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wouldn’t last. Traffic and weather would take care of it. That was about as smart as Lyle got, incidentally.
    Pulling him through the grass and into the brush and trees was harder than across the mostly smooth highway. Lyle was only sixty yards or so into the woods when he dumped the body. He was out of breath, even though he stayed in shape. Mr. Corliss was real heavy. He thought about pistol-whipping him again, but figured the fat man would stay unconscious long enough for Lyle to go back and get what he needed.
    He was right. The fat man was still out when Lyle came back and put on the yellow rubber dish-washing gloves and cut Corliss’ throat with the hunting knife. Lyle was proud of himself. He didn’t get blood anywhere but the ground and the gloves. He’d also brought the shovel, from the Camaro’s trunk, with him. It was hard digging in this cold ground, which had a lot of roots in it. And the hole had to be plenty big, for Mr. Corliss to fit in.
    But the fat man did fit. Barely. Lyle kicked him, hard, really having to shove with his foot, to make him tumble into the grave. It was only four feet deep, but he just couldn’t dig any deeper. He poured some quicklime over the bulging body. That would help keep animals away, Pa said. Then he filled the grave in. Patted it down. Found some leaves and things and covered it over. It looked pretty natural when he got done. Lyle smiled to himself. Maybe I am artistic, he thought.
    Lyle washed up at the Riverview—he really was staying at that particular motel, not having the imagination to lie about it, although his pa was not along (saying so had been Pa’s idea)—and changed his clothes. Just for the hell of it, he decided to drive through the Cities, before catching the Interstate. The night was young —maybe some night spot would catch his eye. Just before he reached the Interstate, one did. Nolan’s.
     
     
    4
     
     
    THE NEXT DAY, Sunday, in the afternoon, in Des Moines, Iowa, Nolan’s frequent accomplice Jon—who, like Nolan, had gone straight—stepped in shit.
    The shit, dog shit to be exact, a pile of it on the sidewalk just outside the New Wax record shop on University Avenue near Drake University campus, was just the beginning. And Jon, who had sensed storm clouds gathering in his life for weeks now, knew the dog shit for the omen it was. He rubbed the sole of his right tennie onto the curb and went in the door next to the record shop, over which he and Toni shared an apartment.
    He and Toni were friends; they slept in separate beds, in separate rooms, though on occasion they made love. Once or twice a week. They met through rock ’n’ roll—playing in a band together—and had been lovers at first, settled into being friends and, now, lived together. But it wasn’t love. Jon wasn’t sure what it was, but it wasn’t love.
    Jon was returning after two less than exciting days in Cedar Rapids, where he’d been a guest at a comics convention, that is, an organized gathering of comic-book fans. As a kid, Jon had been a comic-book fan himself—Batman, Superman and Spider-Man had been his best friends in a childhood that had buffeted him from one relative to another while his “chanteuse” mother traveled, playing the Holiday/Ramada Inn circuit—and, as long as he could remember, he’d wanted to be a cartoonist when he grew up. Now he was grown up, more or less, and was the creator of an offbeat comic book, Space Pirates , a science-fiction spoof, not a blockbuster bestseller, but a cult item that was making him a modest living. An honest living—unlike those brief, volatile days when he and Nolan had . . . well, that was behind him.
    He was short but had a bodybuilder’s build, which made sense, because he worked out three times weekly at a health spa, and had lifted weights and such since high school, where he’d been a wrestling champ. His hair was short and blond, a curly skullcap, and he had a wisp of a mustache. On this crisp winter day,