“Take a ride,” Wood said.

He called me at the apartment. It was a Monday, just after six. In the morning. Wood calling me early at home put me on red alert, but there was also something in his voice, a quickening, Dill might say, dropped like a magician’s silk over the vengeance he’d kept cupped in his palm since the night before Halloween.

“And we’re going where?” I said, hoping it sounded casual.

“Tell you in the car. Bring your tools. Tell Bob you won’t be in this morning.”

“He’ll want to know why.”

“He’ll like why. Be outside in five.”

Wood pulled up in four. He was driving his car, the unmarked squad. Moze rode shotgun. Wood had shucked the brown, polyester, jump suit. Both he and Moze were in their best, two-tone-brown threads and wide-brim, fireplug lids. Without turning to look at me, Moze tossed a thumb over his shoulder to tell me I’d sit in back.

“Anybody puked back here lately?” I asked for openers.

Nobody laughed.

“Bring a camera?” Wood asked.

“Hell no,” I said, leaning forward to see if I could see anything in the front seat that would tell me what was going on.

“What’d I tell you about your tools?” Wood said.

“Jesus, you sound like Marley.”

Wood looked at his watch. Moze held up a 35 millimeter by the strap.

“He can use ours,” Moze said.

“For what?” I asked.

Wood gunned it, knocking me back into the seat. It sighed a puff redolent of Pine-Sol, urine, and vomit. The citizens of Austin County always elect a working sheriff.

The sun was not yet up, and, on this day, it would not be out. But I am a child of the Midwest, and I need not light to know what kind of day it will be. In my bones, I knew it would be damp and not-quite-freezing cold. It would be set out against some relentless, unblemished shade of gray. It would be the kind of day that by noon would leave me weary of packing around this life’s fat ass. It would be the kind of day that, had it fallen in February, after weeks of such days, would paint across my tongue for hours at a time the cellular memory of scotch’s smoke and husk. It would be the kind of day that I might have to seek out not one but two Meetings and maybe call Marley in between.

Yet even as the gruel that was to be that day’s light seeped up over the horizon, flowed out over the dirty ochre of the flat, stubbly fields we passed by, and puddled in the brown towns we drove through, you could tell, Wood and Moze were jazzed. Give them tuning forks, you could’ve heard the cosmos’ chord.

“You got him,” said I, not even a question.

Wood’s eye in the rearview mirror was hard, shiny, and dangerous, kind of like looking closeup at the round end of a ballpeen hammer. Then, the eye closed and looked back toward the road.

“Maybe,” he said.

“What’s maybe? You call me at this unholy hour. You’re both wearing pressed chocolate and mocha, and we’re headed toward Indianapolis. Maybe? Shit.”

Wood and Moze looked at each other. Wood smirked.

“Okay,” he said, “here it is.”

Late the previous Friday, just before closing, a criminal-defense attorney named Marcus Reardon called the Indianapolis office of the FBI. The Rear, as he is known among the law-enforcement community throughout the state, specializes in high-profile cases. His reputation among cops and prosecutors is based more on the stunts he pulls and the publicity they generate than the quality of his representation, and his batting average is much lower than he or other members of the clans would lead you to believe. The last special agent left in the office accordingly accepted the Rear’s call with some reluctance.

Reardon says to the agent the guy has retained him. The guy—the Rear won’t identify him to the agent by name—is willing to turn himself in. The guy didn’t do it, Reardon says; he’s got people who’ll testify to where he was the night of the murders, and it wasn’t at some old lady’s trailer. But, Reardon says, the guy knows the cops are looking for him ’cause, yes, he does know Jake and his family and people he knows are telling him the cops are asking around for him. He assumes Jake gave the cops his name.

The guy will turn himself in, he’s a law-abiding citizen, the Rear says, but he’ll turn himself in only to feds. He’s afraid, Reardon says. He’s pretty sure there are lynch mobs roaming the plains of Austin County, and he fears local authorities will turn him over to said mobs if his arrest is not well publicized.

