“Yeah? You got some real history?”

“Kind of.”

Goat shrugged. “Who’d play her in the movie?”

“The shark from Jaws,” muttered Trout.

Dez Fox stormed up to the Explorer and kicked the door shut. Trout had to do a fast sideways shuffle to keep from getting clipped by it.

“Jesus Christ, Dez,” he barked, “you dented the whole—”

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Her tone was loaded with enough frost to start an ice age.

Trout winced but tried to turn it into a smile. “Hey, is that any way to treat me after—”

Dez got up in his face, her voice low and tight. “Bring up the past, Billy, and I’ll tase you and stomp the shit out of you while you lay pissing in your khakis. Don’t think I’m joking.”

“Geez, Dez, let’s have a little perspective here. I wasn’t the one who—”

“You’re a dickbag who should have been thrown out with the afterbirth.”

Trout sighed and placed his hand over his heart. “You wound me, Desdemona.”

“I’m about to.”

“Whoa there, officer,” interjected Goat, waving his hand between them. “Let’s dial this down and—”

“Fuck off,” Dez and Trout said at the same time.

“I…”

JT had been a few steps behind Dez and stepped in now to take Goat by the arm and pull him back. “Come on, son, best to stand at a minimum safe distance when those two are in gear.”

Goat let himself be pulled to the other side of the road, watching as Dez and Trout bent toward each other, almost nose to nose, shouting at the top of their voices.

* * *

“What’s with them?” Goat asked. “They have some bad blood between than or something?”

JT wore a tolerant smile. “You figured that out, did you? Good for you.”

Goat turned to him, and he wasn’t smiling. “Don’t patronize me. I’m a freaking news cameraman, so how about a little respect?”

JT spread his hands. “Don’t have a stroke, kid. It was a joke. I got you out of there before you got hurt. Even I don’t try to get between Dez and Billy, and I’m armed.”

Goat was hardly mollified and grunted something in Yiddish. JT chuckled.

* * *

Twenty feet away, Dez and Trout were still going at it.

“I didn’t come here to start a fight, Desdemona,” said Trout.

“Call me that again and I’ll put a baton across your kneecaps. It’s Dez or Officer Fox. Actually, for you it’s only Officer Fox. Now tell me what you’re doing here.”

Trout bit back something he was going to say, and instead pointed at the crooked line of parked police units. “Chasing a story, Officer Fox. Why else would I be here?”

“There is no story. Thanks for coming. Have a nice day. Fuck off and die.”

“No story? So why are half the cops in the county here? And … Christ … is that blood all over your shirt?” His guts knotted like a fist. “Damn it, Dez, are you hurt?”

Dez stepped back from him, and Trout could see shutters drop behind her eyes. She cut a look at JT, and when Trout followed the line of her gaze he caught Sergeant Hammond giving a tiny shake of his head.

Dez cleared her throat. “This is an active crime scene,” she said in the uninflected tone cops are taught to use at the academy. “Should the situation require it, a formal statement will be made at the appropriate time.”

She started to turn and Trout touched her arm. “Come on, Dez, don’t run that shuck on me. I own the patent on bullshit in Stebbins County. There’s something serious going down here and I want in.”

Dez, in control now, stopped and looked pointedly at the hand and then at his face. “Please remove your hand, sir.”

“‘Sir’? Oh please … cut the shit, Dez,” said Trout, though he took his hand back. “At least tell me if you’re hurt.”

It took Dez a while to reply to that, and Trout watched various emotions struggle to present themselves on her face, but the wooden cop face won out.

“Why?” she asked.

“Why do you think?” Trout forced a smile despite the hurt he was feeling. “Look … just because we have some issues—”

“‘Issues,’” she echoed softly.

“—doesn’t mean that I don’t care about what happens to you.”

Dez glanced down at the drying blood on her clothes and then looked up into Trout’s eyes for a long three count.

“I’m not injured,” she said, her tone and selection of words coldly formal.

Trout felt his stomach begin to unclench. “Then what happened?”

“Just go away, Billy,” she said as she turned and began walking away.

Trout ground his teeth. Ah … fuck it, he thought, and then called after her, “Is this about Homer Gibbon?”

