Guess it didn't bring them much in the way of luck.

"s.h.i.t, poor Marthe's sittin' in the other room practically in shock." Sutter rubbed his big face. "Couldn't get nothin' out of her when I was questionin' her. Trey, go in and see if she's all right."

Trey nodded again and left the room.

"You were taking pictures," Patricia pointed out.

"Yeah, evidence. We're just a small-town department, Patricia, so whenever something happens here that qualifies as a major crime, we write up the report and collect whatever evidence there is, then turn it over to the county sheriff's. They'll be doin' the investigation. Right now, the county coroner's office is out on the Point, pickin' up the bodies."

"But if the Hilds were murdered several miles away . . . why are you treating this bedroom like the crime scene?"

"'Cos it is, now that I looked around." His hand tiredly gestured the closet and some open dresser drawers. "The Hilds were murdered like a city drug execution. Are ya squeamish?"

"Try me," Patricia said.

"Ethel was stripped naked and chopped in half at the waist with an ax. Wilfrud was tied to a tree and knifed. And he had a couple bags a' crystal meth in his pocket." He pointed again to the closet and dresser. "Then look what I find in there."

Under some linens in the dresser drawer, she noticed dozens of little plastic bags containing either yellowish granules or yellowish chunks of something that looked like pieces of rock salt.

"Crystal meth," Sutter said. "Redneck crack. In the city where you live, crack is the big drug, but out here in the boondocks? That stuff's the ticket. They snort it, smoke it, shoot it up-one of them little bags costs a couple bucks to produce; then they sell it for twenty. It's superspeed, keeps ya high for eight hours. And it's just as addictive as crack."

Patricia looked at the bags, astonished. "The Hilds were using this stuff?"

"Not using, selling, it looks like. See all that other stuff in the closet?"

A large plastic bag sat on the closet floor. When Patricia opened it, she couldn't have been more bewildered.

"Matches?" Ernie said when he looked in too.

There must've been a hundred of them in the bag: matchbooks. Just plain old everyday books of matches. "What does this have to do with-"

"It's part of the process. Meth-heads soak the matches in some kind of solvent to get some chemical out of it-not the matches themselves, but the strike pads on each book. Then, up there on top, that's the main ingredient."

On the closet shelf sat about a dozen bottles of store-brand allergy and sinus medication that could be purchased over the counter in any drugstore.

"They soak the cold medicine in alcohol, then boil it and filter it," Sutter informed her. "That becomes the base for the crystal meth. Then they mix it with the stuff from the strike pad and add some kind of iodine compound, and cook it all down and distill it. I don't know the whole process-it's pretty complicated. But any cop in the world'll tell you that's what Wilfrud and Ethel Hild were into."

"Cain't believe it," Ernie said. "I known Wilfrud 'n' Ethel all my life. They were weird, sure. But drug dealers?"

"More than dealers," Sutter reminded him. "Producers. It takes all kinds, Ernie, and sometimes-a lot of the time, actually-people ain't what they seem."

Patricia supposed he was right about that. Sometimes people changed, became corrupted, and not much else could corrupt a person's values more effectively than poverty. But this was utterly shocking. With all her education, and all her experience living in a large modern city, Patricia was inclined to think that she knew a lot about human nature and the world in general. But now she felt oblivious, even ignorant.

This was a different world from hers.

Chief Sutter rose, walked his girth to the open window, and what he said next provided an eerie accompaniment to what Patricia had just been thinking. "There's a secret world out there that folks like us either don't see or just forget about'cos it don't affect us." He was looking out at the fringes of Squatterville, the ragtag tract of Judy's land covered with tin shacks and old trailers. "And the world of crystal meth is right out there somewhere, right under our noses. The s.h.i.t's been poppin' up more and more in our country over the past few years. s.h.i.t, just the other day me 'n' Trey caught a couple of punks from out of town tryin' to sell this selfsame s.h.i.t down here. Crystal f.u.c.kin' meth." Then he pointed out the window. "And all that out there is why they call it redneck crack. Any one of them little shacks or trailers could be a meth lab."

Patricia knew she couldn't not believe it; that would be naive. And what's Judy's reaction going to be when she learns that some of her Squatters are selling hard drugs?

"So you say Wilfrud and Ethel were murdered by other drug dealers?" Ernie asked.

"Had to have been," Sutter answered. "That's how these people do it-real psycho. The Hilds' operation must've been cutting in on someone else's territory."

"The same thing happens in the city with the crack gangs." Patricia at least knew that much. Just a month ago in the Post she'd read about how drug dealers would kidnap and dismember the girlfriends of rival dealers. "In the corporate world you buy out the compet.i.tion, but in the drug world you kill the compet.i.tion."

