Chapter 7

November 12

In the morning, as Richard was getting ready to leave the office for road duty, Brad Stoddard came through the door, a look of determination not quite masking the fear expressed by white patches at the corners of his down-turned mouth.

"Who do I talk to about a missing person?" he blurted before the door closed.

Betty looked up from her work.  "Why don't you talk to me first?"

"It's my daughter," he said to the room at large.  "I haven't seen her in over a week."

Richard turned around.  "Why didn't you report it earlier?"

"She doesn't live at home," the man said weakly, eyes shifting to the floor.  "Jessie moved out when she turned seventeen . . . moved in with a boy . . . I . . .her mother sees her---"

Stoddard had run out of words to explain a situation that he obviously didn't understand himself, and had no way of defining to others.

"You've looked for her?" asked Richard, coming back into the office.

The man nodded, eyes flicked to the floor, but only momentarily before looking up imploringly.

"You're going to take Mr. Stoddard's statement?" asked Betty.  She had just assigned the task to him.

"Yes.  Is the Sheriff in his office?"

"No.  He had to go to Jeff City for a conference, remember?  Take Mr. Stoddard on in."

She got up, and went toward a doorway leading to a small room off to her right.  "Can I get you a cup of coffee, Mr. Stoddard?" she called over her shoulder.

"No, thanks," he mumbled as he proceeded Richard into the office, walking uncertainly as if he couldn't see where he was going.

Richard began the interview with routine questions establishing the details of Stoddard's family life including places of residence and work, family members.  As he got used to answering questions, Stoddard spilled forth his fears and his obvious guilt.  Like nearly every parent who has lost the battle with a rebellious child, he vacillated between thinking that he had driven his daughter away by being too strict and overbearing, and charging himself with not being tough or consistent enough to keep her in the straight and narrow.

"I spoiled her.  Then when I tried to keep her from making foolish mistakes, I think I drove her away from me.  She ended up living with that---that dope smoking Kinder jerk."

"Kinder?  Gary, Hamm Kinder's son?"

A nod and a distasteful look.

"And you say you went over to the place where they were living?"

"Several times . . . last week and this---she hasn't been in for over two weeks.  That's when I really started to worry."

Richard doubted that man had stopped worrying since the day his daughter moved away from home.

"Did you talk to Gary Kinder?"

"No."

"Did you talk to her friends?"

"I don't know who they are," Stoddard answered weakly, another admission of his failure as a parent.

"And you say the car she's driving is a late model Camaro, white?"

He nodded.  "I bought it for her when she turned sixteen.  She was going to go to college, but she got to running with the wrong crowd . . . didn't even finish high school."

"Are you still making the payments on the car?"

"And her insurance.  That jerk she's living with got her to ask her mother if we could pay off the car and give her the title, but I wasn't going for that.  He'd just talk her into selling it."

"Did she ever ask for money, I mean since she moved out?"

"I think her mother was giving her some . . . don't know how much."

Richard decided that he would learn more from the mother than from Jessie Stoddard's ineffectual father, but it didn't turn out that way.  The overwrought woman knew, or revealed, little more than he had already learned from the father.  What he did pick up on was that there was a long standing and still unresolved argument between the two.  She blamed her husband for driving their daughter away.

 

Pictures, neatly cut from magazines and catalogs were spread across the bed spread, neatly arranged by type and pose.  Hundreds had been placed into a discard pile because they repelled him.  Yet, he still delayed burning them.  He shuddered in disgust, remembering one of the raunchier magazines he had found when he first started his collection.  It had been like a hybrid of a gynecology text and a wrestling comic book.

A guy who likes looking at trash like that has got a serious problem.  And the women!  Talk about sick!

Sweetness was what he wanted in a girl, and sweetness was what he saw in each of the faces in the top half of his collection.  He had named each, invented details about their lives which seemed to go with their faces.

You can tell a lot from faces.  My girls all have that certain something, that innocence.  They keep themselves clean.  It shines in their faces.  You can read it in the eyes and at the corners of their mouths.  There are good smiles and bad smiles.  The bad ones, the mean ones come from making fun of people and leave tell-tale lines that are easy to spot.

Every girl in the discard pile had those lines.  He examined the picture of a dark haired girl closely.  Each time he had looked at her, she became more appealing.  He moved her up into his top ten.

Maybe I'll meet you some day.

