"Well . . ."

"Here's what Father Darren would say. Why is it you think you ain't got enough money?"

"Well, 'cos-"

"'Cos yer wife spends half the money you work your a.s.s off for on food, and you spend the other half on keepin' a roof over her head and her big a.s.s in a car, right?"

Sutter gave him an alarmed glance. "Yeah, and it's a right pain in the a.s.s and it's p.i.s.sin' me off."

Trey nodded knowingly. "And here's what Father Darren would say. He'd say that a wife who's fat 'n' happy is the wife of a G.o.d-lovin man, a man who's doin' his best to live by His laws."

Sutter blinked. "That what he'd say?"

"You can roger that, Chief, and here's why. 'Cos if yer fine wife, June, was bone-skinny and didn't have no cable TV, or no car a' her own, and had ta live in a s.h.i.t little house, then thatd mean that you weren't livin' by His laws."

Sutter sighed. "I hope you're right, Trey, but what ya don't understand is I'm chokin' on a right s.h.i.tload of debt, and now I somehow gotta find me two grand for a new air conditioner. I'm real happy that I'm livin' by G.o.d's laws, but I sure don't see G.o.d buyin me a new air conditioner."

Trey pointed. "But don't ya see? He will. All you gotta do is ask Him. G.o.d provides to those who rightly deserve His provisions. Do it right now, in yer head. Ask G.o.d ta forgive ya for not managin' your finances proper, and ask Him to help ya out. Go on. Do it. Remember what Father Darren says: A man should never be embarra.s.sed to talk to G.o.d."

Sutter slumped behind the wheel of the cruiser. Can't hurt, I guess. He closed his eyes and prayed: G.o.d, what I'm askin ya to do is to forgive me for bein selfish n ungrateful 'n' for takin your gifts for granted. Forgive me for not lookin' hard enough to see how you want things to be, and forgive me for not managin my finances proper and for lettin things get outta hand. I need your help, G.o.d, and I mean I really, really need the scratch for a new air conditioner, 'cos if I can't dig it up, June'll be whinin' worse than a truckload of weasels. . . .

When Chief Sutter opened his eyes again, he felt better. He didn't feel any richer, but he definitely felt better.

"Good man, Chief. When you talk, G.o.d listens." Trey sipped his coffee in some seeming a.s.surance. "He listens to me, I can tell ya that. I ain't braggin', but let me show ya something." He slipped out his wallet and withdrew two slips of paper. "Now, I make less than you, and if anything my wife, Marcy, eats even more than your wife, but look at this."

He pa.s.sed the slips of paper to Sutter.

Holy . . . s.h.i.t! They were bank balance receipts. "Trey, I say you sure do manage your money proper. Jiminy Christmas." Trey had five grand in his checking and eight in his savings.

Trey took back the papers, nodding. "It's 'cos G.o.d listens when I talk to him. G.o.d looks at me and ya know what He sees? He sees a man who's had plenty of chances to go astray but chose not to. He sees a cop, same as He sees you. He sees a man bustin' his a.s.s to uphold the law and maintain peace and decency. So G.o.d don't leave a man like that out to dry. Instead, He helps him out every so often. Just like He's gonna help you.

Sutter reflected on the words. He remembered Trey back in his younger days, before marriage, before typical social and domestic responsibilities had come into his life. The man had been an absolute nutcase, a hard-drinkin', hard-partyin' character. Gals would follow that boy down the street, Sutter thought. Spent mos a' his money on bar-hoppin', hot rods, and women. . . . But life had changed Sgt. William Trey-a change for the good. He'd used the force of his will to change himself into a good man, and now good things were befalling him.

Would the same good things befall Sutter?

He needed some good things now.

It was almost as if Trey were reading his mind when he said, "Good things, Chief."

"What's that?"

"Good things happen to men who put their trust in G.o.d."

Sutter stared out the window. What Trey was telling him just made him feel better and better. He shook his head. "Trey, I known you for goin' on thirty years, and in all that time I had no idea you had so much religion in ya."

"Ain't no secret; ain't no big deal." Trey calmly sipped more coffee. "Live by G.o.d's laws, and He will grant blessings upon you." But in that same moment, Trey's eyes shot wide out the window at a figure at the side of the road. It was a woman, a woman flagging them down, and that was when the very G.o.d-fearing Sergeant Trey exclaimed, "Holy sufferin' s.h.i.t, Chief! Would you get a load of the t.i.ts on that piece of a.s.s?"

Two.

(I).

Patricia, of course, had forgotten. It had been five years, hadn't it?

