Fifteen

When it was all said and done, Maum Chrish’s hearing would be stuffed into the spare closet of our memory, whereas the drought that both preceded and followed her arrest would remain uppermost. Before she was incarcerated, we lived on hints of rain—the impotent electrical storms that made our hearts race with anticipation. We dallied wildly in the assumption that the drought was bound to end soon. But after Maum Chrish was released, and certainly no one who attends the Lutheran or Baptist churches would ever suggest she had a hand in this, the electrical storms stopped. Day after day after day we had nothing but statis. Either a dull gray sky or an unrelenting sun pressing down like a hot iron on flowers and trees. The regiment sitting in front of the Piggly Wiggly said they had never known the sun to shine so long into the evening; two fellows claimed it didn’t set until after ten at night one time in August but of course we didn’t believe them. Anybody who sat in front of the grocery store all day that summer, bottle or no, probably had heatstroke.

The lawns all over town died first; green faded into a sickly yellow and then slowly dissolved into a brittle brown. At first everyone tried to water the grass but, as Harriet maintained, no water out of a spigot could take the place of natural rain. Then the state bureaucrats issued advisories about water usage, asking people not to water their lawns. Most everyone in Essex complied except Elsie Fenton, who thought this was another Communist plot like daylight saving time. All the flowers withered, the shrubs didn’t shoot up, we lost our homegrown vegetables, even the trees drooped after a while. Several small pine trees died. And beyond our borders even worse disaster: the marshes along the coast were so dessicated the snowy egrets were starving, the lakes were so low boaters could only put in at certain points, the corn and soybean crops were almost totally gone (thank God, the peaches were in before it got so serious, South Carolina without peaches would have been entirely too much to bear), wells all over the state were going dry, and generally speaking everyone was pissed off but good.

Beginning that first week after Maum Chrish was released, when the drought intensified, people in Essex went around with a thirsty look on their faces. Maum Chrish herself went back to her shack in the swamp and that was the last most of us thought about her. Marian spent many afternoons out there, afternoons in which Maum Chrish received her much as she had received Seth. (Poor Seth was barely allowed out of his house these days, what with being grounded.) After a while Marian gave up asking the other woman for answers; little by little, like Seth for whom it was easier, Marian learned merely to accept what was given to her. Which was quite a lot really. Under Maum Chrish’s tutelage, Marian learned how to sit very still in the woods in naked absorption, how to be where she was and yet at the same time not be there, how to escape beyond herself, how to return to herself when need be. She made friends with her African kra-soul. She met other blacks who came to visit Maum Chrish, listened to their tales and stories, and watched them dance. Invigorated, she went home every evening to work, after the heat of the day evaporated, in the garden she and Harriet were building in her back yard—despite the odds of its surviving the summer. Almost every day they worked in Marian’s yard together for an hour or two; almost every day Marian moved directly from one world to another without the discordancy that doing so had once caused her. Harriet asked no questions about Maum Chrish or the swamps and Marian offered no confidences; they just built a garden together in the middle of a drought.

It was almost as if the town, in the week after Maum Chrish went home again, took time off from the murders that had ripped our lives apart. Certainly it occurred to some of us that whoever had killed Sarah and Lou Brockhurst was still out there. It occurred to Stoney McFarland quite a lot. But much of that week, Stoney spent in other pursuits. He went to Columbia, saw his supervisor, and was reinstated in his job, a reprimand being attached to his permanent employment files. His first bad-conduct report ever. Two days later he returned to his office on Main Street, and Sumter Brownlow, certain the junior engineer had learned his lesson, welcomed him back enthusiastically; the workload while Stoney was gone had just about done the older man in. Within a few days Stoney was settled back in again but he approached his work a little differently now—when he thought Sumter Brownlow was pushing too hard, he didn’t joke back, he just told the other man straight out to stop badgering him. Then, one night when Stoney and Anna were listening to a Mystic Moods record featuring the sound of thunderstorms, Stoney finally told his wife about being suspended.

“I like that you stood up to Brownlow, that old tyrant,” was all she said.

