"But I set up this whole system when we were handling thirty percent of what we handle now!"

"I'm aware of that. It's all in the records. I will set policy. You will do your job."

She selected her words with care.

"The distinction eludes me."

"It will become clear to you in time, Miss MacBeth. My first policy statement to you is to continually examine the number of people you are using out there, and see where and how the number can be cut."

"It could be cut tomorrow. Fewer work stations. And then we would finish too late for deposit and we would lose a full day of interest on the money we turn in. I have been operating with the minimum number of people to get everything processed on time."

"It was not finished on time today."

"Because we had only a half day to work yesterday."

"I know that. I was merely commenting that you did not finish on time today. What do you think that cost in interest?"

"I have no idea."

"Assuming eight percent, Miss MacBeth, it should be about a hundred and thirty-one dollars and fifty cents."

"That little!"

"That is why I would rather you did not involve yourself in policy. Is the distinction a little clearer?"

"Not very."

"Those women seem very wary of you. You seem to me to be quite harsh with them."

"When they make stupid mistakes, yes."

"You were equally harsh with the operator the time the terminal broke down."

"Was I? I guess it was because I am not used to being followed and watched all day long."

"If I did not follow you and observe you, I would never learn the functions of your department, would I?"

"I could tell you how it works."

"Personal observation is better than something filtered through the mind of an untrained person."

' "Untrained"?"

"In matters of policy. And I might say that you could use some help in actual procedure."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Your work stations are laid out inefficiently, causing wasted time and a certain amount of confusion in distributing and collecting materials."

"I know that! If you will kindly turn off the U.S. mail for a week, I will have that room reorganized. There is a lot of wiring to be rerouted."

"I don't believe impertinence is going to help either of us."

2-95 ' "Impertinence"?"

"Sarcasm is a form of impertinence, Miss MacBeth. We both know I have nothing to do with the mail service. I am delighted that you are aware of the inefficiency of the layout. I want from you a detailed plan showing how the needed changes can be phased in without interrupting your basic service. We need have no further contact until that phased plan is ready for discussion. And at that time I will want to hear your report on the feasibility of a more advanced letter-opening device than those now in use. Thank you for your time."

She stared at him, her mind quite blank, stood up and nodded at him and left the office. She went into her department and looked at the empty tables and desks, the empty computer terminal stations. The pride had been snatched away. A certain tough-minded joy was gone for good. She missed Finn at that moment as desperately as she sometimes missed her dead parents.

Finn had told her to always keep trying to figure out ways to beat the system, and to block them before anyone else moved in. The money of the faithful came through the room like a green river flowing. Joe Deets's microchips provided almost too many checks and balances. Almost. Nibbling here and there was no good. It would be caught. Complaints would come in from donors, about incorrect receipts. The place to intercept would be after the cash was all bound, tagged and bagged for deposit. Two people watched the cash bags at all times. Each day, for a short time, toward the end of the day, she was one of the two.

She slowly traced the route of the deposit bags, out to where they were guarded while awaiting pickup, in an anteroom behind a waist-high counter near the door to the vault. She lifted the gate and went behind the counter and walked over to one of the storage cabinets and opened the door. There were three spare money sacks, folded, placed neatly on a shelf. She closed the door and went to the counter and leaned upon it, arms folded, head bowed, devising and discarding scenarios, measuring risks.

Late on Thursday afternoon Sheriff Dockerty phoned Rick Liddy at the Center.

"Got a little bit of news on the Owen thing," he said.

"Sheriff, okay if I put you on the office speaker here? On account of I happen to have Elly Erskine here with me."

"Doesn't matter to me. Both you boys have taken a pretty keen interest in this, and there's nothing to keep me from telling you what is going on. I mean, it isn't going to screw up any trial testimony because we haven't got any suspect yet.

You know my people have been helping the state people looking for the purse.

"Anyway, they found it about noon today down at the bottom of a place where there's a deep cut where the Interstate crosses about fifteen miles south of here. You know the place?

It's where the median is more like a ravine, and they put in the concrete culverts under the two sides of the Interstate."

"I know where you mean."

"To reconstruct it, what the driver of her car would have done was go over into the left lane and fling it out the driver's side window down into that artificial ravine, all brushy at the bottom. It was a good shot and he hit it in the middle, but the bag had a big shoulder strap and what that did was loop right over the top of the stump of a dead tree. That way, in the rains, when the water came up so high there, the shoulder bag didn't get washed away. But you can understand it was a real mess.

The shoe was in there and the torn pants, and her personal stuff. Any papers or paper money got turned to mush and washed out of there, but the credit cards were pretty much undamaged. Coombs's people took it to their lab to see if they can learn anything from it. If it hadn't hooked on to the tree, it would have been washed down to God only knows where.

Good aim, good idea and bad luck."

"It happens that way."

"But I saved the most interesting part till last, boys."

' "Interesting"?"

"I've gotten the idea, I don't know where or how, that you two might know a little bit more about the Owen thing than you've told me. Maybe it is just a hunch or a suspicion on your part, and you don't think it's enough. But here's what happened. This morning Moses went back to where he'd been working when he got the notion to go to the Mall and preach.

Mrs. Bennett's little place. He finished the work and gathered up his tools and got paid and drove on back to Mrs. Holroyd's place and parked out back behind the barn where she likes for him to park that old wreck. When he was walking from his truck to the school bus, shots were fired. She called me, all shook up, and I went out there. All three missed him, and it isn't hard to see why. I was able to get a good line on the direction because one of them came through the windshield of the bus and went all the way through and out the screening at the back, about two feet lower than where it came in. One smashed the handle of his hoe and stuck some slivers from the handle into his thigh. No telling about where the third went, but he says he heard it make a kind of thup noise as it went by, so it was pretty good velocity, and close.

"I paced it back and got myself pretty winded before I found where it had to come from. The ridge back of her place is a good seven hundred yards, and when I moved to the right spot and looked around I found where the grass was flattened down and somebody had mashed four cigarette butts into the dirt while they waited. Now what I want to tell you boys is that here we've got somebody as unglued as Moses himself, and he thinks that we're a bunch of Supreme Court liberals here who had to let Moses, the killer, go free on account of the rules of evidence or some damn thing. So this tower of moral judgment is going to blow Moses away mostly because he's different, not that he's done anything.

"But he tried from too far off, and I guess he'll think it over and try from closer. You boys got anything to say to me?"