"Hey, so sorry about that, or whatever," he said.

I nodded. He picked at a piece of Bondo that was hanging like loose skin on the side of the truck.

"What you wanted to know about."

"What?" I said.

"The picture guy. I talked to some people."

He looked uneasy and looked even farther away from me.

"Bad news on that one, man," Cormier said.

"What do you mean, bad news?"

"Like, leave it alone."

"Who's saying that?"

Cormier looked at me, then away. Sniffed. Reached out and broke a twig off a birch branch that hung over the road.

"LeMaire," I said.

He didn't say anything.

"I'm just telling you what the word is. And the word is that it's hands off. Stay the hell away. That's from up above. Coming down to the peons. Like it never happened."

"Why would anybody say that?"

Cormier pulled at his hat and smiled.

"That's not my problem. Word is, don't touch it. Back right the hell off. In my position, that's what I did."

He walked back to the cab of his truck and got in. I walked behind him and leaned toward the window, saw him stick an open Bud between his legs. He turned the key and the solenoid clicked a couple of times before the starter caught and the motor roared.

He put the truck in gear and sat with his foot on the clutch.

"Listen, I mean it," Cormier said. "Our little ruckus was fun and games, you know what I'm saying? This other stuff is serious business. You're smart, you'll forget it. Back off. Go back where you come from and take your babe with you. You don't want to end up iced, you know what I'm saying? I don't know how to tell you any more direct than that."

"You're serious?"

"Listen, I've lived here my whole life. And there are people you just don't mess with. Make me look like a friggin' Boy Scout. You know who they are and you stay away from 'em, you know? And there are times to mess and times to walk away. You know the difference, you stay out of trouble. I'll tell you friggin' straight out. If I were you, I'd walk away. Leave it the hell alone."

He revved the motor and pulled up the road, turning around and coming back by me with a small wave of his hand, still on the steering wheel. I stood beside the car for a minute and when Cormier had disappeared around the bend in the road, I got in the car and considered what he had said. I considered it for a millisecond before coming to the conclusion that I had been right.

The word had come down from the top. Vigue.

As I sat there, the implications of it swept over me. From the top down to the peons, Cormier had put it. The patrolmen. Orders to leave it alone. Not talk about it. To act like Arthur had died in his bed, with a history of heart problems. He had swallowed a bottle of pills, ending a losing battle with depression.

Nor would it have taken actual orders. A word or a shake of the head would have done it. The message would have trickled down that this one was off limits. And the staties? A few words would have worked there, too. Crackpot. Flake. A few bricks short of a load. The rubber stamp would have come out much more easily then. No reason to delve into the mysteries of the human mind if you didn't absolutely have to.

And all along I had been going to Vigue, asking him why there was no investigation. I pushed and prodded and Vigue had already put out the word to lay off. But why? Because he had killed Arthur? What other reason could there be? Because he was protecting somebody who had killed Arthur? Why would he do that? He knew about Arthur's peeping pictures. What else did he know?

The longer I sat there, the worse it got.

If Vigue had arranged for me to be jumped and brought to the cabin, he also knew I hadn't reported it. In fact, I had gone to some lengths to cover it up. I didn't run to him because I didn't trust him. Maybe now he knew that, too.

How long would he let me keep digging? How long could he afford to? If he killed Arthur, or knew who did it, how well had he covered his tracks? How close could I get before he panicked?

I sat in the car on the deserted road and felt sick. The wind was blowing through the bare trees, rustling the grass and burdocks beside the car. A scattering of starlings streaked across the sky, like a cluster of dark shooting stars. It should have seemed beautiful, but instead the place seemed dead and grim. I put the car in gear and turned around in Cormier's tracks, following them back to town in much worse spirits than I had been in when I left.

When I got to the paper, everyone was in motion. They told me where everything stood-news copy, ad line, sports, classified-but I barely heard them. My mind was racing, jumping from one problem to another. God, the editorial was running. Stay away from it, Cormier had said, but I was issuing a public challenge. I was about to tell the town that the head of their police department had been derelict in his duty. The cops in his own department had been gagged, and I was going to dare Vigue not to investigate Arthur's death. Back off, Cormier had said, and I was going head to head, probably beyond what even Vigue could have imagined. He thought I was nosing around too much. I was going to splash the thing like he had never seen before.

To make matters worse, I had other things to do. Four stories to write, one relatively major one on the mill issue. It was Tuesday, two days from press day, and I had to keep the operation moving. It all had to get done, and there was no one else to do it.

And then there was S/O w/v.

People were hurrying around like it was a metro newsroom at eleven p.m. Vern was pounding on his terminal like a teletype, his hat on backwards, a toothpick in his mouth. Marion was setting type out front and Cindy was on the phone, and it actually sounded like business. Paul slammed through the door and walked directly to my desk, slapping a contract down in front of me.

"Check that baby out, Jack," he said, proudly. "Dick's Foodliner in Dixfield. Eight-hundred-inch contract. I've been trying to get him back for six months, the tight son of a bitch."

"Great, Paul," I said. "Now we know who buys the beer."

"Beer," Vern said, still typing. "The drink that has fueled armies, nourished civilizations, opiated the masses."

No one responded, so he raised the volume a notch.

"Feel the pulse of the newsroom," Vern shouted. "We are humming, yes, humming at news control. And now, back to you, Jack."

"Can it, Vern," Cindy called.

I even managed a smile.

A weak one.

The envelope from Wheeler at the Wall Street Journal came mid-morning by express mail. I opened it and flipped through the stacks of clips and abstracts and took a deep breath. Good stuff, but it was going to take some work. It was a major project, and I already had several going, both at the paper and elsewhere.

Vern came over and stood, big and wise and comforting.

"How's Roxanne?" he said.

