He turned around and she gasped.

He stood there, dressed to the nines in a blood-spattered Armani jacket. There was blood on his shirt and blood on his shoes-his pants were soaked with it.

"Jack?" she said.

He said nothing, just stood there, smiling as if nothing was out of place. The friendly neighbor who'd stopped in for a cup of coffee. The distant relative you hadn't seen for a while, who'd just happened by. He could have been either one of these things, if not for all that blood. And then there were his eyes, those cold, grey eyes of his, staring through her, almost as if she wasn't even there. His face, drained of color, was slack and emotionless, and other than the fact that he had just droned out *sweet pea' on the other side of the door, there was not a sign in the world to show that he recognized who she even was.

He said nothing.

He took a step forward, and Tricia took a step back.

"Jack," she said. "Are you all right?"

But he wasn't all right, not by a long shot-any fool could have seen that.

He stepped forward, and Tricia moved back... further, until the wall halted her progress. She couldn't go forward, nor could she retreat any further back. She couldn't get away because he was standing right in front of her. All that blood, she could smell it now, taste it in the back of her throat. From one end to the other, it covered him.

And those eyes, as cold and dead as graveyard dirt.

Another step forward, and Tricia said, "What are you doing?"

"What I said I was going to do..."

"What?" she asked him.

"... show you a sweet old time."

She wanted to run but her legs betrayed her, wanted to flee but she couldn't.

He was closer now, so close he could reach out and grab her. And then he did. He grabbed her wrist and it hurt, clamped down hard and she dropped to her knees.

"Jack!" she gasped.

"Please!" she cried out, panic threading her voice as he pulled her awkwardly to her feet.

"Jack," she said. "Please!"

"They're waiting," he said. "They've always been waiting."

Chapter Fifteen.

Tricia didn't struggle when he began pulling her across the floor. She was happy to be getting him out of the house-frightened, to be sure; horrified by the blood and what it might have meant-but happy just the same to be getting him out of there. Mickey and Justin would be along soon, and no telling what would happen if this lunatic was still here when they showed up. Nothing good, she figured. So she bit down on her lip, blinking away tears that were forming in her eyes. She kept her mouth shut and stumbled along beside him, trying her best to ignore the pain shooting up her wrist.

By the time they got to Jack's Caddy, Tricia's fingers were almost numb.

Jack paused when they got there, and looked up at the sky. Tricia knew what he was looking at. She could feel it hovering overhead. That same old dreadful sensation that had washed over her this afternoon was back. Only now, she realized, she really had done it. She'd taken up with a stark-raving mad lunatic, who had done G.o.d only knew what to get that blood all over himself. She followed his line of sight, and there, blotted against a shimmering field of twinkling stars, was a top hat-shaped piece of pitch black. A fitting accompaniment to Tricia's mood, which was growing darker by the second.

That sinking sensation was back, all right-in spades.

"A gentleman," Jack said-to whom he was speaking, Tricia did not know, because he sure as h.e.l.l wasn't talking to her; he wasn't even looking at her. "Always opens a door for the lady." And then he did. He opened the door and ushered Tricia into the front seat, and then slammed the door shut behind her. Relief flooded her as the circulation, no longer stifled by Jack's iron grip, allowed blood to flow back through her injured wrist. She rubbed the palm of her hand, flexing her fingers as Jack made his way around front of the vehicle. By the time she realized the keys were in the ignition, he was already wrenching the driver's-side door open. She could have slid right over, started the car and roared off into the night, could've stopped a ways down the road and dialed up Rusty Piersol, who would have been highly interested in finding out why one of the area's most prominent citizens was running around the countryside drenched in blood. She could have done it, but now he was in the seat beside her-could've done it but now it was too late He started the car, backed down the drive to the street, and then took off down the road, the windows cranked up tight, the A/C blowing frigid air across the front of them. The stars were out in force, the moon high and full-and, of course, Tricia knew something else was out in force, something as dark and mysterious as anything she'd ever heard of, darker even than the sky looming above her. It had shown up out of nowhere, and like some alien moon, it seemed to have pulled a tide of humanity to it. Jack Everett and Jerry McCrea, Jim Kreigle and Chester Roebuck-Herbie Pender, too, she'd been told. All of them had been sucked out into the street as if they'd no choice in the matter. They and all those other men. And that was just on Main Street. Tricia wondered if every man in town had been drawn into the streets and lanes and dusty byways of their little country community.