Anna spent a lot of time thinking about Stoney that week. It occurred to her now that perhaps she and Stoney would never get back the passion they had let slip away from them. When they were younger, he had often hinted he wished she were more sexually aggressive. That felt like another order then, another performance she was supposed to give for his benefit, and so she had rarely taken the lead. Now, she had—that afternoon he washed the cars. Yet afterward Stoney had just let it drop. She had hoped things would be different; when he came home from work, instead of that perfunctory kiss, she had hoped to be met by a lover. She wanted seduction back in their everyday lives. She had tried but he had not held up his end.

It was wonderful to get to your midthirties and finally see how you’d screwed up your life—now that there was nothing you could do about it. Reading Henry Miller and Norman Mailer hadn’t helped. Nor had her mother. On the night before Anna’s marriage, her mother had given her one piece of unsolicited advice: “Never say no twice in a row if you want to keep him.” Even now Anna could remember her mother’s cold eyes. Is that why her father left? The advice infuriated Anna—all those s words came back: surrender, submission, subjugation. Afraid that she might end up as passionless as her mother, Anna plunged into her first years with Stoney with gusto—only to have the words, the times, her experiences with Rand show up later like a resurrected Grim Reaper. She had matured on the cusp of an era when women didn’t give themselves, they gave in. Thus, denial in her adult life became self-assertion and she had ruined her marriage, sexually, by turning down a man she had always been attracted to.

Two weeks after Maum Chrish was released, Leonard Hansen’s house was set on fire. It happened on a Wednesday. At seven in the evening Anna was working in her darkroom, developing the two rolls of film she had finally shot the day before of Harriet Setzler. She heard the car pull up in front of the house. Stoney was in the backyard, lying in the Pawley’s Island hammock reading a book by Gabriel García Márquez, Silas curled into a ball of sleep on the grass beneath the hammock. Every so often the book slipped from Stoney’s fingers and he dozed too; he was worn out from working on six different projects this week.

The visitor was Bill Jenkins, who told Stoney about the fire at Leonard’s house. Apparently someone had broken into the house, burglarized it, then set fire to it. Leonard got home just as the burglar was running away; the guy had been on foot and Leonard said it was a short fat guy with black hair. Now volunteers were needed to search for him.

In a few minutes Stoney left with Bill Jenkins but not before telling Anna, “Lock up tight and keep Silas in. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Driving out into the country as darkness fell, Bill and Stoney were quiet most of the way, both noting the parched farmland with its ruined cornfields. The county had been lucky so far; without rain there would be more fires, forest fires. Stoney tried to remember if he had ever seen the land outside Essex look so ugly, so arid and lifeless. Sometimes now he got the feeling that before this summer was over, something even more terrible was destined to happen, that after it nothing—and none of them—would ever be the same again.

When they were almost to Leonard’s house, Bill said, “I guess this shoots your theory about Leonard.”

Stoney didn’t say anything.

When they reached Leonard’s house, the two Essex fire department trucks were pulling away but there were still at least eight cars parked around the small structure. The acrid air smelled of charred wood. Buck Henry was there with one of his deputies; several men from Essex were also milling about, stopping to talk to Jim Leland on the front porch. Most of the men walked down and got in their cars before Bill and Stoney reached the porch. Leonard’s house was fairly intact, although there was a large gaping hole in the roof and the leaning chimney was singed black. The fire, Stoney guessed, had been started in the living room and had got no further before it was extinguished. Leonard would be able to salvage the house, even though he’d lost quite a bit of his new roof.

Jim looked up as Bill and Stoney came up the stairs. “Thanks for coming, you two. I need somebody to ride down Chapel’s Ferry Road and look for him.”

“You think it’s Turner?” Stoney asked.

Jim looked tired, like a man asked to perform a task outstripping his talents. “I think maybe it’s always been Turner. The guy’s got something against us, against the town. Leonard said he never even saw him before, there was absolutely no reason for Turner to break in here, except it’s way out where nobody passes by much.”

Bill looked around. “Where’s Leonard?”