Well, says the agent, we have no reports of Austin County lynch mobs, but if you’re saying you and your boy know my colleagues at the state and local levels are going to find your boy sooner or later and you want to bring him on over, sure, we’ll take him.

Well, there’s just one thing, says the Rear. The guy’s got family and he wants to spend his last few hours of freedom with them.

You’re saying he won’t be here till ten or what, the agent says, now in sputtering awe of the size of the brass balls Reardon just pulled out of his pants.

Naw, Reardon says, how about I just deliver him to your office Monday morning, say, around nine, so he can be arraigned promptly the same day. Also, the Rear says, between now and then, if you guys try and squeeze any family or friends you may have knowledge of, he won’t show on Monday.

And the Rear hangs up.

The feds call McConegal, McConegal calls Wood, Wood calls Crandall, and Crandall calls everybody, raising all sorts of hell about Reardon obstructing justice and abetting a felon and threatening him with not only an arrest, but also a trip to the state Supreme Court’s disciplinary commission.

“See how that bastard’s going to make blood money without a fucking license,” Crandall is reputed to have said.

In the end, Reardon called Crandall. Wood was with Crandall, listening on the speaker. Reardon told Crandall he didn’t know where the guy was ’cause the guy hadn’t told him. Crandall was pretty sure Reardon hadn’t asked either, but before he could express that suspicion, Reardon put it to Crandall one lawyer to another: “You want him or not? Something or nothing. Best I can do.”

I suspect he risked an aneurysm accepting the deal, but Crandall took something.

“So,” I said, “assuming the guy actually shows up, you charging or just questioning?”

“Assuming it’s who we think it is, charging,” Wood said. “Murder and felony murder, three counts each. Attempted murder and attempted felony murder, one count each. Some other stuff to keep him wrapped up.”

“Felony murder?”

“He killed them in the course of a break-in.”

“Could put him at the front of the line for some volts,” Moze said cheerfully.

Wood glared at him, and he stopped smiling.

“Actually, it’s the amps the condemned wants to avoid,” I said. “Or maybe the watts. I forget.”

They were a tough crowd: Moze didn’t like being corrected, especially by me, and Wood didn’t think jokes about the death penalty were funny. Anyway, they use a needle nowadays.

“Best talk to Crandall about that,” Wood said.

“You guys act like the case is strong,” I said. “He confess?”

Moze glanced at Wood, who kept his eyes on the road.

“Off the record?” Wood said.

“At this point? Hell no.”

“No comment.”

“That’ll look like yes.”

Wood gave me hammer eye in the mirror again.

“How about letting ‘law enforcement authorities’ be your source?”

“Way too pretentious. How about ‘police’?”

“Jesus Christ,” Moze hissed. Wood smiled.

“The answer is no, of course not, we haven’t talked to him yet.”

“Then what makes you guys so confident?”

Wood said nothing.

“The kid ID him?”

Moze carefully watched the strip malls and the big-box stores of the greater Indianapolis metroplex roll by. He seemed intent on not missing a single one of the commerce barns big as football fields on either side of the highway. Wood kept his eyes on the road.

“Lotty saw him,” I said.

“We don’t have him in custody yet,” Wood said finally. “Maybe we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves.”

I took out my notepad, made a few notes. I caught Wood watching me in the mirror. We crept along with the rest of rush-hour traffic, inching toward a skyline of a couple of dozen or so skyscrapers. Locals take great pride in them, but they seemed juvenile and curt by the standards of the Loop.

The phone call, the ride over, the use of their camera, the information: I was feeling a little creeped out by their generosity.

“How’m I getting back to town exactly?” I asked.

“With us,” Wood said.

“And he’s getting to Failey how exactly?”

“With us.”

“You, Moze, him, me,” I said. “All of us together in this squad.”

“What’s your point?” said Wood.

