"Huh-huh-howdy," he stammered.

"What"cha doin"?"

"Ruh-ruh-ruh-routine patrol, miss."

The Southern tw.a.n.g blended with that indefinable Squatter accent enriched her voice to something dark and syrupy and most definitely s.e.xual. "Well, me, I"se just out fer a walk."

Without being asked, then, she opened the pa.s.senger door and plopped her exquisite rump right on the seat. Chief Sutter did not raise an objection.

She grinned shyly at him in the dash lights. "Can I tell ya something, Mr. Chief?"

Sutter"s mouth opened but no response seemed possible. The mere sight of her body choked him up, circ.u.mventing any possibility of reply.

Her eyes looked dreamy, green gems filled with bright-blue chips that seemed to glow. "Just somethin" about officers a" the law, and the uniform "n" all . . ." She sighed. "Just gets me all fl.u.s.tered. Cain"t really even say why."

More proof that this was a dream. In Sutter"s forty years of police work-and forty years of obesity-no woman had ever voiced this cliche to him. And no woman this attractive had ever given him any kind of notice as overt as this. Still speechless, he felt his eyes struggle to stay in one place: her crotch, her tight belly, her bodacious b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Eventually the b.r.e.a.s.t.s won out as those dark pink jutting nipples bigger than silver dollars began to hypnotize him as surely as a mesmerist"s pendulum.

The voice oozed further. "Yeah, Mr. Chief. You fellas in uniform . . . "specially big, strong ones like you . . . git me so hot I cain"t rightly sit still. . . ."

Current as fierce as electricity speared through him when her hand-soft as a little bird but unduly hot-found his knee, then began to inch up higher on his leg. The humid night air hanging in the car drew the sweat out of her skin; soon her nakedness was shining, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and belly aglaze. This pinpoint image of glimmering flesh, compounded by the sensation of her hand creeping toward his groin, made Chief Sutter feel as though his small and almost always flaccid p.e.n.i.s had magically transformed into something the size and stiffness of a summer squash. It strained against his police trousers in an absolutely thrilling agony.

Now her voice seemed desperate with need. "Mr. Chief, ya turn me on so much I"se just goin" crazy! Let"s git"cher pants. .h.i.tched down-" She was almost in tears now. "If I don"t have ya right now, I swear I"ll just die!" And then her hands slipped up to his belt, her slick b.r.e.a.s.t.s bobbing, sweat visibly dripping off the points of the nipples.

s.e.xual malfeasance be d.a.m.ned! Chief Sutter made no effort to stop her.

"You can do me right in this here car." She was panting. "I"se about to git off just thinkin" about it!"

Oh, my, Chief Sutter thought as he ground his teeth.

His pants were down, his knees quivering. The girl came very close to gasping when she looked down, and when Chief Sutter looked down himself, he, too, came very close to gasping.

Where did that f.u.c.kin" log come from? he asked either the universe, G.o.d, or fate. The k.n.o.bbed baton of flesh that throbbed up in his lap was at least three times larger than the actual member nature had tacked onto him. And then he remembered, with a cunning smile: That"s right. This is a dream.

And what a grand dream it was, when the girl crawled forward in the seat.

She spoke quickly now, in words that were scalded by desire. "Guess ya don"t remember me, huh, Mr. Chief? Just a bit ago?"

"Huh?"

"Them bad men in the funny truck who wanted ta do bad things ta me? You mussed "em up right fierce."

Then somehow, through her words, an awareness snapped. The Squatter gal in the road today. The chick that black guy and the hippie were tryin" to sell crystal meth to . . .

"I"se so grateful to you fer protectin" me, Mr. Chief, and I"se gonna show you just how grateful right now," she promised, and began to lift her leg over, to bring herself crotch-to-crotch with him in the front seat- Oh, yeah, he thought, what a great f.u.c.kin" dream!

Then she froze. Her excited expression wilted. A second later she withdrew and sat back on the pa.s.senger side.

"What"s wrong?" Sutter nearly bellowed.

Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and shoulders slumped when she let out a long, frustrated breath. "Dang it, Mr. Chief! I"se forgot. . . ."

"Forgot what?" Chief Sutter shouted.

"We cain"t do this."

"Why?"

"Cos I"se only fifteen years old, like I told ya today. You"re a police officer "n" I"m a minor." She shook her head, smiling innocently. "It was silly a" me ta even think this." And then she opened the door and began to get out of the car.

Sutter"s lips twisted up into queer shape as he tried to form words for his objection. Finally, he managed to bark out, "Wait a minute, honey! We can! It don"t matter that you"re a minor because this is just a dream!"

She looked back into the car, magnificent b.r.e.a.s.t.s swaying. "Aw, no, Mr. Chief. It"d still be immoral "cos you"d feel really bad about it once ya woke up."

