It took most of the morning to take care of that.

While Roger carried the body, he thought back to what he had done a month ago, when he had to carry the last girl out there and bury her. That moment marked a turning point of sorts for Roger, and as he thought back on the events that had occurred since then, he couldn't help but think that everything had gone downhill once the last girl died. Nothing stayed the same. The new girl didn't like him the way the last girl did, and now the police had shown up looking for her, something that had never happened, not even once, with the last girl.

It took him longer to reach the clearing with the cop's body than it had with the girl's. The cop weighed more, and Roger had to stop completely once and lay the body down on the side of the path to gather his strength again. When he did, the cop's head tilted back in the gra.s.s and gray fluid leaked out of his wounds, bringing the feeling of nausea back to Roger's belly. He swallowed hard and took a deep breath. He wondered if any of the fluid had run down his own back, but he didn't care. When Roger felt rested, he picked up the cop and continued on his way.

Over the years, Roger had thought about why the police never came looking for the last girl. He decided it had something to do with all the things his father had told him while he was dying, the things about the power of the clearing and the way the town used to be run. He knew men used to make important decisions there, but he knew he'd never be involved in any of that. He wasn't smart enough. Even his dad didn't get involved with those things. He was a guy who worked with his hands, not one of the "stuffed shirts" who made the town run.

But a man like Mr. John Bolton did get to make decisions. He was one of the stuffed shirts, but he was also-in the words of Roger's father-a guy who put food on their table and gas in their tank. Roger's dad worked for Mr. Bolton, doing odd jobs at his big house in town. Repairing the mortar on the chimney or tilling the garden in preparation for the summer. His dad told him that Bolton hired him for those jobs because it made him feel good about himself, like it was charity for him to drop a few crumbs to a regular working guy.

"Doesn't matter to me why he does it," his dad had said. "As long as he pays."

Roger came in sight of the clearing. The sky above looked bright, and somewhere behind the trees and the leaves, the sun glowed. It was close to noon, and Roger wished he could be out there at night, when it really felt good to be in the clearing. He felt a little charge during the day, a small gathering of blood in the center of his body and a pleasant tingle of electricity in his member, but it only reminded him of how much more he missed by not being there at night. He laid the cop's body down and looked for a place to start digging. He didn't want to put the cop near the last girl, and some part of him didn't want to put the cop in the clearing at all. But Roger thought the clearing might, in some way, hide the cop's body from the rest of the world. If he buried it there, maybe no one would ever be able to find it.

Roger scanned the ground. He had to move quickly. But something on the ground made him freeze. He felt his mouth open and, a second later, realized how ridiculous he must have looked, like someone on a stupid television show. But he couldn't help it, and he let his mouth hang open so long that his jaw began to hurt.

Footprints. There were footprints on the ground. And they didn't belong to him.

Roger blinked and moved closer to examine them. He decided he must have been mistaken, that he must have seen his own prints from his time out there and thought they belonged to someone else. But when he looked closer and examined the marks and the size, he knew they weren't his. They were smaller than his huge feet, and the shoes looked more expensive. Someone else had been there in the last few days.

Roger finally managed to close his mouth.

He didn't know what to do. No one lived around here. No one ever came out to the clearing. If someone were here, they must have been looking for something.

Roger studied the prints again. He noticed a disturbing pattern to them. They cl.u.s.tered around the girl's grave. Its faint outline was still visible, even after a number of weeks, and Roger could tell that whoever came out there to the clearing had seen and examined it.

Something hot welled up at the back of Roger's throat. His eyes started to burn, and then his lip quivered. He tried to hold it in, but he couldn't. He was going to be in so much trouble if the wrong people found out. So much trouble.

He started to cry. Alone in the clearing with the cop's body at his feet and the girl's grave before him, he started to cry. The tears were hot against his face, and Roger wiped them away with the back of his hand. He took two deep breaths that sounded a little like hiccups.

Calm down.

