get Jenny Hart out of bed.”

“I think she already knows. Larry Cortt heard about it, asked me, I confirmed, and since they were pretty close, he went over there,” Schickel said. “I know you think you should have done it, but the word was going all over the place, and I thought it was better that she heard it from a friend than having a neighbor banging on her door with a rumor.”

Coakley patted him on the shoulder: “Thanks, Gene. You did good. I better get over there.”

Schickel said, “Dunn’s heel is gone; he’s gong to need a lot of rehab, but they say he’ll keep his foot.”

A mustachioed cop came over and said to Coakley, “I brought four of the kids in. They were pretty freaked and I was talking to them. . . . These kids are messed up. It’s not just old guys with the young girls; they’re doing the young boys, too, some of them. Everybody’s doing everybody.”

“You know which boys? You get their names?” Virgil asked.

“I got them, but I’ll tell you what—their folks told them that it was all right, it’s what Jesus wanted. Honest to God, I got so mad I couldn’t spit. If we wanted to do the right thing, we’d take these people outside and shoot ’em.”

Coakley said, “I know what you mean, Buddy, but keep your voice down, okay?” And she said to Virgil: “That’s why Loewe was scared—if he was involved with boys.”

“He may have been one of the boys himself,” Virgil said. “Probably was.”

Coakley said, “I’m going.”

VIRGIL WENT THROUGH to the jail and found that while the men were being processed into cells, the women were being handcuffed to chairs brought down from the County Commission chambers. No space for them all.

Back in the sheriff’s office, he took the box of photographs from the Rouse place into Coakley’s office, threw them on a table, and began sorting them. Some showed only clothed people, and they went into a pile; some showed nude people, or sexually engaged adults, and they went into another pile. Others showed adults with children, or partners who might be children, and they went into a third pile.

When he was done, he counted them: 436 photographs.

Then he took the third pile, sat down, and began to scan them. Ten minutes in, he found a shot that showed a nude girl, probably thirteen or fourteen, and a nude man, both on their feet, as though they were chatting; the foot of a bed was off to one side, and the photo was poorly framed, as though Rouse had taken it surreptitiously. From the background, Emmett Einstadt peered at the two nude people.

That was good enough, he thought. And he said aloud, into the space, “I got you, you old sonofabitch.”

He went slowly through the others, found one more with Einstadt, and a dozen more with Kristy Rouse and various men.

He thought about Rouse: she was, as she’d so insanely said earlier, undoubtedly damaged. He wondered how much more damage testimony and trials would do, and whether they’d be worth the damage. Whether it’d be possible to confine the damage to a few kids . . . if it would be possible to find those children who’d been most widely abused, and use only their testimony, while letting the other children slide away.

He wondered if they’d be allowed to slide away: he wondered if the media would let them.

Coakley came in, shut the door, and he stepped over to her, pressed her against the wall, kissed her, asked, “Are you okay?”

“No, I’m not.” She held on to his shoulders and said, “I’m really screwed up.”

“It’s not going to get better,” he said. He took her arm, guided her to her desk chair, and pushed the two photos with Einstadt across her desk. “I’m gonna go get him.”

“Right now?”

“We’ve got enough work here for two weeks, but Einstadt was a leader in the church, and I want him. I want him before he has a chance to run,” Virgil said. “I think we should go as soon as we can round up enough cops.”

She got on her phone, dialed, said, “Step in here a minute, will you?” hung up, and asked, “What else?”

“I’m not sure you understand how big a deal this is going to be....”

A woman deputy stuck her head in the door and said, “You rang?”

“We need at least ten guys for a fast run out into the countryside, to snatch a guy. We need vests,