"So what happens to her? They put her in jail or the hospital?"

"No way. She's an old lady. She'll get reckless conduct with a firearm, terrorizing, maybe. Keep her in the rubber room for a while, pump her full of dope, and send her home in a few weeks. I got guys who do the same thing and get sixty days and five hundred bucks. Judge tells them not to play with guns in the house anymore."

"Nice."

"Goddamn great. Junior gets out and we have to go up and see him next time. Round and round. Same scumbags. All related. This one's father, this one's kids. I get these little bastards, I used to arrest their grandfather. Goes on forever. We'll be six feet under and somebody else will be chasing 'em."

"You sound like a man who likes his work," I said.

"Once upon a friggin' time," Vigue said.

The downtown was deserted that afternoon, as if everyone had been invited to a funeral I didn't know about. I parked the Volvo a block over on Front Street and walked to the paper. There was no one around, and I locked the door behind me. The word would be out soon enough. Pauline Wiggins went nuts. Tried to shoot the guy from the paper. Pauline? You're kidding. No, I'm serious. Jimmy Lancaster, he told me. His brother-in-law's an EMT. Married to Wendy. Said she almost killed the guy. No, I'm serious. Pauline Wiggins. Almost killed the guy in this house on ... well, I'm not sure what street it was on, but it did happen. No, really.

I dreaded it.

Sunday was my day for planning and writing the stories that were hard to do when the office was buzzing, so that's what I pretended to do. I made a pot of coffee at the plastic machine and sat at my desk with a blank legal pad. At the top, I wrote Arthur's name. Then I listed everyone who had anything to do with him. I stared at the names. A loud four-wheel-drive truck went by, five feet off the ground on big tires and red mags. I got a glimpse of it, then listened to the blare of the exhaust until that grew softer and softer and then faded away.

My list was still there.

I had been in the office three minutes, by the clock on the wall. Four minutes and I stared at the names. Arthur. Martin. Pauline and Vigue and Cormier. Me. I had forgotten myself. I put my name on the bottom of the list. I knew him. After my name, I put Cindy and Vern and Marion and Paul. LeMaire, J. Meredith, Arthur's mother. She was dead, but I put her on the list anyway. A list of names. I stared at it and waited for illumination. Seven minutes now. Eight.

I felt hopelessly inadequate, utterly powerless. I knew these names, but little more. Cormier's friend. I added him. The phone caller. I wrote "caller" under Cormier's friend. But the caller could have been somebody already on the list. Not Arthur or Meredith. Or Cormier or his friend. Unless the call was taped, but that was unlikely. Roxanne would have known if it was a tape recording. I put her name on the list, too.

Twelve minutes.

I looked at the names. It looked like an invitation list for a dinner party. I would have them all to dinner at my house and we would discuss it all in a very British way until the suspect, unable to conceal his guilt, or to live with the cancerous knowledge of his crime, would confess, screaming and crying and sobbing until the credits marched over his bowed head.

Fifteen minutes.

Confess to what? A crime that nobody felt had even happened? To an obscene phone call? To shooting a shotgun through my bedroom wall? No confession needed there. To tossing Arthur in the water and leaving him to drown? He would call out. He would claw at the wall of the canal. He would call out in the night until he was too cold, and then? Would he cry to himself in the dark? Would he pray as death took him? Was there anyone on this list of acquaintances who was capable of leaving a man to die so slowly? You'd have to be crazy-to have a crazy streak.

Pauline.

Nineteen minutes.

The horn sounded at the fire station, three blasts. A rescue call, with volunteers needed. As I walked to the window, a police cruiser whined by, blue lights and siren on. A few seconds later, the rescue truck followed, hissing flat out down the empty street.

My camera was in the car. I jogged over and jumped in and floored it out Front Street and west on to Route 2, just in time to see a fire truck heading up the hill past the falls. I followed as fast as the Volvo would go until I got to the top of the hill and saw the back end of the rescue truck and the blue lights stopped a couple of miles up the road. A hundred yards behind the rescue truck, I slowed down. I had seen enough car accidents to know there was no need to race. If there was death and destruction, it would be there when I arrived. I slowed down a little more. The readers of the Review would have to forgive me for not racing to the scene of the carnage. I fulfilled this part of our contract without enthusiasm, reporting the tragedy because I had to, not because I liked it.

The two cars had hit head-on. They sat crumpled in the middle of the two-lane highway, bleeding gasoline and radiator fluid onto the pavement. I parked behind the ambulance on the shoulder and shut off the motor. Camera in hand, I walked slowly toward the wrecks.

