motel room where Isaac Clawson died, not knowing what was on the other side of the door, and stepped into a pool of Clawson?s blood, printing the carpet with it, printing the walkway outside, smearing it into the grit and worn fabric that marked the passage of a thousand low-rent trysts.

And that was the way he would always remember that moment?as one of ineptitude and unseemliness and violation. Later, after the arrival of a journalist and a photographer, someone had placed a hand towel over Clawson?s head and face. The towel didn?t cover his features adequately and provided him neither anonymity nor dignity. Instead, it seemed to add to the degradation done to him by the world.

The shooter, who was probably Preacher Jack Collins, had gotten away. In his wake, he had left the ultimate societal violation for others to clean up. For Hackberry, those details and none other would always define the death of Isaac Clawson. Also, he would never lose the sense that somehow, by stepping in Clawson?s blood, he had contributed to the degradation of Clawson?s person.

Hackberry used a second rag to wipe the moisture from the hose off his boots. When his boots were dry and clean and smooth to the touch, he slipped them on his feet and put his rags, his shoe brush, and the can of Kiwi polish in a paper bag, soaked the bag with charcoal starter, and burned it in the metal trash barrel by his toolshed. Then he sat down on the steps and looked at the sun rising above the poplars at the back of his property.

Inside the shadows, he saw a doe with twin fawns looking back at him. Two minutes later, Pam Tibbs pulled her cruiser into the driveway and rang the bell.

?Back here,? Hackberry yelled.

When she came around the side of the house, she was holding a thermos in one hand and a bag of doughnuts in the other. ?You get some sleep?? she said.

?Enough.?

?You coming to the office??

?Why wouldn?t I??

?You eat yet??

?Yeah, I think I did. Yeah, I?m sure I did.?

She sat on the step below him and unscrewed the top of the thermos and popped open the bag of doughnuts. She poured coffee into the thermos top and wrapped a doughnut in a napkin and handed both to him. ?You worry me sometimes,? she said.

?Pam, I?m your administrative superior. That means we don?t personalize certain kinds of considerations.?

She glanced at her watch. ?Until eight A.M. I?ll do what I damn please. How do you like that? Can I get a cup out of your kitchen??

He started to answer, but she opened the screen door and went inside before he could speak. When she came back out, she filled her cup and sat down beside him. ?Clawson went in without backup. His death is not on either one of us,? she said.

?I didn?t say it was.?

?But you thought it.?

?Jack Collins got away. We were probably within a hundred feet of him. But he got out of the motel and out of the parking lot and probably out of San Antonio while I was tracking an ICE agent?s blood all over the crime scene.?

?That?s not what?s bothering you, is it??

When he blinked, like a camera lens clatching open and closing just as quickly, he saw the faces of the Asian women staring up at him from the killing ground behind the stucco church, grains of dirt on their lips and in their nostrils and hair.

?Ballistics shows that all the women were killed by the same weapon,? he said. ?There was probably only one shooter. From what the FBI knows about Collins, he seems to be the one most capable of that kind of mass murder. We could have put Collins out of business.?

?We will. Or if we don?t get to him first, the feds will.?

Hackberry looked at the doe with her fawns in the poplar trees and could feel Pam?s eyes on the side of his face. He thought of his twin sons and his dead wife and the sound the wind made at night when it channeled through the grass in the pasture. Pam moved her foot slightly and touched the side of her shoe against his boot. ?Are you listening to me, Hack??

He could feel a great fatigue seep through his body. He cupped his hands on his knees and turned his head toward her. There was no mistaking the look in her eyes. ?I?m too old,? he said.

?Too old for what??

?The things young