Green tile on the walls reflected the glare of fluorescent lights in the ceiling. A counter with steel sinks and trays of instruments was flanked by three tables, each with gutters and a drain for blood. The tables were arranged sideways as he faced them, one behind the other, and the third was where his eyes were focused, on that tiny lump beneath the sheet. He walked with slow determination toward it, breathing through the clinging vapor that collected on the inside of his face mask. Then he paused and gently pulled the sheet back, staring at the naked body on the table. So small, so battered, all those bruises from the fury it had been through. There was caked blood on the lips which swollen, slightly parted, showed some damage to the front teeth. But these details weren't important. Even with them, the boy was striking. Blond, angelic, innocent. This was the first time that the medical examiner had worked on someone he'd observed in life, the first time he had done this to a patient. But then that was just the point. He never had a patient. That was why he'd become a medical examiner-to keep these feelings of regret away from him, to shun these awful obligations to the memory of the living. Well, he'd brought this on himself. He had become responsible, and he paused to eliminate emotion before reaching for the scalpel that he would use to peel the hair away. He took a breath and didn't want to do this, but he leaned close to select his point of contact while the eyes flickered suddenly below him and then stared at him, but they were purged of any innocence, as old and stark as any eyes he'd seen, and they kept staring. When the boy's hand came up, the room appeared to swivel, and his own hand to his mouth beneath his face mask, the medical examiner stumbled backward, screaming.
FOUR
Marge had stayed on duty at the police station until everything was finished at the mansion. There was nothing she could do up there to help, but she could free a man from night shift on the radio while he went up to lend a hand, and Slaughter needed every officer in town. So she had gotten the news in bits and pieces from the radio, and when she'd found out what at last had happened, she had done her best to keep from crying. Slaughter didn't need the people he depended on to break down when he most required them. Marge couldn't help it, though, and she had sat there, wiping at her tears, relaying messages. She knew the mother and the father. She had gone to school with older sisters in the mother's family. She had known this woman since the woman was a baby. Why, the woman lived just two blocks down from Marge's house, and Marge had often gone to visit, to see the boy, to bring him presents. Now the boy was dead, and partly out of sympathy for what the parents must be feeling, partly out of sorrow for the boy, she wept. But she did her job, and when the man she had relieved came back to resume his shift, she tried to hide that she'd been crying. All the same, the man had noticed, and he sat with her a while until he felt that she could drive. "You need a little sleep is all," he told her, but they both knew that it wouldn't be that easy. There were many people now who wouldn't get much sleep tonight, and she had thanked him, walking to her car. He'd asked if he should walk outside with her, but she had thought about the radio, with no one to attend to it, and she had told him that he really didn't have to. Anyhow, from five years of work with Slaughter, she had learned the value of control, and she was certain she'd be fine.
So she had gone out to her car and driven from the parking lot. Almost midnight on a Saturday. She normally would have expected lots of movement in the streets, especially outside the bars, young trail hands come in for a weekend's fun, but she was not surprised when she saw little action. A few cars and pickup trucks, a couple of men who stood outside a bar and sipped from beer cans. But in contrast with a normal weekend, this was more like a quiet Tuesday, and she wondered if the word had spread, or if ranchers, losing stock, had stayed home watching for some trouble with the cattle. But no matter what the reason, things were quiet, and that bothered her. As she drove through the outskirts, she saw lots of houselights on, and that was hardly normal either. She wished that she'd had the chance to talk to Slaughter, but he'd been so busy, and she didn't want to stay at home alone, so she drove past her house, went two more blocks, and if there were lights on, she meant to go in and console the mother and the father There were lights on for sure, the whole house both in front and back. She saw the plumber's truck, the car before it. Both the mother and the father must be home then, and she parked her car, wondering if she would be intruding. Well, she'd come this far, and after all it was her duty, so she got out, locked her car, and started up the sidewalk. She could hear the crickets screeching. She was peering toward the lights in all the windows, wondering if anybody else had come to visit, when she heard the voices. Loud: two men it seemed, and they were shouting. Then they were screaming. Marge was paralyzed. The cool night air was still, the crickets silent now, as someone ran out onto the porch as if for help, a man she once had met from two doors down, and he was staring at her. "Jesus, she's gone crazy."
"What?"
Abruptly Marge heard the snarling. Instinct almost made her run away, but she moved slowly forward as the window in the dining room came bursting toward the porch, two figures struggling through the broken edges, falling, writhing on the porch. The mother and the father, the mother snarling, the father screaming, and the mother was on top where she was scratching, biting.
Marge ran up the steps. "You've got to help me! Get her off him!"
"But she's crazy!" the neighbor said.
Marge would later recollect how she had thought of Slaughter at that moment, wondering how the chief would try to handle this. She wanted him to say that she had done the right thing when an instant could make all the difference. She pushed at the man behind her, shouting "Go get help!" as she looked all around for something to subdue the mother. She wasn't about to grab the mother and get bitten like the father screaming there, but when she saw the thing she needed in one corner of the porch, she couldn't bring herself to grab it. Warren evidently had been playing with it the day before he died. She didn't want to touch it, but the father's screaming was too much. She reached for it. Slipping on the broken glass, she lurched toward the mother, raised the baseball bat high above her head, and thinking about Slaughter, started swinging.
FIVE
Slaughter waited in his locked house until Rettig and Hammel arrived. He shouted out the window that they'd better look around before they left the cruiser. So they flashed their searchlights, but there wasn't anything. He went outside to meet them, staring past them, scanning all around them and then pointing. "This way."
"Well, what is it?"
"Don't you think I wish I knew?"
They stiffened. They were dressed in jeans and sport shirts, a gunbelt strapped around each waist. They saw that Slaughter had his own gun out, and they were drawing theirs as they walked toward the fence where he was pointing.
"Shine your flashlights."
The beams arced out across the field.
"But I don't understand this," Rettig said.
"Just keep your back protected. Keep looking all around you," Slaughter told him. "There was something out here. Hell, it came up on my porch."
Slaughter climbed over the fence and flashed his light while they jumped down beside him. Then he started walking with them through the field.
"Your porch?"
"That's right." Slaughter was embarrassed, determined not to admit that he'd run in panic. He felt safer with his men to help him, but he couldn't subdue the burning in his stomach, and he wished they wouldn't ask too many questions.
But they kept on. "Well, what is it?" Rettig asked again.
"I told you, I don't know. I never got a look at them."