Prone in a ditch under hot sun, next to a narrow gravel lane that wound its way up to the one-story rambling white clapboard of one Archibald Gershon, Harrow understood why Sheriff Roberto Tomasa had seemed both eager and amused to have the Crime Scene! host handle interviewing the recluse.

Gershon lived on the property next to murder victims the Reids, and the sheriff had figured the old man may well have seen something.

“Archie’s known to keep track of what goes on in and around his property,” the sheriff had said.

“How do you know anything about the man, if he never steps off that parcel?”

“I didn’t say he never stepped off that parcel—he comes to town once a month. Him and me usually share a beer and some talk. No, it’s just anybody stepping foot on his parcel that’s a problem.”

They had left the sheriff’s office in two vehicles—Harrow and Tomasa in the departmental Tahoe, trailed by the Crime Seen! bus with Pall, Anderson, Arroyo, Ingram, and their driver (other staff members having been dropped at their motel).

Right now they were pulling up to the foot of the place, to large red hand-painted letters on weathered white-painted wood near the gate: TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT! SURVIVORS WILL BE SHOT TWICE!

Harrow frowned. “You just let him get away with shooting at anybody who comes near his place?”

“My predecessor hauled him in, three times. But in this part of the world, people value their privacy. Not a judge or jury around here woulda gave him so much as a fine. Anyway, there haven’t been any incidents lately.”

“Nobody’s welcome?”

“The only person who’s been up here in the last ten years who didn’t draw gunfire was the Direct TV installation guy…The coot does love his TV.”

“Unless he has a dog,” Harrow said, with a dry chuckle, “it’s probably his only company.”

In the ditch now, it didn’t seem so amusing.

And Gershon was true to his word, or anyway true to his sign: when Tomasa’s SUV had pulled up to the gate, a bullet punctured a tire, and a second one took out part of the red and blue light on the roof. That’s when Tomasa shoved the Tahoe into park, and suggested they vacate the vehicle.

Harrow had rolled out the passenger side, hit the gravel hard, then continued on, dropping down into the drainage ditch next to the road. With the open driver’s side door for cover, Tomasa got to the back of the SUV, then ducked behind the Tahoe, all the while gesturing for the bus to back off.

Then, just after a third round pierced the Socorro County shield on the driver’s door, Tomasa came around the vehicle and dove into the ditch next to Harrow.

“Man of his word,” Harrow said. “Sign said he’d shoot. I’m just glad he’s as good at it as he is.”

“You picked up on that, huh?” the sheriff said with a rumpled grin. “Yeah, most people think ol’ Arch misses them. Truth is, he could pick off a gnat’s eyelash at two hundred yards.”

“Not every crazy survivalist,” Harrow said, “shoots like that.”

“He’s no survivalist,” Tomasa said. “And I wouldn’t bet on crazy, either. He just doesn’t like company.”

“Who is this character?”

“Late at night, in certain bars around town, you may hear how Archie was one of the boys on the grassy knoll.”

Harrow gave the sheriff a look.

“Just passing it along, Mr. Harrow. Don’t claim it’s gospel.”

They heard a vehicle door slam—the bus’s, out in the country road below the Tahoe at the gate—and watched as Pall and Anderson jumped out, followed by Maury Hathaway, lugging his Sony cam. Soon the three men were hunkered down in the ditch with the Crime Seen! host and the sheriff.

“What the hell are you doing?” Harrow said. “Bullets are flying. You should’ve stayed put.”

Veteran cameraman Hathaway said, “Didn’t get the memo.”

Young Anderson said, “We’re fine. That guy’s a good shot. He’s just trying to scare us.”

“Really?” Harrow asked. “What if he missed?”

Hathaway said, “We’ll stay put unless you say otherwise. I wouldn’t risk my head or my camera.”

A fourth bullet kicked up dirt by the edge of the ditch.

Tomasa yelled up toward the house: “Goddamn it, Archie, stop that! You known damn well it’s Sheriff Tomasa!”

As if the preceding bullets had been so much friendly conversation, a rough-edged voice called down, “I know who you are, Roberto!”

“I thought we were friends!” Tomasa yelled.

“We are—that’s why you’re alive…now get the hell off my property!”

“I just come to talk!”

“Be in town next week, Roberto! We can talk then.”

“I need to talk today!”

“If I wanted to talk to anybody out here, today? I wouldn’ta put up that sign. You do read English, don’t you, Roberto?”

Tomasa, sighing, turned to the little group in the ditch. “Hard-headed old bastard.” To the house, he called, “You don’t have to talk to me, Archie!”

“I know I don’t!”

“No—that’s not it! I brought someone else to talk to you!”

“Maybe you read English, but doesn’t seem like you understand the spoken word.”

