"Past tense."

"Dead, isn"t he?"

"What makes you think so?"

"Because he isn"t hanging around me, Mac. And that"s the only thing that would keep him away. And because he was going bad fast. He was popping those pills like candy and they were scrambling his brains. He was seeing things, hearing voices, forgetting what he did last, and no idea of what he"d do next. So I guess somebody had to kill him before he spoiled somebody else"s fun and games. Somebody tucked him into a swamp. What kind of games are you trying to play with me, Mac?"

"I"ve been interested in you since last Thursday night when I came within an inch and a half of killing you."

"Me? What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?"

"The only reason I can come up with why you ran in front of my car was because there was somebody out there in the night you wanted to have see you. But you cut it too close."

Three seconds of silence, then the jolly grin again, and a wink. "I sure did, friend. What happened, my foot slipped coming up that bank, but I thought I could still make it. Then all those headlights were close enough to touch. I felt the breeze from that fender on my bare tail. I didn"t mean to put you in the ca.n.a.l though. Sorry. Sure, I wanted somebody to see me. I wanted somebody to see that it was a girl not a man, because they were after Frank Baither."

"Who?"

"Somebody who wanted to kill him and did. Frank was the first and the only real man I ever did know. Some kid stuff before I met him, but after that n.o.body touched me but Frank, until they jailed him and then sent him up north. He"s the one I went on trips with. We were gone four months when I was sixteen one time, and he made thirty thousand dollars and we spent twenty of it."

"What did he knock over?"

"He and two other guys took a casino in Biloxi for ninety on a three-way split. No, it was a hundred, because I remember he had to give ten to the cop who set it up for Frank because the casino was shorting the cop on the insurance money they were paying. Then we went out to California because there was a payroll thing Frank wanted to look at. He decided he didn"t like it, and later some other people tried it and one got killed and the other two ended up in Q."

"Who came to kill Frank last Thursday?"

"Two men who"d been in on something Frank never told me about. He said their names were Hutchason and Orville. He said they thought he"d given them a short count on a split. The way it happened, I was practically living there from the time he got back because he had a lot to catch up on. He heard something outside and woke me up and got his gun and told me to go on home, sneak as far as the road and go like h.e.l.l. One of them followed me, or both of them. I thought they would think it was Frank and shoot me. So I ran across in front of your car so they"d see me. I went on home. It"s only about three and a half miles from here, about. I went back early in the morning and saw the county cars and found out they"d killed him. I just... just didn"t think anybody could ever kill Frank. You know, I didn"t think you"d have a good enough look at me for long enough to remember me."

"If the sheriff knew there"d been a girl there with Baither, wouldn"t he know it had been you?"

"He might think on it, but Mister Norm doesn"t fuss with me much."

A back country silence, standing in shade. She stood against the big trunk of the tree, one knee flexed, bare foot against, the rough gray bark. She idly scratched the rounded top of her brown thigh, and I could hear in the silence the whisper of her nails against the skin. The animal hunger she had awakened with that odd display of strength had not died away. She caught and held my eye and read it, and built it back again with but a slight arching of her back, softening of her mouth.

"Could be," she whispered. "It just could be."

"Think so?"

"Like part of whatever game we"re playing. Saying one thing, holding other things back. We can go someplace, try us out. You"d be thinking I"d say more. I"d be thinking you might say more about what you know, or think you know. That would come after the edge was off. I"m not like this often, Mr. Mac. Could be more than you can take on?"

"I manage to totter around."

She said, "I got to go in a minute, see if that d.a.m.n Nulia has got the old lady cleaned up right this time. Last time she got through the room still stank, and I had to whop her old black a.s.s and make her do it over right."

She grinned, shoved herself away from the tree, and thumped me on the biceps with a small hard brown fist, a considerable blow, and ran to the house, fleet as a young boy.

Seventeen.

SHE WAS in the house over ten minutes. She came out and beckoned to me and headed toward my car. By the time I got to it she had jacked the driver"s seat forward and turned the key on. I got in the pa.s.senger seat and put the rubber beach bag on the floor.

"Easier than giving directions," she said. "I don"t want to drive mine until Henry gets that shimmy out of it. Okay with you?"

"Sure."

