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*giggles*
littledk: I can’t believe it. they make Spider-man perfume, and the fanboys STILL don’t smell better
kay: Well. You’ve never smelled the perfume.

Chapter 4
    I t was snowing in a Bing Crosby sort of way—fat, lazy, photogenic flakes that, in the end, wouldn’t amount to much. Under normal circumstances, it was the kind of weather that Joe loved to stand in, designed for kids to catch snow crystals on their tongues.
    Except that he was no longer a kid, and was staring at a scene where no sane parent would let any child run free. He was standing in an auto graveyard on the eastern reaches of Thetford Township, a few miles north of where Leo went off the road, confronting a long, low wall of precariously stacked cars, piled like absurdist bricks and extending from one edge of the property to the other.
    The snow cover had softened some of the visual carnage, but there wasn’t much hope for the raw materials—a virtual billboard of the crushed, sharp-edged, broken detritus of an all-consuming industrial juggernaut. It was a vision only enhanced by its otherwise bucolic surroundings. All around the yard, gently vanishing into the blur of falling snow, were tree-crowded hills, fields, and forestland.
    This section of the Connecticut River Valley was absurdly pretty, slicing between New Hampshire and Vermont, and decorated with covered bridges, backwater bays, and cow-sprinkled farms. The background of ancient mountains behind the massive, undulating, dark river told a tale of humanity’s struggle with nature, since both these weather-beaten New England states had eschewed their peaks for the water’s edge and turned the river into a commercial highway for over two hundred years, luring pioneers, aboriginal and white, who had forged far inland and upstream for reasons benign and not.
    Held up against such a portrait of heritage and beauty, not even a car graveyard stood much chance of becoming a significant eyesore.
    “Who’re you?”
    Joe turned at the voice coming from the low building to his left. A man had appeared at a door haphazardly cut into the sheet metal siding. He was bearded, long-haired, and dressed in the standard-issue green uniform of mechanics and road crew workers everywhere, complete with name tag stitched above his breast pocket. The man was labeled “Mitch.”
    Joe pulled his badge from his pocket. “Police. I was looking for a car brought in last night. A Subaru.”
    “That’s sealed up. Can’t get to it. Sheriff’s got the key.”
    That’s one of the things Joe had wanted to hear. It seemed Deputy Barrows was efficient as well as accommodating. “You ever get a look at it?” he asked.
    Mitch shook his head. “I wasn’t on. You here to pick it up? The boss wants it gone. It’s taking up space.”
    “The sheriff not paying you?”
    “Sure, but we’re not a storage unit. We got work to do. We need the bay.” He waved at the picturesque falling snow, adding, “’Specially in this shit.”
    “Won’t be much longer,” Joe reassured him with no basis whatsoever. “Who’s the boss?”
    “E. T. Griffis.”
    Joe had turned toward his parked car, getting ready to leave, but he faced Mitch again at this. “E. T.? No kidding.”
    “You know him?” Mitch asked.
    “Everybody knows him.”
    Mitch cocked his bushy head to one side. “Everybody local. That you?”
    Joe smiled before heading back to his car. “Used to be. I’ll tell the sheriff to get that car out of here soon.”
    Joe continued up the road. It had been a poignant and disturbing journey so far—from the hospital, to the crash site, to where the car was stored, and now on to the family farm—perhaps exacerbated by the very beauty he’d been admiring earlier. The familiar name of E. T. Griffis commingled with his sentiments to form a curious mixture of comfort and pain. One generally revisited one’s place of upbringing for support, not to wonder if it might become the watershed where everything falls