“He went with Ricky Gibson to check around the highway.” Jim nodded at his own car in the yard below. “You better take one of those shotguns from the office. In case you do find him. He’s killed two people.”

“I don’t understand why he would do this,” Stoney said. Then he added, “Anna and all those women are alone in town, Jim. You think he might go back there?”

“Not without one of us seeing him. But I’ll drive back in myself later on, just to be sure everything’s okay.”

Now Bill turned to Jim. “Could Turner be some sort of psycho?”

“Brockhurst didn’t think so,” Jim said. “Brockhurst thought he made a living hitting small towns, stealing, then moving on. In fact, Brockhurst tricked Turner into admitting he’d been in Essex once before, had broken into a house here, I think. It was Brockhurst’s theory that Turner had met Sarah then, maybe she took him home for dinner like she loved to do, and he remembered her house and when he came this way again he just decided to go there. Only Sarah made a fuss—which Harriet Setzler heard—and Turner got edgy and killed her. That’s my conclusion too. Remember, Sarah could be right feisty.”

“But why all this other?” Stoney asked. “Why didn’t he just leave after that?”

Jim shrugged his thin shoulders. “He—Brockhurst—figured Turner stayed around to avoid looking guilty. I mean, the natural thing to think is the guy would get the hell out of town if he did it, right? Maybe Turner heard about what Maum Chrish did at the funeral, he decides to make her look guilty, gets an old goat and carves him up and scares the town to frigging death, makes it look like that old woman did the whole thing. Only Brockhurst isn’t convinced and Turner knows that—so he kills Brockhurst too.”

“But after that he wouldn’t come back here. Unless he’s either very crazy or very stupid.” Stoney stared out at the yard; true, Turner had never seemed particularly bright. “Why—after killing a policeman—would he still be here breaking into houses? And the fire—that just draws attention. Did Brockhurst know if he’d ever set a fire before?”

Jim shook his head. “If the guy’s crazy, Brockhurst said he might just blow up at some point, freak out—maybe we can’t expect what he does to make sense. It looks to me like he’s intentionally terrorizing the town. Maybe he’s getting off on that.” The police chief shook his head. “Can we talk about this later? Will you two search around Chapel’s Ferry Road? If we wait too long, he’s gonna get away.”

In a moment Stoney and Bill got back in Bill’s van and took off down the darkening two-lane road.

Harriet Setzler had not set foot in Stoney and Anna’s house since the week they moved in, when Anna was so rude to her, so it was with a certain misgiving that she climbed the steps to the McCloskey monster (as she privately referred to the house) about half an hour after Stoney left with Bill Jenkins. The old lady didn’t like the house. She vividly remembered that upstart McCloskey with his shiny new money (rumor was his daddy was a carpetbagger). The man just sashayed into town one day, with his fancy horseless carriage and his gold-tipped cane, and plopped his behind down on this piece of land and proceeded to build the gaudiest house in town. William said they should treat the McCloskeys just like anybody else, but Harriet never listened. White trash dressed up with money was still white trash.

At the front door, Harriet almost turned around and retook the steps in the encroaching darkness. She wasn’t quite sure why she was here, but she knocked on the door anyway.

Anna opened the door with a look of surprise. “Hello, Mrs. Setzler.”

The younger woman was a little annoyed; she was busy in her darkroom and she preferred that visitors call first. She studied Harriet’s face. The old woman’s hair was splayed across her head in unruly tangles and she was wearing a faded cotton housedress instead of her usual sleek jersey. Her shoulders were still held imperially but it was a forced stance today, as though she herself had stopped believing in her own invincibility.

“Is Stoney home?” Harriet asked. “I heard something about a fire out at that Hansen boy’s place. Elsie said that J. T. Turner was running around loose somewhere, that now they think he killed Sarah and that detective.”

“Stoney and Bill Jenkins just went out there,” Anna said. Again she noticed Harriet’s uncharacteristic nervousness. “Would you like to come in for a minute?”

“Oh no, I need to be getting back home.” But Harriet didn’t move. Instead, she waited for Anna to insist she stay.

Anna didn’t.