He tried, but he wasn't sure he could.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. It didn't used to be like this, not according to what his dad had told him. A man used to be able to do the things he wanted to do-needed to do-and not have to worry about suffering the consequences. But apparently things had changed.

When his father knew he was going to die, when the doctor gave him the speech about improving the quality of the time he had left, he approached Mr. Bolton-with Roger tagging along-about maybe helping Roger out, throwing him an odd job or two. Nothing too big or demanding, his father said, and Roger knew what that meant. Nothing that would confuse the dummy. Roger hadn't expected Mr. Bolton to follow through. Roger just didn't know how to do much. He could lift heavy things and move them around. He did okay with some basic stuff on cars. But really, he knew his skills were limited. It was nice of his dad to try, but there wasn't much to work with.

But Mr. Bolton surprised Roger, not by calling but by driving all the way out to the house and knocking on the door one evening about a month after his father died. When Roger looked out the front window and saw the well-dressed man from town standing on the stoop, he almost fell over in shock. What was he doing there? Had his car broken down? Was he lost?

He let Mr. Bolton in and tried not to notice the way his nose twitched and his mouth curled as he looked around the front room. Roger told him to have a seat on the couch, and Bolton looked down before he sat as though he thought there might have been a pile of snakes on the cushion. Roger knew he was supposed to offer the man something to eat or drink, but there was nothing much in the house. Roger still hadn't figured out the kinds of things to buy at the grocery store and keep in the house. His mother had always done that, and after his mother died, his dad had told Roger what to do as best he could. But Roger knew he had a lot to learn.

Mr. Bolton didn't waste any time with small talk or pleasantries. He cleared his throat and got right to business.

"It must not be very nice to live here alone, is it Roger?"

"No, sir," Roger said. "But I do my best."

"I bet you do."

Roger decided that he really didn't like Mr. Bolton. He didn't like the way the man always talked as though he were standing on a mountain looking down at the people who were listening. He also didn't like that Mr. Bolton's skin looked more tan in the winter than in the summer. But Roger also knew he had to be polite, so he nodded his head and kept listening.

"I know your dad explained some things to you before he died, things about the woods behind your house."

"Yes, sir."

"And he told you about the kind of meetings that used to be held there."

"Yes, sir."

"You know, several generations back, your ancestors and my ancestors used to work closely with one another. They shared the duties of running this community."

"Really?"

"Yes. My grandfather and your grandfather were quite close. Quite close. And that's why I'm here talking to you today. In a way, I feel as though we're family. We're from the same place and share the same background, even if superficially there don't appear to be any great similarities between us."

"Really?"

"Yes. And that's why I have an offer for you. An opportunity. It's the kind of thing our ancestors did for each other, back when the community was still young and people looked out for each other in a much more gentlemanly fashion than they do now."

"Do you have a job for me?"

"Yes. But it's so much more than a job. It's something to change your life. Something you probably can't even imagine."

And then he told Roger all about the girl. He explained that she was lonely and needed a place to live and someone to take care of her.

"She's been in some trouble, sure," Mr. Bolton said. "But the men of this town used to take care of things like that, we used to look out for people who were in need. Isn't that what your dad told you?"

Roger nodded. "Sure." He felt his own excitement growing. A girl. His dad had explained it to him, and it made perfect sense. Take a girl who needed a husband and make her your wife. That had to be what Mr. Bolton was talking about. "You want her to come and live with me?" Roger said.

Mr. Bolton smiled. "I want you to bring her here, yes. I want you to bring her to the clearing, and then you'll know what to do with her."

But Roger hadn't done that. He hadn't brought the girl to the clearing right away. He intended to. He meant to. He found her at the place and time Mr. Bolton had given him, and he took her off the street just as they discussed. But when he brought her back to the house, she cried and asked for her mother, so rather than take her out to the clearing, as he was supposed to do, Roger brought her inside the house. And once she was inside the house, he found out he liked having her there, and he didn't want her to leave.

