I listened to two squirrels argue. I watched a thunderhead balloon on the horizon. I opened my Bible to a random page and dropped my finger to the text for guidance. The verse was no help. A list of names of the sons of Noah, the sons of Japheth, the sons of Gomer. All the while I kept expecting Czarnecki to step out of the cabin, snorting, spitting, and blowing smoke, but he never did.

About noon I walked over and called for him. There was no response. The cabin door was open, but the screen was closed. I climbed onto the porch and shouted again. Again, no answer. The flag hanging next to the door flapped once, loudly, like a whip cracking. A fat black horsefly circled and buzzed off toward the shed.

Cupping my eyes, I peered through the screen, nose pressed to the mesh. A patch of sunlight lay on the empty bed like a brilliant quilt. Another spilled off the table onto the floor. The bright spots only made the rest of the room darker. I had to squint to penetrate the gloom.

The first thing to come into focus was one of the chairs that’d been next to the table. It lay on its back in front of the fireplace now. The rack that held the fireplace tools had toppled, too, and the poker, shovel, and broom were strewn across the hearth. I raised my eyes higher, dread a dark fizz in my chest, and there was Czarnecki, two feet off the floor, dangling from a rope thrown over a roof beam.

I rushed into the cabin, but it was too late. The old man was dead, had been for some time. One end of the rope was tied to a steel hook screwed into the wall, the other had been twisted into a noose. It wasn’t an easy death. His tongue was nearly chewed through.

“You sonofabitch,” I said. He’d laid his burdens—the rovers, Mr. Otto’s crusade, the kid—on me, and I doubted I was strong enough to bear them. I came close to walking out to the van and driving off, close to turning my back on the whole nightmare and returning home. But I’m not that kind of man, and I think you know it, baby. I hope you do, anyway.

It was too much to contemplate the big picture right then, so I focused on what was in front of me. Czarnecki’s body had to be dealt with, and there’d be no police or coroners or funeral homes involved.