"I never said there was," Blackburn said.

The third trooper stood, crouching because of the low ceiling, and shoved his baton into the loop on his belt. His hand went to the b.u.t.t of his pistol. "Boys," he said, "if you would like to go for a cup of coffee, I would be happy to stay with the prisoner."

The first trooper looked up at him. "You know we can't do that."

"He's shackled," the third trooper said. "And you don't have to be gone long."

The second trooper shook his head. "Anything you want to do, you can do with us here. We won't say a word."

"Two minutes," the third trooper said. "That's all I want. You can stay close to the van if you're worried." The first trooper shrugged. "What the h.e.l.l. I ain't worried."

The second trooper shrugged too. "Okay. What the h.e.l.l."

The first and second troopers left the van and shut the door. The third trooper unsnapped his holster's safety strap and removed his pistol. It was identical to Blackburn's old Python.

"You want to take this from me?" the trooper asked, holding up the gun.

Blackburn saw no point in lying. "Yes," he said.

"You want it bad enough to kill me for it?" the trooper asked.

Blackburn considered. "No," he said. "I do want to kill you, but taking the gun would be incidental."

The trooper c.o.c.ked the Python and pointed it at Blackburn's face. "Why do you want to kill me, then?"

Again, Blackburn saw no point in lying. "Because you're a s.a.d.i.s.tic p.r.i.c.k."

The trooper came close and placed the gun muzzle against Blackburn's left cheek. "You got an answer for everything," he said. "So answer me this: Why do I want to killyou?"

The muzzle pressed upward. It hurt, but Blackburn ignored it.

"Because you're a s.a.d.i.s.tic p.r.i.c.k," he said.

The trooper took the muzzle away from Blackburn's cheek and then hit him on the other side of the face with the Python's b.u.t.t. Blackburn fell and lay on the bench. He heard the roar of blood in his skull.

"I just got done healing," he said, trying not to wince. "Don't you think people will notice a new bruise on my face?"

"You're wearing shackles," the trooper said. "You tripped, you fell. Happens all the time. Besides, n.o.body cares if you get hurt. Folkswant a s.h.i.t like you to get hurt. You've for d.a.m.n sure caused enough hurt yourself."

Blackburn pushed himself back up to a sitting position. "I've never killed anyone the world wasn't better off without," he said. "Maybe a few wives and kids have suffered some grief from what I've done, but not as much as they would have suffered if I'd let the sons of b.i.t.c.hes stay alive."

"My uncle wasn't no son of a b.i.t.c.h," the trooper said.

Blackburn was taken aback. "Excuse me?"

"He was a cop in Liberal, Kansas," the trooper said, "and some punk shot him. We never knew who."

He pointed the pistol at Blackburn's face again. "Now I know."

Blackburn frowned. "I've never been to Liberal. The cop I killed was in Wantoda."

"Never heard of it." "That proves it, then," Blackburn said. "You've got the wrong punk."

"Maybe." The trooper lowered the Python and unc.o.c.ked it. Then he replaced it in his holster and pulled out his baton. "But you'll do for now. And don't worry, I'll stay off your face."

Blackburn compressed himself into a ball. The trooper beat him on the back and legs for a while, then kicked him off the bench. Blackburn lay on the metal floor, staring at the trooper's boots. The trooper beat him some more, then stopped, breathing hard.

"Get up," the trooper said.

Blackburn managed to rise to his knees. The trooper hit him in the face with a forearm, and he fell again.

"I told you to get up," the trooper said.

Blackburn didn't move. "You said you'd stay off my face."

The trooper spat on him. "p.u.s.s.y," he said.

Blackburn struggled up to his knees again. As he did so, the door made a noise, and the trooper turned toward it. Blackburn found himself at eye level with the b.u.t.t of the trooper's Python. The trooper had not refastened his holster's safety strap.

The door opened. The first and second troopers began to climb into the van. The third trooper began to say something to them.

Blackburn brought up his manacled hands and pulled the Python from the holster. His right thumb c.o.c.ked it, and his index finger curled around the trigger.

The third trooper turned back, thrusting his baton at Blackburn's face.

The Python fired as the baton glanced from Blackburn's forehead. The bullet caught the trooper in the breastbone, and he spun into his companions. All three troopers fell to the pavement outside the van.

Blackburn got to his feet and shuffled to the open door, pointing the pistol down at the troopers. Their sungla.s.ses and hats had been knocked away. The third trooper lay p.r.o.ne across the other two, who lay on their backs. Blackburn jumped down and landed on his knees on the third trooper. The two troopers underneath groaned. The third trooper was quiet.

Five men stood nearby at the courthouse entrance. Two of them were uniformed police officers. The officers turned toward the van and reached for their weapons. As they did so, Blackburn c.o.c.ked the Python again and placed its muzzle against the nose of the first trooper.

"Gunfire would make me twitch," Blackburn shouted. His voice rang from the tunnel's concrete walls.

The officers froze with their weapons still in their holsters.