"Okay," I said. "But I don't think I'll be seeing much of her up here for a while. She's decided to stay away until things settle down."

"When will that be?" Vern said quietly.

"Maybe soon," I said.

"But they'll get worse before they get better."

"You know, Jack, I don't mean to tell you what to do, but I guess that's exactly what I'm gonna do. Hope you take it in the spirit in which it's offered, but even if you don't, if I were you, I'd put all this down on paper. Arthur. The pictures. The threats and everything. The stuff with Martin and Pauline. I'd go to the AG with it. They'd keep it confidential. Just tell them it's such a small town, you aren't comfortable sticking with the local law enforcement."

"I'm not."

"So they could look into it. Hey, it's a crime using the mails. Maybe the feds could get involved. I don't know."

I ran my hand over the bump on my head.

"You're probably right. But, I don't know; It's such a big step. Christ, once you turn that stuff over, it's out of your hands. They take it and off they go."

"Yeah, but isn't that what you want?"

I thought for a second.

"I don't know. I'm not sure what I want."

Vern went back to his desk and I got out the Maine Directory and looked over the list of assistant AGs. I knew a couple of them, but only superficially. If I went to them with what I knew, it would be like putting my life in their hands. And Roxanne's. Maybe that was the answer. I could call the AP bureau in Portland and ask who they trusted in the AG's office. The number was in my card file. I got it out. I didn't make the call.

I got out my payroll files for the past six months, took out Arthur's folder, and began flipping through his vouchers, one by one.

They ran to two and three pages every two weeks. I went back six months without seeing an S/O or w/v, but I did find something.

Arthur used the letter "w" on several occasions to mean the word with. He wrote PIX W/CONTACT when he supplied photos with a contact or proof sheet. When I'd taken him with me on a couple out-of-town assignments, he'd written FEAT. W/JM on the voucher. Who else would he go with?

That was all the six months of vouchers yielded. I stuffed them in the folder and went down in the cellar and searched in the old file cabinets for payroll records. After five minutes, I gave up and came back to ask Cindy where they would be. She strode off and came back upstairs with a thick bundle of files, wrapped in rubber bands.

"That's five years," she said proudly.

"Beautiful," I said.

I didn't have to go back five years. After eighteen months, thirty-six vouchers, I found it.

23.

It was Sunday, July 29, the year before I came to the paper. I'd heard the story fifty times since.

That night, Arthur had worked four hours without taking a picture. The cops had gotten a tip that the QuikStop was going to be robbed and Arthur had gotten wind of it. He'd been tighter with the police before I came on board and began pushing them. They'd allowed him to go on the stakeout, and he'd sat in the back of an unmarked car. The robbers never showed, but Arthur had figured he still ought to get paid.

He'd put in for the time: S/O W/APD, 4 HOURS."

Androscoggin Police Department. There was only one cop whose name started with a "V," and that was Vigue. But a stakeout? I hadn't heard of anything going on that weekend. And Arthur would have told me-if he'd had a chance.

I took out the notebook and looked at the scrawled letters. They'd been written in a hurry. As if somebody was waiting at the door with the motor running.

It would have been just like the old days. Years ago, Arthur had ridden with the cops in the cruisers. He'd been their confidant because they knew they could trust him. He didn't serve the readers, but he could keep a secret.

I'd changed all that within three months. When I came on board, the cops weren't always right. We reported it when the department budget came under fire. When a patrolman was busted for drunk driving in another county, we ran a story. Arthur's cruises with the cops came to a screeching halt.

But would he refuse if they offered? No way. Arthur had been a lonely person. He liked nothing better than being one of the boys.

It's time, I thought. It's time to gather up the evidence.

The Pine Tree was filled with smoke. Most of the lunch crowd had left, and the few that remained sat at their booths and drank endless cups of coffee and smoked cigarette after cigarette.

I sat at the counter. The counter waitress, a thin, fiftyish woman with dyed black hair, banged a water glass down beside a paper place-mat with word games printed on it. The knife, fork, and spoon were rolled up in a paper napkin.

"Hi," she said. "What can I do you for?"

I smiled.

"Feed me. A tuna-salad sandwich with lettuce and tomato on whole wheat. And coffee."

"That's it?"

"For now."

She turned, still scribbling on her pad, and walked to the end of the counter. Ripping the page off the pad, she impaled it on a hook.

Her name was Marlene. I wasn't looking for her. I was looking for Joy.

Joy probably knew me as the guy from the paper. The guy from out of town. I knew her by sight from eating in the restaurant; I'd heard she was divorced and living with a guy who used to play football for Androscoggin and now drove a truck for St. Amand. I'd only heard that because Paul thought she was hot and lamented the fact that she wasn't single.

The sandwich came. Marlene asked if I wanted anything to drink other than coffee, and I said no. I had taken a couple of bites when Joy came out of the kitchen. She dumped a pile of clean dishes in a rack behind the counter and went back through the swinging doors. I got a glimpse of her face. Flushed cheeks. High cheekbones and blonde hair. She wore white slacks and she was lean, with an athletic swing in her walk.

Paul was right. But she looked like she took nothin' from nobody.

So to speak.

I watched for her as I ate but she didn't come back. I finished my sandwich and drank two cups of coffee. Marlene had just poured a third when Joy swung back through the door.

"I'm outta here," she called back to the kitchen. "Things get busy, put a dress on Frank."

She stripped off her apron as she headed through the tables to a door on the opposite wall. I put a five-dollar bill on the counter and followed, carrying my parka and a manila folder.

Joy went in the door and turned right. When I rounded the corner, she was standing in front of a metal locker, hurriedly running a brush through her hair.

"The john's on the other side," she said.

"I'm not looking for it. I was hoping to talk to you."

She turned and looked at me, weary of come-ons.

"Oh, yeah?" she asked.