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punch a time clock. Vince, her dark-haired, chunky and usually inexhaustibly horny husband, made just enough on his salary as Sheriff Wayman’s deputy that Donna could stay home. The only thing wrong with their marriage—other than the two children they’d lost to miscarriages—was the slight sex problem Vince had been having the past few weeks. Tonight, for instance, he’d rolled on and almost as quickly rolled off. The term in the sex manual she’d bought at the drugstore the other day was premature ejaculation. Here was Vince, who usually wore her out, who usually plundered her until she swore she wouldn’t want sex again for months, here was Vince getting it over in mere seconds.
    Which didn’t bother Donna much, but it sure bothered hubby-poo. He had started averting his eyes, and sitting out in the squad car before coming in, as if he had some dread disease, and avoiding her sexually in every way possible. In the middle of the night tonight, he’d apparently decided to give it another shot. He’d awakened her and played briefly with her breasts, then mounted and entered her. She had just started to get a little wet when she’d heard him curse and felt him roll off with enough force that he’d hurt her.
    Now he lay beside her, his whole body as tense as if it were made of stone, the point of his Merit bright in the blackness of their bedroom.
    “Maybe something’s bothering you,” she said, remembering what the sex manual had to say about stress as a big factor in sexual performance.
    He didn’t so much as grunt a response to her suggestion.
    “Vince?”
    “Yo.”
    “It’s all right.”
    “No, no it isn’t.”
    “It’ll be just like it was. Soon.”
    “You bet, missus.”
    She hated that, when he called her missus. He said that to some of the fancy-schmancy women in Burton, whenever he had to issue a traffic ticket or something.
    Missus.
    She hated that.
    “Vince?”
    “What.”
    “You’ve been upset ever since you drove out to the cabin that night.”
    Then she knew what was bothering him. His hand shot out and grabbed her wrist.
    “What’d I tell ya?”
    “Vince, c‘mon, you’re hurtin’ me!”
    But he was yelling, crazed, all his frustration and shame—as well as a night’s supply of Coors—being spat in her face via warm, terrible-smelling breath.
    “You tell anybody about what I overheard, Donna, and we’re fuckin’ dead people. You understand me? We’re fuckin’ dead people!”
    In what seemed less than seconds he had put on his pants and shirt and slammed out of the trailer. His own car, the Firebird, roared to life. He was gone in a scream of rubber. She knew where he would go. Out on the highway to roar through the darkness, the radio blasting country western, a quart of Coors between his legs.
    Miserably, she reviewed the past few weeks of their lives.
    Ever since he had heard ...
    Ever since ...
    She shuddered, and began weeping.
    She could imagine how he felt about himself, an honest, hardworking man who was afraid to push the truth any further than he already had for fear of losing his job ... and maybe his life.

6
    The first traces of dawn streaked the sky, giving the mansion a regal look against the salmon-pink and yellow clouds packed with dark patches promising rain.
    From somewhere in the house the animal mewling came occasionally, a combination of pleading and satisfaction.
    A tomcat raised its sizable head up once to see if it could identify the sound. But no luck.
    It tucked its head back into the rest of its body and went to sleep.
    There were times he wished the night would never end, that the world would never be light again, when he could live with his pleasures and his lusts. He wanted to escape into the forest and live with the animals there, the dumb, sweet animals who never smirked at you or threatened you in any way. He had dominance over them the way he had dominance over the girl now.
    The girl.
    There were so many things he wanted to do with her