So Chisholm gets mad at him. So what?

Ronnie was going to be awfully happy about what he knew, and he knew just how to dole it out.

d.a.m.n, he thought, laughing aloud; d.a.m.n, sometime I just step in it, you know what I mean?

4.

"Because I watched them, Jasper, that's how I know ... follow them? How the h.e.l.l was I supposed to follow them? My car's the only gold one on the island, Jordan would have spotted it in a minute...Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Jasper, he turned left on Midway and waved for them to follow along. The only reason he'd go that way is to see Chisholm ... no, I don't know who they are ... no, I didn't talk to them, I was already gone ... Good Lord, you are the most... no, I didn't count them, for G.o.d's sake, it was raining! There's a pa.s.sel of them, though, I could see that much . . .

"Look, Jasper, you're not getting the whole picture here. Think about it: they were not supposed to get this far. We were a.s.sured they'd already be taken care of, and Chisholm would be on his own. a.s.suming our boys hadn't already stomped his a.s.s into the next century, that is. So now he's not alone, and I don't think our friend is going to be very happy when he finds out. I think maybe you and I, we ought to get a little creative around here ... you know d.a.m.n well what I mean, and if you're taping this, Jasper, so help me G.o.d, I'm gonna skin you bald, you hear me?

"All right, all right, don't get all huffy. Just watching my back, same as you, and don't tell me you're not. The thing is, we got exactly two weeks, am I right? Now surely we can come up with something in two lousy weeks. Put your brain on the boil, partner, see what you can come up with. Meanwhile, we got another problem ...

"Right. Exactly right. Our friend doesn't want to wait any longer. Time to stop s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around here, time to make that old black b.a.s.t.a.r.d see the light. If you know what I mean. Can't use Stump again, he's got no finesse. We gotta have finesse this time, and I think I know just the man.

"Best thing about it is, partner, the son of a b.i.t.c.h works cheap."

3.

1.

T.

he minute the rain stopped, Casey grabbed his jacket and left the house. He didn't intend to go very far, only wanted some clean fresh air and a good strong walk to help clean out his system.

As soon as Jordan had left, he had made his way back upstairs, stripped, and stood under a hot shower, bracing himself against the tiled wall with one hand, letting the heat and the steam do its work. He stayed there for so long his skin began to redden, but he gave himself no complaints. It felt good. Almost sinful.

Afterward, he shaved, brushed his hair, and dressed. He sang loudly to the empty house. He walked from room to room and looked out the windows, not to see anything in particular, just to walk, to give his legs some exercise. The storm frustrated him, but it also allowed him time to sit for a while between his wanderings, for which he was grateful. He knew that if he'd gone out right away, he would have walked himself right back into bed-too much, too soon.

He ate as large a lunch as his stomach would take, bemoaning how much better Hector's touch was.

He considered a cigarette and changed his mind, walked the house again instead, taking his time, working up a sweat that had him back in the shower-no luxury now, purely utilitarian-and into a fresh set of clothes.

That was okay.

He felt good. He felt clean. He felt somehow less vulnerable for feeling so ... good.

Once he stood on the porch steps, feeling the light breeze feather-touch his face, he realized he was in danger of being convinced he was back to normal.

Still, the rain-cleared air smelled wonderful. Intoxicating. Cold enough to make him rub his hands together, not so cold that he had to fetch gloves or a hat. Brisk, he decided; he and the air felt brisk.

And it reminded him, suddenly and powerfully, of the day he had left that North Carolina cell for the last time, the day he had walked through that high, sliding, pocked-with-rust iron door into the free world. The same intoxication, the same feeling of power, the same feeling of such immense giddy relief that his knees had almost buckled.

A feeling of such immeasurable sadness, for the time he had lost and could never regain.

He adjusted his coat, pushed stubborn hair away from his brow, and strode down the walk to the street. An automatic look left, a check right, and he crossed over, angling toward the narrow path that would, if he had the strength, take him to the beach.

No hurry, he cautioned; no hurry, Case, either you get there or you don't.

No hurry.

He rested under a fat-bole evergreen whose lower branches had been stripped away, those remaining looking as gnarled as a man's arthritic knuckles. There was no wind, just the sand and the tide marks and the roll of the surf.

A sky too large and too high, too clear of clouds after such an abrupt and nasty storm.

He could see the stone whales a hundred yards off to his left; to his right a tall dune that, he seemed to recall, had been much taller when he'd first arrived on the island. A pair of gulls strutting on the wet ap.r.o.n, wings out and legs dancing whenever a wave swept its foam toward them. Broken sh.e.l.ls. The faint darkened rim that marked a long dead bonfire from a long forgotten party.

He wanted to go out to the jetty, feel the ocean's power beneath him, but he knew he wouldn't make it. The sun was on its way down, the sawtooth shadow-line of the trees crawling toward the darkening water. So he leaned against the tree and listened to the sea.

After a long time, he whispered, "I know what you want, but I can't do it. You know I can't do it."

The unbearable sadness of something never retrieved.

He didn't turn, didn't start, when he heard cautious footsteps behind him, softly crackling over the dead leaves and needles that lay thick and thin on the ground.

Even here, he thought; even here, I can't be alone.

Eventually a man came up beside him, barely reaching his shoulder, his oversize coat too thick for the weather, his hair unkempt beneath a pushed-back watch cap that looked as worn as his face.

"You listening for them?" asked Dub Neely.

"For what?" Casey said.

The faint smell of liquor.

Neely smacked his lips loudly. "They got me, you know."

Casey did look then, and looked down. The man's shoes were wrapped and wrapped again with duct tape, but he could see dark stains on the bottom of the trousers, and when he took a step away from the trees onto the sand, dark stains spotting his bare ankles.