"Pretty bag belong to a nice lady?" She backed out onto the unpaved road, and headed southwest.

"Friendly lady name of Jeanie Dahl."

"Mmmm. That"s where you found out about me and Dori Severiss."

"And Lew"s sideline."

She was driving more conservatively than I had expected. "Thought you were getting the scoop from ol" Betsy Kapp, knowing you wasted no time moving in on those giant t.i.tties. Never knew just how much Lew talked to her. Never could figure out how they got together in the first place. He had a funny soft spot for that fool woman. I told him once he ought to sign her onto his little team. Even offered to go convince her, but he told me if I ever went near her, he"d club my head right down between my knees, and I think he meant it."

I saw the sign indicating we were leaving Cypress County. "Hyzer asked me to stay in his jurisdiction."

"Right now, mister, does that mean a h.e.l.l of a lot to you?"

"I wouldn"t say that it does."

"We aren"t going to be out of it long, honey. Right turn coming up, before we come out onto the Trail, and it swings back into Cypress County. Car rides nice."

"Seems to. Where are we going?"

"A place a friend of mine lent me when he went in the Navy. It"s real private."

And it was. It was a fairly new aluminum house trailer of average size, set on a cement-block foundation on a small cypress hammock in marshy gra.s.sland. Limestone fill had been trucked in to make a small causeway between an old logging road and the hammock. A flock of white egrets went dipping and winging away through the cypress and hanging gray moss when she parked by the trailer.

She squatted and reached up and behind a place where a block had been left out for ventilation purposes, and pulled out the keys. She went over and unlocked a small cement-block pumphouse and tripped a switch that started a husky gasoline generator.

"Now we"ve got air conditioning and, in a little while, ice cubes, Mac, honey."

"Can I object to Mac?"

"You can ask for anything your evil heart desires, man."

"Travis or Trav or McGee."

"So I settle for McGee."

"You do that."

She unlocked the trailer and stepped up into it. "Hey, let"s open this thing up until the air conditioning starts doing something."

We opened the windows. It was tidy inside. It had the compact flavor of a good cabin cruiser, with ample stowage. She checked to make certain there was water in the ice-cube trays. She turned on a little red radio and prowled the dial until she found some heavy rock and turned it up far enough to drown out the sound of the generator and the whine of the refrigerator and the busy whacketythud of the compressor on the air conditioner.

She reached around herself and undid the few inches of zipper that reached from the V back to the base of her spine, and said, "Can you think of anything special we"re waiting on, McGee?" She shrugged it forward off her shoulders, lowered it and stepped out of it and flipped it aside. I noted with a remote objectivity that her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were a slight quarter-tone. lighter than the rest of her, and that the bikini band around her hips was as white as in the photograph.

She was as totally at home in her naked hide as any animal. She moved without either coyness or boldness, walked over to the bunk bed, kneewalked toward the wall, rolled over onto her back.

"As any jacka.s.s can plainly we, I am all the way ready. Whyn"t you close the other windows, but let"s leave this here one open the way it is? You"re sure in some terrible rush, huh? Gun shy, McGee?"

I closed the windows with all deliberate speed. It had to be a setup. Though Meyer might try to argue the point, young girls do not make a habit of suddenly propositioning me, driving me off to a hideaway, peeling off their clothes, rolling onto their backs, and breathing hard.

But just how was I being set up? Strong as she was, I couldn"t see her doing much bare-handed damage to me. If there was a weapon, where was it? Down behind the mattress? There were no cupboards she could reach. As I unb.u.t.toned my shirt, I noticed that the two little hooks which held the aluminum screen in the window were undone.

Setup. Phone call from the house. Lots of noise. She had opened that window, so she had unhooked the screen. She had moved over to the far side of the bunk bed, under the window. We were expecting a visitor. Maybe he had arrived and was squatting under the window, awaiting the sounds of festivity. She was certainly powerful enough to hold me or anyone motionless long enough, and perfectly positioned.

She was obviously in a state of s.e.xual excitement, her face slack, eyes blurring. She was rolling her hips slowly from side to side, and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were swollen, nipples thrusting, belly muscles twitching and rippling.

"Come on," she said in a petulant smothered tone. "Come on!"

