“Some cops don’t,” Patricia replied in a sympathetic tone of voice. “Some become drunks. Some beat their wives. Some abuse the people they deal with in the course of duty. Some quit for another profession. Some go off the deep end. And some blow their brains out.”

“And you?” I asked, glancing over again.

“Oh, me?” she replied with a smile. “Every once in a while, I take stock of where I am and give myself a great big psychic enema. I flush it all out, until I feel clean again.”

“How do you do that?” I asked, genuinely interested and concerned.

“I read once about a god of the Aztecs,” she said. “His name was the Filth Eater. Even though he sounded really rotten he was actually a very beneficent god. You would visit him at his temple with every nasty thing in your life. You told him of all the dirty, wicked, vicious, and disgusting things you had done, or witnessed, or that had been done to you. The Filth Eater would consume all the foulness you brought to him, and he would eat it entirely—leaving you clean and whole once again. In my own way, I have a Filth Eater. And sometimes, I have to give him the things I’ve collected.”

I glanced over again. “I’m glad,” I said. “And I think that’s probably what’s wrong with us as a species—too few of us have a Filth Eater—and eventually, the filth consumes us.”

“I see it every day,” she replied. “Every case I’ve ever had, you can follow a string of events as far back in a person’s life as you care to go, and still not know where it really started. But hey!” she said brightly. “Enough of that stuff, tell me about this church we’re going to.”

“Well, it probably puts the capital F in the word fundamentalist . So if you’ve never been to a Holy Roller church before, get ready for some excitement.”

“And your reason, again, for going?”

“I want to meet the preacher, Brother Rainwater. He may know something about Tonya Causey. He might be able to fill in some blanks and tell me something about her state of mind. It’s possible he knows something the mother doesn’t.”

“And you think he’ll tell you if he does?” Patricia queried.

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “But it’s a potential handle. And you know how it is—it’s sort of like dancing with the fat lady.”

“How’s that, Tanner?” She snorted.

“It’s not that you can’t do it,” I said, glancing over again. “It’s just a matter of where you grab hold of her.”

“Ohhh, you are such a funny man,” she said in a mocking voice as she gave me a punch on the shoulder. “And such a chauvinist.”