The spoken word? Harrow thought. What kind of erudite hermit lived up that hill?

“Somebody come a long ways to talk to you, Arch!”

“I don’t want to talk to anybody today, Roberto. Already jawed long enough!”

Jawed long enough? Was this guy Gabby Hayes or Alistair Cooke?

Then, to punctuate his point, the old man fired a round over their heads.

“Maybe this is more trouble than it’s worth,” Tomasa said. “Chances are he didn’t see a damn thing.”

“We’re here,” Harrow said with a shrug. “My suit already needs dry cleaning, and probably some mending. So how about you let me try?”

“Up to you. Just don’t raise your head too high—he’s liable to separate you from it.”

“He could probably part my hair, if he wanted.” Then, toward the house, he yelled, “Mr. Gershon, this is J.C. Harrow! I’d like to come up and speak with you!”

Silence.

“Mr. Gershon, my name is—”

“I heard you!”

“I’m with a TV show called—”

“I know what the show’s called! And I don’t believe for an instant J.C. Harrow’s in a ditch at the bottom of my hill! I don’t think the Fonz or Sergeant. Bilko or Gil Grissom is, either!”

“…You got a scope on that rifle?”

Gershon said nothing.

“Take a look at that bus on the road outside your drive! Name of the show’s painted all over it!”

They waited several long, tense moments, peeking over the lip of the ditch like kids watching a ball game over the centerfield fence.

Finally, the door of the house opened, and a string bean in camouflage T-shirt, jeans, and tennies stepped out onto a cement stoop four steps up. Gershon was old, all right, with long, lank silver hair to prove it. He held a model 597 Remington rimfire rifle with a scope—Harrow had one at home, damn good gun.

The king of the hill sighted down through the scope.

Realizing that the man was trying to get a better look and probably not getting ready to fire, Harrow pushed himself to his feet.

“What the hell are you doing?” Tomasa demanded.

With uncharacteristic energy, from down in the ditch, Southern boy Anderson said, “Come on, sir—you know better!”

“Boss!” Pall yelled, overlapping the young chemist. “Get down—”

But Harrow stayed on his feet—his calling card was his face, the proof of his words his famous appearance. He stepped back up onto the grassy slope—the place was not fenced off, despite the gated gravel drive—and gave Gershon a good look and a clean shot…if that was what he was looking for.

“Be a son of a bitch! You are him!”

Harrow just shrugged elaborately with open arms.

“Come on up!”

“What about my crew? And the sheriff?”

“No. Just you!”

Harrow took a few steps up the slope—the grass was cut, not shaggy with weeds.

Pall whispered: “What do you want us to do, boss?”

Without turning or even halting his climb, Harrow said, “Stay out of range of that Remington. Probably ought to keep low and ease back to the bus.”

Anderson said, “What about you, sir?”

Moving upward but not quickly, looking up at the skinny figure with the rifle, Harrow said softly, “I’ll be fine. Sheriff, can I tell Mr. Gershon if he cooperates, there’ll be no charges for the gunplay?”

Tomasa said, “If you come back with your head attached, Mr. Harrow? We’ll let it slide.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

Harrow went on up the hillside, cutting over and stopping in a circle of gravel in front of the well-tended, unpretentious, if weathered, house. A ’98 Chevy Silverado pickup in the turnaround was showroom clean. Still, everything about the place said stay away. Bushes with long thorns scratched at windows and crowded the narrow stoop. The front screen was closed, the inside door open, a mangy hound visible at the screen, his nose working, his growl barely audible.

So he does have a dog for a friend, Harrow thought.

Up on the stoop, Gershon held the rifle easy in his hands. The old boy wore no glasses, his gray eyes bright if suspicious, his skin leathered from life in the sun, the angles in his face suggesting an American Indian in his ancestry, the lank, silver hair lifting a little in the breeze. He was slender but hard and sharp, like boards positioned at angles on an obstacle course.

“Never miss your show,” he said, genial but low-key, rifle lowered now but ready when need be.

“Never miss a shot, either, do you?”

Gershon smiled—his teeth were mildly yellowed but his own; he was sturdy-looking for a guy his age, which was easily seventy. “If you mean, could I have hit if you if I liked? You know I could. I ain’t prone to missing.”

“You’re going to have to make up your mind, Mr. Gershon.”

“How’s that?”

“Are you a crazy old coot out of Li’l Abner, or are you a smart, seasoned veteran of wars unknown who chooses to live apart from the human race?”

“…You know why I like your show, Mr. Harrow?”

“No.”

“You ain’t no…you’re no phony. No wannabe. You and your people have helped put bad guys away, and I can admire that.”

“We try,” Harrow said.

Gershon stepped down the few concrete steps and offered a hand, which Harrow shook. The grip was firm but didn’t show off.