So I fumbled with b.u.t.tons long enough for her to roll up and crawl toward me, reaching to help, and when she was positioned correctly I thought of the way Betsy"s face looked, and I hit Lilo Perris as hard as I have ever hit anyone, and as perfectly. I reached up, as though getting my hands free of the shirt b.u.t.tons, then I dropped my hand. It traveled about eight inches before it hit her on the left side of the chin, and kept going another foot and a half after it knocked her mouth open. Sensing a reluctance to hit a female, I had told myself to hit through the target and beyond, not hit at it. When you hit at something, you pull it. When you hit someone in the nose, you try to smash an imaginary nose on a person standing directly behind him. That gets the back into it.

She dropped immediately and bonelessly, face down, head hanging over the side of the bed, one arm dangling, legs splayed in frog posture. I put my fingertips against the pulse in her throat and it was fast but strong.

Now, honey, we get ready for visitors. Try the cupboards. Nothing. Nothing. Hmm, an extension cord. Box of Kleenex. Nothing in the next one. There now! Nice fat roll of black plastic electrician"s tape.

Roll you over in the clover. Feel the jaw, shift it about a little. No looseness. No gritty sound of bone edges. Didn"t even chip a pretty tooth. Beginning to puff and darken right there on the b.u.t.ton, though. Thumb the mouth full of tissue, and draw a black X with tape across it. Bring your arms in front of you, and hold your elbows so they touch, and wind the tape around and around. A nice binding just above the elbow, another around the forearms, a third around the wrists. Now clasp the loose hands together and... around and around like this. An awkward att.i.tude of prayer, dear girl. Up with the knees, close together. One binding just above the knees, one just below, and one around the ankles. Now, my muscular darling, we roll you up into a ball, into fetal position, and we put the extension cord around your legs under your knees, thread it up between your upper arms and b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and we tie it right here, at the nape of your neck, just firmly enough. Comfy? Special treatment for a very strong girl.

Radio blasting away. Sound protection works both ways. Stay down, so you won"t be seen by anybody looking in the windows, McGee. Careful with the door. Bit by bit. Nothing. Step down. Strategic window on the other side. Ease around the end. Nothing. Now up to the last corner, lie flat, stick head around the corner made of block.

And by G.o.d, what do you know, there is broad, brown Henry Perris, master mechanic, wife-stealer, and Sunday p.r.o.nger of the stepdaughter, standing very tense, squatting below the window next to a handy pile of block. What has good old Henry got in his hand? Why, he has what looks like a short section of hoe handle with a short sharp piece of metal sticking out of the end of it. Head bent in att.i.tude of listening. Fingertips against the aluminum love nest. What are you waiting for, Henry? A signal? Why, of course, how logical. In extremis, the lady yells to the unwary chap in the saddle, "Now! Now!" And good old Henry stands on the blocks and lifts the screen out and leans in the window and sticks that sharp piece of metal right into the back of lover boy"s head, right where the base of the skull fastens onto the neck and for a lady who gets her jollies out of hurting people, if her timing is right, that must, indeed, be a memorable thrill. Same thrill as the lady spider devouring the mate while they are still coupled.

One might, in fact, suspect that Hutchason and Orville both met this same fate in this same place at these same hands, because there was no time to set up anything so complex in the time she had on the phone.

I eased back and stood up. Insight is perhaps what pops to the surface of the mind after subterranean processes of logic have taken place. If Perris and Lilo were two of the team of five who took the money truck, then Frank Baither went to Raiford knowing they would stay right in the area, waiting for the division after he got out. And if Hutch or Orville showed up, they could not make Henry or Lilo tell them something they did not know. And it would be the a.s.signed ch.o.r.e of Henry or Lilo to quietly take them out of the scene. Baither would certainly know that Lilo was, by inclination, a competent executioner. Unless Frank were out of reach, she could have no chance to get them off guard, to get close enough. And then, of course, the lie to Frank when he came back. They never showed up. Maybe something happened to them. They never showed up, Frank.

Then the dead men had been used to decoy Frank Baither. To send him clattering around in the night in the old pickup, so that they were in position for him when he came back.

