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the
miniskirt.
    No underwear, Kirk said to himself. Great,
just great. She sat again and put the socks on. Got up and went to
the knee-high boots that lay in the corner. She leaned her back
against the wall and slipped them on.
    Kirk silently said goodbye to the schoolgirl
look.
    “The trophy gets put back where it belongs,”
he said.
    It was Lisa’s turn to say nothing. She
headed out of the room, boot heels pounding the carpet.
    A moment later Kirk heard her at the coat
closet, shoving aside the hangers. One of them banged against the
bottom of the hat shelf. At the sound of it Kirk knew it had to be
a wooden hanger, swinging upward as she yanked one of her heavy
coats from it. The full-length cashmere one, he guessed.
    Lisa Brock, he thought. Should change her
name to Lisa Cashmere.
    “I ate at Bev’s,” Kirk heard her call out.
“She’s got leftovers if you want,” and he heard the slam of the
front door.
    He lifted the damp towel off the bed. He
carried it into the bathroom and slung it over the shower doors.
Kirk returned to the bedroom. He opened his closet and stood before
a row of black shirts. Six on hangers, one in the hamper; all
western-cut with onyx button-snaps.
    Unlike most western shirts, his had no
collar points and no piping. Plain black was the way he liked them.
He put one on over his T-shirt and questioned his attraction to
dark clothing. Was it his way of fading from view, a weak attempt
to satisfy his eagerness to disappear?
    Stop it, Kirk told himself. And he threw the
question onto the pile of other questions that had been nagging
him.
    Kirk went into the living room and grabbed
his marine jacket off the sofa. While he got into it he stared at
the trophy on the coffee table. The Greek god Ares carrying a
spear, and wearing a helmet with not much else on; the pedestal
inscribed with Kirk’s name, the marksmanship event and date.
    God of War, he thought. Why couldn’t it have
been the God of Peace? Probably wasn’t any. Kirk remembering what
he had learned back in the marines. Five thousand wars in the past
four thousand years.
    “Okay, then,” he whispered to Ares, lifting
him off the table, “time for your nap.”
    On his way to the linen closet with it, he
again thought of Adam Forstadt dying in his arms. Kirk had the Ohio
address, wondering now if Adam’s family was still there. He had
meant to visit them over the years, never having the time or money.
Or the nerve. Kirk had often asked himself if they knew the name of
the man who had killed their son.
    He held the trophy tightly and had to fight
the urge to heave it across the room. Instead, he returned it to
its resting place, facedown in the back of the linen closet. Behind
the towels, sheets and pillowcases he and Lisa had shared over the
past four years.

Chapter 19
    It hadn’t been clear to Frank what had been
said on the inside of Cottage Six, but there was no doubt about the
tone of it. And now came the slap of a screen door and the
appearance of a dark-haired woman in a full-length coat.
    Cashmere, Frank thought as she passed
through the spreading mist of the pool, black boots clomping toward
the back of the opposing cottages. John Kirk’s ill-tempered wife or
playmate, Frank supposed, losing sight of her.
    Leaning against the side of Kirk’s cottage,
he straightened and brushed the shoulder of his camelhair coat. In
shadow under the dead security bulb, he stood between Kirk’s place
and the fieldstone wall, the image of his own playmate coming to
mind.
    Emily…
    How sad it was, Frank thought, leaving her
behind as bait for Eddie Jones. Never again would he see her red
hair and green eyes, forever deprived of the opportunity to open
Emily’s pretty blue veins.
    Frank caught sight of a sports car backing
out of the lighted drive. Seen across the length of property, it
drove past the far end of the walk that ran alongside Cottage One.
Frank glimpsed John Kirk’s cashmere-coated woman at the wheel.
    Going out for the