"Yes," she croaked. "He...was there..."

Rosh, astonished, looked back to Stein. "Carrie? You"re saying that Jary Kapp was in the Pine Drive house when his brother and those other people got hit?"

She nodded again, sniffling.

"Gee, Sergeant Stein, what do you think the next question should be?"

"I don"t know, Captain, I"m pretty slow, me being only a sergeant, but you might want to ask her if Jary saw the killers."

"Brilliant!" Rosh exclaimed. "So how about it, Carrie? Did Jary tell you if he saw the guys who did the job?"

"Not guys," she croaked. "He said it was just one-"

"Wow, that"s some handiwork. Only one guy killed all those people?"

"Jary was scared s.h.i.tless when he got back to the crib," she said, and seemed terrified at the recollection. "And Jary-you don"t know him-but he"s never been scared of anything in his life."

"Go on, go on."

"He walked in the front room when he heard the racket, took one look at what was happening, and got out a back window."

"His lucky day!"

"He only got one look, but...he said it wasn"t even a guy."

Rosh and Stein both popped their brows. "The hitter was a woman?" Rosh asked.

"No." She swallowed hard. "He said the hitter was...was a thing."

Rosh contemplated that, making a face. "A thing? Hmm. Stein? Wasn"t there a comic book character called The Thing?"

"Sure was, Captain. In the Fantastic Four. "

"That"s it!" Rosh looked back at Carrie with concern in his eyes. "Was that who the hitter was, Carrie? Was it The Thing?"

Strings of snot dangled from Carrie"s nose when she looked up in complete confusion. "What? What are you talking about?"

Rosh laughed. "Just kidding, Carrie. The truth of the matter is we don"t care who killed that housefull of garbage, but I just think it"s interesting that Jary witnessed it. Carrie? We"d like very much to speak with Jary. Do you think you could help us with that...remembering, of course, that there"s an easy way and a hard way to answer any question."

Very slowly, Carrie nodded. "Blue house on Chesapeake," she droned. "That"s the crib we hole up in whenever we drive up from Florida. One of Jary"s bagmen lives there with his grandmother."

"Ah! That"s great. But would you happen to have an address for that residence, Carrie?"

Carrie gave him the address.

"You"re a peach." Rosh picked up a newspaper folded between the seat. "Before we let you go, Carrie, I want to know what you think about this, "cos it really ticks me off." He opened the paper. "I read the paper a lot, and it says here that Congress won"t allow any further U.S. oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico."

Carrie gave him a twisted look. "Huh?"

"It"s true, it"s right here. America"s in the middle of an oil crisis, we"re getting more and more dependent on foreign oil, even as OPEC keeps jacking the price. If we drilled for more oil in the Gulf of Mexico, we could relieve a lot of that de pen den cy and keep more money in our economy."

Carrie slumped, still sobbing. "I don"t care! You said you"d let me go..."

"Oh, we will, but seriously, this really irks me." He flapped the paper. "I want the best for America and I"m sure you do, too. But it says here the reason Congress won"t let U.S. oil companies drill for more oil in the Gulf is because of the potential environmental hazard, even though America has the best track record for clean drilling. This is the point. We can"t drill there, but because it"s in international waters, anyone else can. Are you following me, Carrie?"

"I don"t know what you"re talking about," she groaned.

"We can"t but anyone else in the world can!" Rosh smacked his hand against the wheel. "China"s drilling in the Gulf, and so is Russia! Even Germany and France-France!-and even, even Denmark! Does that make no sense at all? We can"t drill there, but they can? It"s outrageous!"

Carrie looked fearfully into the back. "What-what"s he talking about?"

"Don"t have a clue," Stein said. "He goes on these rants sometimes, the economy and stuff."

Rosh seemed suddenly pointed. "I"m just concerned about the way the U.S. Congress pursues its energy policy. Doesn"t make a lick of sense."

Carrie was shaking in the seat. "Are you...going to let me go, like you said?"

"Of course! Thanks for your cooperation, Carrie." Rosh waved a dismissive hand. "You can go-"

Stein tightened the tourniquet in an instant.

"-after we kill your white-trash a.s.s," Rosh finished.