Something else she wondered about: Ziggy Bowers. He hadn't stumbled wild-eyed into the street this afternoon. He'd been as surprised as Tricia and Sheila McCrea and everyone else. He was a man. Why hadn't he been drawn out like the rest of them?

What was that thing, and where had it come from?

And why, out of all the places in the world it could have shown itself, had it landed squarely over Pottsboro, South Carolina?

These were the questions running through her mind, as her wrist throbbed and the Cadillac cruised down the highway along the outskirts of town, the moon rose higher in the sky, and all throughout the town, men, who under normal circ.u.mstances would have had no interest whatsoever in the flash and dazzle of a country carnival, paced anxiously through houses populated by nervous and befuddled family members.

Tricia wondered where they were going, how long it would take to get there, and if there was a chance in h.e.l.l she would live out this night to make it back home to her son. At least that had gone right-she had gotten Jack out and away from the house, ensuring that Mickey wouldn't get caught up in any of this nonsense. She hadn't spared him much, lately, but she had spared him that.

She was looking out the pa.s.senger window, when Jack said, "You'll like it there."

"What?" Tricia said.

"You'll like it."

"Like what?" she said, and then turned to look at him, something she had been loathe to do since being forced into the car.

"It's nice there."

"What are you talking about?"

"It takes care of you, the dark, wraps you up and keeps everything away."

"The f.u.c.k is wrong with you, Jack? Seriously, have you lost your mind?"

Jack said nothing. He kept his foot on the gas, his hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road. There was a beer in the drink-holder, and Jack lifted it out. The bottle was empty and he rolled down his window, tossed the bottle into the night, and rolled the window back up. Time went on, the night rolled by, and the Cadillac roared down the highway. Tricia, alone in a car with a man who had obviously lost his mind, began to look around for some kind of weapon. A pen or a pencil to jab into his neck, or into an eye, if she had to. The beer bottle would've been nice. When the car stopped, she could've bashed in the side of his head, jumped out and took off running. But there was no bottle now, no pen or pencil or anything else she could see. Just Tricia Reardon, alone with a man in a blood-spattered suit, alone with a madman on a dark and lonely highway, heading somewhere Tricia surely did not want to go.

Chapter Sixteen.

It had been a long day for Rusty Piersol, one that had found him on the road at five-thirty this morning, a ridiculous hour for the forty-one-year-old sheriff to be out and about. But somebody from Pottsboro had to run over to Columbia today, somebody had to show up and give testimony against Bobby Herald. Good old Bobby, voted most likely to succeed his senior year in high school, and now look at him. He'd succeeded, all right. With his drug smuggling enterprise, the gambling, the prost.i.tution and a string of loan sharks meting out their own special kind of penalties against failed debtors, not to mention that money laundering scheme of his, he'd far surpa.s.sed all expectations anybody had ever held for him. But the feds had him now, had him and had him good.

All across the great state of South Carolina, Bobby's criminal enterprise had flourished. Many a good man-bad men, as well-had found themselves on the wrong side of Bobby *The Boss' Herald. Though many had been dispatched to the grave, no murders had ever been pinned on Bobby. The authorities, having settled instead for targeting his huge mountain of undeclared income, had utilized a tried and true prosecutorial tool to bring his world tumbling down around him, one that had been used on criminal masterminds from Al Capone to every two-bit mobster to have followed in his footsteps. And now Bobby *The Boss' found himself snared like a rabbit in the snapping steel teeth of a federal indictment that would have him spending the rest of his days in a cold grey prison cell. He had tossed the die, gambled and lost, and lost big. These days, one of the most powerful figures in South Carolina's criminal underworld had been reduced to sitting behind the defense table, while informants, detectives and deputies and small town sheriffs like Rusty Piersol hammered nail after nail into his coffin.

Somebody from Pottsboro had to go to Columbia this morning, and it d.a.m.n sure wasn't going to be Fred Hagen, who couldn't string four precise and coherent sentences together if his life depended on it. A modic.u.m of intelligence was required to withstand the strict scrutiny of Bobby *The Boss' Herald's team of legal representation, and since the township had only a two-man police force, that left Rusty Piersol to speak to the crimes which had taken place in his county.

