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to talk to Notch about it. Maybe. This Nazgûl connection is kind of a long shot anyway, and we’ve got a hell of a lot of other leads to follow up, people to question. We’re going through all his correspondence and files. A lot of people didn’t like him much. Notch will probably go along if I say he should. Can I trust you to keep in touch?”
    Sandy raised his hand, palm open. “Scout’s honor.”
    “Somehow you don’t look much like a scout,” Parker observed.
    Smiling, Sandy kept his hand up but lowered three fingers and split the two remaining into the familiar V. “Peace, then?”
    Parker nodded. “I’ll see what I can do. You sure you can take care of yourself? I have a bad feeling about this. One of your musicians could very well be the killer. Or all three of them. Lynch had five inches and forty pounds on you, and they cut his heart out with a knife.”
    “I’m not going to do anything dumb,” Sandy said. “Besides, I’ve interviewed these guys before. Once in 1969, again in 1971. They aren’t killers. If anything, they seem to be the victims in this little scene, don’t they? First Hobbins, now Lynch.”
    “Maybe somebody doesn’t like their music.”
    Sandy gave a derisive snort. “Their music was just fine, deputy. You ought to listen to that album for something besides clues. It’s powerful stuff. Listen to Maggio’s guitar riffs in ‘Ash Man,’ and to Gopher John’s drumming. And the
lyrics
. Hell. The second side especially; it’s all one long piece, and it’s a classic, even if it is too damned long for most radio stations to play intact. There was nobody quite like the Nazgûl, before or after. They were so good they scared people. Sometimes I think that was the motive behind West Mesa, that it was Hoover or the fucking CIA or someone like that, scared shitless because Hobbins’ singing and his goddamned charisma were turning people on to the message in the music. More than a band died when that shot was fired. It killed an idea, crippled a movement.”
    “Myself, I like Johnny Cash,” Parker said laconically. “Come on, I’ll take you back to town, and we’ll talk to Notch before I have second thoughts about letting you loose on this thing.”
    Sandy smiled. “You realize, Davie, that your second thoughts don’t matter much? We do have a first amendment still, and I can go ask questions of the Nazgûl whether Notch likes it or not.”
    “Don’t tell Notch,” Parker replied.
    They turned out the lights behind them as they went back to the car. Sandy paused for a moment in the darkened living room. Night had fallen, and he could see the dim circle of the moon through the skylights, its pale light cut into a half-dozen different colors by the stained glass. Seeing the room in that strange light, Sandy felt a pang of nervous fear. For a brief second the slow liquid gurgle of the creek sounded like blood might sound gurgling from a dying man’s mouth, and the sound of leaves scratching across the skylight became the sound of fingernails scrabbling at a wooden desktop in agony. But it lasted only an instant; then the noises were mere noises again, the ordinary night sounds of leaf and stream, and Sandy told himself he was being foolish.
    Outside, Parker had started the car, and the headlights glared at him as he stumbled down the stairs. If he tried, it would be all too easy to hear the sound of music coming faintly from the dark, empty house behind him; to hear the distant thunder of drums, and the forlorn wail of guitars and voice, and snatches of song from the lips of a man long dead.
    Sandy did not try.

THREE
    It’s not often easy, and not often kind/
Did you ever have to make up your mind?
    S andy found a room for the night in a motel on the outskirts of Bangor. It was cheaper and dingier than he would have liked—with Jared Patterson footing the bills, he was determined to go first class—but the conversation with Notch had been longer and more acrimonious than