The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove

the ranchland.Emergency services has the area gridded out. We have to cover the whole grid. I was going to call in some deputies to help us. The volunteer fire guys are exhausted from the explosion this morning."
    "No.None of my guys. Don't call the Highway Patrol or the CCC either.And no aircraft. If the grid on the ranch has to be checked off, then check it off. No one goes on that land, is that clear?"
    "And what if the kid actually is on the ranch.You're talking about a thousand acres of pasture and forest that won't be searched."
    "Oh bullshit, the kid is probably in a tree house somewhere with a stack of Playboys. He's only been missing for what, twelve hours?"
    "What if he's not?"
    There was silence on the line for a moment. Theo waited, watching three new couples leave the Head of the Slug in less than a minute. New couples: in Pine Cove everyone knew who everyone else was dating, and these were people who didn't go together. Not that unusual a phenomenon perhaps on a Friday night at 2 A.M., but this was Wednesday and it was barely eight o'clock. Maybe he wasn't the only one feeling a wave of horniness. The couples were groping each other as if trying to get all the foreplay out of the way before they reached the car.
    Burtoncame back on the line. "I'll see that the ranchland is searched and call you if they find the kid.
    But I want to be the first to know if you find him."
    "That it?"
    "Find that little fucker, Crowe."Burton hung up.
    Theo got into his Volvo and drove to his cabin at the edge of the ranch. There were at least twenty citizen volunteers searching for Mikey Plotznik. The effort could spare him long enough to catch a shower and change his smoke-saturated clothes. As he parked the Volvo, an expensive, tricked-out red pickup truck pulled into the ranch entrance and rolled slowly by. As they passed, a Hispanic man sitting in the bed laughed and saluted Theo with the barrel of an AK-47 assault rifle.
    Theo looked away and walked to the dark cabin, wishing that there was someone there waiting for him. eleven Catfish Catfish awoke to find a paint-spattered woman padding about the house in nothing but a pair of wool socks, in which she had stuck several sable brushes that delivered ochre, olive, and titanium white strokes to her calves whenever she moved. Canvases were propped on easels, chairs, counters, and windowsills – seascapes every one. Estelle moved from canvas to canvas, palette in hand, furiously painting details in the waves and beaches.
    "Y'all woke up inspired," Catfish said.
    It was past dusk, they had slept away the daylight. Estelle painted by the light of fifty candles and the orange glow that washed from the open doors of the wood stove. Color correctness be damned, these paintings should be viewed by fire.
    Estelle stopped painting and raised her brush arm to cover her breasts. "They weren't finished. I knew something was missing when I painted them, but I didn't know what until now."
    Catfish cinched his pants around his waist and walked shirtless among the paintings. The waves writhed with tail and scale and teeth and talon. Predator eyes shone out of the canvases, brighter, it seemed, than the candles that lit them.
    "You done painted that old girl in all of 'em?"
    "It's not a girl. It's male."
    "How you know that?"
    "I know." Estelle turned and went back to her painting. "I feel it."
    "How you know it look like that?"
    "It does, doesn't it? It looks like this?"
    Catfish scratched the stubble on his chin and pondered the paintings."Close. But it ain't a boy.That ol' monster the same one come after me an Smiley for catchin its little one."
    Estelle stopped painting and turned to him. "You have to play tonight?"
    "In a little while."
    "Coffee?"
    He stepped up to her, took the brush and palette from her, and kissed her on the forehead. "That sho' would be sweet."
    She padded to the bedroom and came back wearing a tattered kimono. "Tell me, Catfish. What happened?"
    He was sitting at the table. "I think we done broke a record. I'm sore."
    Estelle smiled in spite of herself, but pressed on. "What happened back then, in the bayou? Did you call that thing up out of the water somehow?"
    "What you thinkin, woman?I can do that, you think I be playin clubs for drinks and part the door?"
    "Tell me how you felt back then, when that thing came out of the swamp."
    "Scared."
    "Besides that."
    "Wasn'tnothing besides that. You heard it. Scared is all there is."
    "You weren't scared after we got