"Do you want her to come home?"

"I've been with her longer than I was alive before we met. But let's face it, Doc."

He glanced at me, his eyes frightened. "My life sucks. Always counting nickels and dimes, called out on the street in the middle of the night. Plan vacations and then something goes down and Doris unpacks and waits at home - like Labor Day weekend when the Harvey girl and her boyfriend disappeared. That was the last straw."

"Do you love Doris?"

"She don't believe I do."

"Maybe you should make sure she understands how you feel," I said. "Maybe you should show that you want her a lot and don't need her so much."

"I don't get it."

He looked bewildered.

He would never get it, I thought, depressed.

"Just take care of yourself," I told him. "Don't expect her to do that for you. Maybe it will make a difference."

"I don't earn enough bucks, and that's it, chapter and verse."

"I'll bet your wife doesn't care so much about money. She'd rather feel important and loved."

"He's got a big house and a Chrysler New Yorker.

Brand-new, with leather seats, the whole nine yards.

I did not reply.

"Last year he went to Hawaii for his vacation."

Marie was getting angry.

"Doris spent most of her life with you. That was her choice, Hawaii or not - " "Hawaii's nothing but a tourist trap," he cut in, lighting a cigarette. "Me, I'd rather go to Buggs Island and fish."

"Has it occurred to you that Doris might have grown weary of being your mother" "She ain't my mother," he snapped.

"Then why is it that since she left, you've begun; looking like you desperately need a mother, Marino?"

"Because I don't got time to sew buttons on, cook, do shit like that."

"I'm busy, too. I find time for shit like that."

"Yeah, you also got a maid. You also probably earn a hundred G's a year " "I would take care of myself if I earned only ten G's year," I said. "I would do it because I have self-respect and because I don't want anyone to take care of me I simply want to be cared for, and there's a very big, difference between the two."

"If you got all the answers, Doc, then how come you're divorced? And how come your friend Mark's is in Colorado and you're here? Don't sound to me like you wrote the book on relationships."

I felt a flush creeping up my neck. "Tony did not truly care for me, and when I finally figured that out, I left. As for Mark, he has a problem with commitments."

"And you were committed to him?"

Marino almost glared at me.

I did not respond.

"How come you didn't go out west with him? Maybe you're only committed to being a chief."

"We were having problems, and certainly part of it was my fault. Mark was angry, went out west, maybe to make a point, maybe just to get away from me," I said, dismayed that I could not keep the emotion out of my voice. "Professionally, my going with him wouldn't have been possible, but it was never an option."

Marino suddenly looked ashamed. "I'm sorry. I didn't know that."

I was silent.

"Sounds like you and me are in the same boat," he offered.

"In some ways," I said, and I did not want to admit to myself what those ways were. "But I'm taking care of myself. If Mark ever reappears, he won't find me looking like hell, my life down the drain. I want him, but I don't need him. Maybe you ought to try that with Doris?"

"Yeah."

He seemed encouraged. "Maybe I will. I think I'm ready for coffee."

"Do you know how to fix it?"

"You gotta be kidding," he said, surprised.

"Lesson number one, Marino. Fixing coffee. Step this way."

While I showed him the technical wonders of a drip coffee maker that required nothing more than a fifty IQ he resumed contemplating this day's adventures.

"A part of me don't want to take what Hilda said, seriously," he explained. "But another part of me has to.

I mean, it sure gave me second thoughts."

"In what way?"

"Deborah Harvey was shot with a nine-millimeter. They never found the shell. Kind of hard to believe the squirrel could collect the shell out there in the dark. Makes me think Morrell and the rest of them wasn't looking in the right place. Remember, Hilda wondered if there wasn't another place, and she mentioned something lost. Something metal that had to do with war. That, could be a spent shell."

"She also said this object wasn't harmful," I reminded him.

"A spent shell couldn't hurt a fly. It's the bullet that's harmful, and only when it's being fired."

"And the photographs she looked at were taken last fall," I went on. "Whatever this lost item is may have been out there then but isn't there now."

"You thinking the killer came back during daylight to look for it?"

"Hilda said the person who lost this metal object was concerned about it."

Don't think he went back," Marino said. "He's too careful for that. Be a big damn risk. The area was crawling with cops and bloodhounds right after the kids disappeared. You can bet the killer laid low. He's got to be pretty cool to have gotten away with what he's doing for so long, whether we're talking about a psychopath or a paid hit man."

"Maybe," I said as the coffee began to drip.

"1 think we should go back out there and poke around a little. You up for it?"

"Frankly, the idea has crossed my mind."

In the light of a clear afternoon, the woods did not seem so ominous until Marino and I drew closer to the small clearing. Then the faint, foul odor of decomposing human flesh was an insidious reminder. Pine tags and leaves had been displaced and piled in small mounds by the scraping of shovels and emptying of sieves. It would take time and hard rains before the tangible remnants of murder were no longer to be found in this place.

Marino had brought a metal detector and I carried a rake. He got out his cigarettes and looked around.

"Don't see any point in scanning right here," he said. "It's been gone over half a dozen times."

"I assume the path's been gone over thoroughly as well," I said, staring back at the trail we had followed from the logging road.

"Not necessarily, because the path didn't exist when the couple was taken out here last fall."

I realized what he was saying. The trail of displaced leaves and hard-packed dirt had been made by police officers and other interested parties going back and forth from the logging road to the scene.

Surveying the woods, he added, "The fact is, we don't even know where they was parked, Doc. It's easy to assume it's close to where we parked, and that they got here pretty much the same way we did. But it depends on whether the killer was actually heading here."

"I have a feeling the killer knew where he was going," I replied. "It doesn't make sense to think he randomly turned down the logging road and then ended up out here after haphazardly wandering around in the dark."

Shrugging, Marino switched on the metal detector. "Can t hurt to give it a try."

We began at the perimeter of the scene, scanning the path, sweeping yards of undergrowth and leaves on either side as we slowly made our way back toward the logging road. For almost two hours we probed any opening in trees and brush that looked remotely promising for human passage, the detector's first high-frequency tune rewarding our efforts with an Old Milwaukee beer can, the second with a rusty bottle opener. The third alert did not sound until we were at the edge of the woods, within sight of our car, where we uncovered a shotgun shell, the red plastic faded by the years.

Leaning against the rake, I stared dismally back down the path, thinking. I pondered what Hilda had said about another place being involved, perhaps somewhere that the killer had taken Deborah, and I envisioned the clearing and the bodies. My first thought had been that if Deborah had broken free of the killer at some point, it may have been when she and Fred were being led in the dark from the logging road to the clearing. But as I looked through the woods, this theory didn't really make sense.