Five years since her return to Agan's Point.

The Cadillac cruised silently, comfortingly, but as the city had faded behind her, and the interstate highways had eventually given over to long, winding, and very rural county roads, the words began to haunt her: Oh, my G.o.d, girl. How could you let something like that happen?

They were her father's words, less than a week after her sixteenth birthday. . . .

The look in his eye, and the words he'd chosen. Like I let it happen, she thought now in an overwhelming mental darkness. Like I wanted it to happen . . .

She'd never been more hurt in her life.

She'd felt good, hadn't she? Her wonderful, if selfish, love session with Byron last night might have had something to do with it, but when she pulled away from the condo, knowing full well where she was going, she felt good, and that was something she didn't expect. Watching the sun bloom as she drove, opening the Cadillac up on Interstate 95, and moving forward . . . It seemed to clear her head of all the city's stresses and the endless intricacies of work. Indeed, Patricia felt clean, new; she felt purged. Until . . .

Her mood began to wilt in increments. She knew what she was doing. Putting it off. But I can't put it off. All I can do is dawdle, procrastinate. She wound up driving through the historic district in Richmond, and blowing an hour looking for a place to have breakfast. Same thing through Norfolk, for lunch. She was turning the three-hour drive into an all-day journey, as if getting to Agans Point later would ease some of her distress. But she knew it wouldn't. I'm torturing myself, she thought.

Hours later familiar road signs began to pop up, signals that she wasnt so much driving away from her exhausting lifestyle in Washington, but instead driving to something much more stressful. The far less traveled Route 10 seemed to throw the signs in her face as she raced past, towns with names like Benn's Church, Rescue, and Chuckatuck. More and more of her frame of mind began to melt. Then a sign flashed by: DISMAL SWAMP-10 MILES.

And more signs, with stranger names: LUNTVILLE-6 MILES.

CRICK CITY-11 MILES.

MOYOCK-30 MILES.

Oh, G.o.d, Patricia thought.

She was beginning to feel sick, and with the sickness came a resurfacing. She hadn't thought of the psychologist in a long time, a keen, incisive bald man named Dr. Sallee. And she'd seen him only once, just after her return from her last trip to Agan's Point five years ago, when her despair seemed insurmountable.

"We bury traumas," he'd told her. "In a variety of different ways, but the effect remains the same. Some people deal with their traumas by confronting them immediately, and then forgetting about them, while others deal best by forgetting about them first and then never confronting them because there's no apparent need. That's what you're doing, Patricia, and there's nothing wrong with that. There's no apparent need because you relocated yourself from the premises of the trauma."

The premises of the trauma. She thought over the odd choice of words. But he'd been right. I moved away as fast as I could. . . .

"What happened to you will always be there," he continued, fingering a paperweight shaped like a blue pill that read STELAZINE. "I'm a behavioralist psychologist; I'm not so liberal in my manner of interpreting human psychology. Other professionals would tell you that it's unhealthy to leave your traumas because they remain in your psyche whether you know it or not. That's not true with regard to how we must function in our lives, in our society, and in the world. If not living in Agan's Point restores you to that kind of functionality, then you've done the right thing. Your trauma becomes neutered, ineffectual-it becomes a thing that can't affect you anymore. It no longer has any bearing on your life, and never will . . . unless you let it. You don't need a regimen of antidepressant drugs and costly psychotherapy to deal with your trauma; all you need is to be away from the area of the occurrence. Your life right now is validation. You're a fabulously successful attorney enjoying a fulfilling career and a wonderful marriage. Am I right?"

Patricia splayed her hands on the couch. "Yes."

"You aren't traumatized by what happened to you when you were sixteen, are you? You aren't a psychological basket case; this event in your past hasn't ruined you. You can't tell me that this twenty-five-year-old tragedy still rears its head and exerts a negative force in your existence, can you? Can you tell me that?"

Patricia almost laughed. What he was forcing her to admit to herself was now replacing a creeping despair with a frivolous joy. "No, Doctor, I can't tell you that at all."

He looked at her with a blank expression. "So your problem is . . . ?"

She conceded to him. "You're right. I don't have a problem anymore."

He raised a finger. "Proximity to the scene of the trauma is your only problem. Whenever you return to Agan's Point, your despair recommences. When you're away from Agan's Point, your mind functions as though the trauma never occurred. We know I'm correct about this because every aspect of your life verifies it. Let me put it in the most sophisticated, clinical terminology I can, Patricia. f.u.c.k Agan's Point. s.h.i.t on Agan's Point. To h.e.l.l with Agan's Point. How's that?"