“Squad’s not that big. Where’s his lawyer going to be?”

“Don’t know.”

“Probably not with us.”

“No, probably not.”

“You and Moze probably can’t ask him about the case. In the car, I mean.”

Wood and Moze looked at each other. Moze raised his eyebrow.

“No,” Wood said. “He’s represented, and his lawyer probably won’t want him talking to us unless he’s present.”

“But,” I said. “And, of course, I speak only hypothetically, I could talk to him if we—him and me—are both in the car.”

“I suppose,” Wood said. “Speaking hypothetically.”

“And if the guy did talk to me and if he talked loud enough, you might overhear what he said.”

“According to you,” Moze said brightly, “you two’ve struck up an acquaintance. You’re buds.”

That was it, as much as—maybe more than—anything else.

“The voice,” I said. “You want me to ID him by his voice.”

“It’d be thin,” I said, pretty much to myself, trying to work it through. “People sound different in person than they do on the phone. You couldn’t hang your whole case on it, but it could be used to corroborate some stuff you may already have and to open up other areas that could be corroborated by someone else.”

The question of whether it was right grew to adulthood in their silence while we traveled on. I made a show of putting my notebook back in my hip pocket and my pen back in my shirt. It seemed like we were going to have to work out some things here, and I didn’t want the pad and its implicit promise of publicity to inhibit them.

Before Wood picked me up, I had called the paper and left a message for Marley about being AWOL. I hadn’t called Marley at home because he’d want me to explain what was happening and I didn’t know. Now I wished I had.

I ground at my eyes with the heels of my hands. I thought coffee, maybe a Dunkin’—not Krispy Kreme—would’ve been good. I looked from Wood to Moze and Moze to Wood, sighed, and clapped my hands lightly between my knees as I sat forward.

“Crandall know you’re bringing me?” I asked.

“Nope,” Wood said.

“Yeah,” I said, “he doesn’t care for me much. Probably doesn’t know you’re carrying me home with your prisoner either.”

“Nope.”

“Probably wouldn’t like it ‘cause it’d give Reardon all sorts of ammunition to get evidence thrown out.”

“You a lawyer now?” Moze said.

“Me? Hardly.” I looked down at the floor, weighed the grossness of a stain I saw there, and shook my head. “But I’ve known a few, maybe a few dozen, maybe a hundred, seen them in action. And I learned a thing or two.”

A thought occurred to me and I looked up.

“Jesus, Wood, tell me this wasn’t Moze’s idea and you’re going along with it.”

“Fuck you,” Moze said, with maybe more bite in tone than was absolutely necessary.

We were fully stopped on 16th Street, waiting for traffic to proceed. Wood unsnapped his belt, threw an arm over the seat back, and turned to look me squarely in the eye.

“I always said you were a smart guy, so I know you know your choices. Depends how bad you want the story. What’re you going to do?”

“Honestly? This point? I don’t know.”

“Well, I reckon we’ll know when the boat leaves. You’ll be on it.”

Wood turned back to the road and shrugged.

“Or not.”

Here’s a recipe for an ugly, public building: Take a gargantuan, rectangular cake, several tiers high. Cover it in a creamy, sculpted frosting. Turn it upside down so that it looks like its propped on its candles along the outside of what would have been the top tier. Let the pomegranate filling spill out to the ground.

That’s pretty much what the federal building in Indianapolis looks like. In a city of ponderous, traditionally civic, gray granite and limestone architecture, it borders on weird modern and reveals among its architects and planners a certain devilish streak.

The same hint of bi-polar disorder exists inside. There are the usual warrens of cubicles and conference rooms fashioned out of pressboard, glass, and khaki felt-covered partitions. But what makes the offices interesting, and more than a little unsettling, is the unusually high number that have gun lockers discretely affixed to the walls and handcuffs, belly chains, and leg shackles tossed casually across the top of the partitions. All the initial agencies with the police powers of the federal government—IRS, FBI, DEA, ATF—have a home in the building. As one who had spent time here straightening out a little tax problem that arose when I was drinking, I was more than happy to comply with Wood’s instructions to wait outside.