It had been a long, boring day of testimony and legal wrangling, lunches, false starts and delays, and enough courtroom hi-jinks to fill out a Law and Order episode. But now it was finally over, Rusty's piece of the puzzle slipped perfectly into place. And now, fourteen hours after his journey had begun, he was headed home, and as he made his way down the interstate highway, he thought about Bobby *The Boss' Herald. Yes, Bobby Herald was a criminal, a thug who had left a trail of death and destruction everywhere he had traveled. Even so, Rusty felt a certain kinship with the man-saw a certain part of himself within him. Both men had been brought into a world of squalor and little hope; Bobby, along the coastal plains of Charleston, South Carolina; Rusty, upcountry in the farms and fields in and around Pottsboro. Like Bobby Herald, Rusty Piersol had risen above his station in life. But unlike Bobby *The Boss', who had left a series of shattered dreams and broken bodies on his way to becoming the top dog in his organization, hard work and perseverance had propelled Rusty to the top of his field.

The fact that he was a big fish in a tiny little pond mattered little to Rusty. He had come a long way. His family had come a long way-stepping off the boat as indentured servants, they had sailed the rough and tumble seas from Ireland to the coastal provinces of South Carolina, hoping someday to carve out a small slice of this wide-open promise land for themselves. Scratching a hard scrabble living from an unforgiving land, while all around them, the Piedmonts and Everetts of the world lorded their wealth over them; oft times perpetuating against them many of the same acts of aggression they had traveled so long and hard to escape. Unlike Jack Everett, Rusty Piersol's forefathers owned no slaves. On the contrary, other than the color of their skin, they weren't much different from the slaves themselves. Certainly they were no better off than their dark-skinned counterparts-they just got paid a little better, treated a tad better, beaten instead of hung for their indiscretions, starved instead of castrated.

Treated a little better, but not much better.

Maybe that was why Rusty had taken the high road, why he had ended up, not a criminal like Bobby Herald, but a good and loyal servant of law and order and civil obedience. Rusty Piersol, whose own family had been trodden upon by landowners and plantation overseers for more than a century and a half, held steadfast views on what const.i.tuted right and wrong. He bent for the Piedmonts and Everetts of the world, but did not break, nor would he bow down before them or kowtow to their demands. He kept a watchful eye on his town, and went out of his way to ensure no man-black or white, or any variation thereof-suffered the tyranny which had been so inhumanely perpetrated against the Piersol clan.

He was at the county line when he saw the Ferris wheel spinning out at the old Negro field; a bright set of headlights headed that way through the darkness on the old dirt road branching off from the place. Many an atrocity had been committed at that field, and Rusty Piersol took great pride in the fact that none of his forbearers had been involved with them in any way.

Rusty found it odd that a carnival should have set up shop way out at the county line-odd, and for some strange reason he couldn't quite put his finger on, a little disquieting. Rusty Piersol had been around these parts long enough to know the turn of the seasons like the back of his hand. He knew when the little league opened its season, the first and last day of the school year, when the first pigskin would be kicked and the first round ball stuffed down the hoop. He also knew which week the little country carnival was scheduled to hit their town, when it was scheduled and where it was scheduled-and this was neither the time nor the place for it.

He also knew that now was not the time to get himself worked up over something like this. He was tired and thirsty, a little hungry, too, and right now the best thing for him was to get to town and get a little something down his throat, some nourishment into the belly, get a good night's sleep. Maybe he'd talk to Fred tonight to make sure the proper permits had been issued for this place, get some sleep and check it out tomorrow morning. It was odd to see such a thing out at the old field, but right now, Rusty Piersol's bed was calling to him, and silk sheets and the soft touch of his young wife's flesh was much more important than the bright lights of a spinning Ferris wheel.

Chapter Seventeen.

The soft green glow of the dashboard lights muted the stark red splashes that had so shocked her back at the house, but Tricia knew they were there, even if she couldn't see them. She could close her eyes and wish herself away, but she knew that no matter what happened from here on out, she would never forget the way Jack Everett had looked when he walked into her house tonight. The dull, flat lay of his eyes, the blood-spattered jacket and blood-soaked pants, all would be indelibly written upon her psyche, filed away in her memory banks impossible to be forgotten, fuel for nightmares to come, nightmares that might never go away.

