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nothing but yell at them to hurry, to help Charlie.
    She didn’t understand her husband was past that kind of help.
    Once she saw him … yeah. She was going to scream.
    Sorenson knew what he was seeing.
    Charlie was still behind the wheel of the truck. The fish had been having their way with him, although that wasn’t going to keep the medical examiner from finding out just what had put Charlie in the river.
    Sorenson suspected there were no natural means involved. Charlie had been the fit sort. He didn’t think Charlie had a heart attack, and the truck wasn’t too messed up, so he didn’t think there was a wreck involved, either. Nor did he think Charlie had decided to up and kill himself.
    If Sorenson had to make a call, right then and there, he’d go with his gut and say somebody had helped Charlie find his way into the river.
    Not that he’d make a judgment call like that.
    Smart cops didn’t do that sort of thing. He’d just say … suspicious death, because of course it was suspicious, seeing as how trucks don’t naturally find themselves in the water like that.
    Behind him, Missy started to shriek.
    Sorenson lifted his eyes to the sky.
    Please, Lord. Just give me patience.
    He felt for the poor woman; he surely did.
    But he’d tried to get her to leave. And she’d insisted she had a right to be here.
    Now she was going to live with this image in her head.
    *   *   *
    “I shoulda listened.”
    Missy moaned it again, for the fifth time, over a cup of coffee.
    The cops around her had taken the little flask she’d tucked inside her purse. She’d tried to pop Jensen Bell for doing it, insisting it was just a medicinal tea she used to steady her nerves.
    Jensen had rolled her eyes while pouring the vodka out. “Medicinal tea … I’ve heard it all now,” she’d muttered.
    “Missy.”
    Missy looked up, her eyes dull as she stared at Jensen.
    “Can you help us here?”
    “I want Charlie,” she whispered. “I want my Junior.”
    “I know,” Jensen said, nodding. “I know. But we need you to help us help him now. Who could have done this?”
    “Nobody.” Missy reached for coffee and lifted it, her hands shaking. “Everybody loved him. He never hurt anybody and everybody loved him.”
    Over Missy’s bent head, Sorenson met Jensen’s eyes and then nodded.
    If Jensen had any reservations at all, she never showed it. “Are you sure about that?”
    Missy lifted her head. “What do you mean by that?”
    “We have his name down as one of the participants in the Cronus Club.”
    Missy’s face went white, then red. “I don’t know what in the fuck that means.”
    Oh, yes, you do, Jensen thought, seeing the denial, the disgust, the confusion, all the emotion Missy tried to hide.
    “It’s a club, a boys’ club of sorts … where the men meet up every month or so … and they rape their sons, trading them back and forth,” Jensen said, pasting a vague smile on her face as she said it. Like she was discussing the weather or what she might wear to Shakers that night. Yeah … this is just a thing here. Let’s talk about it.…
    She saw Missy’s hand and moved just in time.
    The scalding coffee would have felt really nice.
    “You crazy bitch!” Missy screeched. “You fucking evil bitch! My Charlie didn’t do that. And those boys are just a bunch of fucking liars ! If they say anybody raped them, they are wrong!”

 
    CHAPTER FOUR
    You know you’ll have a place to come back to, if you ever need it.
    Those words haunted her sleep.
    Those words taunted her waking hours.
    Even now, as she slowly walked down Main Street, Lana had thought about Deatrick’s calm offer and part of her wanted, more than anything, to take off and run back to him. It would be so easy.
    She didn’t have to be here.
    The cops were working the case now and it didn’t look like they would turn away from it. Not this time. They’d turned a blind eye to it once, but Chief Sorenson didn’t appear to be cut from