“How pissed off is Roberto?”

“How pissed off do you think? You shot at his vehicle. Blew out a tire, popped his cherry top, and put a hole in the door. That’ll cost the county money, and he’s got to explain it.”

“He knows who’s to blame,” Gershon grumbled. “We’re friendly, you know. No secret to Roberto that I value my privacy.”

Harrow lifted his eyebrows. “I appreciate that desire, Mr. Gershon. Public service was bad enough, but now I’m really in the fishbowl. You mind if I call you ‘Archie’?”

The breeze riffled the long wispy silver hair. “Not if I can call you ‘J.C.’ Where was it you sheriffed? Idaho? Ohio?”

“Iowa. Story County. Just north of Des Moines. Good farmland there. Good people too.”

“Not sure there is such an animal.”

“What?”

“As ‘good people.’”

Harrow shook his head. “Not all people are bad. You said yourself, you like how my show puts bad guys away. That suggests good people getting help.”

His host thought about that momentarily. “I’m going to smoke. You want one?”

“Sure.”

Gershon leaned the rifle against the stoop, fished a pack of smokes and a lighter from a pants pocket, and lit up. Then he passed the lighter and cigarettes to Harrow, who joined in.

“Sheriff Tomasa, for example,” Harrow said. “He’s one of the good people. The good guys. Don’t you think, Archie?”

“Better than most.”

“I like him too. What about your neighbor—George Reid? Was he good people?”

“That’s why you’re here, of course—the killings.”

“You know it is. Reid a good neighbor?”

Gershon grinned. “Why, you suppose if you asked him that he’d’ve said I was? No, we weren’t really neighborly. He was just the stranger who lived over there…” He pointed west. “…and did me the favor of minding his own business.”

Harrow looked toward where the sun was lowering, about to drop behind the hills for the night. “He had kids, Archie.”

“Yes, he did. They were never any trouble to me either.”

“Whoever did this killed Reid’s kids.”

“I know. World’s a shithole, and it can suck a kid down fastest of all.”

For a shithole, the world looked beautiful right now, dusk settling in on the recluse’s perch with gentle tones of blue and gray.

“Archie, you see anything that night? Hear anything?”

“If I had, don’t you think I’d’ve told Roberto?”

“No.”

“Why, because I’m a nasty old hermit? A misanthrope who’s given up on the world and everything in it?”

“No. You love that old hound dog, for instance. And he’s part of the world.”

“You think you got a bead on me, J.C.?”

“I think you’re hiding in plain sight, Archie. I think you’re waiting to see which catches up with you, first—people who come around to kill you, or just the darkness that eventually swallows us all.”

He stared a long time at Harrow, who could see the shadows of approaching night washing over the old man, and they just stood there smoking.

Finally, Archibald Gershon said, “Why don’t you come in for a beer?”

“Thought you’d never ask.”

The living room was large and knotty pine, lined with built-in shelves holding volumes of as many varieties as a well-stocked college bookstore—novels, both popular and literary from many decades, non-fiction works on politics and world history, philosophy, poetry, engineering.

Where there weren’t book shelves in the living room, gun racks displayed a collection of firearms a crazy cult might envy. A very comfortable-looking, well-worn brown leather lounger on a braided rug on the bare wood floor faced a big flat-screen television, fifty-something inch easy, as if it were an altar. A table by the chair had beer cans and a fat satellite TV guide, a nine millimeter Browning, and a John D. MacDonald novel cracked open face down.

With the exception of the beer cans, however, the place was tidy, and the kitchen—which opened onto the big library/TV area—had a Formica table dating to I Love Lucy days, where they sat and had Schlitz from the can, very cold. The hound curled up under the table at its master’s feet—when Harrow came in, it hadn’t even growled, sensing Gershon’s approval of their guest.

“Breeze was out of the west that night,” Gershon said, after a particularly deep swig of Schlitz, “and carried the shots over here—it was like they were in my own yard.”

“No question it was gunshots—not a vehicle backfiring, kids playing with fireworks…?”

Gershon gave him a look. “I’ve heard plenty of guns in my lifetime, J.C.”

“Enough to identify them by sound?”

“This was a handgun. Loud. I’d say a .357.”

“You do know your guns.”

Gershon twitched a smile. “You’ve already gathered you aren’t the only one retired from public service.”

Harrow had already suspected that it wasn’t company that Gershon feared so much as The Company. As in CIA.

“When I heard those shots,” he was saying, “I already knew it was too late to do any good. I’m not heartless, J.C.—I knew there were kids over there. But there was no saving anybody.”

Harrow nodded.

“Still, I grabbed up the Remington and got outside.”

“Could you see the perp leaving? Did you take a shot at him?”

The old boy shook his head, the silver locks swinging. “I meddled in other people’s affairs a long time ago—I try not to do it anymore.”

