For the first time since I’d known him, I heard anger in Allen’s voice, anger directed at me.

“No, not at all,” I said.

“I’m going up there to cover a story to its conclusion, not to be somebody’s mouthpiece. But yes, if I have to choose a side, I’m on Kowalsky’s.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, touching his wrist with my hand. “I wasn’t criticizing you.”

Allen’s voice softened.

“I’m just a little defensive today. Some woman left a message on my answering machine last night. She told me I was trying to single-handedly destroy the Tamassee River, and the only reason was because I couldn’t get past my own daughter’s death.”

“That was a cruel thing to say.”

“But maybe it’s true. I said much the same thing to you the other night.”

We were near the top of Stumphouse now, nearly 2,500 feet above sea level. In the woods a few dogwood blossoms lingered like stars in a dawn sky.

“I’ve got one more question for you,” I said.

Allen glanced at me warily. “Let’s hear it,” he said.

“Does Elvilyn take after her dad or her mom?”

“Definitely her mom,” Allen said. “She has the same peroxide-blond hair.”

“What further proof does anyone need?”

“I agree,” Allen said. “Seeing is believing.” He freed his wrist from my hand to check his watch. “It’s a good thing we made that pit stop to eat. We barely have enough time to check in before heading to the meeting.”

We passed the Laurel Mist development sign. The bullet holes in the fawn had been caulked.

“I’ve got a question for you,” Allen said. “Why, if you majored in English, do you use a camera instead of a word processor? I mean, was it an aesthetic or philosophical choice?”

“More a wanting-to-be-employed choice, at least at first,” I said. “My first boss said my writing was too florid, that if I was going to imitate a writer it should be Hemingway, not Faulkner. He had a point. I’d spend three paragraphs describing the inside of the Moose Lodge when he wanted two hundred words on their latest membership drive.”

“So you don’t necessarily view us wordsmiths as inferior.”

“Not at all,” I said. “You’re the one making judgments in that department.”

Allen groaned. “As I’ve said before, that was a youthful indiscretion. I’ll admit right here and now that there have been times when pictures were truer than words. Am I going to have to sign a blood oath to convince you?”

“No, just a specific example.”

“The Civil War. You go back and read first-person newspaper accounts, and you’d think they’d been out there playing baseball four years. It’s Matthew Brady’s photographs that capture what really happened.”

“Like the photo of the dead rebel sharpshooter at Gettysburg?”

“Exactly,” Allen said.

“That photograph was staged.”