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  "Her long blond mane has become somewhat of a trademark."

  "Vanessa is a trendsetter, no doubt about that." "I understand she spends eight hundred dollars to have her hair cut and styled. Does that seem extravagant to you?"

  Pastor Pete made a vague gesture with his hands. "Forgive me, but I have no idea what services like that typically cost."

  Grubbman crossed his legs, as if settling in for the long haul. "I bring all this up because, to put it bluntly, you have many detractors. Some fundamentalists call you a 'pastorpreneur.' They say you preach the idea that good Christians are entitled to a life of financial well-being. They say your sermons are empty of scripture and heavy on cheerleading about securing a better station in life. Would you say that's accurate?"

  Boothe appeared to consider his words carefully "I believe that good things await those who follow the Lord."

  "And by 'good things,' you mean wealth and prosperity? A higher-paying job. A promotion. A big Christmas bonus."

  "His blessings take many forms."

  "Frankly, Reverend, you appear to be very blessed yourself."

  There was a pause, then Boothe said, 'Affluence is nothing to be ashamed of, as I stress in my new book." The book, after all, was the intended topic of the interview. Only $32.95 in hardback.

  Now it was Grubbman's turn to smile. "Yes, your book. I want to talk about that in depth, but first i'd like to ask you about your background."

  Boothe shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

  "You used to own a marketing firm," Grubbman said.

  "Boy you've done your homework. Many years ago, yes, I was in the field of advertising. It helped me hone my communication skills, which I now use to spread the gospel. Time well spent."

  Grubbman scanned through a sheaf of papers in a notebook. "You once wrote a commercial for a juicing machine."

  Boothe chuckled. "I remember that one. The SqueezeMas-ter Deluxe. A fine product. American made. Pulps a grapefruit in less than three seconds."

  "Your commercials sold all sorts of unique items. Michael

  Bolton albums. A Raggedy Ann pen-and-pencil set. A solar-powered dehydrator. And now one might say you're selling Jesus."

  This time, Boothe did not chuckle. Instead, he said, "Mr. Grubbman, I must take issue with your wording. I am not 'selling Jesus' by any stretch of the imagination."

  "Your Web site is so retail-oriented, it would make the folks at Amazon blush. It appears to be nothing more than an online store for your books, DVDs, CDs, and audiotapes. And I gotta say, the prices are pretty steep."

  By now, many viewers were expecting Boothe to start looking for an exit. To his credit, he did not. "We feel those prices are reasonable. We have to cover administrative costs."

  Grubbman checked his notebook. 'Administrative costs? Like this six-hundred-dollar dinner at Chez Moufette in Beverly Hills?"

  "Yes, well, in my new book, I mention the importance of treating oneself to small pleasures now and again."

  Grubbman let that one slide. "Your church in Dallas is the largest in America. Thirty thousand congregants?"

  Boothe nodded, happy, back on solid ground. "And growing every week, praise Jesus."

  "The Pastor Pete Hour is broadcast in thirty countries."

  Here came the chuckle again. "Fortunately, I don't have to write my sermon in thirty languages."

  'And now you're building a second religious complex, on a sixteen-hundred-acre ranch in Blanco County Texas."

  "We're trying to," Boothe said. "The good Lord has blessed that area with a lot of rain lately Things are moving slowly"

  "Why Blanco County?"

  Boothe steepled his fingers, thoughtful, full of altruism and sincerity "We want to open our doors to the good people in Austin and San Antonio. The location in Blanco County will offer both of those communities access to a Sunday afternoon service."

  "Yes, right. I understand you'll fly between the two sites. A sermon in the morning, another in the afternoon."

  "Precisely. Perhaps now you can understand why a man of God might need a jet."

  "Just two days ago, a construction worker died at the job site. What can you tell us about that?"

  Boothe was suddenly solemn. "The poor man flipped his backhoe. A veritable tragedy."

  "Do you believe in signs, Reverend Boothe?"

  "Signs? How do you mean?"

  "Perhaps this man's death is God's way of saying the Boothe empire has reached its limits. Maybe your new church isn't meant to be."

