CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER EIGHT

1

IT WAS THE SMALL, black hours and the streets of the Val lay deserted, except for a stray traveler or two: Lucy Dixon on her way home, coming off the late-night nurse’s shift and zipping along now while visions of her pillow-top mattress danced in her head. Phil Jenrette, the local high school football coach, cruising toward the old freight yards across town, while his wife and children slept, in search of a prostitute by the railroad tracks—and either a young girl or young boy would do at this bleak hour, since Mr. Jenrette wasn’t too choosy in that way. And the kid whose name nobody could ever remember, heading out in his broken-down cargo van, choking and stalling and sputtering all over the sleeping village to deliver his morning edition stacks of The Rock River Guardian safely to their drop-off destinations.

Each of them drove past the permanently darkened Lawrie Theater at some point or other on their witching-hour excursions, and yet none of them looked up. No