"Why didn't he throw everything down the well?"

The lieutenant said, "I reconstruct it this way. It was night. It took everything he had to carry her, find the well, drop her down it and toss her stuff down. Then he pulled those boards off the side of the barn and put them across the top of the well.

Then he went back and checked the scene of the crime and he came across the extra shoe and her purse and the pants he'd ripped off. He just couldn't handle going back there and dropping them in. He never wanted to go back there again. So he hid them someplace else. He stuffed the shoe and the pants into the purse and maybe he buried it. Maybe he just heaved it out into the woods when he was on his way down to the airport in her rental car. We'll keep looking. For the purse and for him. If I don't find him before I get to retirement age, I'll still keep looking. Believe it."

Roy looked down at his fists.

"I believe it."

"I'll let you know when you can have her stuff. The luggage and the clothes are pretty well mildewed and ruined. But there's the pictures of you and your kid in the silver frames.

Things like that."

"When will they release..." He couldn't say it.

"Soon, I think. After they finish the chemistry."

"She'll be cremated here and we'll have a memorial service up in Hartford. Can you recommend..."

"Sure. Stith and Sons. They're reliable. And about a half mile from the hospital. You talk to them and they'll arrange about getting the body when it's released."

He watched at the window as they backed the unmarked car out and turned around and headed for the highway. He saw Peggy Moon come trotting out and flag them down. She leaned in the car window and talked with them for a time, then backed away and they drove out. She turned and looked toward the unit and he wished she would come in and talk. Or listen. She had certainly been doing a lot of listening.

2-39 He called the office.

"You busy?" he asked.

"Holding the fort. But Fred'll be back soon. Then I'll come over. People are still phoning you, trying to get to talk to you."

"But nobody on that list I gave you?"

"Not yet."

"Well... see you."

"Sure thing."

Fifteen.

At half past ten on Saturday morning, Moses stopped cutting and stacking brush for a Mrs. Bennett, left the tools on the ground and drove away in his shabby red pickup truck. Mrs. Bennett was looking out the side window as he drove by. She trotted out onto the porch and shaded her eyes against the glare to see which way he was going. He stopped at the intersection a block away and turned left toward Lakemore.

That very morning she'd had a long phone conversation with a woman who often stopped by for morning coffee, but who said she was not going to go to any house where Moses was working. Mrs. Bennett's friend said that the old fool of a sheriff should have locked Crazy Moses up long ago, before he had a chance to kill that magazine woman. Mrs. Bennett told her friend that she did not think Moses had the gift of invisibility. If he had driven that woman's car down to the city and left it at the airport, somebody would have remembered seeing him there, or seeing him on the way back. Moses would attract some attention anywhere.

The woman said he was a lot more clever than people gave him credit for, and all that preaching on the street he was doing lately was to divert attention from the bad things he was doing.

Even though she was an old friend, Mrs. Bennett had hung up on her, and now, watching Moses drive away without a word, she began to wonder if she had been too abrupt."

One of the inner voices had told Moses to drive to the Meadows Mall and walk into the Mall to the big fountain at the intersection of the wide corridors. The Mall was very busy.

The rains and floods had kept people from their necessary shopping. But there were many there, young families and teenagers, to whom a hot Saturday in August meant a carnival flavor at the Mall. They came from the four-county shopping area. The young designed their own T-shirt inscriptions, had their ears pierced, bought giant cones, and, in the deafening blare of country and Western inside the Music Box they flipped through the bins of records, read the spines of the stacked boxes of tapes, spent too many quarters in the arcade games, met old friends, made new ones and set up dates and arrangements.

Moses had to cruise the parking areas for a time until he found someone leaving. Once inside the cool corridors of the Mall he was aware of how sweaty he was. His soiled tank top, his ripped and faded jeans, even his hair and beard were as soaked as if he had just walked out of the sea. He was aware of people glancing at him and moving quickly out of his path.

Ever since the heavy rains came, he had been aware of strange phenomena in his brain. It was as if some compartment sealed shut for a long time had begun to leak. Bits and pieces seeped into his mind and were gone immediately. The fragments had the quality of the fleeting memories of long bad dreams. There was a sound of lots of voices talking at once inside his head. Excited voices, with now and then a word or two words distinguishable.

"Billy... other gun... operation. Ethel, Ethel!..." When he had stopped cutting brush and had stood out there in the bug-humming heat of the overgrown feed lot with his eyes shut, straining to hear more of what the voices were saying, they faded out entirely. And as he worked, another voice came into his head and told him where to go, and to go at once.

