friendly and good of heart, but he was a coward. If he had come upon a
snake, a fox, or even a rabbit, he would have vamoosed with his tail
between his legs.
AB David drew nearer the waist-high brush– mostly milkweed and
brambles-Moose slunk off, whining softly.
“What is it, boy?”
The dog took up a position fifteen feet away from his find, looked
beseechingly at his master, and whimpered.
Strange behavior, David thought, frowning.
It wasn’t like Moose to be frightened off by a butterfly or a lizard.
Once the big mutt zeroed in on prey like that, he was a formidable
adversary, absolutely ferocious, indomitable.
A few seconds later, when David reached the brush and saw what had
drawn the dog’s attention, he stopped as if he had walked into a brick
wall.
“Oh, Jesus.”
A great river of arctic air must have changed course in the sky, for
the warm May afternoon was suddenly cold, blood-freezing cold.
. Two dead bodies, a man and a woman, were sprawled in the brush,
supported in a partially upright position by the interweaving
blackberry vines. Both corpses were facing up, arms spread wide,
almost as if they had been crucified on those thorny branches. The man
had been disemboweled.
David shuddered, but he didn’t turn away from that gruesome sight. In
the late 1960s he had served two tours of duty as a battlefield medic
in Vietnam before he was wounded and sent home: he had seen gut wounds
of all kinds, bellies ripped open by bullets, by bayonets, and by the
shrapnel from antipersonnel mines. He was not queamish.
But when he took a closer look at the woman, when he saw what had been
done to her, he cried out involuntarily, quickly turned away from her,
stumbled a few steps into the grass, dropped to his knees, and was
violently, wrackingly sick.
n q :’ THE DIvE WAS the teenage hangout in Royal City. It was on Main
Street, four blocks from the high school. There wasn’t anything
special about it, so far as Amy could see. A soda fountain. A
shortorder grill. Ten tables with oilcloth draped over them. Eight
shiny, red leatherette booths. Half a dozen pinball machines in an
alcove in the back. A jukebox. That was it.
Nothing fancy. Amy figured there had to be a million places just like
it spread all over the country. She knew of four others right here in
little old Royal City. But for some mysterious reason, perhaps herd
instinct, perhaps because the name of the establishment sounded like
the kind of sleazy dump their parents would disapprove of, Royal City’s
teenagers congregated at The Dive in greater numbers than they did
anywhere else in town.
Amy had been a waitress at The Dive for the past two summers, and she
was going to work there full-time again starting the first of June,
until the junior college opened in September. She also pulled a few
hours of hash-slinging during the school year, around the holidays and
on most weekends. She took a small allowance out of her earnings,
hardly enough for pocket money, and the rest went into her savings
account for college.
On Sunday, the day following the senior prom, Amy worked from noon
until six.
The Dive was exceptionally busy. By four o’clock she was worn out. By
five o’clock she was amazed that she could still stand. As the
shift-change neared, she caught herself glancing at the clock every few
minutes, willing the hands to move faster, faster.
She wondered if her uncharacteristic lack of energy could be explained
by her pregnancy. Probably. Some of her strength was being diverted
to the baby. Even this early on, it was bound to have its effect on
her. Wasn’t it?
Dwelling on her pregnancy depressed her. Depressed, she found the time
crawling by even slower than before.
A few minutes before six, Liz Duncan came into The Dive. She looked
smashing.
She was wearing skin-tight French jeans and a mauve and blue sweater
that appeared as if it had been knitted on her. She was a pretty
blonde with an extremely cute figure. Amy saw boys looking up from all