"No, I wouldn"t!" he a.s.sured her.

"Oh, yeah, I"m sure ya would, "n" I cain"t have that It"d make me feel guilty."

Sutter shouted again, "You can"t feel guilty! You"re just an image in a dream! My dream!"

"Naw, naw, still wouldn"t be right," she said. Her face perked up. "But I"ll tell ya what! You just wait three years when I"m eighteen and then have this dream again! We"ll have a fine time! I promise!"

And then she closed the door.

Sutter lay back in the seat, on the verge of tears. What a f.u.c.kin" ripoff. . . .

She came around the other side for one last tease. Perfect legs parted, her perfect elbows planted on the edge of his open window, perfect b.r.e.a.s.t.s still swaying, still shining from all that desiring sweat. "But lemme give ya a peck on the cheek, okay?" she said. "I"se pretty dang sure that ain"t against the law."

Well, it was better than nothing, wasn"t it?

She leaned over further, bringing her head into the car, and just as she would kiss him on the cheek- Whup . . .

-her head fell off her shoulders and landed in Chief Sutter"s lap.

A sound screamed through his head like a jet turbine, and suddenly he was falling through darkness, and after what seemed hours of falling, falling, falling- -he awoke in a tumult on his bed.

Oh, G.o.d . . .

His heart thunked in his chest; he thought of an old engine trying to restart. His eyes hurt as he stared after the nightmare, and the inside of his mouth tasted rancid. What a ripoff, he thought again. Why should his subconscious produce such a dream, such intense erotic images, only to leave him unfulfilled?

He winced.

Unfulfilled and with a severed head in his lap.

The entirety of his bulk flinched at a hideous noise. He rolled over in bed and noticed the even larger bulk lying beside him. June always slept naked. Her blubbery belly and b.r.e.a.s.t.s vibrated through each cycle of that awful noise-her snoring. Sutter looked at her aghast in the moonlight. Is that my wife or did someone dump three hundred pounds of vanilla pudding in my bed and put a wig on it? This new image only doubled the cruelty of the dream: first the Squatter girl and her perfect image of s.e.xual beauty, then this pale pile of human lard that he would spend the rest of his life with.

Suddenly all the unfulfillment of his life landed on him at once. Over-the-hill, up to my neck in debt, and married to that, he realized.

This was it. This was his life, staring him in the face in all its irrevocable truth.

He actually could"ve cried. The bed jostled like a small earthquake when he slid off and stood up, pasty, belly sticking out under hairy man-t.i.ts, forty-eight-waist boxer shorts bunched up his a.s.s. Comfort food was the only ticket to cure this grim hour of the wolf, so he trudged out of the noisy bedroom to the kitchen.

He clumped through the darkness, and finally a smile found his mouth. Nice and cool, he reminded himself. At least I have air-conditioning, and yesterday I didn"t. The brand-new unit was doing its job on the summer heat, purring away. He"d thought about it and thought about it, and he"d finally come to the honest decision that taking that dope money off those sc.u.mbags represented no infringement on his sense of professional ethics. It was just drug money. If I"d turned it into the county sheriff"s, they would"ve confiscated it. One thing to feel good about was better than nothing. He"d done his job beyond the call of duty, and . . .

And I got a little perk, he rationalized. Ain"t no harm in that.

The refrigerator light flooded the kitchen when he opened the door. A little less dejected than before, he pulled out a fat Boston cream pie that June had picked up at the grocery store and cut himself a sizable slice, but before he could take his first sloppy bite . . .

He smirked in the dark.

Snippets of the dream swept around his mind"s eyes like a flock of birds. The girl"s stunning, earthy, sweat-glistening beauty unfolding before him and then- Whup . . .

Her head falling off right into his lap.

I must be really f.u.c.ked-up in the head to have a dream like that, he considered. Why in G.o.d"s name would I dream something like that?

Her head falling off.

Her head . . .

Heads, he thought.

It couldn"t help but remind him: Dwayne Parker"s funeral was tomorrow. The most bizarre death his little town had ever seen.

He knew about the rumors. The EMTs had run their mouths, and probably so had some folks down at the county morgue. Can"t say that I blame them. Who could see something like that and not mention it to anyone?

At least they were just rumors at this point, and he hoped they"d fade away after Dwayne"s ashes were cast to the four winds. Even minus the head-which still had not been found-there"d been no doubt as to positive ident.i.ty. The tattoos were right, the clothes were right, and the ID in the wallet was right. Two days later the fingerprints came back from NCIC, and they were Dwayne Parker"s. The death certificate had read: Anomalous death-COD: Decapitation via smooth transection of levator scapulae muscular process and #5 & 6 cervical vertebrae. Mode of transection as yet undetermined and curious.

