"Shh. Let's not get distracted. Who were your suspects?"

"We only had one. Your father."

Crease sat back and lit another cigarette. "He didn't do it."

"I'm still not so sure about that."

"I am. He wanted the cash but he didn't score the girl. It just fell into his lap." Crease let out a trail of smoke, looking up at Reb in the photo, smiling and looking happy, holding Edwards' hand. They made a good couple. "Family enemies?"

"None."

"Business partner who wanted to cash out but couldn't?"

"Burke ran the hardware store. Still does. No partners. No unhappy ex-employees. We did our job. I did my job."

"Background checks on the family?"

"You're not listening to me. We did our jobs. There were no outstanding debts. Wife didn't have a boyfriend who might want easy rent off the husband." The sheriff's expression became a bit more sure and arrogant. "And it wasn't me."

His chin was up, dignified, daring Crease to judge him. Not knowing that Crease was a bent cop himself, and had seen a lot of his brothers in blue pocket a h.e.l.l of a lot more than fifteen g's. It almost made him laugh.

He began to cool down. He lit another b.u.t.t.

"What time did the 'nappers say they'd do the trade?"

"They said to get there by one p.m. and wait. Your father said he'd handle it alone, didn't want to endanger the girl." Edwards couldn't help scowling. "Didn't want any backup. If you're really on the job you know that breaks every rule there is."

Crease knew it all right. "What made you bust into the mill when you did? My father said six hours went by. Why'd you get up right then?"

"It was closer to four. He got there late. He told everybody he arrived at the mill at noon, but it was after one, he'd already missed the chance to get any kind of a drop. He stopped at a liquor store first to load up, left the satchel full of money that Burke had given him right in the pa.s.senger seat. I had a bad feeling right from the beginning and I was watching him."

Edwards began to tremble and Crease handed him the Dewars to help calm his nerves. All of this rage, and Edwards was a near carbon copy of Crease's old man. He watched the sheriff take a good bite, saw his eyes roll up in pleasure and relief. Edwards let out a deeply satisfied, nearly carnal sigh, the same way Crease's father used to do it.

"It was getting dark. I had parked back on one of the trails and left my flashlight in the car. I wanted to make an on-site evaluation of the situation. Make sure your old man hadn't pa.s.sed out, check and see if the kidnappers had already slipped away."

"You didn't want him to blow the collar."

"That's right. I wanted the girl back. I didn't want him to botch the set-up and ruin his life. But he did."

Crease couldn't get back into that now. He needed clarity. "Why'd you walk in the front door? That seems stupid to me."

"The sun was to my back. I wanted anybody in the mill to be blind. I wanted the perp but I didn't want to get shot for it. By the 'nappers or your old man."

"Why didn't either of you see the girl until the last second?"

Edwards had nothing to say to that. His expression twisted again. Crease understood why he would've blamed his father entirely for everything that happened. The missed opportunity, the screwy rendezvous, the dead girl. His mentor had let him down. He was green, and he'd done the right thing the wrong way.

"You're not going to solve this," Edwards told him. "Would you want me to?" Crease asked.

"h.e.l.l yes, clear the books for me. But this one's long gone, and your father was a part of it."

"You too."

"Only because I couldn't save her."

He knew Edwards was right.

He'd never get to the end of it. He'd run around town chasing his tail, like he did when he was a kid. It was a holding pattern. He wasn't a gold shield detective, had never worked homicide. He could trip over the 'nappers five times in an afternoon and wouldn't know it.

"Okay," Crease said, and that was the end of it for now.

Only Edwards didn't think so. He said, "Fair warning, kid. You and me still have business."

"All right."

"I don't care if you are on the job. You're not getting away with this, treating me like this in my own home." Crease half-expected him to say, Messing with my jigsaw dog! "I owe you. There's no way you're walking away from this now. It's going to catch up with you. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but soon."

Crease reached into his pocket, handed Edwards back his gun, and said, "Why wait?"

He sat there within arm's reach thinking of how many ways he could kill the sheriff before the guy got a shot off.

Crease could use the knife he'd pulled off Jimmy, or the b.u.t.terfly blade he'd taken from the foul-up Tucco hired. Or he could draw his own .38. These podunks would never be able to match the bullet to him. Or he could just reach out with his hands and squeeze Edwards' neck until the man turned purple and blue and then black.

He waited, all these scenes of murder running through his mind. And he wasn't even mad at the guy anymore.