Police and fire radios crackled everywhere. Volunteers in rubber boots ran from their trucks. Two guys from the rescue unit were leaning into the windows of what had been a little Japanese car, a Nissan or a Toyota. It was blue, and there was glass all around it on the road. When I got closer I could hear a woman's voice. She was sobbing, saying "Oh my God" over and over in a high-pitched unnatural voice. One of the rescue guys leaned farther into the window and she screamed.

The other car was a big Chrysler from the early seventies, a big green boat of a car, an armored troop carrier. On the side of the road beside it, four teenage boys stood watching the rescue operation. They were expressionless, as if they had been sedated. Everyone else was running and they were standing still. I shot their picture with the wrecks in the foreground.

LeMaire, J. had a fifth kid off to the side. The kid had shoulder-length black hair tied with a red bandanna. His dungarees were ripped and his boots were unlaced with his pant legs tucked in, the way I'd seen kids wear them. Country kids, trying to look tough.

This kid did not look tough, though. Next to LeMaire, J., he looked small and skinny. LeMaire, J. had him by the arm with his big paw of a hand and was talking to him in a loud voice that could be heard even over the police radios.

"Have you been drinking?" LeMaire, J. said.

The kid looked at him sullenly.

"I think you've been drinking, and I'm going to have to ask you to put your arms behind your back," LeMaire, J. said, speaking slowly and methodically in his police voice.

"I ain't putting my arms nowhere, get your hands-" the kid said, but then LeMaire, J. whipped the kid's arms behind him, slipping the cuffs on in the same practiced motion. The kid stumbled and LeMaire, J. held him up by the arms and pushed him toward the cruiser. I backed up a few feet and focused the camera.

I got off three quick shots. As I took the last one, the kid lunged toward me and spat, and I felt something wet on my hands.

"You little bastard," LeMaire, J. said between his teeth, and spun the kid around and slammed him into the side of the cruiser hard enough to snap the kid's head back and lift his feet off the ground. In some cities it would have been enough to bring on a brutality suit, but in Androscoggin, some of the quaint old ways survived.

LeMaire, J. stuffed the kid in the backseat of the cruiser and came back to the car, where four rescue workers and firemen were taking the woman out of the car on a spine board. She was strapped down like she was going in for shock treatments and she had blonde hair that was curly and had blood in it. The blood looked dark, almost black.

I took a shot of them lifting her out of the window. It had all the elements, as Arthur used to say. The victim, the rescue workers, both cars, the crowd in the background. In the crowd were familiar faces from town, truckers with their names on their shirt pockets. A man in a green chamois shirt and khaki pants had the prosperous look of a tourist, and sure enough, there was a car on the west side of the wreck with blue license plates. Ohio or Connecticut.

LeMaire, J. walked up behind me, carrying his automatic Canon.

"You're having a busy day," he said, his eye in the viewfinder.

"You, too," I said.

"At least nobody's shooting at me."

"Give it time," I said.

He moved past me. Crouching awkwardly, then backing up, one step and then another. LeMaire, J. did not look like a professional.

"Getting this one in black and white," he said. "We are gonna put this little shit away."

"What for?"

"Third OUI arrest this year. Probation says no alcohol, and he's plastered. No license, no registration. She dies, they ought to hang him by the balls."

"Sounds reasonable," I said.

LeMaire, J. moved away and I got a shot of him taking pictures, elbows out like a tourist.

I had enough. We'd use one, maybe two pics if it was a fatal. And we'd need a good shot of the kid, the villain. I walked back to the cruiser and leaned close to the glass. The kid was pouting in the backseat.

America's future.

When I walked into the police station, the sound of someone vomiting echoed in the concrete corridor. I knocked once and the metal door to the duty room buzzed and I pushed it open. LeMaire, J. was sitting at a wooden desk writing in the arrest log, a big blue ring binder. Vigue was on the phone.

"She'd be arriving about now, sir. In Lewiston. That's right. Now, Mr. Gamache, I know you're upset. If I was you, I'd be climbing the walls, let me tell you. But listen, sir. Please try to understand what I'm saying. It isn't going to help your daughter if you're in an accident, too. After twenty years, I know. I can tell you I've seen it. It can and does happen. So I know you're going to want to see her, and you're going to want to get there as fast as possible. Do that. But if you obey the speed limits, take it easy, you'll get there just as fast, and you'll be able to help your daughter. Yessir. I know you're upset. Yessir. Please think of what I said."

Vigue put the phone down.

"Jesus H. Christ," he said. "For this they pay me twelve bucks an hour. Guy's so friggin' upset, he'll probably kill himself on the way to the hospital. Should have asked him if somebody else could drive him. Probably doing eighty-five down the one-oh-four by now."

