Spencerville

here.”
    “Told ya. Too bad, though. Need more people. That’ll be twenty-one dollars and seventy-two cents.”
    Keith paid him, and Arles bagged. Arles said, “Next time you come through, you’ll see this place closed.”
    Keith said to Bob Arles, “Your wife did the right thing. You know that.”
    “Yeah, maybe. But I don’t need Chief Baxter for an enemy, and I don’t need to start over again at my age.”
    “I wouldn’t count on Baxter being chief much longer.”
    “Yeah? Ya think?”
    “You read the transcript of the St. James meeting?”
    He nodded.
    “What do
you
think?”
    “Well… the man ought to have better control over his dick.” Arles smiled. “Hey, you know why men give their penises names? ’Cause they don’t want a total stranger makin’ ninety percent of their decisions.” Arles laughed and slapped the counter. “Get it?”
    “Sure do.”
    Arles got serious again and said, “But this other stuff they’s sayin’ he did… like fillin’ up his private car here for free… hell, even if it was true, which it ain’t, nobody got hurt. Now, the thing about him and those women, well, my wife says that makes him unfit to be police chief. I don’t know, because I don’t know if them women is lyin’, or what. But I do know that those kinds of charges ain’t doin’ much for his home life. Hey, you know Mrs. Baxter?”
    “We were schoolmates.”
    “Yeah? Well, that’s a fine, fine woman. She don’t have to hear that kind of crap from those sluts what got up in church, brazen as can be, and told all.”
    “Try to make the next meeting. My regards to Mrs. Arles. You should be with her.” Keith picked up the bag and left.
    From a pay phone around the side of the convenience store, he called Charlie Adair’s house and got the answering machine. He said, “Charlie, my plans are postponed. I’ll get back to you in a day or two. Sorry I can’t make it tonight. Regards to Katherine. Meantime, if you call my home phone, assume it’s tapped by Police Chief Baxter, who has this crazy idea that I’m interested in his wife. Stewart did a great job. He should be back before midnight. I’m still thinking about the job offer. Can I have a grow-light in my basement office? Tell the president I said hi. Speak to you.”
     
    *  *  *
     
    At about nine o’clock that evening, Keith figured he’d been up for about thirty-six hours straight, and he got ready for bed. He opened the drawer of his nightstand and saw that the Glock was missing.
    He thought a moment. The Porters knew where the key was, but they wouldn’t help themselves to the pistol. He looked through his wardrobe cabinets and noticed now that things were slightly disturbed.
    Obviously, Baxter had gotten into his house, which, for a policeman with at least one or two locksmiths on call, was not difficult.
    Nothing seemed to be missing except the pistol, and there was nothing compromising in the house for him to be concerned about. He’d burned Annie’s last letters to him, and her past letters of two decades had gone through one government paper shredder or another. He wasn’t much of a saver, and he was glad now that he wasn’t.
    Letters aside, the Glock was gone, and Baxter had been through his things. That was reason enough to kill the man, and he would have except for his promise, and except for the fact that Baxter was about to lose his wife, his job, his friends, and his town. Death, as the expression went, was too good for him.
    Keith found his old K-bar knife and put it on his nightstand. He turned off the lights and went to sleep.
     
    *  *  *
     
    He awoke at dawn, showered and dressed, and went downstairs. It was a cool, crisp Sunday morning, and when he went outside, he could see his breath. He walked to the cornfield and peeled back the husk on an ear. The color was about right, and so was the dry, paper-thin husk. Almost but not quite ready. Another week or two, weather permitting.
    He walked around the farmyard, surveyed the buildings, the fences, the grounds. All in all, he’d done a good job, and all it took was some money, a lot of time, and backbreaking labor. He didn’t know, really, why he’d done it, what the objective was, but he felt good about it. He knew he’d touched things, fixed things, that his father and uncle had touched and tinkered with, as had his grandfather. There weren’t many physical remains from his great-grandfather’s day, or his great-great-grandfather, the