"Sure." Sutter knew as well. "Old as history. The Hilds were probably movin' in on someone else's turf, and now they got themselves killed for it."

Car doors could be heard thunking from outside.

"Now the fun starts," Sutter muttered. "You two better git on back to Judy's. County sheriff's just pulled up, and when they see all that s.h.i.t in the closet, they'll be callin' the state narcotics squad."

"Do you think they'll get warrants to search all the Squatters' homes?" Patricia asked.

"Oh, I'm sure. Let's just hope this is isolated. If there was a whole lot of other Squatters workin' with the Hilds, we're all in for a big headache."

Patricia and Ernie walked back out to the foyer with Sutter. The door stood open in another room; inside, Sergeant Trey could be seen quietly questioning a very shaken Marthe Stanherd. The thin, elderly woman looked like a bowed scarecrow as she murmured answers to Trey's queries.

Trouble in paradise, Patricia thought. Serious trouble . . .

She and Ernie slipped out, leaving Chief Sutter to brief the incoming county officers. As they walked back across the rising hill-the sun beating down, and the cicadas out en ma.s.se-Patricia took another glance back at the humble sheds and shacks of Squatterville, and wondered if last night's brutal murders were a fluke, or a new beginning for Agan's Point.

The fringes of Squatterville were marked with small, uneven vegetable patches that the clan's children would tend, mostly spring onions, soy beans, radishes. Patricia thought of Marthe Stanherd once more when she spied a genuine scarecrow mounted at the field's edge: old straw-stuffed clothes and a grimacing potato-sack face beneath a corroded hat. The crucified thing seemed to reach out to them with skeletal hands fashioned from twigs.

Around its neck hung, not a cross, but a small wooden board acrawl with elaborate squiggles. . . .

"Patricia! Goodness!" Judy called to her the instant she stepped into the kitchen. Despite last night's overindulgence with liquor, and the mental aftermath of her husband's funeral, Judy looked peppy, vibrant, her grayish-red hair flowing in a mane around her face. "Byron called and he's worried sick about you! Shame on you for not calling him!"

The exclamation caught Patricia totally off guard. "Byron called the house?"

"Yes," Judy sternly replied. "A little while ago. He said he's been leaving messages on your cell phone since yesterday."

Oh, G.o.d . . .

Judy wagged a scolding finger. "Don't you dare neglect that wonderful husband of yours-"

Ernie stepped up, interrupting. "Uh, Judy, lemme talk to ya a minute. The police are at the Stanherd house right now. There was some bad trouble last night. . . ."

Patricia edged away, leaving Ernie to make the grim report of the Hilds' murders to her sister. She was back in her room in a few seconds, then retrieved her cell phone and called Byron.

"Oh, G.o.d, I was so worried, honey," he expressed. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, Byron, I'm fine-"

"I left messages and you never called back, so I thought-"

"Everything's fine, honey," she said, feeling like a complete lout. What could she say? "Things were just so busy here with the funeral service and the reception, and all the people. There're so many people here who remember me-I didn't really expect that."

"But that was all yesterday, right?"

"Well, yes-"

"So why didn't you call me this morning?"

Patricia stalled. She looked, horrified, to the clock: it was almost noon. "I'm so sorry. I slept late-I was so exhausted. Then I went for a walk to get the gears turning. But I was going to call you when I got back, and I just got back a minute ago." She frowned at herself. Now she was simply lying. How could she tell her own husband that she'd completely forgotten about him? That she'd been out "for a walk," all right, with a man she'd been having s.e.xual fantasies about and . . . and . . . And whom I practically just screwed in the woods? she finished for herself.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I guess I'm overreacting. I know how that place distresses you. Plus, I just . . ." There was a pause on the phone. "I guess I'm just a big, whiny, insecure pud, but I had a horrible dream last night that you were having s.e.x with another man."

Someone should've given Patricia an Oscar for the skill and immediacy with which she next tossed her head back and laughed and said, "Oh, Byron, you're so ridiculous sometimes. There's not one solitary man in Agan's Point who isn't a redneck hayseed with a busted-up pickup truck. At least have enough respect for me to dream that I'm getting it on with Tom Cruise or Johnny Depp, someone like that." But even through her recital, she was thinking, Holy, holy, holy s.h.i.t!

Now-to Patricia's relief-Byron laughed. "Yeah, I guess it was a pretty dumb dream. I'm just glad everything's okay."

Finally she had the opportunity to change the subject but to something not so okay. "Actually, there was a big shocker just this morning. The police have been here-"

"Police?"

"-and evidently two of the Squatters who live on my sister's land were murdered last night."

"What!" he exclaimed.

