I hung up the phone, then let out the sigh I'd been holding in. I was blowing it again, wasn't I? Hell, yes, I was. Why would I do such a thing?

I went downstairs and ate a double-size piece of corn bread that Nana had made for the next day. It didn't help, just made me feel even worse, guilty about my eating habits. I sat on a kitchen chair with Rosie the cat in my lap, stroking her.

"You like me, right? Don't you, Rosie? I'm kind of a nice guy?"

The phone calls weren't over for the night. Just past midnight I received a call from one of the agents I'd worked with out in Nevada. Fred Wade had something he thought I might find interesting. "We just got this from Fallon," he told me. "Receptionist in a Best Inn there was raped and murdered two nights ago. Her body was left in the brush near the motel parking lot. Like we were supposed to find it. We got a description of a guest who could be your Colonel Shafer. Needless to say, he's long gone from Fallon."

Your Colonel Shafer. That said it all, didn't it? He's long gone from Fallon. Of course he was.

Chapter 18

I didn't sleep much that night. I think I had awful nightmares about the Weasel. And about the holocaust in Sunrise Valley, Nevada.

Early the next morning I had to sign permission slips so the kids could go on a field trip to the National Aquarium in Baltimore. I signed the slips at four-thirty before they were up and while the house was still dark, then I had to sneak off to work. I didn't get to say good-bye, and I don't like that, but I left love notes for Jannie and Damon. Such a nice pops, right?