"Nine."
  "Seven."
  "Nine."
  "Eight."
  "Done," Agnes said. "Now put away the three dollars, and let's have our lesson before 
my water breaks."
  "Water can break?" Maria asked, looking toward the faucet at the kitchen sink. She 
sighed. "I have so much to be learned."
  
  Chapter 7
  CLOUDS SWARMED THE late-afternoon sun, and the Oregon sky grew sapphire where still 
revealed. Cops gathered like bright-eyed crows in the lengthening shadow of the fire 
tower.
  Because the tower stood on a ridgeline that marked the divide between county and state 
property, most of the attending constabulary were county deputies, but two state troopers 
were present, as well.
  With the uniformed troopers was a stocky, late-fortyish, brush-cut man in black slacks 
and a gray herringbone sports jacket. His face was almost pan flat, his first chin weak, 
his second chin stronger than the first, and his function unknown to Junior. He would 
have been the least likely man to be noticed in a ten-thousand-man convention of 
nonentities, if not for the port-wine birthmark that surrounded his right eye, darkening 
most of the bridge of his nose, brightening half his forehead, and returning around the 
eye to stain the upper portion of his cheek.
  Among themselves, the authorities spoke more often than not in murmurs. Or perhaps 
Junior was too distracted to hear them clearly.
  He was having difficulty focusing his attention on the problem at hand. Through his 
mind, odd and disconnected thoughts rolled like slow, greasy, eye-of-the-hurricane waves 
on an ominous sea.
  Earlier, after sprinting down the fire road, he had been breathing hard when he reached 
his Chevy, and by the time that he'd raced to Spruce Hills, the nearest town, he had 
spiraled down into this strange condition. His driving became so erratic that a 
black-and-white had tried to pull him over, but by then he was a block from a hospital, 
and he didn't stop until he got there, taking the entry drive too sharply, jolting across 
the curb, nearly slamming into a parked car, sliding to a stop in a no-parking zone at 
the emergency entrance, lurching like a drunkard as he got out of the Chevy, screaming at 
the cop to get an ambulance.
  All the way back to the ridge, sitting up front beside a county deputy in a police 
cruiser, with an ambulance and other patrol cars racing close behind them, Junior had 
shaken uncontrollably. When he tried to respond to the officer's questions, his 
uncharacteristically thin voice cracked more often than not, and he was able to croak 
only, Jesus, dear Jesus," over and over.
  When the highway passed through a sunless ravine, he had broken into a sour sweat at 
the sight of the bloody pulsing reflections of the revolving rooftop beacons on the 
bracketing cut-shale walls. Now and then, the siren shrieked to clear traffic ahead, and 
he felt the urge to scream with it, to let loose a wail of terror and anguish and 
confusion and loss.
  He repressed the scream, however, because he sensed that if he gave voice to it, he 
wouldn't be able to silence himself for a long long time.
  Getting out of the stuffy car into air much chillier than it had been when he'd left 
this place, Junior stood unsteadily as the police and the paramedics gathered around him. 
Then he led them through the wild grass to Naomi, moving haltingly, stumbling on small 
stones that the others navigated with ease.
  Junior knew that he looked as guilty as any man had ever looked this side of the first 
apple and the perfect garden. The sweating, the spasms of violent tremors, the defensive 
note that he could not keep out of his voice, the inability to look anyone directly in 
the eyes for more than a few seconds-all were telltales that none of these professionals 
would overlook. He desperately needed to get a grip on himself, but he couldn't find a 
handle.
  Now, here, once more to the body of his bride.
  Livor mortis had already set in, blood draining to the lowest points of her body, 
leaving the fronts of her bare legs, one side of each bare arm, and her face ghastly pale.
  Her lead gaze was still surprisingly clear. How remarkable that the impact hadn't 
caused a starburst hemorrhage in either of her exquisite, lavender-blue eyes. No blood, 
lust surprise.
  Junior was aware that all the cops were watching him as he stared down at the body, and 
he frantically tried to think what an innocent husband would be likely to do or say, but 
his imagination failed him. His thoughts could not be organized.
  His inner turmoil boiled ever more fiercely, and the external evidence of it grew more 
obvious. In the cool air of the fading afternoon, he perspired as profusely as a man 
already being strapped into an electric chair; it streamed, gushed. He shook, shook, and 
he was half convinced that he could hear his bones rattling together like the shells of 
hard-boiled eggs in a rolling cook pot.
  Had he ever thought he could get away with this? He must have been delusional, 
temporarily mad.
  One of the paramedics knelt beside the body, checking Naomi for a pulse, although in 
these circumstances, his action was such a formality that it was almost harebrained.
  Someone eased in closer beside Junior and said, "How did it happen again?"
  He looked up into the eyes of the stocky man with the birthmark. They were gray eyes, 
hard as nail heads, but clear and surprisingly beautiful in that otherwise unfortunate 
face.
  The man's voice echoed hollowly in Junior's ears, as if coming from the far end of a 
tunnel. Or from the terminus of a death-row hallway, on the long walk between the last 
meal and the execution chamber.
  Junior tipped his head back and gazed up toward the section of broken-out railing along 
the high observation deck.
  He was aware of others looking up, too.
  Everyone was silent. The day was morgue-still. The crows had fled the sky, but a single 
hawk gilded soundlessly, like justice with its prey in sight, high above the tower.
  "She. Was eating. Dried apricots." Junior spoke almost in a whisper yet the ridge was 
so quiet that he had no doubt each of these uniformed but unofficial jurors heard him 
clearly. "Walking. Around the deck. Paused. The view. She. She. She leaned. Gone."
  Abruptly, Junior Cain turned away from the tower, from the body of his lost love, 
dropped to his knees, and vomited. Vomited more explosively than he had ever done in the 
depths of the worst sickness of his life. Bitter, thick, grossly out of proportion to the 
simple lunch that he had eaten, up came a dreadfully reeking vomitus. He was untroubled 
by nausea, but his abdominal muscles contracted painfully, so tightly that he thought he 
would be cinched in two, and up came more, and still more, spasm after spasm, until he 
spewed a thin gruel green with bile, which surely had to be the last of it, but was not, 
for here was more bile, so acidic that his gums burned from contact with it-Oh God, 
please no-still more. His entire body heaving. Choking as he aspirated a piece of