Wood stopped a half block away from the building and let me out. Traffic honked indignantly at the unmarked squad until Wood turned on his flashers. He pointed out a drive that emerged from the ground on the south side of the federal building.

“I’ll walk him out the main door. You guys can get your pictures. But that’s where we’ll put him in the car.”

He gave me a long look.

“I’d make up my mind. We won’t wait,” Wood said before pulling away.

As I waddled up to the federal building, I knew I would be far from the only one cooling his heels on the red-orange plaza beneath the first tier. I heard it first, the pulsing rumble, the ocean-like rise and fall, of conversation that occurs at any gathering of the clans, magnified and projected in this case by its echo off the plaza tile. That noise was punctuated by the piping and squeal of children on the playground of the employees’ daycare center, which takes up the north end of the plaza.

At the plaza, a bank of microphones had been set up in front of one orange wall to one side of the door to the building. A couple of burly marshals in the traditional gray slacks and blue blazers flanked the bank, keeping an eye on a jostling semi-circle of maybe 15 or 20 video cameramen and still photographers. Behind them, nervously scanning the horizons, afraid they might miss something, was the talent.

You could sort the twinks from the print and radio people by their topcoats and headgear. The twinks wore trench coats but no hats. God forbid they should muss their hair. Everybody else wore parkas and caps. I doubted the locals had enough imagination or sense of history to think they were Murrow covering the Blitz. More likely, they’d seen network twinks sporting London Fog. Those of us who’d spent more than five minutes stamping our feet at a winter crime scene preferred cloaks of fat or down to hero worship or ambition.

I waded into the clutch, found the AP photographer, and told him to make sure Marley got first dibs on whatever he shot. He didn’t seem offended by the twenty I palmed him when we shook.

I moved to my usual position at the back of the clans, not only because it was my preferred position, but also because it afforded me an opportunity to slip away to the south side of the building. I still didn’t know what I was going to do, but why foreclose options?

From the corner of my eye, I saw a patch of orange separate from a nearby wall.

“Hello, Janelle,” I said, without turning my head as she sidled up.

“Hey, asshole,” she said.

I glanced at her. Unlike the rest of our colleagues, she was not looking around or dancing from one foot to the other. She had her eyes riveted on the door behind the microphones. There was a flush to her olive complexion that seemed not to have a thing to do with the cold. She gave Mona Lisa a run on secretive grins.

I leaned toward her a little and purred, not in a whisper but quietly so that she would know my words were meant only for her.

“You’re looking radiant today, Janelle.”

You would’ve thought I’d put my tongue in her ear. She hopped back, bent away with her mouth slightly agape.

She said, “That’s pretty much inappropriate.”

“No, no,” I said. “The truth is never inappropriate. You seem positively aglow. With an inner light. Perhaps the light of knowledge. Like maybe you know something the rest of us do not.”

“No, I do not,” she said and started to move closer to the clans, as though leaving in a huff.

“Don’t leave,” I said. “I did not mean to offend. I’ll let the compliment stand by itself. I will not address you by your middle initial.”

She cocked her head and raised her brows before she came back.

“So,” I said, “What did Reardon tell you when he called?”

I emphasized the pronoun to suggest we compare notes.

She looked at her watch and put her eyes back on the door.

“He just said when and where,” she said casually.

“You mean for that exclusive interview after the press conference.”

She jerked her head around and glared at me. I smiled.

“I bet he says that to all the girls,” I said.

“You mean that bastard promised you an interview too.”

“Me? Naw. We haven’t spoken in years.”

“Then, how . . .”

I held up one hand.

“Remember, we don’t discuss sources.” I waved the hand around. “Besides, you don’t think a guy like the Rear doesn’t have all our competitors on speed dial?”