"Looks like you walked through the briar patch."

Neely shook his head. "Them birds is what it was." He looked over his shoulder, eyes rimmed red and pouched. When he smiled, there weren't many teeth. "Them birds got me."

Casey didn't understand and didn't ask.

"Dead birds," Neely said, as if that would explain everything. "Walking bones, you know? Came right at me." He lifted one foot a couple of inches off the ground. "d.a.m.n near bled me to death."

Casey nodded, tilted his head, pulled his lips briefly between his teeth so he wouldn't smile.

"The thing of it is," Neely continued, facing the ocean, idly flicking something off a sleeve, "I wasn't as surprised as I ought to have been once I realized what was happening. An astounding bit of nature gone hog wild, and it was, in its awful morbid way, rather fascinating. The prerogative of a drunk, Mr. Chisholm; being able to observe the impossible without losing his mind."

"Is that so?"

"d.a.m.n straight." Neely rolled his shoulders, smoothed his cap down into place with both palms. "Son of a b.i.t.c.h, you look at that?" He pointed toward the water. "Some fool, looks like he left a perfectly good can of beer out there. Idiots don't know what they're missing, you know what I mean? Ain't got no sense the good Lord gave them, and what they do got they ain't got a clue how to use it. Stupid b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. h.e.l.l of a storm. Had to hide under somebody's porch, man. Could've gotten pneumonia, something like that. h.e.l.l of a storm. The phrase, I believe, is gully-washer, right? No matter. A h.e.l.l of a storm."

He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a flask, shook it next to his ear to gauge its content, then twisted off the top and took a quick drink.

"h.e.l.l of a storm, man. Walking bones. d.a.m.n near killed me, but I got away. Close thing, but I did get away."

He took another drink and put the flask away.

"Weird s.h.i.t, man. A perfectly good can of beer all by its lonesome."

Casey, saying nothing, pushed off the tree with his shoulder, put his hands into his pockets, and started down the trail toward home. The treetops had begun to blend with the sky, lowering it, and the tide on its way in had begun to snarl and roar. Considering the way weariness had begun to slip over him, it would be a good idea to get home before full dark.

"Hey!" Neely called.

Casey ignored him. He needed to sit. He needed to eat. This would be the longest half mile he could ever remember, but he wasn't about to stop to rest. Not now. Or stop to have a conversation with a drunk.

"Hey!"

He would sleep hard and long tonight. Tomorrow he would decide what he would do about the Teagues. Since the sheriff obviously wasn't going to do anything on his own, Casey had to make up his mind how far he was going to push this. Make the complaint and force the law into at least making a show of caring? Wait a couple of days and maybe do a little peace-keeping of his own? Forget the whole d.a.m.n thing and hope there wasn't a recurrence?

"Hey, I'm ... I'm talking to you!"

Whittaker Hull wanted to know what he knew, but he didn't think he knew anything. What was there to know? What did it matter to him anyway? Did he really give a d.a.m.n?

"The horses, G.o.dd.a.m.nit!"

He stopped.

"I want to ... I want to know if you was listening for them d.a.m.n horses again!"

Ah ... h.e.l.l, he thought; oh ... h.e.l.l.

But when he looked back, Dub Neely was gone, nothing at the end of the trail but a faint glow from the water, and a darkness that looked all too much like a wall.

2.

By the time he reached the edge of the woodland, twilight had turned to dusk, and he had used up all the curses he knew, aimed at the stupidity for walking so far so soon after he'd left his sickbed. His breath came in short gasps, pockets of sweat gave him shuddering chills, and his eyes weren't working quite the way they were supposed to. As if he had to walk through a world just out of focus enough to give him a headache if he looked at it too long.

Slowly, unsteadily, he pa.s.sed between two of Cutler's rental houses and grinned at the sight of Midway Road. Nothing spectacular, it hadn't been miraculously paved while he'd been gone, but it meant that, if he had to, he could crawl the rest of the way home and not lose too much skin in the process.

A bonus, then, when he saw Rick Jordan's truck parked at the shoulder in front of his own place. Jordan himself sat on the lowered tailgate, legs swinging lazily, cigarette in one hand, his head drooped low as though he might be napping.

"Rick," he called, and winced at how weak he sounded.

Jordan dropped to the ground, arms slightly away from his sides as he searched for the voice. Nodded when Casey called him again, and wandered over, a hand in his hip pocket, the other flicking the cigarette away.

"No answer," he said, nodding toward the house. "I thought maybe you got yourself s.n.a.t.c.hed or something, and holy s.h.i.t, Chisholm, where the h.e.l.l have you been, you look like holy h.e.l.l."

Casey shrugged nonchalantly. "Just went for a walk on the beach."

"The beach?" Jordan stared at the houses, the trees beyond, measuring the distance. "You out of your mind?"

"Yes," Casey said, and laughed. "Come on inside, I have to sit, and sit fast. You can tell me-"

"Can't," Jordan said. "I have a date with Ronnie, and if I don't get cleaned up in a hurry, she'll sink me in the marsh."

They stopped at the pickup's hood, Casey resting a hip against it.

"So?"

"So, I don't get it."

"You don't have to, Rick. Not yet anyway. Did you find out?"

Jordan pulled a bottle of pills from his jacket pocket and handed it over. "Supposed to be antibiotics and painkillers and stuff, right?"

"Right. That's what..." He scratched under his chin. "Alloway? Yeah. That's what Alloway said."

Jordan took off his cap, slapped it lightly against his leg before jamming it back on. "Now I really don't get it."

Casey looked at him hard.

Jordan flinched apologetically. "Hey, sorry." He pointed at the bottle. "Valium."