"Yeah, it's the craziest thing. There have never been murders here ever; then all of a sudden Dwayne gets killed, and now this."

"I want you out of there right now," Byron insisted. "Sounds like that backward boondocks place is boiling over. Get in the car right now and come home!"

"Byron, now you are overreacting. It was drug-related, the police said, and it happened miles away out in the woods. Judy's just finding out about it now, but even though it's tragic and all that, it's nothing for us to get all worked up over. A Squatter couple were secretly dealing drugs, and they got murdered by a rival drug gang-that sort of thing. It's not like there's a serial killer prowling Agan's Point."

"Well, I don't like it," Byron affirmed. "The funeral's over and done with, so there's no reason for you to stay. You hate the place anyway."

"Byron, the whole reason I came in the first place was to give my unstable and fairly heavily drinking sister some support in her time of need. I'll be back next week, just as we planned."

"Well, all right. But I still don't like it. And you need to call me-"

"I will, honey," she promised. "Most of the commotion's over now, so there won't be any more distractions. And once I got Judy back on her feet, I'll be home in a flash."

"Good." He paused. "I really miss you and I really love you. You've only been gone for a few days and I'm already realizing how important you are to me. I guess I don't show it much. . . ."

"Byron, of course you do, so stop it." She truly did love him-more than anything-and she did want to get back to be with him. Her little mishap in the woods with Ernie was just a fluke brought on by the stress of being back; it was simply a loss of control in a moment run amok. I do love Byron, she attested to herself. Ernie was no more than a man in a magazine ad whom she'd happened to notice.

On the other hand-and as loving and genuine as he was-Byron did have his moments of insecurity. He was an overweight middle-aged man, and Patricia was still a well-endowed, beautiful woman. She knew it must be hard for him to deal with sometimes.

"You never have to 'do' things to prove your love to me," she continued. "Just being you is the proof. Please remember that. And I love you too, very much. Remember that too."

"I will," he replied, a bit choked up.

"I'll call tonight, and every night I'm here. And I haven't forgotten. I even have a cooler."

"What?"

"Your Agan's Point crab cakes, silly!"

"Good. And the minute you get back here, I'm going to eat them off your beautiful, naked body. That's a promise."

"Byron, nothing turns me on more than culinary s.e.x," she said, laughing, and then they bade their final "good-byes" and "I love yous" and rang off.

Patricia lay back on the bed and let out a great sigh. The conversation left her relieved and ashamed at the same time, not a good combination. She had lied to him-little white lies, but lies just the same-and she had offered invented excuses, and maybe that was good, because it helped her confront something important about herself.

It's all me. It's not Byron. There's nothing wrong with my marriage, and there's nothing wrong with him. So . . .

And the coincidence jolted her. He's been having dreams about me cheating on him, and I've been having dreams about me cheating on him. And today, with Ernie, I almost did cheat on him.

It was with a total spontaneity that she roved through her cell phone's address book and found herself looking at Dr. Sallee's number, and before she knew what she was doing, the line was ringing.

He probably doesn't even remember me, she thought. She'd seen him only once, when she and Byron had returned from Agan's Point after Judy's wedding. When the receptionist answered, she said, "Hi, my name's Patricia White. I had a session with Dr. Sallee several years ago. I was wondering if I could arrange a phone consultation. I could give you my credit card number over the phone."

"Is your home address still the same?"

"Yes."

Keys were heard tapping. "Yes, we still have it on file."

"Great. Then if possible could you give me a time to call back for a consultation?"

"One moment, please."

As Patricia waited, she didn't even know what she would say once she got the consultation. I don't really even know why I called. . . .

"Dr. Sallee is available now," the receptionist told her. "I'll put him on."

"Thank you-"

"Patricia White?" the next voice asked.

"Yes, Doctor. You probably don't remember me but-"

"The real estate lawyer with blazing red hair-of course I remember. How are you?"

She was flattered he remembered her. "All in all, I'm fine, but . . . I've been having some problems for the last several days."

"When you came to me last time, we'd nailed your problem in general as a reactive symptom of monopolar depression. You'd left town to attend your sister's wedding, at a place called . . ."

"Agan's Point," she helped him.

"Yes, the crabbing town. Your depression was activated by memories of a s.e.xual trauma-a rape-that you suffered at age sixteen. We agreed that this depression was entirely location triggered, and decided that as long as you kept your distance from Agan's Point, the depression would not recur. I presumed this theory worked, because I never heard from you again. Am I wrong?"

"It did work," she said. "I felt fine after that and have for the last five years. But for the last few-"

"Where are you right now, exactly?" he interrupted.

"Agan's Point," she slowly admitted. "This time for a funeral-my sister's husband."