He walked through the people, staring straight ahead over the heads of all of them. When he reached the fountain there was a short time of hesitation, and then he knew what he had to do.

He climbed up onto the wide concrete shelf that encircled the water jets and the green pool. It was only two and a half feet high, a comfortable height for sitting when tired from shopping.

A lot of them looked at him curiously as they walked by. A few stopped and stared at him, alert for the slightest deviation from normal behavior on the part of anyone.

He spread his big arms wide.

"Hear me!" he brayed in his great voice.

"Hear me! Hear this, all nations! Pay attention, all who live on earth, important people, ordinary people, rich and poor alike! My lips have wisdom to utter, my heart whispers sound sense; I turn my attention to a proverb, and set my solution to the harp. Why should I be afraid in evil times, when malice dogs my step and hems me in, of men who trust in their wealth and boast of the profusion of their riches? But man could never redeem himself or pay his ransom to God: it costs so much to redeem his life, it is beyond him; how then could he live on forever and never see the Pit when all the time he sees that wise men die; that foolish and stupid ones perish alike, and leave their fortunes to others?"

His huge voice overpowered the pervasive Mall music.

More and more people gathered around. A security guard came pushing through the people and yelled up at Moses, "Get down from there! You get down from there!"

"You get down on your knees, brother, and pray for the dead souls of the Meadows family." The man grabbed at Moses, and Moses leaned over and clubbed him on the side of the head with a thick fist. The man was caught by the crowd before he could fall. He recovered his balance, shook his head and went unsteadily away to find reinforcements.

"Their tombs are their eternal home, their lasting residence, though they owned estates that bore their names. Man, when he prospers, forfeits intelligence; he is one with the cattle doomed to slaughter. So on they go with their self-assurance, with men to run after them when they raise their voice. Like sheep to be laid in the grave, death will herd them to pasture and the upright will have the better of them. Dawn will come and then the show they made will disappear. The grave is the home for them! But God will redeem my life from the grasp of the grave, and will receive me. Do not be awed when a man grows rich, when the glory of his House increases; when he dies he can take nothing with him, his glory cannot follow him down. The soul he made so happy while he lived, thinking all the time, look after yourself and men will praise you he will join the company of his ancestors who will never see the light of day again. Man in his prosperity forfeits intelligence; he is one with the cattle doomed to slaughter, to a darkness everlasting, forgotten by man and God alike. And so this House, these Meadows, they have raised up an edifice they call a Church; it is but a possession, an earthly glory for them and their progeny, and it has nothing to do with worship, nothing to do with eternal life. I proclaim the everlasting life of the one who once lived who was named Paul Meadows. A holy man who 2-43 died young and now has life everlasting in the kingdom of heaven' "You are under arrest," the tall young deputy said.

"What for?"

"Creating a disturbance. Disturbing the peace. Assault on a civilian security officer. Come on along."

The audience backed away from the officer. He took two steps back and unsnapped the flap on his holster. Moses jumped down lightly and said, "All right, all right. If that's what you want, all right."

When Eliot Erskine arrived at Rick Liddy's small office, Liddy was just finishing his sandwich and coffee.

He nodded, chewed, drank the last of the coffee and said, "Siddown, Elly. How'd it go?"

"All right. Dockerty had Moses in a little holding cell. He seemed calm enough. Lieutenant Coombs got there a few minutes before I did. Like you guessed, they're going to try to make him for the Linda Owen murder, but their hearts aren't in it. He'd been read his rights. He said he was willing to talk without a lawyer present. He told about driving the woman from the motel to the Center when she couldn't start her rental car. He said he hadn't known her name at that time, and didn't find out until much later when he heard she was reported missing, and Peggy Moon at the motel told him that was the same woman he had transported to the Center and back.

"Dockerty asked him why he had started preaching at the Mall, and Moses said that some voice had told him to.

Dockerty wanted him to promise he wouldn't do it again, and Moses said he would be glad to promise, but if the voice told him to do it again, he would. Coombs asked him if the voice had ever told him to do other things, bad things, and Moses said that the voice, and other voices he couldn't understand, had started about when the big rains started. And he said that he did not believe the voice would ever tell him to do anything bad. He said he had been thinking about that voice, and he thought it was the voice of Paul Meadows."

Liddy nodded.

"The kid brother."