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redneck attitude fool you.”
    “I just came from talking to Brennan,” I said. “And I came away with the feeling he doesn’t really take this too seriously.”
    “Why not?”
    “Maybe because I’m involved. I don’t know.”
    “So what are you gonna do? Play cop?”
    “I was one once, you know.”
    Lori smirked. “Yeah, you rode around in a squad car out in some California equivalent of Port City for what, a month and a half before you quit? Big deal.”
    “Lori,” John said.
    “Look, Mal,” she said, “I like you and all that, but I’m not in favor of helping out anybody who’s got in mind taking the law in his own hands. I’m an
ex
-radical these days, all settled down and married and a mother, and I’m for working through the system, not running over it.”
    “Don’t pay any attention to her,” John told me. “She’s been a schizophrenic for years, trying to be a left-wing antiwar liberal on the one hand, and supporting that super-conservative stepfather sheriff of ours on the other.”
    “Lori,” I said, “I just want to poke around a little bit and see if I can uncover some truth. Is there anything wrong with that?”
    Her expression froze in an undecided half-smile, and she sat back and thought it over for a while. John started to coax her, but I waved at him to shut up.
    Finally she sighed and started pouring out everything she knew about Janet Ferris Taber.
    “Five years ago,” she said, “when I was a student at the community college, I had this summer job, a job I felt would be rewarding in more ways than just financial. The job was beinga full-time secretary on the campaign team for U.S. Senate hopeful Richard Norman.”
    “Norman, huh?”
    “Yeah. Norman, our local wonder boy.”
    Son of Port City’s resident eccentric millionaire, Sy Norman, young Norman had been a top honors man in college and a letter-winner in track to boot, and had gone on to be first in his class in the University law school. His next achievement was being the youngest man in the state’s history to be elected to the Iowa legislature. He served his district well (which included his home town, Port City, of course) for ten years, then began to mount his campaign to reach Washington.
    “I was eager to help him,” she said. “I’d been vice-president of the Young Demos at the college and Norman was a Republican. But, he was a liberal Republican, and that was about as far to the left as this state could ever be expected to move, so I jumped in with both idealistic feet.
    “The other full-time secretary on the campaign team was Janet Ferris, a young student the same age as me who went to Drake in Des Moines, and in her spare time during the school year’d worked as a part-time secretary in Norman’s office, in the Capitol Building. Norman had brought Janet from Des Moines to Port City, which was to be the launching pad for his campaign. She and I became close friends, worked intimately together, shared the same dedication to Norman—Janet always spoke of the senator in glowing terms—and the summer months went quickly by.
    “Janet and I had our tearful good-byes at the bus station, Janet heading back for Des Moines and Norman, to help him continue with phase two of his campaign, and me back to thecommunity college and part-time work on the local level as a Norman volunteer.
    “On the whole,” she said, “even though we were college students, Janet and I had a very high school-ish relationship. Giggling girls caught up in the importance of what we were doing—you know, helping to change the world and all. When we got together last month, after I found out she was back in town, it was an awkward situation. I mean, we were ‘friends’ with a relationship based on something past, and everything that happened to her since I saw her last was such a downer. We never did say much about that summer we worked for Norman. Sometimes I wonder how Janet must’ve taken it when Norman lost.”
    “Norman,” I