let me put Marvel on.”

She took the phone and said, “Something else, I can’t stand it. There’s a rumor that Harold went off to Memphis with Sherrie. I don’t believe it for a second.”

“Is she missing? Sherrie?” I was afraid the fraud was audible in my voice. If it was, she didn’t hear it.

“Can’t find her,” Marvel said. “I was supposed to warn her against going to work, but I was with John, and shit

I forgot. Fuck me, I forgot.” There was a tone of finality in her voice, with an undertone of bitter anger.

“Jesus, forgot?” And now Sherrie was dead. I wanted to shout at her but I couldn’t. “There’s no chance that they did go off?” I was floundering, trying to react the right way, when I didn’t feel any of it. I had already reacted to the murders the moment that I saw them and this, now, was just playacting, deceiving a woman I liked.

“No!” She almost shouted it. “What do you think they are?”

“Marvel, I don’t know what to tell you. I didn’t see this coming.”

“Neither did I.” She sighed. “We should have known. We’re playing with fire.”

“Keep hoping,” I suggested. “Maybe

I don’t know

Look: Let me talk to John again.”

John came back on the phone. “Yeah?”

“Listen, if something was done to Harold and the woman

This Hill guy, the guy who came to see you with Ballem, is the town muscle. He’s nuts, I think - a psycho. You can take care of yourself, but there’s Marvel now, and her friends. People in town must know she was tight with Harold

“

“I’ve got some people coming down from Memphis,” John said. “Don’t worry about us, and don’t worry about what Duane Hill might do. If he gives us any shit, Duane’ll need a new head.”

John talked to Ballem again the next morning, and this time Dessusdelit sat in.

“Like a crow,” John said. “She sat there with her head bobbing up and down, like she was pecking on me.”

John had parked the white BMW on the street outside the lawyer’s office, where everybody might have a chance to look it over. In his time as an underground activist in Memphis, he’d picked up the language of municipal development; the three of them, John said, had an intense discussion of tax increment financing. When he left, Ballem was seeking references to TI financing in the state statutes.

They were excited, he said, but something else, too.

“This Dessusdelit woman, man, she looks fucked up. I mean, she looked a little crazy. Are you sure she’s all right?”

“She always seemed wrapped a little too tight, if anything,” I said.

“Not now,” John said. “She looked frazzled.”