything he needed to do when he found civilization. First, he had to find a phone, to call Detective Orr. She needed to work out the jurisdictional issues and get to the old Whistle farm immediately.

Second, Eddie needed two liters of Columbian Supremo in an I.V. drip. Stat!

A big gray Buick swayed lazily around the corner, toward Eddie. He squinted at the driver-a woman, black hair in a short bob, no ski mask-and then waved both hands at the car. The car slowed a moment, drew closer, then suddenly roared off with a squeal, the driver staring Eddie down with an open-mouthed grimace.

What's her problem?

He walked some more.

Third on Eddie's list, go home and feed General VonKatz. The General was not accustomed to being left alone overnight, nor did the cat appreciate missing a meal. Eddie imagined the General would be expressing his unhappiness with claws today, maybe converting Eddie's suit trousers into Bermuda shorts.

Fourth, Eddie had to fix that G.o.ddam deadbolt on his front door so it couldn't be opened by MasterCard or Visa. He believed what the a.s.sa.s.sin had told him; Mr. Ski Mask would be back.

Three other cars pa.s.sed Eddie over the next hour. n.o.body would stop. He sat in the middle of the road, on a long straightaway, determined to force the next driver to help him, or run him down.

Time pa.s.sed. The sun beat on Eddie. He sweated as he sat there.

I had to wander into the least traveled road in Ma.s.sachusetts.

Another car finally approached.

Good holy heaven, a police cruiser!

Finally, some better luck!

Eddie struggled to his feet. The police car said "Nashua" on the side-that's in New Hampshire. Eddie had crossed the state line during the night. No matter-he waved the cruiser down. The car pulled over. A broad-shouldered cop climbed out slowly, with a hand over his gun.

"Easy, pal," he said in a gentle voice, the tone you'd use to approach a strange dog.

"Really need a telephone!" Eddie blurted. "I was digging this farmhouse bas.e.m.e.nt and I found a skull and a bunch of bones from that old robbery and then this a.s.shole in a ski mask who tried to kill me last week showed up and I spent half the night in a well and the other half in the woods..."

"Whoa!" the officer said. He signaled for a time-out. "You need to get in the back of the cruiser, and we're going to start this story over from the beginning."

Keeping an eye on Eddie, he unsnapped his holster guard.

As Eddie climbed in the back seat, he saw his likeness in the rear view mirror and shrieked, "Jesus and his barber!"

Who was that bare-chested, unshaven, wide-eyed mountain man in the mirror? The one wearing dust and dried blood like pancake makeup and rouge? Eddie scratched black-rimmed fingernails on a scab over his cheekbone. A purple bruise circled his throat. Fortunately his injuries were not as bad as they looked, or he'd have died three times.

"Do you have a towel, or something?" Eddie asked, as the officer slipped into the front seat.

"At the locker room at the station." He slipped the gearshift to "drive." The cruiser made a three-point turn and sped off.

Eddie picked bits of forest off his scalp. "And I could use a comb-I got enough dried twig in my hair to weave a sparrow's nest."

"Yessir, at the station."

"Maybe some coffee, too?"

"We got all kinds."

Is he making fun of me?

"Just call Lowell Police," Eddie said. "Tell Detective Lucy Orr that Eddie Bourque got mixed up in it again." He leaned back and closed his eyes. "She'll know what you mean."

Detective Orr let Eddie do the talking during the ride from downtown Nashua to the Whistle farm in an unmarked Lowell police sedan.

Eddie explained as patiently as he could, but it drove him near insane that she kept to the twenty-five miles per hour speed limit. Weren't they in a rush to get to the farmhouse to investigate the shallow grave Eddie had uncovered?

"The perimeter of the farm is secure," Orr promised him. "Tell me the rest of the story."

Was she slowing down? Eddie took a deep breath. He looked human again in a borrowed blue police recreation league t-shirt, sweat pants and canvas sneakers. His pants and shoes were on the seat in a plastic bag. Ten minutes in the men's room had improved his face and hair, and three mugs of Arabica had overhauled his disposition. The two EMTs that had evaluated Eddie at the station had concluded that he was not seriously hurt, though after hearing snippets of his crazy story they had wondered aloud if he was a danger to himself.

Eddie explained to Orr: "So I had the skull in my hand for, like, two seconds when the son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h in the ski mask jumped me. He must have been waiting in the shadows until I found something incriminating."

"And the two of you got trapped in a grave?"

"No, a well...that comes later."

"And why were you digging in the first place?"

"Lucy-I told you, I thought it was the bas.e.m.e.nt where the kidnappers had taken the photographs of Roger Lime."

She sighed. "And you did the digging?"

Eddie held up his hands. "Wanna see the blisters?"

"Can't you give a better description of this perpetrator than 'ski mask'? "

"It was dark."

"You were with him half the night," she said. "You must have noticed something else about him."

"This was attempted murder, not a fender bender," Eddie said, sharply. "We didn't exchange driver's licenses." They drove in silence a minute. "You don't believe me, do you?"

"It's quite a story, Ed."

Eddie turned his body toward her. Ouch! "Look at me-I didn't beat myself purple."

"n.o.body doubts you were in a fight last night."