A marshal appeared at the doorway. The video floods popped on, screening him behind glare off the glass. The noise level dropped. Aides shooed children off the playground into the building. Janelle nearly skipped forward, whipping out a notepad, sidearm and wide, from the folds of that damned coat.

Crandall and Reardon emerged at the same time but, judging by their body language, not together. I knew, as they stood waiting for the shooters’ flashes to cease, their contrasts would be the theme of any number of the next day’s sidebars.

Crandall had, to my relief, lost the blue porkpie, but he still sported the brown trench coat and otherwise looked much like he usually did: round, rumpled, and glowering. Call him puckered, a little like a sausage that had been left unwrapped too long.

Reardon, on the other hand, was half Crandall’s age, tall, and a trim triangle in build. His face mirrored his build, thin and triangular, a feature emphasized by a black goatee. He had a full head of black hair, moussed to look wet and combed straight back. He wore no overcoat, just his usual TV rig, a fifteen-hundred-dollar, black, double-breasted suit with a blue shirt and blue silk tie. As he came out the door, he dialed up a smile, a little serene one, as though he’d just left church.

For a moment, each gave the other the don’t-screw-with-me look lawyers use when they ask themselves yet again whether the other guy’s going to hold up his end of the deal. Then Crandall rubbed the flashes’ red spots from his eyes and stepped to the bank of microphones. He spent a moment handing out a dose of his contemptuous stare to each of us before he introduced himself by name and title.

He said that an arrest had been made in the murders of three Austin County children and the attempted murder of their babysitter. He identified the Defendant by name, address, and date of birth. He specified the charges and the potential penalties associated with each. He said that as result of a vigorous and exhaustive investigation by local and state police the Defendant had apparently felt compelled to turn himself in to the FBI that morning. He was now in the custody of Austin County police.

The Defendant would very shortly be transported to Austin County, Crandall said, where he would be held until he could be arraigned in the Circuit Court at 3 p.m. that afternoon.

Crandall said he would not entertain any questions. His mandibles bulged as he arced a flamethrower glare across the heads of the clans to quell any challenge. It stopped for just an instant to bestow on me an extra blister or two. Then he broke out the boyish, beneficent grin that makes widows vote and thanked us for our time.

Neither Reardon or Crandall looked at each other as they exchanged places. Reardon folded his arms and looked at the ground.

“Wow,” he said.

He bowed and shook his head.

“Gee.”

He shucked us a shrug.

“Pretty powerful stuff.”

He raised his head and looked each of the television cameras in the lens.

“’Cept my client didn’t do it.”

Reardon put one hand on his hip and cut the air with the heel of the other.

“On the night and at the time of this unfortunate incident, my client was home, 40 miles away from the scene of the murders, one short, hallway away from his mother and father, 10 feet away from the crib holding his infant son, inches away from his sleeping wife. You’d think one of them would’ve noticed he was gone.”

With that, it was on.

“Your client has an alibi,” said someone at the front, a master of the obvious, probably a twink.

“Obviously,” said Reardon.

“Is this notice to Mr. Crandall of an alibi defense?”

“Well, of course, a proper pleading will have to be filed, but it would be correct to say that Mr. Crandall was completely aware of where my client was at the time of the murders before he charged him.”

“So you’re saying the arrest is improper.”

“The facts speak for themselves. A man can’t be in two places at once.” He gave the cameras an impish grin. “That’s physics.”

Some thought it witty and laughed. Crandall did not. He folded his arms and glared, apparently willing a lobotomy on Reardon.

It was plain what Reardon was doing. He was already making his case to the jury in Austin County and, in so doing, laying the groundwork for getting the case moved out of Austin County. If he could show the judge that enough people knew about his client’s case, including his alibi, Crandall would have no choice but to move the case to a county where the facts were less well known. Since the Indianapolis television market covered about half the state, Reardon’s chances of getting the case moved a substantial distance from Austin County improved considerably.

