His pale green eyes glowed luminescent beneath the thick lenses of his glasses. The terrain around the cabin was rocky and rough except for a gurgling creek to the north. At one point, a stone dam from before the turn of the twentieth century checked the water, giving life to a small stand of pecan trees before it continued on its way to the Pedernales River. To the south rose a forbidding cluster of hills studded with juniper and mesquite. Sales stooped to shift his wet bathing suit from the shade into the sun where it would dry faster, then left the comfort of the porch and climbed into his dusty Ford pickup.

To keep his clothes clean and his wig straight, he rode with the windows up and the AC on. From the tape deck, George Jones bawled on about his broken heart. A bitter smile crept across Sales's face. No one could know how badly life had damaged him. Broken wasn't the word.

He craned his neck to look at his face in the rearview mirror. Even without the disguise, his appearance had changed dramatically over the last thirty-odd years. There was nothing more than a fleeting shadow left from the hopeful days of his youth. But what could he expect? Anyone who had done the things he'd done and seen the things he'd seen would be the same, maybe worse. At least he had the ability in his quiet moments to occasionally slide back into the past, to hear his wife's sweet voice singing in the soft light of the dance hall and just float away, safe from reality.

Some people called it daydreaming, and that's what he did until he was off the highway and jerking to a stop at a red light in the midst of the hectic concrete maze of downtown Austin. At the corner of Eighth and San Jacinto he pulled into a parking garage and got out. He was only a few blocks from the public safety building. He soon came to a corner where the light signal read DON'T WALK, but after checking the traffic he crossed the street anyway, walking confidently with his head held high. He had the same demeanor when he strode into the courtyard, which was busy with police cruisers. Near an obscure door in the side of the concrete building, several people stood in a silent cluster smoking cigarettes in a slice of shade. Sales took up his usual station and casually puffed a Winston down to its filter.