Collecting and naming his girls had taken him days of intensive research and effort.  Now he knew each of them, their likes, dislikes, habits and even their fears, most of which were silly.

That's the way nice girls were though.

Lately however a second type, appropriately arranged at the bottom of his collection, had begun to intrigue him.  These were the cold, aloof ones with superior expressions---the ice queens.  They weren't depraved like those in the discard pile, but they were messed up in the head.  They needed a firm hand to correct them, to turn them into what they needed to be.  He picked up a clipping of a pretty, but snotty looking girl.

You need to learn not to look at people like they're dirt.

He knew the pictures, names, personalities of his collection were all just fantasy.  After all, he wasn't some kind of nut case.  But he had to stay with it.  His imaginary world was a kind of life line, and he had turned to it as a substitute in order to stop his slide into the darkness.  He could have killed the Steward woman.

A freckled face smiled at him, and he picked it up to examine more closely.

Are you an angel come to comfort me?

He could almost taste her sweetness.  Increasingly, however, the cold ones were calling to him.  It thrilled him to think of correcting them.  For a moment he flashed on the thought of really doing it, and before he knew it he found himself constructing a scenario.  When the daydream threatened to turn violent, he choked it off.

"It's only imagination," he said aloud.  "I would never hurt them."

But you did, didn't you? came the answer.

"I'm not like that," he assured himself.

And it felt good too, remember?

His silence was answer enough.  For a long moment he stared at the picture of the freckle faced girl he had cut from a teen magazine.

You looked like a Lara.

He caressed it with the tip of his thumb as if he could feel the reality beneath the gloss of the page, the cashmere of her sweater, the swell of her breasts.  But the paper felt flat and cold, and left him with a longing.

 

Despite having taken the statement, Richard didn't get the job of trying to find the missing girl.  Shug gave it to Ron Guidry.  The brash former detective bulled his way through the process in record time, extracting information from the girl's friends and her boyfriend's acquaintances confirming quickly that no one had seen either Jessie Stoddard, Gary Kinder since the sixth.

Guidry chewed thoughtfully on a local franchise's version of a Philly cheese while he considered Richard's question.

"Definitely.  Kinder is a small time dealer . . . though I can't prove it yet.  What else he's involved in, there's no telling, except it don't got nothing to do with work.  Selling meth and pot, maybe some blow if he can get his hands on it and has the right clientele, but I think he's too much of loser even for that."

"Think they left town?"

"Car's gone," said Guidry simply, taking another huge bite from his cheese dripping sandwich.

"You know, they disappeared about a week after Granger Holman was beaten.  Maybe Kinder thought the old man was going to die and didn't have the sense not to draw attention to himself by running away.  What do you think?"

"Well, I don't see this guy as a criminal genius . . . more like a well-hung gigolo . . . greatest talent's taking advantage of high school bimbos.  Probably took the Stoddard girl off to the city with some idea of pimping her out.  But that pretty boy hayseed . . . get his throat slit, he tries breaking in on street action.  Girl probably end up on the bricks no matter which way it swings."

"The girl's dad is really worried.  Be nice if you could track her down and let him know she's all right."

"Wherever she is," said Guidry, finishing off his sandwich, "she ain't all right.  But, what the hell, people been making bad choices since before they swung down out of the trees.  Come to think of it, that might have been the first biggie."

He wiped his hands with the single napkin that appeared to be a customer's quota even when supplied with a leaky cheese sandwich.

"It's a waste of time, Ricky.  I'll finish checking around, ‘cause it might lead to something we can use, but there's no way to track them if they went to St. Louis, Memphis, or who the hell knows where.  Big city cops don't got time for hick missing person's cases."

"I know," acknowledged Richard.  "Look.  Could I ask you a favor?  Don't call me Ricky.  A guy used to call me that, and I don't enjoy being reminded of him."

"Okay, if it's that big a deal to you," laughed Guidry.  "What'd the guy do?  Run over you dog?"

"Made me kill him."

Guidry looked at him with a frozen grin on his face.  Then he saw that Richard wasn't joking.  "Well, that's a real conversation stopper there, Carter.  Remind me not to piss you off."

"Forget it," said Richard, sorry he had brought up the subject of Mic Boyd.  Guidry would dig around until he found out the whole story, although he probably wouldn't mention it again.

"Did you talk to Hamm Kinder yet?" he asked.

"Yeah.  Full of excuses for his son, but you could see the same old thing . . . spoiled the little bastard and now he don't know where he went wrong.  I think he knows what the kid was into, but he won't tell us . . . might even know where they are."