Carrie"s eyes bulged in the certainty of death. Her back arched up again, and her face darkened. Stein cranked the cord harder and harder. With each twist of the nightstick, the leather creaked and sunk deeper and deeper into the meat of Carrie"s neck. Her tongue stuck straight out.

She began to convulse in her death throes, veins in her neck bulging like baby snakes beneath her skin. Her face went from pink to red to maroon, and then the whites of her eyes hemorrhaged.

Then she slumped in the seat.

"Hold it another minute or two," Rosh ordered. "Gotta make sure she"s dead."

Stein gave the nightstick one last twist.

Rosh put an ear to her heart. "Good job. She"s officially punched out."

As Stein uncranked the tourniquet, Rosh-without even thinking-pulled up Carrie"s halter and began to fondle her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"Jesus!" Stein outraged. "You"re feelin" up a dead girl!" Rosh scowled. "What"s the harm? It"s not like she can complain."

Stein snorted. "You really are a sick pup."

Rosh jerked his stare back to Stein and pointed.

Stein sighed. "You really are a sick pup, Captain."

"Good!" Rosh started the car. "Now call D-Man and Nutjob and tell those two sc.u.mbags we got a body for them to bury..."

III.

Seth rushed to the Eyeball, hit the s.p.a.cebar, then watched the hideously veined eyelid flick open with a wet click. The Heart Valve Door pumped open and Seth side-arrowed through, then clamored up the Bone Ladder. He sliced open a Water Cyst with his Scalpel, acquired the much-needed complement of Antigen Armor and a Platelet Sphere, which upped his Hemo supply to one hundred percent. Now all he had to do was make it across the Stomach Acid Channels and a.s.sault the dreaded Meatmen...

"Not bad," he said aloud to himself. He rubbed his eyes and pushed his chair back from the shimmering LCD screen. The second beta level of House of Flesh II seemed to be diverse without being too hard, and graphics rich without being distracting. He saved the programming index changes and turned off his computer. Pretty fair for a half-day"s work, he figured.

The cool house stood comfortably silent around him. I"d say the AC"s working just fine, he thought when the temp gauge on the office window registered ninety-nine degrees outside. Downstairs, he made two big iced teas, went out into the stifling air, and tromped down the double-doored stairs to the bas.e.m.e.nt, where Judy had been toiling most of the day.

Ovenlike heat hit him at once, but in the immediate distraction he barely reacted to it. Oh my G.o.d... The distraction was Judy herself. To help deal with the heat, she"d put on an old bikini.

"Iced tea!" she exclaimed. She set a crowbar down on one of the age-stained barrels. "What a thoughtful boyfriend!" She s.n.a.t.c.hed a big gla.s.s, then chugged half of it. Seth stared in awe at her body as she leaned back to drink, hand on a hip. Every inch of exposed skin gleamed so intensely with sweat it could"ve been suntan oil, while the bikini itself, normally powder blue, looked almost navy from being thoroughly drenched.

"You"re s.e.xy as h.e.l.l in that bikini and all dripping with sweat like that."

"I"m glad you think so"-she finished all the tea, then held the ice-filled gla.s.s to her forehead-"because I don"t feel very s.e.xy right now. I feel like a sweathog. I"ll bet it"s one hundred ten degrees in here. I thought fruit cellars were supposed to be cooler than the outside."

"Not in Mary land, not in July-here, take this, you need it more than me," he said and gave her the second gla.s.s. "And let"s go back up. You could get heatstroke or something down here."

"Gimme a break, I"m a Florida girl. I like it hot. "

He was about to complain further but was taken aback when he saw that she"d managed to pry off nearly all the barrel tops.

"Prying one-hundred-thirty-year-old barrel tops off is good exercise," she joked, "and they didn"t come off easy. It really gave my arms a workout."

"That"s well and good but it"s not your arms that are foremost on my mind. It"s the rest of your body."

"You"re sounding pretty feisty today." She giggled. "We live here now, you know. We could do something really off the wall, like have s.e.x on top of a bunch of barrels from Prague."

