Nelson DeMille - Spencerville

"Of course."

"I know that something is going on between you and Annie Baxter, and, to be quite honest, I'm not totally opposed to it. But you must go about it the right way, or it will never be right for either of you."

Keith replied, "I'm still not admitting to coveting my neighbor's wife, Pastor. But I'm listening."

"Good. Listen, and forget where you heard this." He said, "She, the woman in question, is in an unhappy and unhealthy marriage, according to her pastoral counselor. Her husband is an adulterer and a verbally abusive man. I may be from the old school, but I listen to the young pastors, and I'm convinced that she has to leave that marriage before it becomes dangerous. He's become enraged at the suggestion of counseling, and neither the pastoral counselor nor the wife in question sees any hope for a change."

Keith did not reply. He found his car and stood beside it.

Pastor Wilkes continued, "Divorce is acceptable under these circumstances. After her divorce, she is free to do whatever she wishes. You, Mr. Landry, must be patient and must not become part of the problem. This is a good woman, and I don't want to see her hurt."

Both men stood in the dark, a faint light coming from the church windows casting shadows over the gravestones. Keith said, "Neither do I."

"Mr. Landry, I'm sure your intentions are honorable, but the only honorable thing you can do now is to break off any contact with her. Things will work themselves out with God's help."

"And without my help."

"Precisely." He asked, "Do you or do you not intend to stay here to live?"

"I did, but I'm not certain now."

"I think your presence here is fuel to the fire. Can you go somewhere for a while? No doubt, your parents would like to see you."

Keith smiled. "Are you running me out of town?"

"I'm suggesting that if you leave, I can see a happy ending for both of you. If you stay, I see only disaster."

Apparently, he and Pastor Wilkes had reached the same conclusion independently of each other. Keith said, "I didn't think you were going to advise me on how to win another man's wife. I thought I was going to get hellfire and brimstone."

"That's the fundamentalist church down the road. Here we do love and compassion. Will I see you Sunday?"

"Perhaps. Goodnight."

As Keith pulled away from the church. Obviously, he thought, there was nothing simple about a simple rural community. In fact, life was simpler in the big city. Here, they cared about your soul and made you think about it, too, and that really got complicated.

Keith drove along the dark country road. He knew that the police could stop him anytime, anyplace, on any pretext, and he'd resigned himself to that. He'd been in the hands of the police in other countries, and he knew the drill, knew when they just wanted to scare you and when they intended to knock you around. He'd never had the experience of being really tortured and obviously hadn't faced a firing squad, though there was one time in Burma, years ago, when he knew they were talking about it.

Being a veteran of a few arrests, he couldn't imagine that the Spencerville police station could hold many terrors for him, but you never knew what they had on their minds until you got there and saw how they were acting. A more unsettling scenario than the unlikely possibility of dying in police custody was the more likely possibility of dying trying to escape arrest, which was far more common in the civilized countries. Keith didn't imagine that there'd be much of an inquiry if he was shot on a country road, especially if the police put a weapon in his hands after he was dead. But they'd have to supply their own weapon to plant, because he didn't have his with him, though he wished he did.

But was this police force that far down the road toward criminality and viciousness? He thought not, but Cliff Baxter certainly was, especially after being baited by Keith Landry.

He glanced in his rearview mirror but didn't see any headlights. He turned onto a series of farm roads and took an indirect way back to his house. The bottom line, though, was that there was only one road that passed his farm and one way in. If they were at all bright, they'd simply wait for him at either end of that road.

As he drove, he thought about what he'd heard in the church and in the parsonage, not to mention what happened outside. It all came down to Cliff Baxter, this sort of evil fog that covered the once sunny and happy countryside.

Enter the hero, the savior. "No. Exit the hero. Everyone here will get what they deserve, for better or worse." Wilkes was right. Leave it to God, or to Annie, or to the Porters, whoever acted first. "Do not get ego-involved in this."

"Here's the question, Landry — if Annie were not the wife of Cliff Baxter, would you take on this fight in the interest of justice?"

Well, he thought, he'd done that often enough, though he'd gotten paid for it. But there wasn't enough money involved for the risks he'd taken. Obviously, he'd been motivated by patriotism and a sense of justice. But when that waned, he'd been motivated by a selfish desire for adventure and career advancement, and that wasn't enough. Here, in Spencerville, he found he could accomplish several objectives with one act: By killing Baxter, he could do the town and himself a favor, free Annie, and then perhaps have Annie. But that didn't seem like the right thing for the right reasons, no matter how he dissected it.

He found himself on the road that led to Route 28, his road. Rather than get onto 28, he swung the Blazer off the road and followed a dirt tractor path that crossed the Mullet farm through the cornfields. He put the Blazer into four-wheel drive and navigated by the dashboard compass, eventually making his way onto his property, which was planted with the Mullets' corn, and within ten minutes, he came out into the clearing of his own farmyard near the barn.

He shut off his headlights, turned toward the house, and parked near the back door.

Keith got out, unlocked the door, and went into the dark kitchen. Feeling both foolish and angry, he left the lights off and listened. He knew he wouldn't be doing much night driving anymore, and if he did, he'd take the Glock or the M-16 with him.

He considered going upstairs and getting his pistol, but his instincts told him it was safe, or if it wasn't, he'd be better off here in the kitchen, near the door. He opened the refrigerator and got a beer.

"So, should I turn the other cheek and leave, as Wilkes suggested?" But this was not what his life had been about.

He opened the beer and, still standing, took a long drink. "Or do I stalk Baxter instead of the other way around? I catch him coming out of one of his girlfriends' houses and cut his throat. A little wet stuff, one more time. Yeah, people think I did it, but there're a thousand other suspects, and no one's going to look too closely at it."

Sounded good, but that left a widow and two fatherless children, and maybe you didn't kill a man for being a bad husband, a corrupt cop, and a bully. "But why not? I've killed better men for less reason."

He finished the beer and got himself another one. "No, I can't murder the son-of-a-bitch. I just can't do it. So I have to leave." He went to the kitchen table and, by the faint light from the back door and window, he looked for the letter he'd left on the table, but didn't see it. He turned on the light hanging over the table and searched the chairs and the floor, but the letter was gone.

Alert now, he shut off the light and put the beer can down. He listened, but there was no sound. It occurred to him that Aunt Betty or any of that crowd may have come by to clean or deliver food. They'd seen the letter, took it, and mailed it. But that didn't seem likely.