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on, you can tell him that there’ll be plenty of stuff he can do for us later.”
    “Okay. I think he’d been planning a day in the field with one of his grad students. How’s Dickie?”
    “He’s already gone to work, down at the Lifeway talking to the other employees.” Delice paused, and when she started talking again, sounded more like her normal feisty self. “Jesus, I hope he finds the guy quick. You should have heard my cocktail waitresses going wacko last night when they heard the news. By the time we closed up, they were all demanding that somebody had to walk them to their cars. They were sure they’d be dragged off by a homicidal rapist. Imagine what the supermarket checkers are saying today.”
    Sally could. Tell the truth, she was feeling a little shaky herself. But then, she had the right. What she’d seen the day before was finally beginning to sink in. “I guess you can’t blame them,” she allowed.
    “I don’t blame anybody for anything, except the bastard that killed Monette. But I hate to think that tonight I’ll be walking my customers to their cars too. By tomorrow night people could be deciding to stay home behind locked doors and watch Walker, Texas Ranger on TV, or go back to wherever they came from and skip the rodeo, or just move along down the road. You know how rumors spread in this town. The paranoia could get out of hand pretty easy.”
    No kidding. Laramie had its share of bar fights, domestic incidents, drunk and disorderlies, traffic accidents, and small-time property crimes, but as in most small towns, citizens hardly questioned their safety. People didn’t much bother to lock their houses or their cars. With a population of twenty-six thousand, you’d never go more than ten minutes in public without running into somebody you knew. It might be some annoying person (Sally thought of Amber McCloskey and remembered, with vexation, that she had to go take care of things at Edna’s that afternoon). Still, there was something reassuring about living in such a neighborly place. Delice liked to tell the story of how her son, Jerry Jeff, had once left his bicycle at Washington Park after a soccer game, and two days later, not only was the bike still there, but a neighbor out for a morning walk recognized it, knew who it belonged to, and wheeled it back to Delice’s house.
    Rape was uncommon, or at least hardly ever reported. Murder was rare. Rape and murder, in combination, was almost unheard of. And it was, Sally thought with a rush of fury, unacceptable.
    “You’re right,” she said. “I’m sure that this is all people are talking about.”
    Sally had her first demonstration of that fact when the phone rang only seconds after she’d hung up from talking to Delice. She picked up the phone. “Have you seen the paper?” said a soft steely voice.
    “Not yet, Maude. I haven’t even had a cup of coffee.”
    “Well go get your coffee and your Boomerang and call me back. Something’s happened, and we’ve got to take action.”
    “Action?” said Sally.
    “A girl’s been raped and murdered—Monette Bandy. She works down at the Lifeway.”
    “Yeah, I know, Maude,” said Sally. “She’s Dickie and Mary’s niece. I’m going over there later to be with them. I’m sure they’ll be grateful for your concern.”
    “They’re next on my list,” said Maude. “I didn’t want to call them too early.”
    Maude Stark, chairperson of the Dunwoodie Foundation, was a six-foot, sixty-something pistol, who wore T-shirts with slogans like “Get Your Laws Off My Body.” She was also the richest former housekeeper in Wyoming, a stalwart friend of womankind who baked like an angel, benefactor to a passel of causes, and a person who knew exactly what to do with a shotgun. She had a little farm outside Laramie and had probably been up since four, feeding her chickens and working in her garden and greenhouse. She’d never scrupled about early morning phone calls to Sally. She was