"Why do I get the feeling you're about through with this?"

"They'll turn up or they won't.  If we find them it'll be the old fashioned way:  someone will tell us where they are or they'll do something else stupid and get themselves arrested or dead."

"So that's it?"

"Yeah, except for a run out to a place in the county.  One of Kinder's buddies mentioned a guy named Hendrichs.  I've heard some stuff about him and this is a good excuse to take a look at his place."

"Why?"

"The crusade against the meth labs," said Guidry mockingly.  "You got trouble right here in River City, my friend.  This guy's another one of your many local citizens who spend money without a visible means of support . . . regular Mr. Wizard . . . got a doctorate in kitchen chemistry."

"Hendrichs out on U?" said Richard.  "Got a sign at the entrance of his place Swift River Limousin Ranch?"

"Yeah," Guidry laughed.  "First few times I drove by I thought it was a hell of a place for a car rental."

"Beef cattle," said Richard.  "Jill says the name comes from a region in France where the breed was developed.  You're wrong about the guy having no means of support.  He makes a good living off that bottom land out there."

"He did ‘til he asked Uncle Sam to protect him from his predatory creditors."

"Bankruptcy?"

Guidry nodded.  "Maybe fancy French cows went out of style.  Went belly up two years ago," he said as he gulped down the last of his coffee.

The overly solicitous young waitress who had hovered over them throughout lunch hurried over with a coffee pot.  Guidry held up his hand to forestall her.

"Bring us the check, Darlin'," he said with a wink before turning back to Richard.  "If you're not too busy with your own crime fightin', why not ride out there with me?"

"Moral support?"

"Don't got no morals of my own.  Everyone knows that."

 

A winding drive drifted with nearly a foot of hard edged and rain blackened oak leaves led past three separate signs warning potential trespassers of dogs to beware of.  At the peak of a partially cleared hill, stood a large ranch style house clad with blue-gray stained board and batten flanked by gnarled post oaks twisting black-fingered limbs like negative lightening into the gray overcast.  Yellow light lit a window at the left end of the house.  Although it was only four in the afternoon, the daylight had begun to fade.  A late model dual-wheel pickup sat beneath the trees, covered with a sprinkling of oak leaves that would continue to fall intermittently until the spring buds pushed the last of them off in May.  A white Crown Vic sat inside the open left door of the two-car garage.

"Nice of the government to let a guy keep his basic transportation," said Guidry.

"And his humble abode," added Richard as they got out of the car and headed up the walk toward the front door.

When no one answered the doorbell, they went around the side of the house.

"Smell that?" asked Guidry.

"Yeah," said Richard grimly.

Behind the house they found the source of the death smell.  A blackened carcass lay at the end of a shiny chain.  Two more were strewn upon a rough finished pad of concrete surrounded by eight-foot tall woven wire.

"Guess we don't have to beware of the dogs no more," said Guidry.  "Those were Rottweilers weren't they?"

"Pit bulls I think.  Think somebody shot them?"

"No reason to with them being in that pen.  Then again, dopers got their own brand of logic."

"I think we got us another missing person, Ron."

They went back to the front where Richard tried the door and found it unlocked.  When he pushed it inward, warm air flooded out, untinged by corruption.  Relieved not to be assaulted by the smell of a dead body, he entered with Guidry close behind.  It was hot inside, nearly eighty, he thought.  There was no sign of a struggle, nor any indication that the house had been searched.  In the kitchen the dishwasher stood ajar, inside only a plate, a knife, fork and spoon, and a long stemmed glass, all sparkly clean.  The living room fireplace doors stood open, and the cold ashes of a fire lay undisturbed on the grate from which the dead ends of two four inch thick logs had fallen on either side.

The beds were made.  Towels and face cloths were hung neatly in both bathrooms.  Only the open garage door was out of harmony with a house kept in meticulous order.

"When do you think the photographers for Better Homes and Gardens will be here?" asked Guidry.

"Reminds me of the Marie Celeste," said Richard.  "You think he just left of his own accord?"

"If he did, he went with someone . . . and I don't think he's coming back.  Who the hell's Marie Celeste?"

"Ghost ship found adrift in the Atlantic, I think.  When they searched her, food was still on the table, and everything looked normal except everyone was gone."

"One of them Bermuda Triangle stories?"

Richard nodded.  "Close enough."