Finally Harriet, thinking that despite taking the pictures the other day, Anna was still the rudest woman she’d ever met, added, “Well, tell Stoney to come by when he has a minute. I need to tell him something.”

Again Anna noticed the desperate look in Harriet’s eyes. Under other circumstances it would have appealed to the photographer in her, the interesting way the eyes fought the fear that threatened to overwhelm them, but right now she was worried the old lady might collapse on her porch. “Mrs. Setzler, would you like some tea or coffee?” she heard herself ask, feeling idiotic, trying like everyone else in Essex to feed whatever ailed anyone.

“No, no.…” Harriet trailed off. Her eyes receded into her head and her mind moved back to another time. A young Marian standing there on the front porch, her dress ripped, her face contorted with dirt and tears, blood on her left shoulder where the dress had been torn and on her right leg too. As though someone had hit her and dragged her down to the ground. Marian’s mouth open but no words coming out, her eyes rolling back in her head like she’d lost her senses, her hair filthy dirty and stuck to her head with sweat, the smell of liquor, the smell of something else too, something vaguely familiar but not pleasant. The girl crying, then trying to talk, asking Harriet to keep something from happening again. Harriet patting her shoulder, the pitiful dress falling off to expose Marian’s tiny brown breast from time to time and Harriet daintily pushing the dress back up to cover the girl.

Harriet said abruptly, “I shouldn’t have told her. It’s all my fault.”

Anna stared at the elderly woman. “Pardon?”

“I shouldn’t have told her,” Harriet insisted. “She was never able to let things be, we were alike that way. I should have known what would happen in the long run.”

God, Anna thought, she’s losing it. This time Anna insisted Harriet come in and she finally did. Anna led the way to the kitchen, kept Silas from mauling Harriet, and got the octogenarian installed at the kitchen table. Then Anna left to rescue her prints, of Harriet ironically, from the developer in the darkroom. Back in the kitchen again, she put some water on to boil.

While Anna was getting mugs out of the cabinet above her head, Harriet said, “Someone was in my yard last night. I woke up and I heard him. Walking around. Just like before. And just like the night Sarah died.”

Anna swallowed, turned around to the old lady. “Are you sure? Could you tell who it was?”

“I’m not certain. I thought I knew but now I’m not sure. All I know is, he keeps coming back to my house.”

Anna didn’t say anything. But before she poured the tea, she went back into the living room and double-checked the lock on the front door.

Stoney and Bill rode slowly down Chapel’s Ferry Road, so named for a long-since-abandoned Baptist church. No one remembered how the ferry part figured in the naming of the road in the twenties; there wasn’t even a wooden bridge along it. It was just one of dozens of potholed backroads radiating from the three highways which bisected the rural countryside northwest of Essex. Along it stood a few small farms and one large spread owned by the Fenwicks; that farm, consisting of a thousand acres, had been in the Fenwick family for nearly a century. As Stoney and Bill turned into its long driveway (actually a short private road), they passed fenced pastures where cattle grazed and eventually came alongside a small oblong frame building with a pitched roof—it had once been the farm store from which the Fenwick farmhands purchased their supplies each week. Beyond it, some distance away, stood two barns surrounded by various pieces of farm machinery, including two large John Deere tractors. The white house was a modest two-story Cape Cod with dormers and to its rear was the one-story flat-roofed frame grandchildren’s house with its walls of bunk beds for when all the Fenwick kids visited at the same time.

Stoney and Bill climbed up the steep front steps and knocked on the door they both knew was unlocked. Martha Fenwick, who had run the huge farm for the last forty years after her husband died of a heart attack, was not well but her sixty-year-old unmarried son, Tex, who lived with her, came to the door. Always smiling, an avid birdwatcher, Tex now oversaw the farm’s operation, often from his motorized golf cart, for his mother. He had been out in the fields this afternoon, praying for rain if you wanted to know the truth, but he hadn’t seen a thing, didn’t Stoney and Bill want to come in?

