The next morning Marvel asked if we could meet her at the farm home of a friend, out in the country, well away from the river and the prying eyes of Longstreet.

“It’s safe and quicker than Greenville, and nobody will see your car,” she said. “Half an hour?”

“I’ll be there.”

LuEllen again decided to stay with the boat, away from new faces.

“You gonna be here when I get back?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said gravely. “I’m not leaving until we find some way to grease Hill and St. Thomas.”

Marvel’s friend’s name was Matron Carter, a plain, cheerful woman with short hair and good moves. She was shooting basketballs at a netless hoop hung on the side of a swaybacked, free-standing garage when I pulled into her yard. Marvel’s car was around back, next to a vacant chicken coop. A rusty forties-style power mower appeared to be permanently parked in knee-high grass under lilac bushes at the edge of the yard, and a pear tree and a half dozen aging apple trees marched in military file down the edge of an overgrown field.

“They’re waiting for you inside,” the woman said, dribbling the ball as she talked. She faked one way, turned the other, and popped a fifteen-foot jump shot.

“Nice shot,” I said.

“Do it for a living,” she answered, running down the ball. Marvel told me later that she was a gym teacher at Longstreet High School and coached the girls’ basketball teams.

The house was tired but comfortable. I went through the back door, through a kitchen, and into a small living room, where Marvel and John were sprawled on a broken-down couch.

“Harold’s dead,” Marvel said. She stopped me in my tracks.

“You found him?”

“We found his car. At Wal-Mart,” she said wearily. “And he’s gone. I can feel it. The motherfuckers took him someplace and killed him.”

Tears started running down her face, and John said quietly, “They go back to when they were babies. They were raised together.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said, running my fingers through my hair. I was gripped by the temptation to tell them the truth but instead blurted, “We need the FBI in here.”

“I don’t,” John said sharply. “I’ve had some problems with those boys. And we’ve still got to take this town. That’s the main thing.”

“Maybe Harold is OK. Maybe he had to take off for some reason,” I said fatuously. I wandered over to a window and looked out. Matron Carter was pumping a wrought-iron water pump and drinking from the spout as the water surged out of the ground. In the dappled sunlight in the yard she looked beautiful, not plain. “Maybe they scared him and he took off for Greenville or Helena.”

“And left his car at Wal-Mart?” John asked.