"Radio says nine inches in Lakemore since ten this morning. That comes to near two inches an hour."

During the three years Erskine had worked for Liddy, the two men had arrived at a moderately comfortable relationship. They were both loners, both dedicated to the law, both intent on keeping fit. They often worked out together at the University gym. They both liked neatness, liked the ends tied firm and tight. And they both sometimes wished they were back in actual law enforcement even at lower pay and less comfortable living conditions. They trusted each other, as much as they were capable of trusting anyone.

Erskine had asked for the appointment with such formal ceremony that Liddy knew it was important. Before he sat down facing Liddy, Erskine put a canvas zipper bag on the desk with such care that Liddy knew it contained whatever the hell Erskine wanted to talk about.

Beyond Erskine, on the wall twelve feet away, was a large map of the Meadows Center areas, with all the security areas and stations marked in different color codes.

This could take a little time," Erskine said.

"Who's going anywhere? I told the girl to hold the calls."

"In the last week in January, Rick, you put me on what I guess you could call part-time detached service to the Reverend F. Walter Macy. You told me you didn't know what it was about, but Macy wanted me to keep it to myself. Which I have. Until now. You told me that if what he wanted me to do interfered with my regular duties, I should come to you. I was able to handle it okay."

"Has Walter Macy released you to talk to me?"

"No, sir. It's just that I think I should."

Rick Liddy leaned back and frowned at Erskine. Liddy was a ruddy and muscular man with stone eyes and black hair parted precisely in the middle. Silence is at times a useful way of asking a question.

"I think I finished the job he asked me to do," Erskine said, 'and I just don't see the point in keeping on with it. He's not going to get any more than he's got already."

"And you do know, Elly, that Macy is number one in line after the brother and sister. In one sense we're both working for him."

"Rick, I just don't know how to explain why I thought it was time to come to you unless I show you this stuff. There's another thing, too. Walter Macy ordered me not to keep any copies of anything. But when I realized what he wanted, I knew I had to save my own ass by saving at least some of it."

"Up until now, I've trusted your judgment," Liddy said.

"The way it all began, the way Walter told me it began, it seems that right after Christmas there was some kind of foul-up on the phone lines and he heard John Tinker Meadows making some kind of date with a woman, time and place unknown. He tried to find out about it on his own, but he was afraid John Tinker would discover that Walter was trying to tail him. So he got you to assign me, without telling you what he wanted me to do."

"So you tailed John Tinker Meadows. That's really beautiful."

Erskine unzipped the canvas case and took out a sheaf of color prints. He came around the desk saying, "I did the lab work myself, of course. Made extra prints of some of them, and turned the others and the negatives over to Doctor Macy.

It took me three or four weeks to unravel it. It was kind of delicate work, because they hole up in a pretty remote spot.

Here is a photograph of the old white double-wide trailer. The two cars are parked over there to the left of the picture beyond that stand of live oaks. Her yellow Rabbit convertible and the blue Ford van he draws out of the motor pool. That water in front is Burden Pond, and I took these from a little ridge up the hill from the pond, in the scrub-pine woods.

"Now here are a dozen I took with the twelve hundred lens when they'd come outdoors on nice winter days for what they call a little al fresco. I took maybe ten rolls of the outdoor fun and games but these show the faces best. It's like a sixty-power telescope."

"I know. Say! This here is Mrs. Wintergarten!"

"The very same."

"Oh Christ! Oh holy bleeding Christ!"

"They aren't in any special order."

Liddy went through them like a man playing a very slow game of solitaire.

"Absolutely great ass on that woman," he murmured.

Erskine had gone back to his chair. He took out the little tape recorder and put a cassette on it. Before he pressed the key for playback, he said, "I wired the place and used a voice actuated recorder. It didn't work real great. You miss the first word or half the first word every time it starts up again. I gave all the tapes to Doctor Macy, but before I did, I played them back and copied some parts of them on to this tape. I got about an hour here of this and that. I pulled the recorder and I haven't told Doctor Macy I'm quitting. This damned thing has turned into overkill. And it's boring, and, speaking as a police officer, he's got all he needs to make his case. The son of the founder is screwing an employee's wife."

"Where is this place?"

Erskine explained how to get there, and told him that it was land which had been donated to the Church.

"Let's hear what you've got."

Erskine turned it on. The fidelity was reasonably good. It was a rackety bed. In extremis, the woman liked to yell dirty words. Erskine had selected excerpts which confirmed identity through the specifics of their conversations.

"That's enough," Liddy said, and Erskine punched it off.

"What's happening is, it is winding down," Erskine said.

They used to do a lot of laughing and tell jokes and try a lot of different ways of doing it. I could tell about that from the way they would tell each other what to do next. But now they grouse and fight, and from the way they complain, the sex isn't as good as it was."

Liddy went back to one of the pictures and studied it.

"That son of a gun is a lot better hung than I would have guessed.

He's a real bull."

"When I first found out what was wanted of me, I didn't want to do it. I thought of coming right back to you."

"I would have told you to go right ahead."

"Why?"

"You never had to be political, Elly."

"Sometimes in Atlanta it seemed pretty political."

"Not like Uncle Sugar. The more you know about everybody around you, the longer you last. And the better you make out.

Look at it the other way. You refuse to tail the big man, I back you up, then what happens when Walter Macy takes over?"

He picked up the Kodacolor prints and leafed through them again.

"I heard rumors. But you know something? I thought he had more sense. My God, he's a national figure. He went after this like a schoolboy. Real dumb. If he wants some great ass on the side, the way to get it is line up somebody you can trust to go get it for you. And not here. In Vegas or L.A. or Houston.

It's bush league to go sneaking off with the wife of one of your own people. It's dangerous. Worst of all, it's plain stupid."

"Agreed. Did I do right to stop at this point, Rick?"

"Without this here casework, no. With it, yes."

"What's his point, having me go on and on?"