"Your friend was hurting me," Blackburn told the two troopers on the pavement. "I had to defend myself. You understand that, don't you?"

The troopers stared up at him. "Doesn't matter, then," Blackburn said. He pressed down on the Python, flattening the first trooper's nose. "Get his keys and unlock my handcuffs. If you're slow, or if either of you tries to take out his Smith and Wesson, I'll a.s.sume that you mean to hurt me. You have ten seconds. One thousand one. One thousand two."

The first trooper unb.u.t.toned the third trooper's shirt pocket and pulled out the keys. They were wet with blood. One of the second trooper's arms, pinned under the third trooper, moved a little.

"If you jostle me," Blackburn said, interrupting his count, "my Colt might go off." It wasn't a threat, but a statement of fact. This Python had a more sensitive trigger than his old one.

The second trooper lay still.

"One thousand eight," Blackburn continued.

The first trooper unlocked the handcuffs. Blackburn pulled his left hand free and took the keys. Then, keeping the Python against the trooper's nose with his right hand, he reached back with his left and unlocked the leg shackles without looking at them. He had been paying close attention when they had been removed earlier.

"This won't solve anything, James," a voice said.

Blackburn looked up and saw his attorney approaching. The attorney's hands were spread, and his forehead gleamed. He stopped a few feet away.

"Put down the gun before things get any worse," the attorney said.

Blackburn was amused. He had just shot and killed a Texas DPS trooper. From a legal standpoint, things were as bad as they could get.

"You have a car in the parking lot?" Blackburn asked.

"No," his attorney said. It was a lie. Blackburn had gotten good at telling when his attorney was lying. It was most of the time.

"Take me fishing for my birthday?" Blackburn asked.

His attorney looked confused. "I don't think so."

"Oh, come on," Blackburn said. "I haven't been fishing since I was a kid." He stood, but kept the Python pointed at the first trooper's face. "Let's go."

His attorney looked from side to side, as if for help. No one else in the tunnel moved. "Taking a hostage won't improve your position," the attorney said.

"What hostage?" Blackburn said. He stepped off the troopers and gripped his attorney's arm. "If I wanted a hostage, I wouldn't use a lawyer. The whole point of hostage-taking is to pick someone the police don't want to shoot." He shifted the Python's aim so that its muzzle touched the attorney's left ear.

"Anyone who follows us outside," he shouted, "will be sued by this man's estate." Blackburn and his attorney walked backward out of the tunnel into hazy sunlight. The air was thick with Houston steam and smelled of automobile exhaust and mold. Blackburn wondered what had ever possessed him to move down here in the first place. Except for one sweet night with Heather, Houston had been a bad idea.

The attorney's car, a Chrysler New Yorker, was parked close to the courthouse in a s.p.a.ce reserved for the handicapped.

"You're not handicapped," Blackburn said, pushing his attorney around to the pa.s.senger side of the car.

"I'm not going to take lessons on morality from a man who just blew open another man's chest," the attorney said.

"I was trying to aim for his head," Blackburn said, "but this thing has a hair trigger. Now get in and slide over. You're driving."

They entered the car, and the attorney drove out of the parking lot into downtown traffic. "I can't believe they haven't tried to pick you off yet," he muttered.

"Whose side are you on, anyway?" Blackburn asked. He wiped his hands on the velour seat, then reached into his attorney's jacket and took out a wallet. He removed the cash and stuffed it into his own jacket.

They were only four blocks from the courthouse when sirens began wailing. The attorney wasn't driving fast enough. At the next red light, Blackburn tucked his new Python into the back waistband of his slacks and left the car, tugging his jacket down to make sure it hid the pistol. As he ran between cars to the sidewalk, the Chrysler's horn blared.

Blackburn ran up one street and down another, then ducked into a hotel. He stepped into an elevator and rode up to the eleventh floor with a fat businessman who had a parking-garage ticket sticking up from his breast pocket. He followed the man to his room, pushed his way inside when the man opened the door, and then tied the man's wrists to the shower curtain rod with his belt and gagged him with a hand towel. He stole the man's car keys and parking-garage ticket, then left the room and took the stairs down to the garage. There was a car-alarm remote control on the key ring, so he pressed the b.u.t.ton and followed the chirps to a Mercedes sedan. The parking attendant didn't even glance at him while handing him his change.

He left the Mercedes in a Wal-Mart parking lot on the city's northern edge and stole a rusting Ford pickup whose owner had left the keys in the ignition. It was only after he was on a crumbling two-lane, heading northeast through the Texas countryside, that he realized his face and body ached from the third trooper's beating. Also, the Python was digging into his spine.

He pulled the gun from his waistband. It fit his hand as if it were part of it.

Today was his birthday, and he had just killed a cop who wore mirrored sungla.s.ses. Maybe he would head for the Ozarks again. But first he would find a telephone and call Information for the numbers of Houston-area handicapped-persons' organizations. He would tell them about his attorney's parking habits.