"Look at this?" said Guidry, calling Richard's attention to a heavy metal cabinet in the master bedroom.

"Gun safe.  We'll need to get in there," said Richard.  "Get the serial number and go through the paper work we can get the combination from the manufacturer in a week or two.  Wonder what we'll find when we get in?"

Guidry shrugged.  "Let's find out who all the vehicles belong to.  That shouldn't take two weeks even in Missouri."

"First let's check the outbuildings while we still got daylight."

Richard suspected that Marvin Hendrichs might not be missing after all, but that they would find him just like they found his dogs.

The outbuilding nearest the house was an equipment shed inside which were parked a tractor and a backhoe.  Further down the slope stood a recently built barn, inside of which they found only neatly stacked square bales of hay and wheat straw along with a few yard tools and a tarp covered riding lawn mower.  Like the house, everything was neatly stowed away.  Marvin Hendrichs, no matter what his other faults may have been, could never be convicted of being a slob.

Behind the barn a concrete pad held three rows of round hay bales encased in plastic sleeves like gigantic sausages.  A graveled drive curved downward toward a sewage lagoon and woods beyond, ending at a gate some hundred yards away.  Through the trees beyond the fence an expanse of cleared bottom land was just visible through the gap in the trees.

"What do you think happened?" asked Richard as they went back to the car.

"Either he's on an unexpectedly long business trip, or he ran with the wrong people and they whacked him.  If we were in New Orleans, I'd say he was either ‘gator bait in some bayou or helping hold up an overpass.  Where do they put the body's around here?  Dump ‘em on a logging trails maybe?"

"If it's drug related---" began Richard.

"It's drug related."

"Probably.  If so, then whoever is responsible knew where the drugs and/or the money was, because the house hasn't been searched unless the thief was the world's most obsessive neatfreak."

Richard wondered how Brad Stoddard would take the news.  He put himself in the man's shoes and knew.  He would be frantic with worry.

"The girl's car's not here," said Guidry.  "Could be they all took off together."

It didn't feel right.  Hendricks place bespoke of pride.  He couldn't see a guy like that any place other than in the driver's seat, both figuratively and literally.

"We don't know there's a connection," said Richard.

"I'm not real smart in country ways, Carter, but do so many people disappear around here at the same time that you assume there's no connection?"

"I didn't say there was no connection.  I said we can't assume there's one."

"There is, and somebody's dead," said Guidry flatly.

"Probably.  Let's give it a thorough search---buildings, woods, everything."

When he called it in, Shug told him to give it only a cursory look to see if a body lay in sight, but to put off a search of the house until he got them a warrant.  Finding nothing, they put off the search until the next day and stationed a deputy on the drive back from the road in order to not draw attention with orders to detain anyone coming in and call it in.  The common sense procedure sent Guidry into a paroxysm of head shaking laughter.

 

Richard stopped at Barber's Cash on the way home to pick up a couple of items as instructed by Jill when he phoned to tell her he would be a late.  He had just found the items at the back of the store he heard a familiar voice at the register.  He couldn't quite place it, but knew he should.  Approaching the register down an aisle stacked high with a soft drink display, he heard the voice again.

"That's a right pretty dress you got on, Darla."

Richard came around the corner to see a thin man with tightly curled blond hair dressed in tan bib overalls leaning on the counter.  The teenager working the register tried to strike the right balance of friendly service and cool reserve.  Steve Preslar, oblivious to her discomfort, seemed to be ready to crawl over the counter to get closer.

"Thanks.  Will that be all?" she said without looking up.

"Yeah, that ought to do me," he said as he extracted a money clip and ostentatiously peeled off a bill.  "You think you can make change for a hundred?"

"I'm getting a little low on twenties and fives," she said doubtfully.

"Well, here then.  I'll make it easy on you," he said, slipping the hundred back in the clip and extracting smaller bills.  "Just got paid and thought I might have me a little nine ball action tonight.  Need something to make change.  Never you mind, though.  I'll make do."

The girl gave him change without comment. 

"Expect you got a date tonight, it being Friday and all."

"No.  I work until ten."

"Shame a pretty little thing like you cain't have no fun on a Friday night.  What's your boyfriend think about that?"

"He's . . . uh . . . okay with it."