  Boothe narrowed his eyes and made a scoffing noise deep in his throat. "You can choose to think of it that way if you wish. But it was an unfortunate accident, and nothing more."

  3

  "WHY CAN'T WE have a normal homicide around here?" Sheriff Bobby Garza asked. He was sitting at a conference table, with Marlin across from him and Chief Deputy Bill Tatum to his left.

  "We get fake drownings," he continued, "fake hunting accidents. A man supposedly gets attacked by a chupacabra, only it turns out he was really stabbed in the neck with a screwdriver. Hell, in the big cities people just walk up and shoot each other. It's quick, it's efficient, and there's no question what happened. But no, out here, people gotta get weird."

  "Not to point out the obvious, but you said homicide," Tatum said. He was average height, but he had a weightlifter's physique—a thick torso, and biceps that stretched the sleeves of his khaki uniform. He was a good man, highly intelligent, but, unlike the sheriff, Tatum was never much for banter. He had a pale yellow circle under his left eye—the last traces of a shiner—and it made him look like a barroom brawler.

  "I did," Garza replied. "Lem hasn't made the final cut, but he was able to tell us that much from the prelim."

  The sheriff was referring to the autopsy of a local man named Hollis Farley, a backhoe operator whose body had been found the previous morning. The initial theory was that Farley had been crushed by his own rig late on Thursday afternoon after it had hit a boulder and flipped. Marlin had heard all about it, including the fact that it had taken the deputies nine hours to find a crane that could lift the eight-ton backhoe off Farley's corpse.

  "So what'd Lem find?" Marlin asked. His mind was racing ahead; he had some relevant information to share, though it was probably a long shot.

  "Here, tell me what you think." Garza placed a photograph on the table. "I puzzled over this thing for about ten minutes before I figured it out. At least, I think I figured it out, and Lem seems to agree."

  Marlin leaned forward to study the photo. What he saw was a close-up of a round puncture wound, maybe a third of an inch in diameter, which was bisected by two inch-long slits, one vertical, one horizontal, like the crosshairs in a rifle scope. Near the wound were the bumps of vertebrae running along Hollis Farley's spine. The wound could have been mistaken for some sort of injury inflicted by the flipping backhoe, but Marlin knew better.

  "Shot in the back with an arrow," he said. Garza whistled. "Now I feel stupid. What'd that take you? Five seconds?"

  Tatum picked the photo up and continued to examine it, scowling. "I'm still feeling stupid. This was an arrow?"

  Marlin nodded. "With a broadhead hunting point. I'm guessing it was one of the mechanical types—with blades that open on impact—because the conventional broadheads generally have a smaller diameter."

  "That's right," Garza said. "I wouldn't have thought of that."

  Tatum shook his head. "Well then, somebody pulled the arrow out, because there wasn't one in him."

  The chief deputy was an experienced hunter, but Marlin knew he didn't use a bow. Like most people, the only image he had of a human getting hit by an arrow came from the movies; cowboys getting attacked by Indians, arrows sticking out of chests and legs. Archery technology had improved greatly since those days, of course. "With enough draw weight," Marlin said, "most arrows will go clean through."

  "Even if they hit bone?" Tatum asked.

  "Depends on the bone. They can usually bust through
the rib cage pretty good."

  'And that's what this one did," Garza said, placing another photo on the table, "because this is the exit."

  The wound to Farley's chest wasn't as neat. The skin was torn and ragged, and a splinter of rib bone was protruding from the hole.

  "That means the arrow's still out there, unless somebody picked it up," Marlin said.

  "Crap," Tatum said. "We didn't even know to look for it."

  "Let's get a couple deputies back to the scene," Garza said. "See if we can track it down. In the meantime, there are plenty of people we need to talk to. Family, friends. We need to find out if this was something personal, or maybe Farley got cross-ways with a poacher."

  "I guess that's possible," Marlin said, "but it seems doubtful that a poacher would shoot him off his backhoe. Most poachers just run, if you give them a chance."

  "Then there's the possibility that it was related to the construction," Garza said.

  "If it was, this'll be a cinch," Tatum said. "There won't be any more than about nine thousand suspects."