Now Patricia was laughing outright.

And he finished, "Your despair is activated only when you return to Agan's Point, so my professional advice is never to go back there. You don't have to. You don't have to do anything you don't want. If you want to see your relatives, then they can come to you. You don't have to go to them. Agan's Point is a bowel movement that you flushed down the toilet years ago. Solution? Don't go back to the sewer."

And that was that. Not only had Patricia gotten a great laugh from Dr. Sallee's ac.u.men, she'd needed to see him only that one time for all to be set back to rights. When she'd gone home from her sister's wedding, it all returned to her-indeed, like a toilet backing up. Now that I'm away from that h.e.l.lhole . . . I feel great. . . .

And she continued to feel great . . . until she'd received the call from Judy reporting her husband's murder.

I'm going back to the sewer, she recalled the doctor's metaphor as the Caddy brought her closer and closer. I don't know what else to do. She's my sister. . . .

This was all she could do, and she knew it. "And I'll just have to make the best of it," she said to herself. "It was so long ago anyway. I'm acting like a baby. Admitting that to herself was easier than admitting her optimism was forced.

She let more of the road take her, the Cadillac almost too quiet and smooth as more roads turned rural, and more turnoffs took her farther away from her metropolitan world. The wilds of southern Virginia were an opposite world-farms instead of skysc.r.a.pers, old pickup trucks and tractors lumbering along quiet, tree-lined roads, quite unlike the manic traffic streams of the city. She knew that home grew ever closer by still more telltale signs: AGANS POINT CRAB CAKES, boasted a roadside restaurant. Then a market: WE SELL AGANS POINT CRABMEAT. Her sister's crabmeat was locally renowned. Eventually the scenery began to calm Patricia's nerves, and she actually smiled. Would she really be able to forget about her trauma of decades ago? Maybe it's all just worn off, she hoped.

Then another sign swept by: AGAN'S POINT-3 MILES.

She steeled herself behind the wheel. It's no big deal, no big deal. I'm over it!

And then the awful words came back to haunt her just as effectively as she was being haunted by her past: Yes, her own father's words . . .

How could you let something like that happen?

Patricia's eyes suddenly flooded with tears. She couldn't control herself; she couldn't even remember what she was doing, her sensibilities jerking away from her like something being stolen. Without even realizing it, she pulled the Cadillac to the shoulder and got out, her heart hammering, sweat pasting her red bangs to her forehead. A pa.s.serby would've dismissed her as a crazy woman about to run amok into the woods. Tears blurred her vision. Her feet took her in a blind run away from the car. When she fell to her knees several minutes later, she looked up, choking through sobs, and then saw a smaller sign just before the turn onto a narrow country road. She had to squint through her tears to focus until she could finally read the sign, a right-turn arrow and the words: BOWEN'S FIELD.

Patricia shrieked, vomited into the gra.s.s, and pa.s.sed out.

(II).

"It just seemed weird to me, Mr. Chief," the slim, curvy girl with tousled black hair was relating into the driver's-side window of the Agan's Point police patrol car.

The strange accent was more of a giveaway than the pale skin and black hair, not to mention the "Mr. Chief." One of Stanherd's Squatters, Chief Sutter realized. They always called him Mr. Chief. He didn't recall seeing this one around, but then he didn't typically pay much attention to the Squatters-he didn't have to. They kept to themselves, stayed out of trouble, and worked hard, most of them taking minimum-wage jobs at the crab company. Chief Sutter was a reasonable man. Work your job, pay your taxes, and obey the law, and you'll have no problem with me. Right now, however, Chief Sutter was having a problem of his own, with this girl who'd flagged them down on Point Road. As she leaned over the window, to convey some mishap at the Qwik-Mart, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s stared him bold in the face. The homemade tomato-red jumper top restrained a pair of b.r.e.a.s.t.s that might be getting close to D-cup territory. The hand-set st.i.tches of the top, in fact, were stretching enough to show lines of flesh in their seams. She also wore an equally tight threadbare skirt hemmed uncomfortably high on the thigh. The Squatters made their own clothes from fabric sc.r.a.ps they bought at Goodwill, and this little thing was obviously still growing into her getup. A heat wave flashed in Sutter's groin when, as he listened, his eyes shot a quick glance down the front of her abdomen and hips. Oh, lord, he commiserated. Her right foot crossed over the back ankle of her left, a dollar-store flip-flop hanging off the sleek, voluptuous foot. Jiminy Christmas, even her f.u.c.king feet are hot . . . Hence Chief Sutter's "problem." The images distracted him, such that he found himself nodding as if in attention but hearing almost nothing of what she said.