Roger wondered if all of his trouble began then, when he didn't listen to what Mr. Bolton told him to do. And now, after all of these years, the chickens were coming home to roost. He wiped the snot and tears off his face and grabbed the shovel, raising it and driving it deep into the earth on the other side of the clearing from where he had buried the girl. He churned the earth, piling it to the side of the hole he slowly created, making room, ever so slowly, for the body of the dead cop to be placed inside.

He had to be a man. He knew what he had to do.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT.

Getting rid of the truck was relatively easy.

Before he rolled the cop into his shallow grave, Roger went through the man's pockets and found the key ring. He trudged back to the house, carrying the shovel, the dirt from the grave covering his hands and his clothes. He thought about going upstairs and checking on the girl, but he didn't imagine it would do him much good. She might have worked her way loose and run off, or she might still be there, tied to the bed. It didn't really matter to him at this point. Whatever the situation with her, he could deal with it when he came back. And deal with it he must. But first, there was the truck.

Roger knew he didn't have time to dispose of it properly. In order to do that, he'd have to have someone else to work with, someone who could drive one car while he drove the truck, and they could go far away, possibly to Columbus or Cincinnati and leave it parked at an airport or bus station, anything that would throw the police off the trail. People did that kind of thing all the time on the cop shows. But he couldn't do that. He had to dump it fast and then get back to the house and finish the rest of his work.

But Roger did think he could find a decent place to hide the truck in the short-term, just long enough to give him to time to straighten up the house and be ready for the trouble he suspected would be coming down on him very soon.

He wished he could keep the truck for himself. It smelled new and clean inside, like the kind of truck that Roger had never owned and would never be able to afford. It looked like it belonged to a guy with a good job and a little bit of money. On the pa.s.senger seat, Roger found a map of the county with different areas circled and other areas crossed off. His house was circled in green marker, so he took those papers and threw them out the window of the truck, letting them flutter away behind him like giant moths in the wind. When they did find the truck, he didn't want any evidence left linking him to the cop. Unless the cop had already told someone he was coming to Roger's house. He shook his head quickly. He couldn't think about that.

Roger drove east for three miles, away from his house and toward the small town of Lambeau. He remembered going there with his dad to hunt. He knew a dirt road, rutted and narrow, where hunters left their cars during deer season. He found the spot and left the truck there, off to the side of the road and near the trees. The season had been going for almost a month now, and it wouldn't be unusual to see a truck parked in that place. Anyone pa.s.sing by would a.s.sume it belonged to a hunter out in the woods and would then go about their business as though nothing were wrong.

Before he left the truck, he dug around in the cab looking for anything else he needed to remove, anything that might link him to the cop. It looked like the guy was in school. Roger found some papers covered with math equations and a couple of thick textbooks. He also found some loose change, a tube of deodorant and a baseball glove, but nothing he thought he needed to take.

Roger stepped out of the cab and closed the door. He tossed the keys back into the woods and heard them land somewhere out of sight with a metallic jangle.

Do I need to wipe my prints off the car? he wondered. He shook his head. Not enough time to do that. He had a long hike back to the house and then the girl to deal with. He started walking.

The sun had started to slide down the western sky. It was late afternoon, getting on close to three or four, and while Roger walked he thought about the day's events. He had killed a man, plain and simple. He had never meant to hurt anyone, and just thinking about the cop's death, the way his head exploded and went all over the walls, made the tears return to Roger's eyes. He felt sorry for the cop, even though he knew the cop had come to do him harm. To take the girl away. But it didn't change the fact that Roger felt bad, like someone innocent had come along and gotten mixed up in what was going on, and now that things were mixed up, they were going to get mixed up even more. One thing had led to another. First the cop, then the car.

And now the girl. His girl. His wife.

What was he going to do with her?