  He was alluding to the entire population of Blanco County Very few residents had voiced support for the Reverend Peter Boothe's new church. Marlin was against it, too, especially after he'd learned how large the project was. It wasn't merely a church, it was a massive religious complex, complete with an auditorium that seated nearly fifteen thousand. The parking lot alone would cover sixty acres. The airstrip would swallow another ten. Worse yet, the construction site was adjacent to Pedernales Falls State Park, on the banks of the Pedernales River, and the pristine waters were at risk for pollution. Most of the locals were outraged that the site plan had ever been approved.

  'And don't forget that conservation group," Tatum continued. "We'll need to check them out."

  Garza laughed. "Well, yeah, I plan to. But I think I'd better speak to them myself. Considering."

  Marlin had heard about that, too—how Tatum had gotten sucker-punched by an elderly woman who'd chained herself to a cottonwood. Just one member of a group of protestors from Austin who'd visited the construction site earlier in the week.

  Tatum showed a rare moment of humor, saying, "Give me another shot, Bobby I think I can take her."

  Garza said, "I don't know, Bill. She sounds pretty tough. Better let me handle it. Besides, you're leaving town, when, Monday morning?"

  "That's the plan, but I can postpone it." "No, that's fine. You should go. Your kids would be crushed." He explained to Marlin: "Bill's taking the family to Disney World."

  "Oh, yeah? That's the one in Florida?" Marlin asked. "Yeah. Near Orlando," Tatum said. "You flying?" "Driving."

  Tatum had a look on his face like he'd just as soon lose a finger to a power saw. Marlin could only imagine two solid days cooped up with children in a car.

  "Well, uh, good luck with that."

  Garza asked Marlin, "You got some time to spend on this?" "You bet."

  Garza often involved Marlin in larger investigations; after all, Texas game wardens were fully commissioned peace officers and could enforce any state law, not just those pertaining to hunting and fishing. For the sheriff, it was like having an extra deputy on hand, when needed. Marlin, Garza, and Tatum had known each other since childhood, and they worked well together.

  "Good," Garza said. "If I remember right, you've had some trouble with Farley in the past."

  "Just once. Caught him hunting without a license a couple of years ago."

  "Didn't I see him in your office a few months back?"

  "You did, but he was actually helping me out with something. I don't know if this will lead anywhere, but... do either of you know a deer breeder named Perry Grange?"

  "I know of him," Tatum said. "That high-fenced ranch down on McCall Creek Road."

  Garza said, "I thought his name was Harry"

  Marlin said, "No, that's his brother. Remember a movie called Hell Hole, from six or seven years ago?"

  "Yeah, something about kids trapped in a cave."

  'A haunted cave," Marlin said. "Harry Grange directed it. Shot it out near Llano, where he and Perry are from originally Low-budget stuff, but it ended up making a fortune. Kind of a cult classic for teenagers. So then he got a big deal with one of the studios, but his next movie bombed, and he's been making cheesy horror flicks ever since. From what I can tell, Harry set his brother up in the deer-breeding business, like a silent partner.

  Harry, I think, put up the money to buy the original stock. Now Perry's got eight or nine good bucks out there, and he breeds them with decent does and sells the buck fawns."

  "How does this tie in to Hollis Farley?" Tatum asked. Marlin smiled. "Patience, Bill, patience. In January Hollis Farley called me and asked if there was any kind of reward for turning in a breeder who wasn't following the rules. I said yeah, I might be able to dig something up, depending on what he had. So he said Perry Grange was selling more fawns than his herd could possibly produce. He figured Grange was trapping wild fawns and selling them as his own. Which means his customers weren't getting the trophy bloodlines they were paying for, and, obviously Grange was able to sell a lot more deer than he normally would. We're talking about fawns that sell for five or six grand apiece." Garza shook his head. "You work in a strange business." "Getting stranger all the time. A few years ago, a couple of breeders paid nearly half a million dollars for the biggest captive buck in Texas."

  "Jesus. What the hell are they gonna do with it?"

  "Breed it. Make their money back, and then some. Assuming it doesn't die. Even then, they're probably insured."

  "Was Farley right?" Tatum asked.