Out of the delusion of their own irresistible male charm, Hutch and Orville, one at a time, had clambered so eagerly onto the deathbed, coupled with the strong brown spider. I realized that had I not found Betsy"s letter to Lew, had I not seen the sweat and pallor on Dori Severiss"s face when she told me of Lilo, I could have been less on guard. I could have bought her rationalization about it.

"You"d be thinking I"d say more."

No problem to phone Henry at the station. And he could scoot west on the Trail, turn onto the far end of Sh.e.l.l Ridge Road, be there before we got there. She had driven slowly. He could drive beyond the little causeway to the hammock, tuck his car away, come back under the cover of the noise of generator and rock radio.

I had revealed too much to her. But maybe it did not have to be very much, if she was that twisted. "It"s like I was helping them get past something or over something." Helping them get over the problem of living, of breathing. And Dori saying, "... smiling at me and giggling and calling me love names and saying how much fun it would be to really kill me."

Thoughts roaring through the mind like a train racketing through a tunnel, while another part of my mind flipped through the possible ways of taking Henry Perris. I did not know how well he would move. I knew he could be as powerful as he looked. And I knew he had a useful weapon in his hand.

Estimate the triangle. Henry was fifteen feet from me. The white convertible was parked twenty feet in back of Henry, and perhaps thirty feet from me. Burst out in a full run and I could almost be at the car before he could react. She had turned it around and parked it heading out. Driver door was on this side. Beach bag on the floor on the far side.

So run around the hood, yank door open, pick up bag, find shape of gun through the fabric, and come up with it with a very good chance of taking one step to the side and firing across the hood through the fabric. If he was too close, there"d be no time for shoulder or thigh. If he was far enough away, one into the ground at his feet might do it.

One and a two and a three and go, McGee. Don"t lose your stride by looking at him. Not until you round the hood. Now look. And he is down off the blocks, and he is yanking the bright rubberized beach bag open in fumbling haste, and you should think a little better, McGee. Your thinking is spotty. You work one thing out and get overcome with your G.o.dd.a.m.n brilliance, and forget that she parked the car in a blind spot, where it could not be seen from any window of the trailer, and so he had to use that angle as his approach, and it would be natural to check the car, heft the bag, finger the distinctive shape, bring it along.

All the shots are going to do out here is startle the egrets and puzzle the brown girl, if she is awake yet. And unless you get smart very fast, they are going to make some very final and very ugly holes in a fellow you have often felt kindly toward over the years.

Fact: It is not accurate at any long range. Take a quick look into the car. Fact: The keys are gone. Fact: He has the gun out of the bag. Fact: It is too d.a.m.ned long a run for cover, if you want to get into that cypress. Probability: If you stay by the car, he will angle out to the front or rear, stay fifteen feet from it, and pot you in perfect safety.

I dropped and looked under the car. Coming at the predicted angle toward the rear end of the car. Not running. Better if he was running. Plodding along. Patience and good nerves.

Find place with best clearance under the thing. Okay. Onto the back. Pull yourself along under it like a cat playing under a sofa. Out the other side, roll up onto the feet and into full speed for the first few steps, then sacrifice speed for that crouching zigzag, like long ago, when they"d put the old tires on the practice field. Absolutely ice-cold target area in the middle of the spine. Corner of the trailer apparently receding into the distance. Not coming close very fast. Barn. No impact. That thing would hit you like a small sledge. Barn. And you are around the corner, skittering; skidding, the comedy runner, sliding to a bulge-eyed frantic stop, yanking the door open, plunging into the trailer, falling to hands and knees, spinning, yanking the door shut, taking the wheezing breaths, feeling the tremble in the knees.

The red radio is hollering about "a little help from my friends." Sidle to a window and try to spot him. Sudden silence. Music chopped off. Dying wheeze of the air conditioning, fading whir of fan. Methodical fellow. Taking his time and thinking it out. Avoiding mistakes: I crept to the galley area, opened logical drawers, found a flimsy carving knife, a dull paring knife, four rust-flecked oyster knives, steel blade and handle, rounded tip. Tried one. It balanced precisely at the juncture of handle and blade. Each was forged out of a single piece of mediocre steel. One in the right hand, handle outward, blade flat against the underside of the thumb and the heel of the thumb. Provided a little amus.e.m.e.nt that time I spent holed up with Miguel in the Sierras. He had the single throwing knife. Tree target. Basic lessons. Always the same motion, a long forearm snap. Always the same force. Let it slide away from the thumb, nat urally. Useful only at reasonably exact distances.

