OK, buster. You want feelings?

I took a deep breath and unloaded.

“Some sick son of a bitch torched a newborn. Some other prick’s been slaughtering wildlife like it was mold under the sink. Two guys wasted themselves on a rock face while in the act of boosting the Colombian economy. And some poor bastard got his brains blown out, and his head and hands lobbed into a shithouse.”

My chest gave a series of tiny heaves.

“I don’t know, Ryan. Sometimes I think goodness and charity are racing toward extinction faster than the condor or the black rhino.” Tears were now flowing.

“Greed and cal ousness are winning out, Ryan. Love and kindness and human compassion are becoming just a few more entries on the list of endangered species.”

Ryan pul ed me close. Wrapping my arms around him, I wept on his chest.

The lovemaking was slower, gentler that night. Cel os and a triangle, not drums and a crash cymbal.

Afterward, Ryan stroked my hair as I lay with my cheek nestled in the hol ow beneath his col arbone.

Drifting off, I felt Birdie hop onto the bed and curl behind me. The clock ticked softly. Ryan’s heart thudded with a peaceful, steady rhythm. Though perhaps not happy, I felt secure.

It was the last I’d feel safe for a long, long time.

14

ILOOKED AT THE CLOCK. FOUR TWENTY-THREE. BIRDIE WAS GONE.Ryan was snoring softly beside me.

I’d been dreaming about Tamela Banks. I lay there a minute, trying to reassemble fragmented images.

Gideon Banks. Geneva. Katy. A baby. A pit.

My dreams are usual y a piece of cake. My mind takes recent events and weaves them into nocturnal mosaics. No subliminal puzzlers. No Freudian brainteasers.

So what the hel was this dream al about?

Guilt over my failure to return Geneva Banks’s cal ?

I’d tried.

Twice.

Guilt for not tel ing my daughter about Ryan?

Katy had met him when she dropped Boyd off.

Met him, yes.

Fear for Tamela? Sadness over her baby?

Then my mind was off and running.

Why was Tamela Banks’s driver’s license at a farm belonging to Sonny Pounder, a man recently busted for dealing drugs? Had Tamela gone there with Darryl Tyree? Did the cocaine belong to Tyree? To Pounder? Why had it been left in the basement?

Where was Tamela?

Where was Darryl Tyree?

A sudden terrible thought.

Could the victim in the privy be Tamela Banks? Had Darryl Tyree kil ed her out of fear she’d reveal what had happened to the baby? Out of anger that the child wasn’t his?

But that was impossible. The bones in the privy were devoid of flesh. Tamela’s baby was found only a week ago.

But when had the infant died?

I recapped what I knew about timing.