Edwards just sat there, his mouth open, napkins up his nose.

Eventually Crease got bored, stubbed the b.u.t.t on the corner of the coffee table, stood and got out of there.

Chapter Seven.

The Bentley with tinted windows started following him as he turned the corner onto Main Street. It wasn't exactly an undercover vehicle. A few cars were around, some foot traffic on the sidewalks, shopkeepers out front. It was as good a place as any to get the next bit of business out of the way. He pulled the 'Stang over, climbed out, and leaned against it while the Bentley drew up behind him and parked.

Cruez lumbered out of the driver's side. He went six-seven, a man-monster weighing maybe three-fifty, with a face like a lump of clay that a cla.s.s of emotionally disturbed children had pounded the h.e.l.l out of. He liked using a .357 long-barrel Magnum. In his hand, it looked like a derringer.

Cruez had saved Crease's life twice and Crease had returned the favor a couple of times during bad double-cross deals over the years. Crease knew their shared history wouldn't stop the monolith for a second if Tucco gave the word. Cruez was an insanely loyal dog to his master. All the bosses had a guy like this. He was imposing enough to keep away the minor troublemakers, rough enough to do damage when he had to, and huge enough that he could block a few bullets while the big cheese ran for cover.

This was going to be a scene.

Tucco was already drawing it out, taking his time getting out of the Bentley. Showing Crease that n.o.body could ever get away, he'd follow you down any rabbit hole, even if it led to Vermont. Cruez stood at the back door of the Bentley, opened it, and waited.

The seconds ticked off. Crease didn't feel like watching. He very much wanted to see Morena and was afraid the weakness was showing in his face. He was out of cigarettes so he stepped up the curb to a nearby convenience store and asked for his brand. They were out. He asked for another. They'd never heard of them. Finally he just pointed to a pack and paid.

Cruez was in the same spot, the back door of the Bentley still open, Tucco still inside with Morena. Man, the drama. Where the h.e.l.l would any of them be without the drama. All of this and nothing was going to happen today anyway. This was just the second push.

Finally Tucco slid free from the car. Today he was dressed like a Wall Street stockbroker in a four thousand dollar black suit, long leather coat tugged to the side so you could see the suit, nice shades. He and Cruez and the car looked as out of place in Hangtree as they might've in the Mississippi Delta.

Tucco stood 5'3", going about a hundred-thirty pounds of bone and wiry sinew. He had a slight Spanish accent that he consciously affected so he could sound like a Spanish Harlem tough. Otherwise he sounded as uptown as anybody in a white collar. Truth was, he'd been hand-fed by maids and grown up with a view of Museum Mile in Manhattan, the son of two highly successful stockbrokers who made their biggest hauls every time the economy took a downturn. They raked it in during the Reagan years. Tucco had built up his double-life from scratch, same as Crease had.

It wasn't an act anymore. When Tucco gave the dead gaze it would rattle almost anybody. The lifelessness there, the pure infinite blackness of it. Crease had never been able to figure out where it came from. Not poverty, not shame. Not even rage over real or imagined slights. Crease had talked to Tucco stoned, sated, and medicated in the hospital with his guts opened up to drain. Tucco had rambled and whispered and hissed and Crease still didn't know a thing about what really went on behind the guy's eyes.

You could push Tucco pretty hard. He liked it, going right to the edge. Crease had seen it several times while they worked together. How the traffickers would talk circles around him and rip him off right in front of his eyes, and Tucco wouldn't do anything about it. The other dealers, especially the Colombians and Haitians, they'd chop a guy to pieces with a machete if he spoke out of turn or stepped on someone's shoe.

But Tucco liked walking the rim of his own malevolence. Sometimes for weeks or months, until the day came when someone would go too far, and Tucco would finally have enough. He'd react fast as a serpent then, pulling the b.u.t.terfly blade and going to work with it. Sometimes it would be over fast and sometimes he really took his time.

He'd make the gang watch. Guys with ten kills who were hard as iron would turn green and pa.s.s out. Tucco liked to turn and give a grin to Crease, and Crease would light another cigarette and grin back. He'd put it all down in his reports, every detail no matter how insane or unbelievable it sounded, and the squad would go and bust some other honcho. No matter what he did, n.o.body wanted Tucco badly enough to let Crease drag him in.

Tucco stepped up, took one look around Main Street, and said, "No wonder you got a taste for the life, coming from a hole like this."

"Yeah."

"How long were you here?"