Stoney and Bill didn’t stay but told Tex Fenwick to keep an eye out for anything unusual; the dimunitive man pressed them with flashlights and some fresh vegetables and a bottle of bourbon before they left. Stoney and Bill rode farther down Chapel’s Ferry Road and stopped at several dilapidated barns; cautiously they shone the flashlights into various leaning structures but they didn’t find anyone inside or see any sign that anyone had been near them recently. They did manage, however, to surprise a nesting barn owl who flapped suddenly and took off in a huff, scaring both men so badly they opened the bottle of liquor when they got back in the van.

“We’re not exactly the kind of guys who should be out looking for killers,” Bill said, twisting the top off the bottle and tipping it back. He drank deeply, then coughed and laughed. “Next we’ll be whizzing along the side of the road and going to cock fights.”

They rode on slowly, stopping from time to time for Stoney to get out and shine one of the flashlights into a vacant field. When he got back in the van after doing so a third time, he said, “You know, we are never going to find him this way. If he’s even out here.”

Bill put the van in gear. “Where else could he be if he’s on foot?”

“Doesn’t this strike you as just a little weird?” Stoney stared out the window at the night-shadowed field on their right. “I mean, how many guys break into a house—planning to get away on foot?”

“Meaning what?”

“Maybe Leonard set the house on fire himself.” Stoney began to sweat now that he’d said it; he was glad he had left his rifle in town, with Anna. He would show her how to use it when he got home tonight. “I mean, what better way to make yourself look innocent—than to become one of the victims?”

“I swear, McFarland, you’re just not gonna be happy until that man confesses, are you? Tell me this—if you were renovating a house to sell it, and you’d just put a new roof on, would you set the fucking thing on fire?”

Stoney sighed. Then he said, “But did anybody else see Turner?”

“Yeah, a cop in Beaufort. Just over a week ago. Which is proof that the guy’s still around. Driving a stolen car. Not exactly a hallmark of innocence.”

“Then how come he’s on foot now? Nobody’s found that car.”

Bill handed the bourbon bottle to Stoney. “Here. You need this worse than I do. Maybe he hid the car.” Then Bill said more seriously, “I really think you’re wrong about Leonard. I remember the shit he used to pull. But I don’t think he did this.”

For once I hope to hell you’re right, Stoney thought, thinking again about Anna.

Now Harriet was Talking about teaching school. Anna stared across the kitchen table at the old lady and poured more tea into Harriet’s mug and wondered if she’d ever stop talking. It was after eleven and Anna was so sleepy she was having trouble looking interested.

“And on my very first day, don’t you know, in those children marched and they knew I was a new teacher. Green—oh I was so green. I could tell, though, that there was some mischief in the air but I pretended not to notice. I told them to take their seats and I sent around a piece of paper—we never had class rolls then, half the children in the county didn’t even come to school—and I said for them to sign their names on that paper. I waited and waited. Seems like it took a long time. The paper went around the room and then I collected it. I saw some of them tittering. I took the roll up to the front of the room, right by the old coal stove, and I began reading it out loud, calling the names. ‘George Washington,’ I said. ‘Jefferson Davis, Betsy Ross, Thomas Jefferson, Madame Curie, Babe Ruth,’ and on and on I went. Not one child in that room signed his real name.”

Anna smiled. To have been a fly on the wall. “What’d you do? How’d you get their real names?”

“I didn’t even ask. I started the history lesson, I let each famous person in the room tell me about his life and accomplishments. Some of those children didn’t look a bit happy about that. I called them by those names all year long, even when I knew better. I graduated some of the most famous people in America from that school.”

Anna giggled. God, she probably did. For a second Anna stared at Harriet. She really was funny sometimes.

Then Harriet’s face tightened. “If only I hadn’t told her,” she said, losing time again.

Concern unfolded across Anna’s face like a map. “Told who?”

Harriet stared across the room, into a distance Anna didn’t see. “Why, Sarah of course. I’ve been thinking about it all day. I told her and she did what she thought was right. And now all this has happened and I keep wondering what it means.”

“You told Mrs. Roth about what?”