Reardon would speak only to the TV clan. The print people were politely raising their hands, but he would not recognize them nor respond to their shouted questions on such mundane matters as the names of his client’s family members. The twinks lobbed him underhands across the plate and Reardon smacked back line drives.

That aspect of it—Reardon’s blatant co-opting of the television folks—and maybe a little boredom, certainly not any desire to do Crandall any favors, probably prompted me to shout from the back: “Will the missus testify to her husband’s whereabouts?”

“Sure,” Reardon said, craning his head to see who had asked.

“How about last night?” I did not need to shout, I found. A loud voice resonated well off the plaza tile; I was pretty sure the mikes would pick it up easily. “Can she testify to his whereabouts last night?”

“Do I know you?” Reardon said, when he spotted me.

“What’s the answer?”

“Well, if you mean was she with him, yes.”

“Which hotel was that? The one they were in last night.”

Reardon turned to look with suspicion at Crandall, who raised his eyebrows, closed his eyes, and shook his head. Turning back to me, Reardon said: “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Sure you do. Your boy spent the last two nights in a hotel. I’m asking which one.”

“I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

“So you’re not denying you offered to turn your client in last Friday, but you made authorities wait for two days while he shacked up?”

“Jesus, that’s not what happened.”

“Well,” said this ponderous, deep resonance near the front, “what did happen?” Even the TV clan was beginning to see the best angle on the story.

Everyone peppered Reardon. He tried to juke ’em, but there was too much crossfire.

“Where did you put them up?”

“I didn’t put them up anywhere.”

“Well, where’s your client been the last two nights?”

“Spending time with his family.”

“Where?”

“I’m not going to get into that.”

“Why not? Are you embarrassed?”

“It was the Hilton.”

“Two nights at the Hilton? Who paid for that?”

“That’s a matter of attorney-client privilege.”

“Meaning you did?”

“No comment. It’s irrelevant.”

Then Janelle jumped in with an intelligent question: “How do you think the people in Austin County are going to feel about your client evading authorities for two days by holing up in the Hilton?”

As an experienced advocate and grandstander, it was all Reardon needed to turn things back to his advantage.

“My client is not guilty. He was nowhere near the premises where the homicides occurred. But it was concern about the feelings of people in Austin County that prompted us to keep my client out of the hands of Austin County authorities and that brings us here, in Indianapolis, rather than the Town of Failey, today.”

With that, he launched into his speech about concerns for his client’s safety if he were left in the hands of Austin County authorities. Up to that point, Crandall had been enjoying Reardon’s grilling, standing behind him with crossed arms and a smirk as he watched traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue.

When Reardon began talking about the hostile nature of Austin County folk, Crandall must have known it would only serve to rile the folk, which would, in turn, give Reardon more ammunition for arguing that the case should be moved to another venue. The smirk gone, his full attention now on Reardon, Crandall listened for another moment, then nodded at the glass doors.

A wedge of state troopers emerged from the glare. They moved at such a deliberate pace it could have only been premeditated. Between the forks of the wedge walked Wood and Moze, their grim features set in the flashes of the strobes. And between them was the guy.

I don’t know exactly what I expected. Someone older? Someone taller? Someone neater? I had, after all, talked to him directly. But the man I saw did not fit the fuzzy picture in my head, and in the confusion arose doubt.

He was just pretty ordinary, a slender, scruffy guy in his early twenties, about the same height and age as Moze. He wore thick, photogray aviator glasses. He had shaggy, shoulder-length, black hair and a full, untrimmed moustache and beard, probably to disguise the fact he had no chin. He wore faded, dirty jeans, a denim jacket and a snap-pocket cowboy shirt open at the neck. His hands were shackled to a belly chain, and the leg chains he wore made him rock side to side as he walked, like a chimpanzee.

