go up and try the door. . . . I mean, I’d knock first.”

“Just drive right up the driveway—”

“And knock, and leave me there if nobody answers, like you were looking for them, and then you left, in case anybody’s watching,” Virgil said. “And if somebody answers, we ask for the Rouse girl. Kristy. We ask her about Kelly.”

“What about a dog?”

“If there’s a dog, we leave,” Virgil said. “I don’t do dogs.”

“Ah, jeez, Virgil. I don’t know.” She looked at him anxiously. “If we get caught . . .”

“That would be a problem, but . . . I think it’s worth the risk. If what we think is happening, is happening.”

THERE WERE no dogs. There were two or three lights on in the house, but no answer to repeated, loud knocking. Virgil went back to the truck and said, “Take off.”

“You think you can get in?” she asked. She wanted him to say no.

“The door is loose. I think I can,” Virgil said. “I need my camera and my butter knife.”

“You carry a butter knife?”

“The Holiday Inn does. . . .”

He got his camera from the backseat, slung it over his neck, and she turned around, white-faced in the headlights reflected off the farmhouse, and took off. Virgil went to the door, rattled it a couple more times, then went to work with the butter knife. He needed a long, smooth curve in the blade, so he wouldn’t damage the wood around the old lock. He bent and re-bent the knife, finally got it right, felt it push back the bolt, and he was in.

He shouted, “Mr. Rouse? Mr. Rouse?” No answer. He whistled for the dog; no barking. He carefully wiped his feet, went up a short flight of steps, found himself in the kitchen, with a single fluorescent light over the stove. “Mr. Rouse?”

Up the stairs, into the Rouses’ bedroom. Stuck the flashlight in his mouth, began swiftly going through the bedroom drawers. Found a sex toy, a vibrator, a group of transparent negligees, but nothing else. Went quickly down the hall, more and more nervous, to another bedroom, the girl’s bedroom, checked her bureau, found more negligees. Negligees that were too old for her, negligees that might be worn by a woman in her forties.

Nothing else. Went back down the stairs, did a quick scan of the first floor, found a small office with a computer and two printers, one a small Canon photo printer along with a box full of blank 4x6 photo paper. Opened a closet and found a jumble of old photo equipment, including small 35mm film cameras and no fewer than three Polaroids, and a slide projector, but no slides. Pulled the drawers on four file cabinets.

No photos, no cameras.

Had to be photos somewhere, because he had that printer. Thought about it, hurried back up to the main bedroom, looked under the bed. Nothing there. Looked at the bedroom closets. One closet was fairly large, and jammed with clothes. The other was not much bigger than the door itself. Something wrong about that.

Virgil looked at the side wall, found a seam halfway up, hidden by the jackets in the closet. He pushed on it, and a hatch popped open. He lifted it: and inside, saw a stack of boxes, boxes jammed with photographs.

He lifted off the top one, an old boot box, and carried it to the bed. Photos. A hundred of them, maybe two hundred, or more, all about sex, a man with one or two women, two men with two or three women, two or three men with a woman.

Women and children.

With the flashlight in his mouth, he took a dozen of them, lined them up on the bed to rephotograph them.

The radio beeped, Coakley’s voice, harsh: “Somebody’s coming. They’re still a mile out.”

Virgil said, “Shit,” scooped up the photos, put the lid on the box, and, moving more slowly than he might have hoped, carefully put the box back in place. He had to struggle with the hatch, getting the pins matched up with snaps, and then he was down the stairs, through the kitchen, through the mudroom, and out, pulling the door shut behind him. He ran across the barnyard to the side of the barn, put the radio up, and said, “Where are they?”

“Still coming. Are you out?”

“I’m jogging down the driveway,” he said. “I see them now.”

The car was five or six hundred yards out, coming on at forty or fifty miles an hour, slow because