“I was shocked, outraged. That such a thing could happen to such a sweet child. And I just told her one day, while I was mulling over what to do. I didn’t think about it, like I usually think over things. We were doing the spring cleaning, I recollect. I just had it on my mind and I blurted it out and there it was. I never thought she would do anything about it. I never thought it could mean anything all these years later. But now—” Harriet stopped, then finished tersely, “I think she believed I wouldn’t do anything about it. Because of Marian.” She faltered. “Marian’s … color.”

Anna gawked at Harriet in genuine alarm. The older lady was rocking back and forth, looking at the floor as though she saw someone in it. Anna gazed up at the clock. Shouldn’t Stoney be home by now? What was he doing out there? Was he okay? Should she call a doctor for Harriet? Anna was about to get up to go to the phone to call Marian when she remembered Marian was in Charleston. That was why Harriet had come here. Should she call Ed Hammond, have him check the old lady out?

Harriet was still mumbling, “I shouldn’t have told her. She went to him and he marched him downtown. Later she said if you couldn’t accept a person knowing all the things about them, then what good was it? She said she was responsible and she had to do what she could. I told her, don’t ever tell him, don’t you ever tell him, Sarah.”

Anna swallowed. Something about this was beginning to make sense. “Mrs. Setzler, are you all right? Who are you talking about?”

The old woman halted somewhere between past and present. “I can’t help but think she told him later and for some reason he killed her because of it.”

Anna grabbed Harriet’s hands, to stop them from shaking. “Sarah told who? Tell me, for God’s sake.”

Harriet went mute, just rocked back and forth.

“Mrs. Setzler, who do you mean?”

Harriet still stared vacantly, as though she’d forgotten what they were talking about. Sensing that the moment was lost, Anna finally said, “It’s okay, really. Everything’s fine.” Which clearly wasn’t the case at all. She hesitated, then asked, “Listen—could you stay the night? Stoney’s not back yet and I’m sorta nervous. Do you think you could stay?” Anna heard herself begging; she could hardly believe her own voice. But she couldn’t send Harriet home alone, this disoriented, with a very real murderer wandering around out there somewhere. “We have a nice guest room upstairs.”

The old lady looked up, totally recovered herself. “Oh I don’t know, I need to be at home, there are things that need looking after.”

The eyes and the words didn’t match. This time Anna said, “I really would appreciate it if you could stay. I feel sorta anxious without Stoney here—with all this going on.”

“Well, if it’ll make you feel better, certainly I’ll stay.”

Anna got up and rinsed out the teapot, wondering what on earth Harriet’s ravings really meant. One thing was certain—the woman was frightened by something in the past, and by whoever she thought she saw in her yard the night before. As Anna and Harriet walked up the stairs slowly, Anna said, “There’s a half-bath off the guest room with clean towels already in there. If you need anything else, just let me know.”

“Oh I won’t need a thing, dear. I’ll have to get up real early and go check on my house.” She said it as though the house might disappear in her absence.

“Well, I appreciate your staying.” It wasn’t entirely a lie. Harriet’s ravings had made her nervous. She told the older lady good night and turned back into the hall. Who was Harriet Setzler so afraid of? On impulse Anna went back downstairs and checked all the windows and door locks again. In the kitchen she noticed the dusty Marlin rifle still leaning against the basement door. Of course, she didn’t remember where Stoney put the ammunition and she didn’t even know how to load the damn thing. But its presence in the room was somehow reassuring all the same.

At midnight Anna was lying in bed, trying to read but unable to concentrate, thanks to Harriet’s thunderous snoring down the hall. About every fifteen minutes Anna turned and looked at the clock radio, and at least every half hour she got up and either stared out the window at the street or went in the bathroom for a drink of water. Where was Stoney? What was happening out there? Why didn’t he call and at least let her know everything was okay? Again she crossed to the window and gazed down below her. Stoney was out there somewhere looking for a man who had killed two people. Who had also now set fire to a house. To Leonard Hansen’s house, the man Stoney believed might actually be the killer. No wonder the world didn’t make sense. Anna had seen J. T. Turner only once, that afternoon a month or two ago when he kept walking by the McCloskey house. He gave her the creeps. Leonard Hansen she’d seen quite a few times but she never liked the way he looked at her either, his insidiously invasive smile. It was a look she’d seen before, in the eyes of other men, men on the street in D.C. or passing by in cars; its purpose was to let a woman know that if they ever wanted something from her, they would just take it. This man she’d defended to Stoney?