What set him apart from your run-of-the-mill criminal, what made him creepy, was his head was up and his smile was triumphant. Regardless of what Reardon told the feds about why his client was turning himself in, this is what he’d come for.

Reardon and Crandall fell in behind Wood and Moze, and the whole thing became a moveable feast. The wedge could not pierce the clans because the clans moved with it, the shooters and cameramen tacking backward against the talent to get the best angle and the talent falling back along the sides to shout questions at the guy, the cops, and the lawyers. I dropped back and away to watch; the moveable feast is just as often famine when it comes to useful material, and I needed to be in position to make a quick decision about getting in the squad with the guy.

Wood had parked the squad just where he said he would: at the top of the underground ramp, nose out, ready to pull out onto the street. When the cops reached the car, the wedge finally drove through the shooters and cameraman who were pressed back against it. The troopers got the back passenger-side door open. Wood put his hand on the guy’s head to fold him into the back seat. Knowing full well where the cameras were trained, Reardon reached forward to put a comforting hand on client’s shoulder, but Moze brushed it away and got in back with the guy. Wood went around to drive. He stopped before he got in to give me an inquiring look across the roof of the car.

I made my choice. I probably knew what it would be all along. Yeah, I knew and hated that they were using me, but it was too much of an opportunity. I report. Wood and Crandall deal with the legalities.

I nodded at Wood and held up an index finger to tell him to wait one. I doubted Reardon and Crandall would stop to watch and wave, like maybe they were sending their son off to college, so I stood back until they began to move back toward the plaza. The clans went with them, shouting more questions and taking their last-chance photos and tape. Only one or two of the cameramen lingered at the car to grab some continuity of Wood pulling away, but they didn’t know me.

Janelle did, and I did not count on it. I like to think that she sensed my as-yet-brief absence as the opening of a void in her being, but more likely she was just her observant and competitive self. As she stood waiting to get to Reardon for her exclusive interview, she shouted, yes, shouted, to no one in particular: “Hey, where’s he going?”

I had one foot in the car and was about to swing my big butt onto the seat when I heard Reardon shout, “Stop!” I just about had the door closed and Wood was moving forward when Crandall’s voice boomed through the squad radio. He’d grabbed a trooper’s mobile unit. He said the same thing.

Wood said “Shit” and slammed on the brakes. We sat there for only a second or so before the clans rocked the car, crowding it on both sides. I turned to smile in my most boyish way into the faces of Crandall and Reardon. I had only enough time to see they were both scowling before the strobes and the video lights blinded me.

I’m not sure how he did it, but I believe Crandall used the word fuck or some conjugation of it no less than three times in yanking open the squad door and telling me to get out. The troopers had formed a semi-circular wall around the passenger side of the car to push back the clans while Crandall and Reardon conferred. Crandall said something about my mother then something about my sexual practices before pushing me away toward the troopers. I heard him say to Reardon that he’d personally ride with “these fucking yahoos” to make sure his client’s rights were not violated.

“That’s what you say,” Reardon hissed.

“You’re goddamned right I do say. And that ought to be fucking good enough for you. But you don’t trust me? Come along.”

Reardon looked at the car for a moment, then shook his head.

“Don’t fuck with me, Crandall,” he said.

Crandall bit his lips and nodded once like Reardon had confirmed whatever Crandall thought of him. Before he closed the car door, he said, “I wanna fuck with you, sonny, I’ll do it straight up, in court. You’ve got my fucking word on that, too.”

As the car pulled out onto the street, I could see Crandall leaned over, giving it to Wood. The guy turned to look at me through the back window. At that point, he was the only one with a radiant smile.

McConegal let his boys crowd and jostle me on the plaza while he took ten minutes out of his day to tell me that I had failed to properly balance the interests of a free press against the interests of the state and the accused in a fair trial and that accordingly I could only be considered a piece of shit. He said he would gladly arrest me for being a piece of shit if he could, but he couldn’t, so he would, with the greatest reluctance, turn me loose with the promise that he would kick my ass if I interfered with another investigation.