Make a half turn and chunks home at fifteen feet. Hold the handle end and get a full turn at thirty feet. Hold the blade and get a turn and a half at forty-five. Got arm-weary throwing it and footweary trudging up to yank it out of the tree and going back to the mark. I held the other three oyster knives by the handle in my left hand. Miguel said a man who tries for the target at thirty feet, when it is an important target, is frivolous: Fifteen feet is so much more certain. At the slow rate of spin, it will be blade first from twelve to eighteen feet, enough to slash at the outer limits of the range. At ten feet or twenty it will strike flat. Do not try to adjust. Throw always for the right-angle impact at fifteen feet.

A rattle of small stones under the nearby footstep, beyond the aluminum. "McGee?" Hoa.r.s.e voice. No urgency. Calm and reasonable. "Want to do some d.i.c.kerin", McGee?"

I backed away from the side of the window, then leaned a little forward, cupped my hand to confuse the point of origin of my voice. "What are you selling, Henry?"

He was selling gunshot wounds. Not bam this time. More like braing. Hole at chest height a foot in from the window edge and an exit hole high on the far side. I thudded both feet on the carpeted flooring and moaned and backed away.

"No good, you tricky b.a.s.t.a.r.d. I heard it go whining off, tumbling. Couldn"t have touched you. What did you do to her?"

Lilo answered. She squalled behind the packed wad of tissue, a sound of pure animal anger, m.u.f.fled, like a cat in the bottom of a laundry hamper. "Tied and gagged, eh?" Henry said. "That would take some doing. That I would like to see. I really would. Getting warm enough for you in there?" No point in answering him.

"I"ve figured out something, McGee. I think what I"ll do is go around and turn off the bottle gas for the stove at the tank and cut the tubing and shove the end back into the hole and turn the gas on again. Good idea?"

Yes, it was a splendid idea. Simple and effective. After a while he could figure some way of igniting it, if I didn"t come choking and stumbling out. It was such a good idea, that it did not seem logical that he would stand around and chat about it. He would go do it. So there was a factor that kept him from doing it. And that was most probably the serious effect it would have on the health of Miss Perris.

I moved back to the galley, put the knives down, and in one surge slid the small refrigerator out into the middle of the work s.p.a.ce and crouched behind it.

"Henry, at the very first whiff of propane, I am going to take one of these dull kitchen knives and saw that throat open on your little pal. You had better believe it."

"Now why should that make any difference to me?"

"I wouldn"t know. The abiding love of a stepfather for a high-spirited girl, maybe. It"s the only thing you left open that I could try, Henry."

"Go ahead and cut away." Just a little too much indifference.

"Henry, you could try to smoke me out. Or you could get a piece of rope, or cable and fasten it low on one side of this thing, throw it across the roof, hook it to the Buick and roll this thing over. Let"s see now. You"ve got a car here. You could swing the Buick around and get a good start and just run the h.e.l.l into this hunk of aluminum. But if I smell smoke, Henry. Or feel movement. Or hear the Buick. Or hear anything else I can"t understand, I am going to start sawing."

In the long silence Lillian made muted bleating noises, and even tethered as she was, managed to snap and flex enough muscles to bounce herself around on the bunk bed.

"She tied up good? Can"t get loose?"

"Guaranteed," I said. I moved as quietly as I could, over to the bunk bed and sat close to her, and put the oyster knives on a shelf above the foot of the bed, blades outward. "Matter of fact, Henry, I"m sitting so close to her that if you try any more trick shooting, you can just as easily get her as me." I looked down at her. She was on her left side in her curled position, her feet toward me. She looked at me with a ferocity that was an almost physical impact. Then her muscles bulged and her eyes closed as she strained to stretch or break the tough tape. I could hear little poppings and cracklings of joints and sinews. Then she let her breath out and relaxed, snuffling hard. I reached and gave her a friendly caress along the flank, a little pat on the brown haunch. She snapped into the air like a shrimp on a dock eyes maniacal.

"We can work this out, McGee," he called.

"Now just how do we do that, Henry?"