Outside the window the new full moon was misted over, its surface enclosed in a translucent filmy caul. Anna glanced down the street; from this window she could see all the way to the corner and she watched the silvery moonlight caress the tops of the live oaks, the concrete sidewalks, the clean lines of the bungalows with their clipped flower gardens and porch swings. In this light the town was almost pretty, drought and all. To her back, down the hall, Anna heard Harriet snort and turn over. She was almost glad to have the old lady in the house. What had Harriet meant though? Did she know about Marian being raped all those years ago (but Marian said she didn’t tell anyone) and what did that have to do with Sarah Roth anyway?

Abruptly Anna heard a car outside the window; it pierced the stillness like a baby’s wail. Then she saw headlights and she strained against the windowscreen looking for Stoney’s Rover. But the vehicle stopped short of the house, just out of sight. The headlights went dark and a car door opened. The door sounded too heavy and Anna’s heart plummeted: it wasn’t Stoney. Besides, Stoney would park in the driveway. Anna licked her lips, whirled around to look back at the clock. It was so late. Who would be moving around the neighborhood this time of night? She turned and doused the bedside lamp and leaned out the window farther. Footsteps. On the sidewalk in front of the house. Anna froze. Whoever it was, was coming toward her.

Suddenly he was on the porch. The floorboards squeaked. He was walking back and forth on the porch, going toward one end and then turning around and crossing to the other end. Why didn’t he just ring the bell? Unless … Then the footsteps changed—he was going back down the steps. She thought she heard the car start up again. No. She was wrong. He was on the sidewalk again. Muted footsteps now, thrump-thrump-thrump. He was walking through the yard.

He was going around to the back door.

Anna grabbed her bathrobe and tied it around her waist. He was going to try the back door. She waited a few moments, to make sure it wasn’t Stoney, to make sure he didn’t just let himself in the kitchen. Five minutes passed. No door opened, no familiar voice called hello. Where the hell was Silas? Why wasn’t he barking? Anna strode across the room and picked up the phone and flipped through the local phonebook and dialed Jim Leland’s number. One ring, two, three, four. She hung up the phone. This was stupid. Jim Leland was out there with Stoney.

And somebody else was on the back porch.

Then Silas barked. Anna could hear the retriever running back and forth in the kitchen. She took a deep breath, wondered what it would take to wake Harriet Setzler. Then Silas was still for a second and Anna heard the storm door rattle outside the kitchen. Do something. Silas barked again, it sounded like the dog was jumping against the back door. Didn’t Silas faze him at all? Wasn’t he worried about the noise? Anna’s hands were clammy and she couldn’t breathe, so she leaned over and took another deep breath. He wasn’t going to kill another old lady. Not in this house. He wasn’t going to kill anybody in this house. No sir. She scrambled over to the other side of the room and opened the bedroom door. The rifle was in the kitchen; he didn’t know it wasn’t loaded. She had to get to it before he did.

Down the hall Harriet snored on, blissfully unaware. Softly Anna crept to the head of the stairs and stopped and listened. When Harriet breathed in, Anna could hear the wall clock in the kitchen ticking. Silas was still moving around too, growling low and serious. Anna padded down the staircase. She had reached the middle of it when Silas suddenly yelped again and began to jump around the back door, scratching at it. Whoever was on the back porch was also moving around, outside the kitchen door. He was going to come in the back door. The same way he did at Sarah Roth’s. Anna shivered and plunged on down the stairs, biting her lips, holding on to the bannister with a desperate grip.

At the bottom of the stairs she felt her way toward the kitchen. He was still moving around on the back porch. First she heard him at one end, then at the other. She stole across the kitchen floor, ordered Silas down under her breath, wiped her right hand on her cotton bathrobe to get the sweat off, and then reached for the rifle leaning against the wall. She lifted the gun to her chest, held it like a baseball bat. Then she swallowed and walked toward the back door, Silas scooting around behind her trying to get the feel of the new game. Through the sheer curtains at the top of the door, Anna could see the outline of a man.