"He's okay with it, huh?  Well, I sure wouldn't be if I's him.  Girl like you deserves to have her a good time on the weekend.  Yes, sir.  If you was my girl, I'd make sure you'd enjoy yourself.  I'd---"

"Excuse me," said Richard.  "I hate to be rude, but I have to get home before my wife gets out the rolling pin.  She sent me for groceries and told me to hurry back.  So, do you mind if the young lady checks me out."

He put the cans on the counter and took out his wallet, continuing the charade that he was in a hurry.

"Got to be going anyway.  Sorry I held you up," mumbled Preslar.

"Thanks for rescuing me," said the girl.  "He does that all the time.  He's just lonely, I guess, but it really makes me uncomfortable for him to ask me about stuff like that."

She handed him his change.  "I don't suppose he's had proper parenting.  That's the way Mrs. Leach would put it.  She's my FACs teacher.  Family and Careers," she explained.  "Used to call it Home Ec, I think.  Anyway, I wish someone could teach some of these rednecks a few manners."

"All part of working with the public," he said.

"I suppose.  Thanks for helping me out," she said with a big smile that made her look all of thirteen.

 

As he drove back Richard thought about lonely people with too much time and only their own company, people without adequate social lives.

Tends to make you eccentric, I guess.  Red neck bachelors without significant female attachments.  Interacting only with others of your own kind tends to make unattached males at least moderately misogynous.  Only natural.  Deprived of feminine attention and frustrated in their attempts to connect, they become increasingly less tolerant as they age and therefore harder to please.  At the same time, they themselves would become less attractive.  So the window is closing from both sides.  No wonder their anger smolders.  They're angry at the whole world.

"Well, at least at half of it," he said aloud.

Preslar was angry, perhaps angry enough to firebomb Porter's house.  Maybe his cousin's long ago murder was just a convenient excuse for him to strike back at someone.  He mused that there probably wasn't a lot of difference between redneck bachelors and the young Arab militants whose lives were devoted to hatred.  Only the terrorists piggy-backed their frustration onto a religious/geopolitical rationale.

Probably both screaming for justice when all they really want is a sexual relationship so they can feel like a man.

"Pop-psychology and probably nonsense," he said with a yawn.  "You're tired, Richard."

Psychobabble aside, Preslar was good for the Molotov cocktail, and just dumb enough to screw it up.

 

The next morning Richard and Guidry processed the Hendrichs house, taking fingerprints from the gun safe, doorknobs, and dressers.  They found nothing out of place and no physical evidence that anything had occurred.  A thorough foot search of the woods and pasture land turned up nothing but a half dozen cows, all that was left of the breeding stock after the bankruptcy proceedings.  Like the buildings, the man's property, some hundred and twenty acres, was well maintained, unlittered by trash or brush, and enclosed and subdivided by new and arrow straight five strand barbed wire fencing.  All three vehicles, including a Humvee parked in the second bay of the garage were registered to Marvin Hendrichs and owned clear.  All had been purchased within the past year.  The man had made a remarkable recovery, especially since he had, as Guidry pointed out, no visible means of support.

When they returned to the office they found Shug cleaning the deer rifle he always carried in the trunk of his cruiser.  The pieces were laid out neatly on his cleared desk.

"I didn't know that desk was made of wood," said Richard.

"Very funny," replied the sheriff as he wiped a thin layer of oil on the trigger assembly and inspected it for lint.

"I want you to investigate all the disappearances," he said, looking briefly at Guidry before sighting down the bore.  "Carter, concentrate on the burglaries and break-ins, including the attacks on Holman and the Steward woman.  Holman died today."

"Then it's homicide," said Richard.  "Shug, the time frame suggests a link to the disappearances.  Holman was beaten around the time Kinder and his girlfriend went missing.  Now Hendrichs is gone too."

"I know," he said as he began snapping the pieces of the thirty-ought-six together.  "But I still want the investigations kept separate until something besides imagination brings them together.  I've got this certain investigator who's apt to jump to conclusions."

He held up his hand to forestall Richard's objection.

"We've got a jurisdiction problem here.  Some of this happened in Blue Springs, some in Kaleville and further out in the county.  In the city you'll have to work with Blue Springs police, such as it is.  If Guidry's right about the drug connection, and if it turns out Hendrichs was killed, then we may be working with the Highway Patrol, and maybe the DEA.  So let's don't complicate things until we have to.  Besides, you two will exchange information anyway."

Shug hadn't made the assignments precipitously.  Guidry had more experience and savvy when it came to drug investigation and Richard had the tact required for handling the home invasion, grieving relatives of Holman, and the Blue Springs police (such as it was.)

