Standing in front of his patrol car, Lamar stared at his house and waited, his hands forced deep into his pockets and head bent down as he examined the surface of the street.

It stood to reason that he should make a stop at the place he had called home: the people who had trashed the station and killed Maynard must have stopped by the house.

Five cars stood idle on the street as the men in the vehicles waited for the answer to the Chief’s question, most thinking Lamar would be right and his wife dead.

One of the ugliest, meanest-looking men Lamar had ever seen walked out the front door of the house and began a slow walk to the street and the police chief. Porter Bounds was the town’s version of a redeemed soul, a man who had spent his youth and early adult years on the wrong side of the law. Scars and tattoos on the exposed flesh of his arms bore testimony to his past.

Porter stopped a few feet short of Lamar and flexed muscles restrained by the leather jacket he wore, an old battered trophy with amputated sleeves. The big man building the strength to tell Lamar the worst.

“Well?” Lamar asked without looking up from the road.

“She says if you send me into the house after she goes to bed again, you can look forward to a skillet upside the head,” Porter replied, barely containing his humor.

“Asshole,” Lamar visibly relaxed and smiled at the onetime dangerous man.

“Let me know when you decide to get divorced.”

“Keep pushing it and I’ll put you in jail for the hell of it,” Lamar waved Porter towards the car, “kind of general principal sort of thing.”

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Porter opened the passenger door and slid into the cruiser. “It’s just that you should have warned me she sleeps in the buff.”

Lamar favored Porter with a steady look, then reached for the ignition. “I thought everyone sleeps in the nude.”

Both men chuckled as the cruiser aimed out of the residential street and headed for the only road leading to the north of town.

“So, are you going to tell me what the big worry was about back there?” Porter fished for a cigarette in his coat pockets.

“Maynard is dead.” Lamar replied in a low voice.

“Aw hell,” Porter stopped his search and looked at the chief. They had known each other for several years, through the good and the bad. Lately, they had seen pretty good years with a friendship built upon the wreckage of the past. “Who killed him?”

“Don’t know,” Lamar admitted, “but I have a good idea where I can find him. At the old Armistead place in the Barrens. Some people are doing some next level shit out there. That is where we will find Sylvia.”

“These boys are on a roll,” Porter grimaced at the revelation of the dispatcher’s name. “When were you thinking of telling the rest of our posse?”

“When we get out to Cabot Corner. I wanted to get clear of town, then hook around from the north before I break this news on them.”

“It’s worse?”

The cruiser flashed past, farmland etched out of the northern woods, bouncing over uneven blacktop while the line of cars followed Lamar.

“You think they were going to kill your wife,” Porter reasoned aloud, “that is why you sent me into the house. You sent me into a trap?”

Lamar forestalled the big man’s indignant anger. “No, they were long gone before we went to the house. I just had to know how badly they wanted to have me come out to the Barrens.

Porter turned in his seat, staring at Lamar, the unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth. “The house wasn’t a trap, but you’re taking us into the middle of an actual trap?”

“That’s about the right of it.” Lamar agreed.

Facing forward, Porter lit the smoke and thought while the scenery raced by the car. Soon they would enter the woods and the road would turn to packed dirt, which would be an interesting drive.

He owed the man driving the car. If Lamar had never given Porter a chance, the town would never have accepted him in their midst. A debt owed was a debt that had to be paid as a matter of honor.

The town’s single motorcycle expatriate looked at Lamar and pulled the cigarette from his mouth. “Do you mind if I say a prayer for Maynard?”

“I can’t think of a better time,” the police chief nodded.