"Don"t tempt me," he said and walked to the ten barrels. They occupied more than half the bas.e.m.e.nt, along with some yard tools, a lawn mower-which Judy had insisted on; "I"ll mow the lawn so I don"t get fat!"-and a can of gasoline. The bas.e.m.e.nt itself was not brick or rock as one might expect but, like the rest of the house, walled by larch beams. The beams, however, stood upright rather than lying stacked as they were upstairs. Simple, hard-packed dirt composed the floor. Seth lifted a barrel lid and saw more old clay, then another and found the same. "Where"s the one with the dishes?"

She pointed. "And they"re more than dishes."

"Really? Valuable?"

"Nope. They"re broken dishes," she said.

Seth looked inside and found a barrel full of shards and packing straw. "Great. What about the marbles? Old marbles might be valuable to collectors."

"Oh, sure they are...when they"re not broken."

Seth lifted another lid, on the barrel marked marmorovy, and discovered it full nearly to the brim with thousands of marbles split down the middle.

"I"m sure over a century of hot summers and freezing winters caused all those marbles to crack at their chrysalises," she said. "Oh, and two of the barrels have tools in them."

Seth looked. One was full of sharpening files that were so corroded by rust they snapped like pencils. From the other he hefted out something that looked like a brick of rust. It had a hole in the middle.

"Hammer heads," Judy identified.

Ruined by rust. "I"m a hammer head paying to have this c.r.a.p moved down here. So is there anything interesting in any of these barrels I just paid hundreds of dollars for?"

"Zilch. Oh, but we do have two barrels of uhliprach. " She pranced in her flipflops to a barrel in the corner.

Seth looked in quizzically and saw only black powder. "What the h.e.l.l is that?"

"Coal dust."

"Why on earth would anybody buy coal dust from Czechoslovakia?"

"Coal was in its infancy back then," she said. "It was hard to get, so it only went to the highest bidder: the cities. Rural burgs like Lowensport weren"t priorities for power. The only thing available to lower population centers was coal dust. They added water and a small amount of methyl alcohol to turn it into slurry fuel. It burned very slowly; they used it for lamp oil."

Seth laughed humorously. "Broken dishes, broken marbles, rusted hammerheads and files, coal dust, and clay. That"s all we"ve got?"

"That"s it."

"Ten barrels of nothin"."

"Maybe not." She walked quickly to the barrel of dust and hammered the lid back on. "This one"s probably the lightest."

"What?" Seth questioned.

"The barrels full of clay are too heavy. I don"t know how those workmen got them in here so fast."

"They"re strapping young men, unlike me, and would you mind telling me what you"re talking about?"

Her stomach muscles tightened when she pushed against the barrel. The barrel moved. "Oh, yeah. I used to go out with this guy who wrote books about eighteenth and nineteenth century craftwork. Americana mostly, but foreign stuff is even better. You want to talk about a collector"s market, try a Franklin Stove or an original stone-sled or wheelbarrow. Early American cabinetry, too, is worth a lot, especially if the designer"s name is on it."

"There"s no original cabinetry in the house," Seth reminded, more taken by the image of her body than the prospect of valuables.

"No," she chided, "but you"ve got ten very old barrels that were probably made in Prague and mostly in good condition. Cooperage, honey. Cooperage."

"Cooperage?"

"The art of making barrels. My point: collectors buy old barrels, especially if they have authentic markings on them."

Seth eyed the dust barrel. "Ah, so...we"re going to tip this over on its side to see if there"s writing on the bottom?"

"Writing, or engraving, or a brandmark," she defined, and grabbed the barrel"s rim and pushed with a groan.

"Let me do it," Seth said, trying to a.s.sert his masculinity. He nudged her aside, grabbed the rim himself and, forcing himself not to grunt, shimmied around and lowered the barrel until it sat on its side. He winced when he leaned back up.

Judy excitedly knelt and examined the barrel"s bottom. "Seth!" she squealed. "You"re not gonna believe this!"

"Markings?"

She stood back up and smiled. "No markings."

"Real funny, baby. But I guess that settles it. These barrels are worthless."

"Not necessarily. I"ll e-mail that guy I used to date and ask him-"

Seth groaned. "Please. Don"t bother. I"m insecure enough."