they crack the church, you’re going to spend your senior days in the state penitentiary. The only lucky thing for you is, you’re too old to last long. They told me: thirty years. Thirty years for knowing about Kelly. You think somebody won’t crack, looking at thirty years?”

“What else?”

Loewe had the old man’s attention now: his green eyes were half-shut, focused.

“Oh, heck, they wanted to know if I’d had a relationship with Bob Tripp, they wanted to know about my relationship with Kelly Baker. They wanted to know if she had a sexual relationship with Jake—they’re that far down the road, Emmett. They asked about Birdy Olms—”

“What about Birdy?”

“I don’t know. They asked where she went. I said I didn’t know . . . ’cause I don’t.”

Einstadt was peering at him.

Loewe asked, “Do you know?”

Einstadt turned away, then said, almost pensively, into the windshield, “Flowers was down at the Main Street, asked about Liberty.”

Loewe bobbed his head and said, “Well, there you go, Emmett. There’s only one way to know about Liberty—somebody told him.”

“All right,” Einstadt said. “I’m going to talk to some of the others. We’ll figure this out. You sit tight—you don’t know anything about anything. We’ll ride it out. We had a problem like this thirty years back, rode it out.”

“Emmett—”

His voice harsh, a prophet’s voice, Einstadt said, “Keep down, keep your mouth shut. Like you said, if you talk about anything, you’re gone. It’s not only Jacky Shoen you fucked. If the whole thing comes out, there won’t be no deal strong enough for you.”

They looked at each other for a minute, then Loewe said, his voice calmer, “I believe you can take care of it, Emmett. That’s why I called. But you need to know how serious this is. I’m going home. I’ll keep my mouth shut. I’ll even pray. But you gotta do something.”

Einstadt nodded and said, “Take off.”

LOEWE GOT OUT of the Silverado, back into his Ford. Watched, slumped in his seat, as Einstadt wheeled out.

Thought, San Francisco.

His folks didn’t need him, with the crops in for the year. His old man could handle the winter work on his own.

Loewe looked at his watch: he could go home, load up, and be in Omaha by dark. Thought about it a little more. Maybe not, he thought. If something happened, they could put out an alert to the highway patrols between here and there, and pick him up.

He needed to sell the truck in Minnesota. Up in the Cities. List it on the Internet, Craigslist, with a low enough price, and it’d be gone in a day. Get a bank draft for it, put it in the bank, then yank the money out in cash. Take off. Three days. That way, if something broke, they couldn’t track him across the country. . . .

EINSTADT PULLED OUT of the rest stop thinking about those damn women. He didn’t worry about Liberty, because Liberty was dead, and there wasn’t anything anybody could do about that, including the World of Law. He didn’t worry much—maybe a little—about Loewe, because Loewe had a taste for the boys, and he was right: if the World of Law found out about it, they’d call him a predator and put him in jail forever. So he would keep his mouth shut.

But those damn women: Kathleen Spooner and Birdy Olms. Spooner had gone and shot Crocker and should never have done that. Never. Crocker was a cop, and the other cops would never let go, now that they knew he’d been murdered.

And Flowers, blabbing all over the place, had hinted that there was some DNA involved. DNA was the latest curse from the World of Law. If they had DNA on her, they could use her as a wedge to open up everything.

Then there was Birdy. Birdy wouldn’t listen to anybody about anything. Even after her initiation, she’d continued to fight them. Finally, she’d run away. In some ways, it was a relief; in other ways, a threat. She was still out there, somewhere. They’d never heard a peep from her, but she’d cleaned out her husband’s cash and tax account before she left, and had enough cash to hide pretty thoroughly.

Now, maybe, they should take another stab at finding her.

First, something had to be done about Spooner. He thought about that for a long time, to the first exit, across the bridge, back onto I-90, and finally called his oldest son, Leonard, and told him they needed to meet. “Tell Junior