July 9

MR. DEES drove a powder-blue Mercury Comet, bought new in 1965 and used mainly in the winter when it was too cold for him to make the walk to school and whenever he wanted to drive to Bloomington to do some shopping. Otherwise, he preferred to walk.

But on this night, when he needed to be able to cover ground quickly, he backed the Comet out of his garage and started toward the Heights, where he meant to put his mind at ease by seeing that Junior Mackey had left Gooseneck and gone home, as Mr. Dees had recommended, rather than driving to Georgetown with that crazy scheme still in his head.

It was a sweetheart, that Comet. A Super 289 V-8 engine, multidrive Merc-O-Matic transmission, a deluxe sixteen-inch steering wheel, only twenty-one thousand miles on the odometer. It hummed along the Tenth Street spur, and even though it wasn’t one of those jazzy Mustangs or GTOs like the kids drove, it was in apple-pie order—Mr. Dees saw to that; he brought it in regularly to have the oil changed and made sure the tires had the proper pressure—and he felt confident driving along the empty street.

Then, as he was passing Mackey Glass, he recalled the details of Junior’s plan, and he had the thought that it wouldn’t hurt just to turn in and drive around behind the long buildings to make sure that everything was quiet there.

He pulled back into the yard behind the humped ridges of sand and limestone, and there he came upon a sight that stunned him. He had to step hard on his brakes to keep from rear-ending Junior’s truck. The Comet’s headlights swept over Junior and Gilley and a third man they had crowded up against the truck’s front fender. All three of them swung their heads toward the Comet’s lights to see who was finding them. Mr. Dees could see that the third man was Raymond R. and that Junior had the gun, the one he had carried into Mr. Dees’s house.

Mr. Dees switched off his headlights and the sight in front of him faded into the darkness. Little by little, as his eyes adjusted to the dark, the image came back to him, the three figures reemerging. Behind them, he could see the shadows of the smokestacks from the glass furnaces. Even though it was after midnight on Sunday and the glassworks were shut down, he could smell the heat from those furnaces in the muggy air.

He heard Junior shouting, intent on his business, unconcerned that Mr. Dees had happened to appear to witness it.

“All right, now,” Junior said. “Here’s what I want. I want to know what you’ve done with my daughter.”

Raymond R. was trying to get his breath. “I swear, mister. It’s like I’ve done told you. I don’t know.”

Junior held the Colt to the soft flesh under Raymond R.’s chin. He drew back the hammer. “You better know,” he said.