 

She comes toward him in the moonlight, fishing in her purse for the door key.  He flattens against the wall.  She steps inside.  He hits her with the flashlight, and watches as she falls in slow motion to the floor.  She's motionless, face down, almost glowing in the pale light of the full moon.  He rolls her onto her back, knowing before her face comes into view that she's the little sister.  But her face is freckled.  She's Lara.  Her eyes flicker and then open.  An intake of breath---a scream he has to prevent---his hand over her mouth---struggling beneath him---then his other hand is at her throat---and she is struggling beneath him---

Awake!

There was a throbbing sound he soon realized his own pulse.  A cramping pain shot through his left arm and he felt queasy.  Gradually it all subsided.  After an hour of readjusting positions in pursuit of sleep, he gave it up, got dressed and turned on the television.  Nothing was on, at least nothing that could drive away the dream images.  He put on his jacket and went out into the intense cold of the early morning darkness.

 

November 14.

On Tuesday Richard rode out with Shug and Guidry to open the gun safe, after receiving the combination by bonded messenger.  Inside they found nothing too surprising.  A lever action 30.06 and a Browning shotgun with ported barrel stood in their racks, gleaming with a light coating of oil and not a speck of dust.  Their wooden stocks glowed with a dark richness of finished wood upon which there was not the slightest scratch.  Full boxed of cartridges and shells for each were stacked neatly in the left hand corner next to three matching cleaning kit boxes of light gray metal.  On the top shelf lay an empty faux leather zip bag with the logo of First Southern Bank of Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

"Three cleaning kits," said Richard.  "Another gun?"

"He had a .22 pistol registered along with these two," said Guidry.  "Maybe he's got it with him."

"Nice piece," observed Shug, admiring the shotgun.

"I think we ought to vacuum the fabric," said Richard.  "If any type of drugs were ever kept in here, there's a good chance of finding some residue."

"I've got business at the jail so I'll leave this to you," said Shug.  "Want me to take these back to the vault?"

"It would probably be best if we kept it all together, keep the evidence chain as simple as possible," replied Richard.  "Let me vacuum here and then I'll take everything back and log it into the locker."

Lawyers had a way of conjuring doubts in the minds of jurors over such seemingly inconsequential details.  All it took was a properly timed question and a poorly delivered explanation to produce reasonable doubt where none existed.

Although Guidry claimed to be literally dying for a smoke, Richard insisted that he stay through the entire process.  First he placed a new hepa filter in the hand held vacuum and ran it for exactly a minute.  Then he removed the filter to an evidence bag, labeled and dated it, signing his name and noting Guidry's presence and filling in the exact time.  Then he put in a second new filter and vacuumed the entire interior surface of the gun cabinet.  When the second filter was bagged and labeled, he reclosed the safe preparatory to taking everything to the evidence vault except the filters, which would go directly the SEMO forensic lab in Cape Girardeau.

 

Steve Preslar found Randy and Mouse sitting on the tailgate of his truck when came out of the County Mart with a six-pack and a bag of chicken strips.  He and his running buddies talked about stocking a cabin for deer season.  Deer camp was the zenith of their year, hillbilly holy week, as it were.  None of the men had grasped the fact, or perhaps they did and just couldn't admit it even to themselves, that they were middle-agers, not teenagers.  Like Preslar, Mouse was a lifelong bachelor, while twice-divorced Randy had come to terms with the fact that the responsibilities of family life were beyond his capabilities.  He complained that his first ex wouldn't let him see his two boys, but was secretly glad she had custody.  Contact with them now was limited to her sporadic efforts to cajole him into contributing the child support he had agreed to at the dissolution of their marriage.

The "boys" swapped jibes, popped the beer, and made what (to them) seemed witty observations on any woman passing within sight.  The coeds were particularly worthy of their ribald attempts to impress each other.

Harold, carrying his weekly groceries in two plastic bags and trudging head down toward his car, came almost face to face with Preslar before either of them knew it.  When they made eye contact Harold noticed recognition light the man's face, but thought little of it.  Several people had given him the same look lately.  He figured it was because his picture had been in the paper following the firebombing.  He nodded without saying anything or slowing.

"You're Porter," said Preslar, stepping into his path.

"Yeah, but I don't know you," said Harold, moving to go around the red faced man.

"Well I know you, you son of bitch," he said, putting his hand on Harold's chest.