Of course it was Velma's blood. Who else's blood could it have been? Sweet, matronly Velma, who somehow had managed to carry her good looks with her into a time when others her age had left theirs far behind them. Pretty little Velma, the one-time southern belle who couldn't keep her man home at night no matter how well she kept herself. And here was Tricia, a broken sh.e.l.l of the happy little school girl she once had been, driving down a dark and deserted highway, a victim of an unhappy circ.u.mstance of her own making. n.o.body had forced her to succ.u.mb to Jack Everett's advances; no one held a gun to her head. She knew he was married, knew it was wrong, but she had done it anyway-why, she had no idea. Other than his extreme wealth, he held no alluring qualities. Nothing really existed to attract her to him. He was an old man, with white hair and sagging skin, an old coot, trying desperately to relive his youth by grabbing onto hers. She knew this, but she had continued to see him anyway, because he gave her money and showered her with compliments, promises and gifts.

She had traded her looks for a few car payments, a house note or two, a handful of nights on the town with someone whose wealth exceeded well beyond her reach. That was why she had allowed their relationship to continue, because a man who could have anything he wanted, anyone he desired, desired her. And that, in and of itself, had kept them going. That and the fact that she had been drifting through the world with a shot in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other, along with a handful of pills to keep her moving through the alcohol-induced haze she so constantly found herself in.

And now here she was, rolling down the highway, her future-or what was left of it-in the b.l.o.o.d.y hands of a madman, who more than likely had just slit his pretty little wife's throat. What had she done, put her foot down and demanded he stay home, demand from him the respect she rightfully deserved for putting up with his sorry a.s.s all these years? Velma Everett had not been much different than Tricia herself. Both had put up with wildly inappropriate behavior, way longer than they ever should have. And now look at them, Velma, dead, most a.s.suredly left bleeding out on her thick s.h.a.g carpeting; Tricia well on her way to joining her.

Here she was, all her little chickens come home to roost. She could feel it. Tonight she would pay for what she had done: to Velma Everett, for stealing nights with her husband; to her own son, for the part she had played in removing his father from their lives. One way or another, she would pay. She could feel it just as she could feel the cool breeze the air conditioner was blowing across her bare arms.

They had circled the town, gone from one end of it to the other, and then back again. Jack's eyes never left the road. He hardly spoke. Tricia wanted to engage him in conversation, to talk him back down from wherever he was, but she didn't know what to say, or how to approach him. She wanted to ask about Velma, but what if that sent him over the edge? Obviously he had done something horrible to her, unless he'd been out butchering a hog in his brand new Armani suit, and Tricia didn't think that was very likely. But for fear of screaming and then not being able to stop, she had to say something, anything. So she turned to Jack, and said, "Where are we going?"

Jack, eyes still on the road, said, "Don't know about you, but I sure could stand for a nice cold beer right about now."

Tricia's eyes lit up.

"Me, too," she said. Getting a beer would be a good thing, because getting a beer meant getting off this road, out of the car and into a bar, a store, maybe; someplace there would be people to cry out to for help. He really had gone off the deep end, if he was going to walk into somewhere in his blood-spattered outfit. And he probably would-up to this point he had given no indication whatsoever that he even knew the condition of the clothes he wore. Just marched slowly around-much as he had earlier this afternoon in front of the Wagon Wheel-like a zombie being drawn forward by some kind of irresistible force.

They were in town now, heading down Main Street. Tricia could hardly wait for the car to stop. She was going to throw the door open, jump out and haul a.s.s screaming all the way to the sheriff's office.

Past the schoolyard they went, past the courthouse with its ancient town clock. Soon they would be at the Wagon Wheel-where else could they be going, she figured, if he wanted a nice cold beer?

Jack screeched to a fishtailing stop in the middle of the street, directly in front of Jim Kreigle's general store. Tricia, thrown sideways into Jack, barely had time to register what had happened before he once again clamped that iron grip of his around her wrist. She cried out with pain as he kicked his door open, and began hauling Tricia across the Caddy's slick leather seats and into the roadway. She bounced off the metal frame of the open doorway and onto the asphalt, kicking her legs against the street as he pulled her toward Jim Kreigle's store.

"Jack!" she cried out. "Please! You're hurting me!"

He hauled her to her feet as if he were lifting a straw dummy from the trunk of his car, and then led her onto the wooden porch of the general store. Tricia wanted to cry out for help, but she was too frightened to even try. She could just see those powerful hands of his latching onto her throat, the bones would crack and she would go limp, the air would suddenly go away, and she would spend the last few seconds of her life gasping and drowning in her own blood.

She kept her mouth shut and stumbled forward, across the floor and in through the doorway. Behind them, Jack Everett's Cadillac stood sideways in the middle of the street, the driver's door open and the headlights burning, exhaust pluming out from the tailpipe as the engine ran on.

"Kreigle!" Jack called out. "Get your a.s.s out here!"

