“It was real nice of you to bring over all this food,” I said to Grant.

“The new freezer’s a tad smaller than I’d planned, so I had to do something with this chow, y’know?”

I grinned at his white lie. “How’s the Hangman coming along?”

“I look to re-open in about two weeks.”

“You gonna replace the old jukebox?”

He stopped for a moment, thought about something, then shook his head. “You know, I don’t think I will. It works just fine. In fact, I’m getting rid of that new one.”

The Reverend came up behind me. “Are you two finished with this architectural discussion? I could use Sam’s help.”

“You can always use Sam’s help,” said Grant. “In fact, I wonder if you’d get anything done if you didn’t have Sam’s help.”

“And yours, and Ted’s, and God’s. I am useless without any of you.”

Grant laughed. “Just wanted to hear you say it.”

“It’s unbecoming of you, Grant. Fishing for a compliment.”

“Been a bad couple of months. But you don’t want to hear about my dreadful personality problems.”

“Your lips to God’s ear.”

They looked at one another and smiled. The Reverend took hold of my elbow and we fell into step behind the sheriff.

“This guy was in pretty bad shape,” said Jackson, “so Grant and I put him back in your office. Hope you don’t mind too much.”

“As long as he hasn’t puked on everything.”

Jackson grinned. “Not that kind of bad shape. The guy was shit-scared half out of his mind. Wanted to be put someplace where no one could see him.”

“Did he get here before or after Bill Emerson?”

“After.” Jackson grinned. “Can’t say any of us were much help to Bill.”

“Still no word about Joe, then?”

“Afraid not. I’ve got my deputies out looking for him, as well, now. Don’t worry, we’ll find him.”

“God, I hope so.”

We arrived at the door to the Reverend’s office-slash-living quarters. Jackson gripped the doorknob, then looked at us. “I was kinda into Parallax, too, when I was younger. That’s why I about fell over when I saw who this was.” He opened the door and we stepped into the room.

Byron Knight—that’s right, the Byron Knight—was laying on a cot beside the Reverend’s desk. It had been almost 30 years since anyone had seen him. Most people who cared to remember him at all assumed that he was dead, what with his dramatic disappearance back in the early 1980s.

The years had not been good to him. His once muscular frame—featured on the covers of both Rolling Stone and Melody Maker the same month—was now an emaciated ruin. The clothes he wore were torn, patched, and tattered. And the sickly gray pallor of his skin betrayed an illness I was all-too familiar with: cancer. I’d watched it slowly chew my mother to death after Dad abandoned us when I was twelve.

“The source of the ulceration,” whispered the Reverend.

“The source of the what?” asked Jackson.