Taken by surprise, Harold only gaped.

"Boys, this is the bastard that killed my little cousin," he said over his shoulder without taking his eyes from Harold's.  "How in the hell you got the nerve to come back here?"

"I'm sorry for what happened to Marie, but I didn't---"

Preslar shuddered as if he were barely able to restrain himself.  "You got the balls to call her Marie?  I oughta kill you just for that!"

"It was a long time ago and I---"

"Long time?  Like that makes a difference?"  Preslar grabbed Harold by the front of his shirt and pushed him against a car parked next to his truck.

"Hand me that tire iron, Mouse," he said over his shoulder.

"Maybe you ought not do this, Stevie," suggested his friend.

Preslar was in no mood for reason, however.  He pulled Harold forward until he could reach into the bed of the truck to snatch a rusty jack handle.  Holding Harold at arms length, he raised the tire tool threateningly.

Although far from brave, Harold had been in such situations many times in prison.  Bullies---and that's what Preslar was---wanted you to cringe, wanted you to be scared of them.  Once that started, it never ended.  At Jeff he had learned that there were two kinds.  The ones who would either slip one into your back the first time they got a chance (although the real hard ones wanted to look you in the eye as they stirred your guts), and the ones who craved someone to terrorize so that they could feel big.  He had never faced the first type, but had seen them often enough.  With the second, the bullies, a certain fatalism was---well, it wasn't a defense, because once it started you became what they wanted you to be until you found a way to end it.  Harold had survived at Jeff for twenty-three years.  He sized up Preslar quickly.  He had faced worse.

"If you're gonna use that thing, do it," he said evenly.  "But you better finish what you start.  You understand me, boy?"

Preslar faltered.  If he didn't know better, he'd swear that Porter really didn't care whether he hit him with the tire tool or not.

"I could kill you right now."

"You could, but you won't.  We both got tomorrow and the next day.  What you gonna do when I decided it's time to settle this?"

Preslar laughed nervously.  Then he released Harold with a shove.

"Get the hell out of here."

"Best remember what I said," said Harold

As he went to his car, the little man closed tried to still his rushing heart.  He had pulled the bluff off, but he didn't feel a great deal of satisfaction in it.  Preslar was a coward, but cowards were dangerous.  When one of them was after you, you had to watch your back.

Preslar too was glad the confrontation was over, although it hadn't played out the way he had thought it would.

"Showed that son of a bitch, didn't I?" he said, hoping his friends hadn't noticed his uncertainty and confusion.  "I'll flat clean his plow the next time I run into him."

"Little sucker's got balls though," said Mouse.

"Stevie, you know what that reminded me of?" asked Randy.

By his tone, Preslar knew his friend was about to crack a joke, which was fine with him.  He could stand a little humor just now.

"What?" he asked.

"My old hound dog, Duke.  Know how he's always chasing cars?  Well, hell.  If he ever caught one he wouldn't know what to do with it.  That's the way you was.  You caught the old guy, then you didn't know what to do with him."

Mouse laughed appreciatively.  Preslar didn't think the remark was so hilarious.

"I'll show you sons-a-bitches if I ever get my hands on him again."

"You should of saw your mouth drop open when he said to go ahead and hit him," said Mouse.

"He's crazy," grumbled Preslar.  "That's why I done it.  You cain't never tell what a crazy person will do.  Besides, it ain't him I'm worried about.  Gotta be careful ‘cause they think I tried to burn down his damned house.  If'n I'd hit the bastard they throw me in jail for sure."

 

November 15

The door of the Caprice was locked, but the driver's side window was cracked almost a quarter of an inch, just enough to slip in a sheet of crumpled newspaper, which is just what he did.  Working undisturbed for over five minutes, he managed to feed in the entire Springfield paper, save for the last piece.  He inserted the last one most of the way in, holding it by one corner as he lit it with his lighter.  When it caught he dropped it onto the pile cascading from the driver's seat to the floor.  It caught quickly, illuminating the interior of the car and casting his shadow against the wall of the building.  He moved as quickly as he could into the shadows, certain that he had not been seen.  After all, who would be awake at two in the morning?

 

As it turned out, no one saw the fire, and it was daylight before Harold Porter phoned the sheriff's office to report the vandalism.  The fire had gone out quickly, smothered by its own smoke and a lack of oxygen, but not before it ate away the bucket seat and melted much of the dash.  Given the age and condition of the car, the insurance would declare it a total loss.