He had decided in the clearing that the girl had to go, that with the cop and whoever else coming near the house, it was simply too risky to keep her around. And he couldn't very well just turn her loose and hope she didn't tell on him. He knew she'd promise not to tell, but she'd end up doing it anyway. The police would talk to her and make her say where she'd been all that time, and when everything came out, the police would show up at his door and take him away. So there seemed only one way out of the mess.

But as he walked, he tried to convince himself that he overreacted in the clearing. Maybe, he thought, the footprints belonged to the cop. If that were the case, he had taken care of the problem, so long as the truck remained undiscovered for a while and then, when it was discovered, they didn't trace it back to Roger. Maybe he didn't have to get rid of the girl. Maybe it had been the clearing itself telling him to do that thing, but it didn't mean it was right. He wasn't sure if everything that came to him there was right or proper, although he wanted to think it was. He wanted to believe the clearing guided him in all things and wouldn't steer him wrong.

But the girl? Hadn't the clearing brought him the girl? Why would it want to take her away?

Roger was halfway home. He walked along the side of an empty field, and off in the distance stood a lonely and weathered barn that looked like it was about to collapse in on itself and shrink into the ground. The more he walked, the better he felt. He started to believe the girl could stay. He'd have to be more careful with her. He couldn't let her out of the ropes much at all, not for a very long time. He couldn't have a repeat of what happened earlier with her putting her foot through the window. But if he took care of her and watched her, maybe he could let her stay.

Maybe.

He heard the car approaching from behind him, but he didn't pay it any attention. He was lost in his own thoughts and looked forward to getting back to the girl. Maybe now, with the mess cleaned up-except for the bedroom wall, he couldn't forget that-their routine would begin. A lot of maybes, he knew, but lots of maybes were better than nothing.

The car came even with Roger and slowed.

"Excuse me?"

Roger looked. It was a cop car from Union Township. White with blue letters and blue lights on the top. Roger stopped walking and turned and stared. The cop was a young guy wearing mirrored sungla.s.ses, and he leaned one arm out the window while the other held the wheel. He looked friendly enough, but Roger knew that could be a trick.

"Car break down?" the cop said.

Roger didn't respond. He thought of running off into the field, off toward the old barn, but he knew it was a ridiculous idea. The cop would find and catch him. He'd run the car right through the field and maybe run Roger over. He couldn't run.

"Sir?" the cop said.

Roger shook his head. "Just walking."

The cop nodded. "You haven't seen a guy out here in a black pick-up truck, a Ford F-150? He's twenty-two, shaved head. Tall. Have you seen anyone like that while you've been walking?"

"No, sir. I didn't see anybody."

"Do you have identification on you?"

Roger patted his back pocket. He hadn't brought his wallet. He drove the cop's truck without it, but it was okay now because he wasn't driving.

"I don't have it. It's at home." He pointed in the direction of the house but dropped his arm. What if the cop wanted to go there and get it with the girl upstairs and the broken window? And the blood?

"What's your name?"

Roger told him.

"And where do you live?"

Roger had no choice but to give the address. The nausea crept up the back of his throat. His tongue felt swollen and thick like a giant sponge. The cop looked Roger up and down. He was thinking about something, sizing Roger up, reaching a conclusion about him.

Roger's stomach felt nervous. He farted, but the cop didn't seem to notice or else didn't care.

"Why are you walking out here?" the cop said.

Roger hesitated. "I just like to walk. I like to get out and look around. I'm going hunting this weekend, and I wanted to see where I should go."

The cop's face didn't change. He didn't speak. He stared at Roger, and Roger fought to stand still, even though every inch of his body became itchy all at once.

Finally, the cop nodded. "You have a license to hunt."

"Yes, sir."

"If you see that man I told you about or his truck, you call us. Okay?"

"Yes, sir. Is he wanted? Is he dangerous?"

Sometimes Roger surprised himself with his ability to lie. He almost smiled but didn't.

"He's not dangerous," the cop said. "We're just looking for him."

Roger nodded. "If I see him, I'll call."