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standing a few feet behind the cutter, maybe holding the flashlight. Maybe he steps forward a little. He’s done this for five poles, and so on the sixth maybe he’s just a little bit cocky…a little bit off-guard. But then the pole starts to lean, to sway maybe, and dollars to donuts he just doesn’t duck and run like hell. That’s what the hell he should have done, of course. Instead he looks up and gapes in fascination. Maybe he tries to shout at his buddy, reaches out a hand in panic. Now in the best of all worlds, because both boys are off to one side, both poles might have tangled past them without catching either one. If the one pole gives way first, I can see the whole mess twisting before the second pole comes loose. See, they hadn’t meant for the poles to fall just then. That’s my theory. I mean, why would they? There’s too much risk. But that weak pole changed all that. It crashes down on the line fence, right on that big juniper brace, and the butt end bucks up before they have time to say, ‘Oh, shit.’ Bucks up and back and catches Johnny’s boy right under the chin on the way up. Pow.”
    â€œWhat a friend, just to leave him lying out here.”
    â€œNissan man? If that’s him, what a friend indeed, even though I think it would have been obvious his buddy was stone cold dead. And if he has half a brain, he knows this sort of damage isn’t something that would take until morning to discover. He wants out of there, you bet. He knows folks are going to be on his tail.”
    I shrugged. “Seems to me that all this would explain why he didn’t give Perry Kenderman a chance, didn’t try to bluff his way out of a speeding ticket. He’s left a corpse behind, and the death occurred during the commission of a felony—and with that half a brain of his, Paul Bunyan knows he’s in deep shit. And at the same time, he had to know that no matter how fast we could respond, the odds are in his favor. He can be long gone, without a trace, if he acts quickly enough. Road blocks are a wasted effort.”
    She knew that as well as I did, but I pressed on. “The killer didn’t spare an extra minute arguing with Kenderman. Shot him and drove away. He’s got time on us. And you’re not going to find someone covered with sawdust at a traffic stop. He won’t be that dumb. Not if he tried to think something like this through.” I watched her dark face settle into a determined frown. “Boyd was a local kid. That’s a place to start. And you know, this is an interstate power line. You won’t go far before you have to talk to the feds.”
    â€œCaptain Mitchell has already called them,” Estelle said. “And we’ll have a full State Police presence in a few minutes.”
    â€œWell, then, that’s good. If you want a running start, have Linda photograph the bottom two feet of number five, there, if you can figure out how to reach it, or cut it off, or something. Take some scrape samples at the same time. If Curt Boyd got himself clobbered some other way, then you’ve got a different game altogether. But I’ll bet you a green chile burrito that nasty uppercut to the chin is how he died. Perrone found a sliver of wood in the wound, so nothing else makes sense. Not unless we find a handy bullet hole hiding someplace.”
    I took a deep breath and regarded the still-spectacular night sky—not because I loved star gazing, but to stop my motor-mouth from continuing to tell Estelle Reyes-Guzman things she knew perfectly well on her own.
    â€œTwo things bother me the most,” she said. “One is the timing. He wanted to cut and run. With the right weather conditions, that power line might not have toppled for who knows how long. When it did finally go, it could have caught vehicular traffic in any number of ways as busy as this road is now. He couldn’t have known who he might end