Could be. I noticed that the Chevy, Pinto, and pickups remained exactly where they'd been the day before.

I checked the time. Two-thirty. Crowe wouldn't be back yet.

Now what?

I requested a phone directory and was handed a 1996 edition, dogeared and reeking of petroleum products. Two hands were required to part the pages.

While there was no entry for the Eternal Light Holiness-Pentecostal House of God, I did find a listing for L. Bowman on Swayney Creek Road. P/T knew the intersection but could provide nothing more. I thanked him and returned to Ryan's car.

Folowing P/T's instructions, I headed out of town. As he'd predicted, Swayney Creek dead-ended into Highway 19 between Ela and Bryson City. I stopped at a filing station to ask directions to Bowman's house.

The attendant was a kid of about sixteen with greasy black hair, separated down the crown and tucked behind the ears. White flecks littered his part like snowflakes along a muddy creek.

The kid put down his comic and glanced at me, his eyes scrunched as though sensitive to light. Picking a cigarette from a scaloped metal dish, he drew deeply, then jerked his chin in the direction of Swayney Creek.

'It's about two miles north.' Smoke bilowed out with his answer.

'Which side?'

'Look for a green mailbox.'

Walking out, I felt squinty eyes on my back.

Swayney Creek was a thin black tongue that dropped sharply after leaving the highway. The road descended for the next half mile, then leveled off and passed through a long stretch of mixed-conifer forest. A creek ran along one side, the water so clear I could see individual pebbles littering the bottom.

Driving north, I passed few signs of habitation. Then the road curved east, climbed slightly, and I spotted an opening in the trees, a rusty green mailbox to its right. Drawing close, I saw the name 'Bowman' carved on a plaque hung below the box with two short segments of chain.

I turned onto the dirt lane and crept forward, hoping I had the right Bowman. Pine, spruce, and hemlock towered above, choking off al but a few shoots of sunlight. Fifty yards up, Luke Bowman's house squatted like a solitary sentinel guarding the forest road.

The reverend lived in a weathered frame bungalow, with a porch at one end and a shed at the other. Together they were stacked with enough firewood to heat a medieval castle. Bright turquoise awnings angled over windows to either side of the front door, looking as out of place in the gloom as the Golden Arches on a synagogue.

The 'front yard' was black with shade and carpeted with a thick mat of leaves and pine needles. A gravel path crossed it, leading from the door to a rectangle of gravel at the road's end.