"Until I was seventeen."

"That explains why you're crazy."

The life didn't just mean money and slick cars and strutting into a booked restaurant without a reservation and getting the best table. It was the darkness, the dirty belly, the fear in the other guy's eyes, the being bad, and the knowledge that you could take whatever you wanted so long as you could keep it.

Crease said, "Anybody can get a taste for the life. Look at you. You like to play that you come from Spanish Harlem, but your parents were top line shakers and you were born on Fifth Avenue. Not in the back of a cab either. When you were a baby, you had servants trading off diapering you. If you were lucky, your mother maybe changed you on Sundays."

"Nah, she'd just make me hold out until Monday, when the maid came back to work. It was all right."

"You like the ride up here?"

"Yeah. I like the trees. All the colors, this is the right time of the year to catch them. I'd heard about people doing that, caravans of cars coming up this way, mooks driving three hundred miles just to stare at the leaves. It always sounded really stupid to me. But I liked it. What else they got up here? Syrup?"

"Yeah," Crease said. "There's syrup. And military boarding schools. Bed and breakfasts. Dairy farms. Lots of them."

"That just about it?"

"And llamas."

Tucco drew his chin back, his shades reflecting Crease's face back at him. "What?"

"Yeah."

"C'mon. The h.e.l.l for?"

"Special wool for bulky sweaters."

"Is that right?"

It was a dumb conversation, but you always had to have dumb conversations with the other guy when both of you were waiting for the other to jump first. A part of your head was antic.i.p.ating the knife, thinking about how long it would take you to get out your own. Meanwhile, you talked about leaves and llamas.

Cruez was just standing there looking like one of Zapata's banditos. You could hack at his face with an ax and probably not notice the difference afterward. He didn't worry Crease, but he might get in the way just enough to trip him up.

Tucco took off the shades. He wanted to show off the death glare, try to really spook the s.h.i.t out of Crease. It wasn't going to work but you had to go through these little games, it was just the way that they had to be.

Those black, blank eyes focused on Crease now, Tucco's face empty of all emotion.

"You want to know what I did to her after you left?" Tucco asked. His voice was utterly empty, meaning it was supposed to be serious. But Crease knew he was really laughing inside, still making his own fun.

"I already know," Crease said.

"I cut her." Tucco tried to smile and his lips barely quivered. "I took her nose first. It happened so fast she didn't even know it was gone for a minute. There was nothing but a hole there and I could look all the way back into her head. You think you'd still want to f.u.c.k her without a nose? I don't think so. I think you'd throw up. Then I hacked off a few of her fingers. Not too many, just a couple. I left her her thumbs, so she can still open bottles of beer and s.h.i.t. But they were important to me, those fingers, right? You know what I mean. I didn't like that she'd been touching you with them."

Crease said, "You didn't do anything to her."

"I slit her tongue up the middle, turned her into a snake. Kinda s.e.xy really, I think I'm starting to get a little kinky in my old age, the two pieces slithering around in her mouth. Last, I took her eyes. Those gorgeous eyes, man, and you know I'm someone who appreciates a woman's eyes. The way they twinkle, the way a s.e.xed-up mama gives you that hooded lid look, right, when she's trying to get you into bed. I still got 'em, in a little jar back at home, if you want to see them. Sitting there, the cook serving me, I have the jar next to me, tell it how my day went."

Crease gestured to the Bentley. "You left your window open."

"What?"

"I can see her in the back seat drinking, looks like a scotch on the rocks. Not that I'd ever believe you'd hurt her. Not even if her fingers did touch me."

Tucco turned and looked back at the car, tilted his head a little to see Morena in the back staring at them, sipping her drink. It was funny and it wasn't funny. She caught Crease's eye and the old familiar ache climbed back into his chest.

Tucco said, "Yeah." His hands started to move. "I'm gonna reach into my pocket for a cigarette."

"No," Crease said. "You're not." Instead, Crease drew his own pack and proffered it.

"What's this? Are those . . . Jesus Christ, are those menthol?"

"All the store had left."

Tucco waved them away. "You're making me sad, seeing you like this. How'd this happen to you?"

It was a good question, Crease thought. He still wasn't any closer to an answer.

"You in this place, I'm finding it hard to believe."

"I do too."

The smell of burning leaves drifted through the air. Tucco stared off at the hills in the horizon. "So where'd you bury that other one I sent after you?"

"Jinga's boy? I sent him home."

"You did? How'd he get there?"