That stopped Dez in her tracks. Trout knew that she was too good a cop to do something as lame as whirl around in shock, but the sudden tension was there in every line of her body. She turned and walked back to Trout.

“Would you repeat that, please?” she said.

Trout licked his lips. “Does that mean that this is related to the Homer Gibbon case?”

“What do you know about that, Billy?”

Not “sir.” Not “fuckhead.” She used his actual name.

“I know that he’s here,” said Trout, nodding toward the mortuary.

Dez said nothing.

“Did something happen?” Trout asked. “There were some threats during the trial and before the execution. Did someone break in to desecrate the body?”

Nothing. Dez’s eyes might as well have been made from cold blue stones.

“Did someone steal the body? There were threats about that, too.”

There was a flicker in Dez’s eyes that told Trout that he’d scored a point. Holy rat shit, he thought. Someone actually did steal Gibbon’s body. If the execution was the third act, this is a solid gold epilogue.

He kept the triumphant smile off his face. “Any theories on who stole it?” he asked.

“I never said a goddamn thing about—” Dez began and then stopped as JT Hammond crossed the road and stood next to her. Goat followed silently in his wake.

“Do you have information to share with us, Billy?” asked JT, his voice as cool as Dez’s.

“No, but I’d like to get some information from—”

“Then please get into your car, turn around, and go back to the road,” said JT.

“You can’t throw me out. This is news and—”

JT stepped close. Trout was tall at six feet, but JT was two inches taller and a great deal tougher. “This is a private road, Billy,” said JT. “It’s mortuary property all the way down to Doll Factory. You can wait down at the crossroads or up the road at the diner, but you cannot park here.”

“Since when did you join the gestapo, JT?” Billy asked in a disappointed tone.

The skin around JT’s eyes tightened. When he wanted to, JT’s face could transform from the genial nerd Samuel Jackson from Jurassic Park to the far more predatory Samuel Jackson from Pulp Fiction. This was the first time the transformation was done for Trout’s benefit. “You didn’t have many friends when you arrived here, Billy … and you have fewer of them now. Now get in your car and drive out of here. I won’t ask again.”

Billy Trout tried to outstare JT Hammond, but he knew that it was a lost game before it started. He had no cards to play.

So, without another word, he turned around, gestured curtly for Goat to get in the car, and within ten seconds he was driving down the road. Just to piss off the two cops he broke the speed limit all the way. It was a silly little victory and it made him feel about three inches tall.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

MAGIC MARTI IN THE MORNING

WNOW RADIO, MARYLAND

“This is Magic Marti at the mike with news from the exact middle of nowhere. If you’re in a hurry this morning, steer clear of Doll Factory Road east of Mason Street. There’s some police activity in the area and we’re getting a rubbernecker slowdown.”

Sound of canned thunder.

“Time for an update on that storm that’s grinding its way here from Pittsburgh. Heavy winds have picked up, and we’re seeing fifty-mile-per-hour sustained winds and gusts reported up to ninety miles per hour. The National Weather Service has classified it as a Category One hurricane, and there are reports of moderate damage to motor homes, billboards, and other light structures, as well as small to moderate stream flooding. It’s expected to hit our area in two hours, so expect a list of school and business closings.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

HARTNUP’S TRANSITION ESTATE

“How the hell did he find out about this?” growled Dez as they watched Billy Trout’s car vanish.

JT shrugged. “Maybe he was monitoring the police radio and heard the call.”

“Doesn’t explain how he knows about Gibbon.”

JT shrugged. “He’s a good reporter, Dez. He probably has sources. Maybe in the department, maybe with the courts, or even the prison. Could have been anyone, and it’s moot. He knows and now this circus is going to turn into a state fair. This will draw down the big media. CNN, Fox, and everyone else.”

“Yeah.”

JT looked at Dez, who was rubbing her temples and wincing. “Why are you so hard on that young man,” he asked.

“Don’t start.”

“Dez—”

“Billy wants too much. He wants shit that I can’t give.”

“I know what he wants, Dez. I was there the last five or six hundred times you two broke up. What I can’t understand is why you’re always giving him such a hard time. I’ve seen you treat wife-beating meth addicts with more compassion. All the boy did was ask you—”