He’d said that to me before. I await delivery.

Janelle stood with her arms crossed, watching one of twinks do a standup with Reardon. She had a hard time making eye contact when I stepped up next to her.

“Notice Mr. Carter,” she said quickly, seizing the conversational initiative. “You’re acquainted with Jason Carter?

“If you mean the short, swarthy guy holding the microphone, I rarely watch TV news.”

“Mr. Carter is, in fact, short. I put him at 5-3, maybe 5-4. Thus, the cameraman.”

A fairly husky, young guy in a red-and-blue parka bearing the channel number and call letters of an Indianapolis station was on his knees, shooting over Mr. Carter’s shoulder.

“Note the kneepads,” Janelle said.

The cameraman had kneepads.

“Carter’s regular guy?” I said.

“Yes, Mr. Carter has his own personal cameraman, who must wear kneepads so that Mr. Carter will not look like a little person.”

“That’s very liberal and tactful of you. I take it you didn’t get your exclusive interview.”

“Mr. Carter’s name,” said Janelle, “is actually Jacob Kryzinksi. Thus, the swarth. Jason Carter is a name that’s easier to spell on a crawl and it plays better in insular, WASPy little Midwest towns such as your own. He’s pretty smart, he’s exceptionally aggressive and rude, and he’s got vocal cords that go all the way from the top of his inflated head to nails of his tiny, pedicured toes.”

“Deep,” I said. “Resonant.”

“Just listen,” she said.

Carter was repeating the same questions that various reporters had asked at the press conference. It was easy to hear him even from where we stood: his voice sounded like someone working the left end of a pipe organ. Reardon repeated his answers, adding considerably more spin now that he had rehearsed.

“He wants to make sure he makes the noon broadcast,” Janelle muttered, as the standup ended. “That son of a bitch.”

I didn’t know whether Janelle referred to Reardon or our competitor, but I really didn’t care. I leaned over to her and said, “We’re even.”

“Not hardly,” she said, watching Reardon as he turned and approached us.

He gave me an extra-long look before introducing himself to Janelle. She slipped her arm through one of his to turn him toward me and said, “Mr. Reardon, meet Clay Ambrose.”

Reardon has a smile for all occasions. The one he gave me had nothing to do the look in his eyes, which had gone instantly Arctic at the sound of my name.

“I was hoping I’d meet you today,” he said.

“I can’t imagine why.”

“I wanted to tell you how much my client and I’ve appreciated your recent work. I don’t mean to insult Ms. Wheeler here, but you have written, by far, the most detailed and thorough stories about the investigation.”

He programmed another smile, this one bearing a trace of self-satisfaction.

“In honor of your work, I have something for you,” he said.

From inside his jacket, he withdrew a piece of paper and pressed it into my hand, which he had not released since we shook. He explained to me that it was a subpoena, which directed me to appear that afternoon to testify on behalf of his client and to bring with me any and all stories and photographs that had been published in my newspaper and any and all notes or audio tapes in the possession of my newspaper or me related to the deaths of Lottie Nusbaumer and three children.

“I’ll have to run this past the paper’s lawyer,” I said.

“Do what you want, but make sure you show up at the hearing today. We’re moving this case out of Austin County, and you’re going to help.”

Janelle had stood back and to one side. She held up her own subpoena and smiled wryly.

“The only problem, Mr. Reardon,” I said, “is I don’t have a way back to Failey. You probably noticed, my ride’s left.”

I smiled back at Janelle. Reardon looked from me to Janelle, then down the steps to a small, black Mercedes at the curb.

“You can ride with me,” he said.

With good reason, Janelle looked horrified.

“Thanks,” I said. “I wouldn’t dream of interrupting your interview with Janelle, but if you don’t mind, I’ll take a few notes. And if there’s time, maybe you can talk to me when you’re done with her.