LeMaire, J. grunted.

Vigue lit a cigarette and drew a third of it into his lungs. "What a way to make a living. Let me tell you."

He looked at me.

"What can we do you for, Mr. Clark Kent?"

Before I could answer, the patrolman named Plaistow, who looked almost old enough to be in high school, walked in from the booking area, his uniform splattered with vomit.

"Man, Lieutenant," he said.

"Get the hell back in there," Vigue barked. "He'll drown in the toilet, and your ass and mine will be in court."

Plaistow started to say something but stopped, then turned and walked out of the room.

"Don't teach you about puke at the academy," LeMaire, J. said, poring over forms at the desk. "Report's not done. Not much to it, though. Driver of the Toyota, Lori Gamache, east on Route Two. Second car, Toby Tansey, nineteen, Androscoggin, local dirtbag, swerved from the westbound lane, collided with vehicle one, the Toyota. You saw what was left. Girl is headed for Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston. Multiple injuries. Tansey is fine, of course."

I got out my notebook.

"Charges?" I said.

"Oh, maybe a couple. We've got to talk to the DA's office again, but he's already been charged with criminal OUI. A point-two-three."

"Not bad for a Sunday morning," Vigue said.

"Probably just out of church," I said.

"Our Lady of Jack Daniel's," Vigue said.

LeMaire, J. continued with his report.

"Okay, the OUI. You got that. Operating without a license. Operating an uninspected motor vehicle. Failure to show proof of insurance. Reckless driving. Let's see. What else was there, Lieutenant?"

"Possession."

"Oh, yeah. Illegal possession of and transportation of alcohol."

"And that's if the girl lives," Vigue said.

"It might be a fatal?" I said.

"I don't know," LeMaire, J. said. "They were talking about internal injuries, internal bleeding. Her insides are all stove up. Steering wheel sort of crushed her chest and abdomen."

"How old is she?"

"Twenty-two. Nurse. Lives in Lewiston, works at the hospital down there, I guess. Up here to visit her parents. Good kid. Comes home on weekends. Father, Lionel Gamache, used to work in the mill. Blackie Gamache, they call him. Lives on Penobscot Street, I think. Used to, anyway."

I scribbled. LeMaire, J. got up from the desk and picked up his camera and started rewinding the film. When the winder spun freely, he popped the camera back open and the yellow Kodak canister dropped on the floor and rolled. He grunted when he picked it up.

"Hey, you know, without Bertin around, where are we gonna get this developed? What are you guys doing with your film?"

"Cindy, our receptionist. She did X-rays at the hospital. She can do it, or I could do it myself if we were in a jam. Takes me forever. What are you gonna do with that?"

"I don't know. Take it to LaVerdiere's? I'm not gonna do it, I know that," LeMaire, J. said.

"You process film?"

"Hated it. All those timers and little reel things. Remember that, Lieutenant? When we hired Bertin to teach us a few years ago. What a joke that was. Remember that, Lieutenant? Ten seconds. Twenty seconds. You couldn't see what you were doing. None of us were any good at it, but we got detail pay. Lieutenant here was the only one who got anything on his pictures. Spit in the water, I think."

Vigue growled.

"Trying to teach you numbskulls is like trying to teach a friggin' chimpanzee. Except a chimp can learn something. You guys would screw up a wet dream."

"What was the idea?" I said.

"Save money," Vigue said. "Bozos on the council decided they'd all get reelected by saving money. Had us walking to save gas. Cut the uniform allowance. What a joke. So we go through all this crap and then the guy behind it, Millington or Pillington, skinny freak, goes back to Mass. or wherever the hell he came from, the son of a bitch."

"I like a happy ending," I said.

"The stuff that goes on," Vigue muttered, and got up and hitched his equipment belt.

We stood for a moment or two.

"Your friend Mrs. Wiggins is in Central Maine Med, too," Vigue said. "Held for observation."

I nodded.

"You should come in tomorrow and sign the reports, after they're typed up. Somebody from the DA's office will want to talk to you."

"I don't think I want-"

There was a shout from the cell block. Then a crash.

Vigue and LeMaire, J. bolted through the door and I followed.

The kid from the accident was on his back on the floor. There was blood on his nose and mouth and he was laughing. Plaistow, the patrolman, stood over him, panting.

"Got behind me," he sputtered. "Tried to choke me, the son of a bitch."

The kid was laughing so hard that tears were running from the corners of his eyes. Vigue used his boot to flip him onto his stomach, then stood with his boot pressing the kid's face hard into the concrete floor. The laughing stopped.

Under the boot, the kid whined.

"Fundamentals," Vigue said. "You've got to keep your prisoner secured."