"Then what's the problem?"

"Finish the story," she told him.

Eddie did, describing his fight with the killer, his escape and how he had wandered the woods into New Hampshire.

The police radio cackled; it was unintelligible to Eddie, but Orr seemed to understand. She took the microphone, mumbled some codes into it, adding: "He's with me now. Ten minutes."

She looked straight ahead and said to Eddie, "There's nothing illegal about a person defending himself."

Eddie shrugged. "Of course not."

"Just so long as they tell the truth about it."

"I'm telling the truth," Eddie cried. He stopped, enforced calm on himself and began again. "I know it's a cracked-up story, but that's exactly how it happened."

Police cars from Lowell, Nashua, Dunstable, and the Ma.s.sachusetts state police were parked haphazardly along the country road outside the old Whistle farmhouse. A uniformed officer on traffic patrol waved Orr's car through. She parked beside the boulders blocking the driveway. Police had roped off the end of the driveway with yellow barrier tape.

Orr got out without a word and explained briefly who she was to a statie at the tape. He nodded and looked Eddie over.

Eddie got out with his bag of dirty clothes. "I parked over here yesterday," he said. "There-there's my bike."

The Late Chuckie's rat bike was where Eddie had left it. The police had penned it in with yellow tape. Eddie ducked under the tape and flipped open a saddlebag. The contents were a mess, the bag had obviously been searched. He didn't like the police going through his stuff, but he couldn't blame them; he had forgotten to mention that he had arrived on the bike. He stuffed the bag of clothing inside.

"I didn't know you had a motorcycle license," Orr said.

"Yeah, right...um..." Eddie pointed. "The well is down the driveway-let's take a look at it." He led her to it. In the daylight, the well was not a frightening liquid grave; it was a source of clear and harmless water.

"I found the digging tools over there, in the barn," Eddie said. He led Orr to the main house, warning her, "Watch the porch, the boards are rotten."

"You certainly know this place," she said.

"I told you that I was here most of the day yesterday."

Police were walking through the house, photographing stuff and making notes.

Eddie waved Orr along. "The bas.e.m.e.nt door is in the kitchen. The stairs are narrow, but they're st.u.r.dier than they look." He stood aside to let two detectives in suits come up from the bas.e.m.e.nt. They stared at Eddie's neck bruises as if they were gills.

"Looks worse than they feel," Eddie a.s.sured them. He led Orr down the stairs into a bas.e.m.e.nt crowded with portable lights and cops. Flashbulbs were going off. Police were mumbling to each other. An officer dusted for fingerprints on the red lantern Eddie had used the night before.

A man called out, "Detective Orr?"

Eddie recognized the voice-Brill, the cop who had leaked his scoop about Dr. Crane's hanging. He mumbled to Orr, "Not that a.s.shole again."

She shushed him.

"What does that guy have against reporters?"

"I said shush!"

Brill said, "The body's around the corner, there."

Orr looked to Eddie and then followed Brill.

"I told you," Eddie said, trailing behind them. "That's where I found the bones." Eddie walked around the corner and looked into the hole.

What he saw was not possible.

Somebody had dug the hole deeper, nearly waist-deep, and had piled the dirt nearby.

In the hole was the battered body of a man, lying face-up-not bones, a dead body, and it was wearing a ski mask.

"Choked to death," Brill said.

"Uh-huh," said Orr.

"I'm done here," said a police photographer.

"Take the mask off," Brill ordered.

A uniformed cop reached into the hole and peeled away the mask.

The body's skin was waxy and purpling. There were rope burns around the neck. The eyes were closed, the face relaxed, and blood had trickled from one nostril. The body in the hole was so far removed from the reality Eddie had expected, he pointed into the grave without thinking and shouted: "Holy s.h.i.t! That's Jimmy Whistle!"

Chapter 22.

Back in Detective Orr's sedan-Eddie in the back seat, Orr and Brill up front-Brill gave Eddie the squeeze: "So you wanted to give Jimmy Whistle some payback for helping put your brother away all those years ago, is that it Bourque?" Brill said. "So you two decided to meet up here, to hash it out?"

Eddie stared at the dome light and tried to delete the mental image of Jimmy Whistle in the grave. He thought about Whistle's son, Jimmy junior, who didn't yet know that he had lost the father he barely remembered. It was another tree-falls-in-the-woods question. If he hadn't seen his father in thirty years, would his murder matter?

"What about it, Bourque?" Brill demanded.

Eddie had conducted enough adversarial interviews as a reporter to know that using logic against crazy scenarios was no way to win. "My statement from before stands," he said. "I found this place on my own. I dug the floor. Discovered a skull. Got jumped. Fought for my life. Called you guys as soon as I found help."

Brill looked away for a moment. As he turned, Eddie watched the bulging trapezoidal muscle at the base of his neck squirm under his shirt like a cobra getting comfortable. Brill turned back and came at Eddie with a new tactic. "Look Bourque, everyone knows Whistle was a punk," he said. "n.o.body does thirty years in prison unless they deserve it. If a piece-of-s.h.i.t like Jimmy Whistle came after me, I'd fight back hard. Who wouldn't?"