"-and they was kinda grinnin' and lookin' me over," she went on, "the way fellas'll do, makin' me really uncomfortable, and when I told 'em I didn't wanna buy none, they said somethin' like, 'Well, that's all right, we'll give ya some fer free if ya come and party with us.'"

The Squatter girls weren't much above the neck, sort of wide faces and flat noses, not the best teeth, and that ratty black hair. But below the neck?

Jiminy Christmas, Sutter repeated the thought. They all had bodies that would make a calendar girl feel insecure.

"What's that you were sayin' there, hon?" Trey asked. Sutter could tell by Trey's squint and the tone of his query that he too was experiencing a problem with distraction. Any officer's job was to get all the facts, and that wasn't working well here, not with this Squatter bombsh.e.l.l's pair of absolutely state-of-the-art b.r.e.a.s.t.s practically falling out of that top in front of them.

"What was it you say these fellas were tryin' ta sell you?" Trey blinked hard enough to get out.

Her hip c.o.c.ked, which caused her bosom to sway delectably in the hand-st.i.tched top, and she explained in that weird accent that all the Squatters seemed to have, "Ice! Can ya believe that? They asked me if I wanted to buy some ice! Sure, it's hot n all, but we got a bunch a' ice trays in our freezer just like dang near everyone, and even if we didn't, I could walk right in the Qwik-Mart and buy me a bag. Dumbest thing I ever heard anyone tryin' ta sell right out front of a convenience store. Who sells ice out of a truck, Mr. Chief? So's that's why I flagged ya down, just 'cos that whole thing seemed really weird and so did them fellas. Thought the police'd wanna know."

Sutter and Trey exchanged glances. At least now they had some police business, which was good, because if Sutter had to spend another minute looking at this girl's outrageous body he might have a heart attack right there in the cruiser.

"That was right of you to flag us down, missy," Sutter said, "because fellas like that are definitely not the type we want in Agan's Point. You see which way they went?"

Now she stood on both feet, legs parted, and leaned back with hands on hips. More distraction: she was so short-all the Squatters were-and as she leaned back like that, she nearly appeared unreal, like something manufactured at a scaled-down size. When she pointed across the windshield, Sutter's eyes bugged as one immaculate breast rose in the top, and in that little gap underneath he could see the bare bottom of it in all of its...o...b..cular glory. "They ain't went nowhere yet, Mr. Chief, 'cos see? They're still there. That's them in that orange boxy-looking truck parked right out front of the Qwik-Mart, and that's one of 'em standin' right there talkin' on the pay phone."

Trey's expression revved up. "Well, ain't that grand, yes, sir!"

"You got that right," Sutter agreed, then back to the girl: "You've done a fine civic duty today, missy, and we appreciate it."

She seemed delighted by Sutter's response, and then her not-so-comely face lit up with a big smile-not that Sutter nor Trey, was focused on her face. "You have a fine day, Mr. Chief, and . . . and . . . and Mr. Chief's partner."

Sutter paused to himself. s.h.i.t. I gotta know. "By the way, missy, if you don't mind my asking . . . how old are you?"

Her eyes beamed. "Why, it's funny you should ask, but I just turnt fifteen yesterday!"

Trey spit out a mouthful of coffee while Sutter thought in a long, low groan: Oh, my great G.o.d in . heaven. . . .

The girl waved giddily as the cruiser backed up and began to turn. "Jiminy Christmas," Sutter muttered like a man with a bad bellyache. "That dizzy brick s.h.i.t-house was almost the death of me just lookin at her."

"d.a.m.n near busted my pants, Chief. And did'ja see how little she was? Bet she wasn't five feet. And who cares about the b.u.t.t-ugly face? Them Squatter chicks got bods on 'em that make me wanna howl at the f.u.c.kin' moon." Trey may have momentarily rubbed his crotch when Sutter wasn't looking. "I got myself a leapin' lizard down here."

"Tell me about it."

His slapped his thigh. "And she's only fifteen!"

"Tell me about it," Sutter repeated, pulling around.

Trey was shaking his head. "But just as they got bodies from h.e.l.l they ain't got but s.h.i.t fer brains." He let out a hick laugh. "She thinks those guys are selling ice cubes! How's that for a dumb s.h.i.t?"

"Aw, give her a break. She's had a s.h.i.t life, no proper schooling, and works her a.s.s off at the crab plant."

Trey belted out another laugh. "s.h.i.t, Chief, with that bod, she can work my a.s.s off anytime she likes!"

Sutter shot him a reproving glare.