If he saw the gun before he got in, maybe he’d take off. That was her only hope. Her plan—pull the curtain back, surprise him, hold the gun up where he could see it. If he broke the door in, Silas would rush him and maybe she could get upstairs again and lock herself and Harriet in and they could yell out a window.

But would anybody hear them?

Anna held the rifle out lengthwise and inched toward the back door. He was still there on the porch, very close. He was walking toward the door. Oh God. What if it doesn’t work? Anna threw her head back and held the rifle up, put her finger on the trigger. She stood squarely in front of the door. She looked over at the light switch beside it. Flick the light on, push the curtain aside, crouch down so all he can see is the gun. Maybe he’ll think it’s a man holding it. A man with bullets.

Nothing but the piece of glass between them. Silas beside her, Anna closed her eyes and held the rifle higher. Her arm shot out, fingers on the light switch. Now. Everything went bright. She brushed the curtain aside, dropped down, shoved the metal barrel against the window.

“Get out!”

A body thudded to the floor. “Shit.”

Dead silence.

Then, timidly, a voice. “Mrs. McFarland? Would you put that gun down? It’s Jim Leland.”

Anna collapsed against the door and the rifle fell onto the floor. She laughed hysterically, then sobbed, “What are you doing scaring me to death like that?”

Slowly Jim peeped over the bottom part of the door. He checked to make sure the gun was gone. Then he stood up. “I came by to see if you were all right. To tell you Stoney’ll be a while.”

Anna flung the door open and Silas rushed out to sniff Jim. “You scared me half to death,” Anna cried. “Why didn’t you come to the front door?”

“I thought you’d be asleep and I didn’t want to wake you. I was looking in the windows to see if there was a light on, if you were still up.” Jim looked exasperated. “I never thought I’d get shot at.”

“It’s not loaded,” Anna exclaimed, her voice tired. “I don’t even know how to load the damn thing.”

Jim reached down and picked up the rifle, pulled the bolt back, and examined the chamber. “If you don’t mind my saying so, there’s nothing more dangerous than a gun in the hands of someone who doesn’t know how to use it.”

“I totally agree. But two people in this town are dead. And my husband has been out all night looking for the guy who did it.”

“I know. We’re all a bit on edge.” Jim put the gun back down and looked at Anna. “I’m sorry, Mrs. McFarland. You gave me quite a scare is all.”

“I’m sorry too,” Anna said. “Thanks for coming by. And do call me Anna.” She pointed upstairs. “Harriet Setzler’s here, in case you go by there and her house looks deserted. Is Stoney okay? Did you find Turner?”

Jim patted Silas on the head, wondered if the retriever would be any good at duck hunting. “Stoney’s fine; he and Bill are together, they’re like Mutt and Jeff, those two. No luck on finding Turner when I left but maybe something’s turned up by now. We’ll find him. Then maybe this whole thing will finally be over.”

“I sure hope so,” Anna said.

“Well, I better be going.” Jim yawned. “You get some sleep now. Stoney’ll be along soon.”

Anna walked him toward the back door. “Thanks again. Really did scare me when I first heard you on the front porch,” she laughed.

The police chief stopped dead. “I wasn’t on your front porch. I parked in the driveway and came immediately around the back to see if any lights were on.”

“You didn’t park on the street.”

“No.”

“Did you see another car out there?”

“I saw some headlights when I turned down the street but the car pulled away by the time I stopped.” Jim hesitated. “I wasn’t going to say anything but to tell you the truth, that’s sorta why I stopped. Did you see who that was?”

Anna stared at her hands, willed them not to shake. “No. But I heard him on the front porch.”

Jim patted her on the shoulder reassuringly. “I’ll check outside for a while. Lock up behind me.”

Until Stoney came home two hours later, Anna sat in her living room, wide-eyed and awake, listening to Jim Leland’s off-key whistling on the porch steps.