Whatever the hell was going on, he didn’t like it. People were acting strange lately. He’d seen cabin fever before, but this wasn’t it. Besides, the winter hadn’t been any harder than usual, and if people weren’t used to the snow by now, well then they had better get the hell out and go find Florida, because the sun wasn’t due in St. Boudin for another few weeks at least.

And whoever had killed Eddie, whatever sick and pissed off son of a bitch had done that little bit of late Christmas carving, was still out there. It had taken them a day just to get an ID on his body, and they had never found the head. Privately, Bobby prayed they never would. Maybe he had made a mistake sending Joe and the others out looking for the girl so late at night. Maybe he should have called in for backup a long time ago. Maybe…

Fuck the maybes, he thought. Don’t be stupid. The truth of the matter was, if he had called for help, St. Boudin would be a war zone about now. And that would mean trouble politically. That would mean even more pressure on him, and with that he just might go under. The new hydroelectric facility meant jobs, money, life to this town, and he couldn’t afford to screw it up by bringing in some bad publicity. Besides, for all he knew, whoever had killed the farmer had moved on a long time ago, or died out in those woods. He had no reason to suspect foul play with the girl or with Joe. Just because they hadn’t found the bodies didn’t mean a goddamned thing.

At the moment, Bobby Babcock was doing a very good job convincing himself that he had done something right, though with every passing day that became harder and harder to do. He had spent most of his childhood in St. Boudin, moved there when he was six from Fort Kent in Maine, been promoted through the ranks until he had finally reached the top (or as close to the top as you could be in a small town), but he still felt like he didn’t quite measure up, like the town watched him a little more carefully than they might anyone else. He was an American. And though the cultures seemed to mix here in St. Boudin, an American was still a foreigner. He had to watch himself all the way, or he would step in something that smelled real bad, and would make him smell real bad too.

He prayed to God this February wasn’t it.