That was the tech talk. Sutter himself had been one of the few to see the body. The coroner"s remarks-undetermined and curious-were understatement. Sutter had never seen anything so strange, nor inexplicable.

He"d never forget the sight of the body when the attendant had opened the body bag.

Jesus . . .

It seemed less like his head had been cut off and more like it had vanished off his body. There was no telltale "stump." No cut marks or blade striations. Dwayne Parker"s skin, in fact, seemed to cover the area of s.p.a.ce between his collarbones as though the skin had impossibly grown over the decapitation wound.

Sutter sighed, his appet.i.te lost. He put the pie back in the refrigerator.

G.o.dd.a.m.n Dwayne, he thought, wincing the vision out of his mind as he headed back to the bedroom. Almost like he"d never had a head in the first place.

Four.

(I).

When Patricia opened her eyes, the bedroom was shimmering in sunlight. She felt warm and rested, ready for the day in spite of its circ.u.mstances. The funeral, she thought. She"d dreaded it, hadn"t she? Because she"d dreaded coming back here, but so far her return had provided the opposite of what she"d expected. I feel great, she realized, and then she hopped up from the big bed and looked at herself in the dresser mirror. And I look great, too. Her skin shimmered like the light in the room. Her eyes looked back at her, vibrant, bright. Her naked body had never appeared healthier, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s heavy yet high, her waist tight, bereft of even a trace of middle-age flab. And I"m starving, she reminded herself. The aromas of coffee and bacon drifted into the room, seducing her She quickly pulled her robe over her shoulders and rushed into the hall toward the shower. She grabbed a towel from the linen closet, then opened the bathroom door- A blue-jeaned and shirtless Ernie looked at her, a toothbrush sticking out of his mouth. His eyes widened, and he flinched at the sight of her. "Jesus, Patricia," he mumbled through lips foamy with toothpaste.

Patricia stalled, blinked; then a shock bolted through her brain. My G.o.d, I"m practically naked! It had taken her a second to realize that her robe hung wide open, affording Ernie a complete full-frontal glimpse. Then her face must"ve turned nearly as red as her hair. She pulled the robe closed and sprinted back to her room, squealing in embarra.s.sment.

She slammed the door shut and leaned against it, bug-eyed. What in G.o.d"s name is wrong with me? What kind of a complete airhead am I? Was she that distracted by coming here? She didn"t feel distracted at all; in fact, until she"d opened the bathroom door, she"d been marveling at how good she felt, and how together. Ernie"s going to think I"m an exhibitionist!

Then she reflected further: Maybe I did it on purpose. . . .

Something in her subconscious. She even admitted to herself that she"d been sort of teasing him last night, when she"d bent over braless to untie her shoes. She knew he"d been looking down her blouse... and she didn"t mind.

And now this.

He just saw everything. . . .

More reflections spun around her head. Something weird"s happening me. Since the minute I got back to town, I"ve been h.o.r.n.y as h.e.l.l. Then last night I dream about having s.e.x with another man right in front of my husband-the lewdest dream of my life. I took my nightgown off in my sleep, and I even had o.r.g.a.s.ms during the dream, and then . . . then I wake up masturbating. And to top it all off, the first thing I do after Iwake up is expose myself to Ernie! What is going on in my head?

Patricia was a very logical woman, but she could find no logic in this. Agan"s Point is the town where I was raped. I should feel very uns.e.xual.

So why the opposite?

The good feelings she had wakened with were ruined. She waited till Ernie was finished in the bathroom, then showered quickly. She made a point to wear a bra this time, an old baggy crewneck T-shirt and a cotton ankle skirt. The frumpy clothes made her feel very uns.e.xy.

Now for the hard part . . . She couldn"t sit here all day. What am I going to say to Ernie? A worse consideration: Did he tell Judy what I did?

And what might he say to any male friends? She knew how guys talked amongst themselves, and in her mind she could hear it now: Yeah, guys, I swear to G.o.d, she just walked right in with her robe hangin" wide open showin" the whole package! t.i.ts stickin" out-d.a.m.n near poked me in the eye! And that red-hairt beaver? Yeah, man! "Oh, please," she muttered.

She summoned her courage and walked straight to the kitchen.

"Good mornin", my sweet big sister!" Judy greeted her. She smiled brightly as she was pouring the orange juice at the table.

"Hi, Judy," Patricia said dolefully.

"Sleep well, I hope?"

"Yes, fine . . ."

Ernie stood at the stove, flipping eggs. He glanced over with half a smile. "Mornin", Patricia."

She let out a frustrated breath. "Ernie, I don"t know what to say."

"Aw, don"t worry "bout it," he dismissed. "Probably groggy when ya got up and forgot you weren"t in yer own house. No biggie."