And there came Jim Kreigle, out of the office that stood directly behind his cash register. He had left the door to his office ajar, and as Jack pulled Tricia up to the counter, she could see Helen Kreigle slumped over her desk, a huge chunk of her skull missing from her ear up to the crown of her head. There was blood on the wall, bits of bone and pieces of dark matter stuck to the beige plastic side of the computer monitor her ruined head languished beside. A torrent of red ran down her face, drip-drip-dripping onto a sticky mess that had pooled beneath her chin.

Tricia stood there, her eyes wide, her mouth agape. "What... " she said. "What... what... "

The words she was trying to say, were *What have you done?' She could clearly see them bobbing on the surface of her fractured mind, but all she managed to get out was a squeaky little *What', that obviously no one besides herself could even hear.

Footsteps thudded across the porch.

Somebody was coming.

Thank G.o.d, Tricia thought. Thank f.u.c.king G.o.d!

The door slammed open and in walked Chester Roebuck, who stopped and looked calmly about the room, smiled and said, "It's getting there, isn't it... the time."

He crossed the floor, not stopping until he stood at the counter between Tricia and Jack, and Jim Kreigle, who stood behind the cash register as if it were just another boring Sat.u.r.day night spent at his old country store. Chester could see Helen Kreigle's dead body slumped over her desk-Tricia knew he could. If she could see straight to it, she knew that from his vantage point, he had to be able to see it, too. He most definitely could see the dried blood from one end of Jack Everett to the other, the hand he had clamped so securely around Tricia's wrist and the stark look of absolute terror st.i.tched across her panic-stricken face. Yet there he stood, smiling, as if he too were out and about on a Sat.u.r.day night not much different than any other that had occurred in his life.

"Beer, Kreigle," Jack said.

"Ohhh, yeahhh" Chester Roebuck said. "We're gonna need beer, plenty of it."

Kreigle turned, left the counter and marched down the aisles to the wall-sized coolers at the rear of his store. Moments later, he returned bearing a case of Rolling Rock beer. Icy vapors rose off the bottles as he set the case on the counter, pulled a bottle loose and cracked it open, tipped it up and took a long gulping pull from it.

In all the time Tricia had been coming into Kreigle's general store, even as a small child with her mother, she had never seen nor heard tell of Jim Kreigle drinking beer or any other alcoholic beverage. As far as she knew, Jim Kreigle was a G.o.d-fearing man, a friend of the church who took his standing in the community quite seriously. He was not the sort to dabble in alcoholic revelries, certainly wasn't the kind of man anyone would have expected to kill his own wife. Yet there he was, guzzling beer like it was going out of style, and there she was with half her brains either blown out or bashed right out of her skull, the rest of them dripping down the side of her face.

The pain generated by Jack's iron grip, excruciating now, soon began to overwhelm her.

"Jack," she said. "My wrist. You're hurting me."

"Don't worry, sweet pea," he said. "It'll all be over soon."

Tricia felt a slight wobble in her knees, as a queasy sensation generated by those prophetic words began squirming through her stomach. She swooned a bit, but didn't go down because Jack held her upright. She began to babble, "Jack, please, Jack, think about what you're doing, think about-"

A car pulling up out front stopped her in mid-sentence. A door creaked open, and then slammed shut. Footsteps sounded on the wooden porch. Moments later the door opened, and Rusty Piersol stepped inside.

"The h.e.l.l is Jack's Caddy doing in the middle of the street?" he said. He was smiling, but that didn't last long.

"Rusty!" Tricia cried out, as Jack turned to face Rusty Piersol in all his blood-spattered glory.

"Good G.o.d, Rusty," she said. "Help me!"

Rusty stood before Jack Everett, the front of Everett covered in what could only have been dried blood, the hand he'd clamped around Tricia Reardon's wrist obviously causing her an extreme amount of agony.

"The h.e.l.l's going on here?" he said. He went for his gun but Jim Kreigle was quicker-his hand came up from the counter, clutching a .357 magnum tightly in its grip. Fire roared from the barrel and Rusty Piersol's head exploded in a showering hail of blood and brain and fragments of bone. His feet rocked back and his hands came up level with his chest, clawing air as blood pumped from the shattered remains of his skull. He went over like a falling tree, down on his back where he lay silent and still, while a gushing red river spread dark bits of matter across Jim Kreigle's hardwood floor.

"What is wrong with you people?" Tricia cried out. "What is wrong with you!"