  Marlin said, "I think so, in one case at least. The problem was, I didn't have enough to get a warrant for DNA tests. But I managed to find two of Grange's customers whose fawns had supposedly been sired by the same buck. We tested them, and those fawns weren't any more related than the three of us."

  "What'd Grange say?"

  "That it was a mix-up. That one of the fawns must've come from one of his other bucks. Both customers got a refund, and neither was willing to take it any further."

  'At that point," Garza said, "you'd think all of his customers would be lining up for DNA tests."

  "Just the opposite. I think there's an embarrassment factor. Most of Grange's customers use the fawns to stock their own ranches for commercial hunting, and they don't want to admit they got taken."

  "Like, what, it'd be bad PR?"

  "Exactly They don't want people thinking their deer are no different than the ones on the roadside. But I do know Grange's business suffered. He's having to sell a lot further from home."

  "So," Garza said, "boiling it down, Grange had a pretty good reason to be pissed at Hollis Farley."

  "But there's a hang-up. Everything Farley told me was confidential. Grange wouldn't know who ratted him out unless Farley opened his mouth."

  "Did he get a reward?" Tatum asked.

  'A thousand bucks."

  'A guy like Farley might've bragged about it." "Yeah, maybe."

  "Tell me about Perry Grange," Garza said.

  'An odd bird," Marlin said. "Maybe thirty-five years old, but he dresses like an old-time trapper or mountain man. Thinks the government should stay out of his business."

  "Got a temper?"

  "I didn't see one, but it never got confrontational."

  Garza sat quietly for several moments, pondering the information. "Okay, Henry's processing Farley's truck right now. In the meantime, John, you drop in on Perry Grange, but don't tell him why Just poke around and see how he reacts. Bill, before you leave town, work on Farley's coworkers and family members. I'll look into that environmental group, but first I'll grab Ernie and search Farley's place."

  They agreed on the plan, and Marlin got up to leave.

  Tatum was staring at the photos again. "The arrow didn't go all the way through in Deliverance. "

  Marlin smiled. "That's the movies for ya."

  4

  RED O'BRIEN WAS snooz
ing in his recliner, his belly full of tamales and Keystone beer, when he heard brakes squeal on the county road in front of his trailer. He'd been hearing that same annoying sound six days a week for two months now, because it had been that long since he'd had any paying work. It always came in the midafternoon, right when he was napping. The vehicle would slow, come to a stop, idle for a few seconds, then move a hundred yards down the road and repeat the process.

  Neither rain, nor snow, nor poorly maintained brakes...

  Red's best friend and housemate, a three-hundred-pounder named Billy Don Craddock, was lounging on the sofa, the TV remote resting on his chest. On the screen, a tight cluster of cars, all plastered bumper to bumper with various corporate logos, was roaring around Texas Motor Speedway. The volume was turned low, so all Red could hear was the faint droning of the juiced-up engines. As far as racing went, Red could take it or leave it, but it was a decent thing to watch on a lazy Saturday afternoon, with the spring breeze wafting through the open window. Truth was, it was damn near hypnotic, those cars going in circles like that. Could put a man to sleep before the tenth lap.

  Red stretched and yawned. Then he said, "Hey, Billy Don, why don't you run down and fetch the mail?"

  Billy Don didn't budge, but Red could see his eyes moving. Lap 63. Mike Garvey was leading, with Kyle Busch right on his ass. Red always figured the drivers' names were fake. They were too show-bizzy Names like Tony Stewart and Ryan Newman. You never heard about a racer called Cecil Strump or Percy Wiggins.

  Four more laps passed, and Red was getting heavy-lidded again, not even expecting an answer, when Billy Don said, "Go fetch it yourself. You ain't left the house in three days."

  "Neither have you."

  "Yeah, well, none of the mail's for me anyhow."

  Which was true enough. In the five years Billy Don had lived with Red, the big man had received exactly one piece of mail: a jury summons that Billy Don promptly flushed down the toilet.

  So Red pushed himself out of the chair, went out the front door, made his way to the road, forty yards away, grabbed the mail—just a couple of bills—and picked up the Blanco County Record from the weeds next to the caliche driveway.