Blackburn put the Python under the seat and then gazed down the road. He had never been here before, but the road looked just like a thousand other crumbling two-lanes he had driven. After eleven years,nothing had changed.

And if that meant that the world was still the same, at least it meant that he was too.

NINE.

BLACKBURN AND THE LAMB OF G.o.d.

When he was clear of Houston, Blackburn tried to head for northern Louisiana. But he couldn't keep his direction constant because he was sticking to back roads. After nightfall he used some of the money he had taken from his attorney to buy gas, a candy bar, and a cheap digital watch at a small-town convenience store. The Ford's odometer said that he had driven three hundred and sixteen miles, but because of his route he doubted that he was any farther than two hundred miles from Houston.

Clouds moved in to cover the stars as he resumed driving, and by 2:00 A.M. on Thursday, May 15, he was lost on a dirt road in an East Texas forest. Then rain began to fall, and he discovered that the pickup's windshield wipers didn't work. He pulled over to the edge of the road and tried to nap, but lightning and thunder kept him awake. Each flash lit up the pines and dogwoods and cast their shadows across the road. As thunder rattled the truck, Blackburn imagined the trees catching fire in white bursts.

The rain fell until daybreak, and when the clouds cleared, the rising sun showed Blackburn that the dirt road ran north and south. It had become a narrow sea of mud. Blackburn started the Ford and tried to continue driving, but the truck slid into the ditch and sank until mud covered its rear axle. So Blackburn took his Colt Python, climbed to the road, and struck out northward on foot.

The road sucked at his shoes, so he jumped across the ditch and walked in the weeds next to the trees.

The ground was uneven and thickets of brush were frequent, so it was slow going. The humidity was high, and the temperature was rising fast. Blackburn took off his suit jacket and necktie, but that didn't help much. The shirt his attorney had given him to wear to court was polyester, and the slacks were wool. The Python was too heavy in his waistband and kept trying to slide down, so he removed it and rolled it up in the jacket, carrying the bundle under his arm. He sweated and itched and was sure that he was breaking out in boils. When he became thirsty he licked rainwater from leaves. He also had to use leaves as toilet paper. By midmorning he was plagued by swarms of gnats and flies. Added to all this was his growing hunger; except for the candy bar, he had not eaten since breakfast the day before.

Blackburn began to think he was being forced to pay penance for his one sin. He wondered if he should start believing in G.o.d.

The woods on both sides of the road were unbroken by buildings or clearings. There weren't even any fences. After hours of walking, Blackburn crossed another mud road, and then another, and in the early afternoon came to a two-lane strip of pavement. He stepped onto it and stamped his feet to knock the mud from his shoes.

As he stamped, he heard the hum of an automobile approaching from the east. He looked toward the sound and saw that there was a hill between him and the vehicle. If he wanted to, he could run into the trees and hide. But his clothes were sticking to his skin, and his feet were blistering. There was a chance that the vehicle contained a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper-but he would take that chancerather than slog back into the mud. He crossed to the north side of the asphalt and slipped his right hand into his rolled-up jacket, curling his fingers around the b.u.t.t of the Python. His muscles tensed, and he waited.

The vehicle turned out to be a slow-moving white van. Blackburn relaxed a little as he watched it come over the hill, and then he took his hand from his jacket and waved. The van pulled to the edge of the pavement and came to a stop beside him. Black lettering on its side panel said RUSK STATE HOSPITAL RUSK TX 75785.

Blackburn looked at the two men inside the van and tensed up again. The plump, balding man in the pa.s.senger seat was wearing a short-sleeved yellow shirt, but the driver was a younger, thinner man wearing a blue uniform that made him look like a cop. Blackburn didn't see a gun, though, so he didn't put his hand back into his jacket.

The plump man rolled down his window, and Blackburn felt a puff of air-conditioning. He stepped closer.

"Having trouble?" the plump man asked.

Blackburn forced a smile. He had to look friendly, like someone who deserved to be helped. "Yes. I was exploring some of these back roads looking for dogwood blossoms to photograph." He pointed at the mud road. "But I didn't realize that one was in such bad shape until I was on it. My car bogged down, and I had to leave my camera equipment so I could walk out."

"You're about a month late for dogwood blossoms," the plump man said. "The end of March and the first week of April are best."

The driver was muttering. "Dirt road after a rainstorm," he said. "Not too bright."

Blackburn ignored him. "Well, I'm a transplanted Northerner," he said to the plump man. "I just now moved down here, and I forgot to allow for the earlier spring." He squinted up at the sun. "Feels like summer already."

"It's getting warm, all right," the plump man said. "Could we give you a lift into Palestine? It's over ten miles, and you look like you've walked a piece already."

"I'd appreciate it," Blackburn said. "I drove my car out from Palestine this morning, but I was starting to think I'd be going back in a box."

The plump man started to open his door. "You're lucky we came along. This road doesn't get much use."

The driver made a noise in his throat. "Uh, Doctor, what if we find Morton?"