and tonic from the arm of the redwood chair. He drank it standing up, one hand propped on his hip, crunching the ice on his molars, chewing and swallowing the lime slice, his eyes fixed on the boiling rapids and the whirlpool farther down the river. When he touched his brow, it felt as tight and hard as a washboard.

The phone rang inside. He almost broke a toe on the back step getting to it before the message machine clicked on. ?Hello!? he gasped, out of breath.

?Dad??

?Who?d you expect?? he said, wondering why, of all the times in his life, he chose now to sound impatient and harsh with his son.

?Did Mom call??

?No. You don?t know where she is??

?She left us at Barnes and Noble. She was going back for something at the deli. That was an hour ago.?

?Kate and Ruth are with you? Y?all are still in San Antonio??

?Yeah, but the deli is only three blocks from here. Where would she go??

?Did she go back to Mrs. Bernstein?s??

?No, Mrs. Bernstein went to Houston with her daughter. We went all this way to deliver the brownies, and she wasn?t there.?

?Did you see any strange guys around y?all? Like somebody watching or following y?all??

?No. What strange guys? I thought all that stuff you were worried about was over. Where?s Mom??

PAM TIBBS AND Hackberry Holland drove in their borrowed cruiser on a winding two-lane road that followed a dry creek bed bordered by cottonwoods that were bending hard in the wind, the torn leaves flying high in the air. To the east they could see irrigated ranchland and a long horizontal limestone formation that resembled a Roman wall traversing the bottom of a hill. The cruiser was shaking in the wind, grit and the needlelike leaves of juniper trees ticking against the windshield. They entered what appeared to be another domain, one that was dry and cluttered with brush and spiked plants and thick tangles of undergrowth, one that seemed abandoned to Darwinian forces, all of it surrounded by huge wire-mesh game fences of the kind one sees along highways in the Canadian Rockies.

?Shit, what was that?? Pam said, her head jerking sideways at something they had just passed.

Hackberry looked through the back window while Pam drove. ?I think that?s called an oryx or something like that. I?ve always had a fantasy about these places. What if the patrons were allowed to hunt one another? The fences could be electrified, and the boys could go inside the fences with three-day licenses to blow one another all over the brush. I think there?s a lot of merit to that idea.? He heard her laughing under her breath. ?What?? he said.

?God, you?re a case,? she said.

?I?m supposed to be your administrative superior, Pam. Why is it I can?t adequately convey that simple concept to you??

?Search me, boss.?

He gave up and remained silent as they continued down the road, the cottonwoods and pebble-strewn creek bed gone, the terrain one of twisting arroyos, brush-covered hills, and flat expanses of hardpan where trophy animals as diverse as bison, elk, gazelles, and eland grazed. It was a surreal place sealed off by hills that seemed to suck light into shade, lidded by clouds that were as yellow and coarse as sulfur.

?I?ve got to tell you something,? Pam said.

He continued to look out the window and didn?t answer.

?I think sometimes you go to a place inside yourself that isn?t good. I think that?s where you are now. I think that?s where you?ve been all day.?

?What place might that be??

?How can anyone know? You never share it with anyone, least of all me.?

He stared at her profile for a long time, somehow thinking he could force her to look him squarely in the eye, to make her admit the nature of her assault on his sensibilities. But she was unrelenting in her concentration on the road, her hands set in the ten-two position on the wheel.

?When this is over?? he said.

?You?ll what??

?Take you out for dinner. Or give you a few days off. Something like that.?

She closed her eyes for a second, then opened them as though com ing out of a trance. ?All I can say is I have never in my life met anyone like you,? she said. ?Absolutely no one. Never.?

They went around a curve and saw an archway over a cattle guard and, at the end of an asphalt driveway, a two-story log building with a peaked green metal roof. The logs in the building had