"Shrewd, kid. Very shrewd."

She heard a cracking sound on the line and then a quick loud zoo slam of thunder.

"Hey, goodbye. Lightning too close!" She hung up. She had turned the bed light on. It was darker in the room.

She read all the literature. She had never had to take a speed-reading course. She came from a family of compulsive readers. If you didn't finish a book quickly enough, somebody took it when you weren't looking. The light kept flickering and the storm seemed anchored directly over the motel.

When the phone rang she answered it reluctantly and cautiously.

"Miss Pennymark? Albritton here. I won't be able to provide a car, either rental or from our pool. I'm sorry."

"I'll give it a try."

"I thought you would," she said, and hung up.

There were four rental agencies. Delegates from the Congress of Christian Leadership, a thousand strong, were due to arrive late that afternoon, and the Hertz, Avis, Budget and Dollar agencies in Lakemore said they were completely out of cars of any kind.

She phoned the County Line Motel and a woman with a southern accent rang Roy Owen's room. When he answered, Carolyn said, "I don't want to stay on the phone too long because the lightning is scaring me witless. I never saw lightning like this anywhere. I'm a friend of Lindy's from the magazine down here to do a story on the investigation. I'm Carolyn Pennymark. I was going to get a car and come out there, but I can't rent one or borrow one. I'm at the Meadows Center Motor House, number two-four-two. If you're not too busy, and if you have a car, can you come in and talk?"

It was almost an hour before he arrived. She had finished the club sandwich and coffee she'd asked them to send up to the suite. She was brushing her hair when they rang up to tell her a Mr. Owen was there. She told them to send him up, and she unchained her door and left it ajar.

He was of the stature she expected, as Lindy had told her about Roy, but the mustache surprised her. Lindy hadn't mentioned that. But she should have expected it, she thought.

It was a cliche among urban men, especially those in stocks and banking.

He apologized for taking so long, telling her of the floods in the road and going the long way around. He apologized for how his raincoat was dripping on her rug.

She gave him her warmest smile and said, "Lindy was very dear to me, Roy. I miss her terribly. We worked together many times and she was marvelous to work with. I know you've been staying here, trying to find out what happened. I wonder if you'd save me some precious time by telling me what you've done and what you think?"

It took him an hour. She had to ask very few questions. He had an orderly mind, and a better gift for description of people and their attitudes than she had expected from a stocks and bonds person. It did not bother him when she scribbled the occasional note.

"Would you have gone at it like she did?" he asked her.

"I suppose it would depend on what I was looking for."

"Scandal in high places. Sex, misuse of funds, whatever."

She shrugged.

"I wouldn't lurk. Not my style. I go after people with questions. Hard questions. Lots of people. And pretty soon the answers don't fit as well as they did in the beginning. So I keep at them until somebody rats on the others."

"I wish she'd tried it your way, Miss Pennymark."

"You going to stop calling me Carrie, Roy?"

"Sorry. Maybe you could use your system to find out what happened to Lindy."

"When everybody says they don't know, my system doesn't work. I run out of questions too fast. You've been around here a while, Roy. I've read their handouts. I'm beginning to get some ideas about the whole operation, but I'd like to hear yours. I mean, is this whole Center a Good Thing, in caps?"

He frowned and got up and wandered over to look out at the rain, hands locked behind him.

"Compared to what?"

"Now there's a direct answer if I ever heard one."

He turned, smiling.

"I'm by nature a measurer. I measure things against things, ideas against ideas. When the weather changes and you can walk around out there with the pilgrims and go to services, you get the feeling you see a lot of very happy and relaxed faces. They smile at one another and nod and speak. They are emotional. They cry easily. They seem to be... opened up. There is kind of a temptation to be carried along with them into whatever it is that makes them feel so... so secure and so loved."

"Compared to what?"

zoz He shrugged.

"Compared to any city street, I guess. Or compared to the congregation in the Lutheran church my family attended when I was a boy. That seemed dim and remote and rigid compared to this."

"And there are religions where people whip each other and kill the infidels and so on. It can get pretty gummy, right?"

"I suppose."

"These national congregations are something brand-new under the sun, Roy. They have one hell of a lot of clout. I was listening to some of the sermons that get broadcast from satellites before I came down here. They are strong and they contain a lot of nonsense. Right to life. Abortion is murder. I got over any chance I ever had to fall for that syrup when I did a story on the way little kids have to be warehoused in the big cities. Unwanted and unloved. They're brought into the world and there are not enough people to hold them, walk them, talk to them, bounce them up and down. That's the way babies learn, you know. So what happens? Those kids don't learn to talk until they are between two and three. Most of them don't learn to walk before they are two because they get no training, no chance, no practice. They are warehoused in cribs where all the attendants can do is work from one end of the huge rooms to the other feeding and changing them and ignoring them.

Know what I would like to do if I was queen of the world? I would take a couple of platoons of those big elegant steely eyed broads who think babies are too dandy to be aborted, and make them work the warehouses for a year, telling them that their job would be to turn those infants into human beings, people who would not have stunted minds and stunted emotions, and who would not go out on the streets like animals to rob and kill the helpless."

She noticed the way he was staring at her.

"Hey, I'm sorry. It made a big impression on me, and I keep on unloading every chance I get. Aside from that, the electronic preachers have a lot of other brands of shit. Amurrica for Amurricans. Everybody who really wants a job can find one. Let's drop the big one on the dirty red Commie menace. Keep that Jap junk off our highways. Help our poor hardworking millionaire farmers. Let's stop the press from destroying Amurrica by shaking the people's faith in their institutions. They don't miss a chance, Roy. They say the things they know will feed ignorance and hate and superstition because the listeners express their approval in money, and money buys more air time."

"Is all that in the handouts?" he asked.

"All carefully and delicately and persuasively said. But it's there if you look for it."

"People always find what they look for, Carrie."

"Excuse me all to hell, friend. Did I step on your toes?"

"No. Nothing like that. In my line of work you get suspicious of simplistic analyses. I get the impression they tell their congregations some good things too."

She slung her legs over the arm of the chair.

"Okay, okay. I come from the grubby streets of the naked city. In my line of work you look for the worst and you find it all the time. So you get conditioned. They tell me I can go talk to anybody I want except old Matthew Meadows. Jenny Whatever told me he's too far gone. So I can talk to John the Tinker, and fat sister and anybody else. But that won't have anything to do with Lindy, will it?"

"Nothing at all."

"Thanks a lot for your help, Roy."

"I remember Lindy mentioning you. You say you went on assignments with her?"

"That's right."