“Okay, look, I’m maggot shit, and you’re a saint. That’s well known. But bring yourself down to my level long enough for us to talk about Glenn instead of my character flaws.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. He hasn’t been … right … since you showed up.”

Trapper was having a hard time holding down his own temper. He didn’t raise his voice, but he leaned forward and spoke with emphasis. “Don’t lay all this on me, Hank. The night I walked in on Glenn unannounced and told him about Kerra’s upcoming interview with The Major, he was guzzling Jack straight from the bottle. While I may have been an additional aggravation to him this week, I’m not the source of his problem. It was in place before the events of this week.”

Trapper knew he’d struck a nerve when Hank glanced at Kerra, clearly uneasy.

“What’s going on with him, Hank?” Trapper asked.

He hesitated, then, “I don’t know. Something.”

Trapper settled back against the booth, concern over Glenn replacing his anger with Hank. “Maybe he’s sick, real sick, and is keeping it to himself.”

Hank dismissed that. “Mom would know. She monitors everything from his daily baby aspirin to his bowel movements. The past few years he’s had some health issues. High blood pressure, high cholesterol. Normal for a man his age, more nuisances than illnesses. Until today.”

“Pressures of the job getting to him?” Trapper asked. “He told me he needed a man in his CAP department who was younger and smarter than him.”

“He may be resisting aging in general,” Kerra said. “It works on the minds of some people more than on others.”

“All those could be factors,” Hank said. “I think there’s more to it than that, though. But I don’t know. That’s the bottom line: I don’t know.” He struck the tabletop with his blood-stained fist to underscore the words.

“He doesn’t confide in me. Won’t. Whenever I urge him to, he says something cutting like ‘when I need a priest, I’ll turn Catholic.’ Stuff like that. But whatever is bugging him, he didn’t need any more stress.” The last was addressed to Trapper.

“It wasn’t my fault that The Major got shot.”

“No, but have you made a terrible situation better or worse?”

“You’ve already made that point.”

Trapper’s quietly spoken concession took some of the starch out of Hank. He shook his head with frustration. “Trapper, I know you’re fond of Dad. And I don’t believe you do anything with malicious intent. You’re just being you.” He leaned forward. “But you make trouble. You always have. I can’t help but think that the chaos you’ve generated this week is at least partially responsible for Dad being in the ER as we speak.”

It upset Trapper to hear that. It bothered him more than he let on. He couldn’t raise a single defense against a charge that was most probably true, so he said nothing.

Kerra breached the taut silence by asking Hank if he had any idea of how serious Glenn’s condition was.

“The ER nurse who admitted him didn’t think he was having a heart attack because he didn’t have all the symptoms. We’re hoping it was just an acute anxiety attack. Bad enough, certainly scary, but not deadly. Mom’s supposed to call me after they’ve run all the tests.”

The waitress arrived with their order. Hank took one sip from the straw in his soft drink, then scooted to the end of the booth. “I need to go and get things sorted out at the site. Whether or not Dad is hospitalized, I need to be available to him and Mom later today.”

“I’ll check in with you,” Trapper said.

Kerra wrote down her cell number on a paper napkin and passed it to Hank. “Call me if there’s an emergency.”

“Will do.” Hank pocketed the napkin. Then, looking at Trapper, he said, “Sorry about that,” and motioned toward Trapper’s face.

“Like hell you are.”

Hank gave a soft laugh. “Like hell I am. It actually felt really good.” He bobbed his head in a goodbye to Kerra, then left them.

The bell above the door jingled as he went through. The two old men had moved from auto makers to football teams but were still arguing. Seated on a stool behind the cash register, the waitress was flipping through a tabloid magazine.

Trapper picked up a french fry and studied it as he twirled it between his thumb and index finger, then dropped it back onto his plate.

“No longer starving?” Kerra asked.

“No.” He noticed that her food had also gone untouched. “What’s spoiled your appetite? Sitting next to me?”

“Trapper—”

Before she could say anything more, he got out of the booth, pulled a twenty-dollar bill from his pocket, and placed it on the table. “That should cover it.” He set a key fob on top of the bill. “Keys to the maroon car. Your bag is already in it. I doubt you know how to hot-wire, so I’ll use your car. I’ll get it fixed for you. In a day or two, we’ll figure out where and when to make the switch. Phone.”

From a coat pocket, he produced a cell phone and battery. While he was inserting it, he said, “This is the number yours has been forwarded to. You can undo it when you reunite with your phone. Be careful driving back.”

“Wait a sec. You’re just leaving? Like this?”

He paused to take her in. Eyes, beauty mark, mouth. She was everything desirable, and he wanted her.

But he made trouble. He wreaked havoc and made people miserable.

Like Marianne.

Like Glenn.

Like his father.

He was poison.

“I didn’t want this to be my life, you know,” he said. “It just is.”

As Trapper drove through the gate, the wind whipped up a dust devil between him and the horizon. He braked and watched as it cut a swath across the ground. For a minute or more, it spun with furious energy, kicking up everything in its path.

Then, as though exhausted by its own futility, it disintegrated.

Except for the damage left in its wake, no one would have known it had been there, raging but aimless.

Trapper continued up the drive toward the house. One end of a strip of crime scene tape had come loose. The yellow ribbon snapped in the wind, whisking the windshield as he brought Kerra’s car to a stop just short of the porch.

He left the engine running when he got out. The front door was locked, but he knew where The Major had always kept the spare key, and it was there, resting on the third support to the left under the eaves.

The crime scene techs had been thorough. There were markings on the floor where measurements had been taken. Tiny plastic tents in varying colors showed where pieces of evidence had been collected. Black dust coated articles from which fingerprints had been lifted.

He avoided touching anything as he made his way first into the kitchen. He gave it a cursory glance, seeing nothing in it to indicate that it had been an area of interest to the investigators.

Leaving it, he crossed the main room and entered the hallway. The door to the powder room was missing, taken as evidence, battered latch and all. The window through which Kerra had escaped was intact, the upper and lower sections locked together. He marveled that she could have squeezed through a space so small, but then panic and adrenaline enabled people to accomplish amazing feats.

He continued down the hall. He’d never lived in this house, but when The Major and his mother had moved to Lodal from Dallas, she’d designated a guest bedroom as Trapper’s room, making it homey and personal to encourage frequent visits. The wall opposite the bed served as a photo gallery with all the pictures framed identically and attractively arranged.

Trapper stood before it now and studied the collection that more or less chronicled his life. He could have marked the year of the Pegasus Hotel bombing just by looking at the photographs.

In the pictures taken before it, his dad was beside him, hand on his shoulder, grinning proudly into the camera as they held between them a fishing pole sporting a catch, an athletic trophy won at summer camp, a Boy Scout sash with badges attached. Snapshots captured other such milestone markers up to age eleven.