“We just use local mortuaries,” he said. “The one we’re headed for is just a couple blocks up. We’ll be there in a minute.”

They were out of the garage now, heading north on the one-way street that ran past the courthouse.

“Another thing’s a little different out here,” the sergeant went on. “At least, different in our county. The sheriff’s also the coroner. So, in effect, I’m acting as coroner right now.” He looked at Hook. “In case you were wondering.”

Hook nodded assent, a numb understanding. But he still could not speak. He had the feeling that the air was thinning, its oxygen content growing less by the second. He could barely breathe. His mouth was dry. The sergeant turned off on a side street and two blocks farther pulled into a parking lot behind the mortuary, a sprawling pale-pink building with meticulously kept grounds and a wrought-iron sign identifying the place as Bowman Brothers. Hook managed to get out of the car by pulling himself up, but he felt so unsteady on his feet that for a few moments he just stood there holding on to the door while Rider strode on ahead of him toward the building. Then, seeing that Hook was not with him, he stopped and turned.

“You okay?” he asked.

Hook threw the car door closed and started after him, on legs he could not feel.

“We better go around the front,” Rider said. “You never know what you’ll run into in these back rooms.”

The reception room was large and plush, presided over by a blue-haired lady with a voice as soft as the carpet under their feet. Mr. Bowman would be right with them, she said. He was just down the hall, in one of the “slumber” rooms. She had used the word, actually used it, without the slightest trace of a smile. And when the mortician appeared, Hook was not surprised to see that the man looked exactly like the woman, only male, with his face congealed in the same decorous mask of professional sympathy. One of the sergeant’s beefy hands lightly prodded Hook, indicating for him to move on, and he followed the mortician down a corridor and through a six-foot-wide door into a small antiseptic room divided by a plastic curtain. Without ceremony, the mortician went to the corner of the curtain and drew it open—on the body. It was long and thin, stretching the full length of the wheeled table under a clean white sheet. The mortician, ready, looked at the sergeant, who nodded for him to go ahead. The mortician drew back the sheet.

It was Chris.

So that execution which had begun on the farm with Chief Janson, and had been temporarily called back by the word suicide, was consummated now. Looking at his son, seeing even under the discoloration and swelling the beauty of the boy’s spirit manifest in every line and contour of his face, Hook felt his own death, the end of that life he had worked so patiently to rebuild out of the ashes of his wife’s passing. Now it was gone. He would never rebuild. He would never really live again.