David nodded sympathetically, feeling like an asshole for bringing it up in the first place.

“He was lookin’ for that little girl I told you about, the one who used to—”

David threw a quick glance at him and shook his head sharply. Helen was upstairs, but Jessie might overhear and understand. This was the wrong time for that to come out.

“—well, you know, he was one of them,” Hank continued, with only a slight pause. “The only one in the search party we lost, thank God. It was bitter cold last month.”

“It’s bitter cold right now.”

“Aw, this ain’t nothin’,” Hank grinned, accepting the obvious bait. “Why, when I was about ten, we had a storm…”

The conversation drifted off onto other things. Hank stayed for over an hour, they finished the six-pack, and when he left David had forgotten about Joe Thibideau entirely.

By the time he thought of him again, it would be almost too late for it to matter.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Robert Babcock (Bobby, to his friends) was having a hard time with his tie. He had never been much for suits, ties or sports coats (this was at least partially because they would not allow sufficient room for his enormous belly, and made him feel light-headed), and now that the town had finally decided to go ahead with this funeral, he wasn’t sure he wanted to go. Joe had been his friend and a damned good deputy, too. His funeral would be a pretty goddamned bitter experience for everyone. At this point, Bobby didn’t know how many of the twenty-seven-man search party blamed themselves for Joe’s death, he just knew he did, at least a little bit. On top of all that, he had to get into this goddamned jacket and tie.

And the bitch of it all is that we don’t know he’s dead, he thought, though that wasn’t true. Nobody survived out in those woods for a month without food or shelter. Still, there was something inside of Bobby Babcock that just wouldn’t let go.

He sighed, giving his stomach one last gasp of freedom before he donned the blue blazer, and turned away from the mirror. He looked like shit anyway. Why bother? It had been one hell of a February in St. Boudin, and he had bags under his eyes the size of pump- kins to prove it. First Eddie, then the girl, and now Joe. Too many deaths for such a small town. And the only body they’d come up with was Eddie’s; Joe and the girl would not turn up until spring, and maybe not even then. They just didn’t know where to look.