Harrow said nothing.

“Come on, J.C. Think it through. He’d killed who he’d come to kill, by the time I heard those shots. If I’d gone over there, they’d be dead anyway. If I shot the guy, who knows who he is or he’s working for? No. I have enough on my plate just keeping my own ass alive.”

“Why do you bother, Archie? Keeping your ass alive, if the world is such a shithole?”

“Why, J.C.—if I was dead? Something terrible would happen.”

“What?”

He grinned. “I’d miss your show.”

Harrow grinned back at him. “Okay, Archie. You didn’t take a shot. But what did you see through that scope of yours?”

He swigged more beer. “You’re right—I did watch as the guy drove off.”

“What direction?”

“East.”

“So, then…he drove right by here.”

Gershon swigged again.

“What did you see, Archie?”

“Late model Ford F-150.”

Harrow tried not to show any reaction. “Color?”

“Blue—light blue.”

Another hit.

Still, Harrow remained impassive. “See the driver?”

“Not really. Probably a man. That’s about all I got.”

“What makes you say it’s a man, then?

Gershon shrugged. “Just didn’t feel like a woman. Loud gun like that mag, truck like that…. No, I think it was a man, all right.”

“What else did you get, Archie?”

Gershon took another gulp of beer.

“Come on, Archie—what is it you’ve been trying to decide whether or not to share?”

“…You want the license number?”

Harrow just looked at him.

“Oklahoma plates,” he said, and gave the number to Harrow, who wrote it down in his mini-notebook.

Harrow shook his head. “You memorized the number?”

“Sometimes having a good memory comes in handy. Other times you’d trade it for being able to forget.”

“And sometimes,” Harrow said, “memory is all you have.”

“Truth in that,” the old man said.

Harrow finished his beer, then stood. “Look, Archie—I’ve got to go run this plate. You got anything else for me?”

“I don’t think so.”

But Harrow couldn’t quite let go. “Why didn’t you tell anyone? Just call your friend Roberto?”

“No phone.”

“It’s just…Archie, goddamn it—somebody might have caught this bastard, if you’d just notified the police.”

“If that’s all, J.C., I got shows to watch, and books to read.”

Harrow shook his head. “None of this means anything to you?”

“You lost your family, didn’t you?”

“…Yeah.”

“Ever want to cash it in after that?”

Harrow sighed. “I could use another smoke.”

The old man provided one, and the two went back outside where dusk had deepened to purple evening.

“I might want to cash it in,” Harrow said, “but I can’t think that way. I have to stop this son of a bitch before he does this sick thing again, and again.”

“See, that’s why I like you on TV, J.C. Why other people like you on TV.”

“Huh?”

“You don’t give a shit about being a star or having your fifteen minutes of whatever-the-hell. You’re the only person on television with an unselfish motive for being there.”

“Oh, I have a selfish motive, Archie. I want justice for my family.”

“Not revenge?”

“Semantics.”

Gershon chuckled dryly, letting smoke swirl out. “People think I’m crazier than a shithouse rat, living out here. I survived things I never should have, and that survival’s so ingrained in me, I couldn’t ever punch my own ticket. So, here I sit on this goddamned hill just waiting to die.”

“Or for someone to come kill you?”

“That’s just one way of dying.” He looked out into the gathering darkness. “What those ‘good’ people do out there to each other, that doesn’t mean squat to me anymore. Yet I’m still here. Waiting.”

Harrow stubbed out the cigarette under his heel, but before he turned to go, he asked, “Were you in Dallas in 1963, Archie?”

“…Don’t believe everything you hear.”

“I don’t,” Harrow said. “But I do pay attention.”

Bestowing his guest a tight smile, Gershon said, “I will tell you one thing—I was in the Dominican Republic in 1961.”

“Trujillo?”

“You know your history. If a man knows his history, he might keep from repeating it…not that anybody in charge of this country for the last twenty years ever got that.” The breeze blew at his hair again, and the old man shivered, possibly with the cold.

Harrow sighed. “Been a lot of blood spilled in a lot of places.”

“I said you knew your history.”

“Whoever spilled that blood next door, Archie, has got to be stopped.”

“Don’t disagree. But it’s your job, not mine.”

“It is at that…and I should get to doing it.”

“You should,” Gershon said. “But if you ever want to stop back and shoot the shit again, chances are I won’t shoot at you. And if I do, I won’t likely hit you.”

Harrow gave up a lopsided grin. “Thanks for that much. And thanks for the license plate number. That should put you in solid with your pal Roberto. And I’ll get my network to pay for the damage to his vehicle.”

“And they say TV stars are just a bunch of phonies.”

Then, laughing at his own joke, the old man turned around and went into the house and joined his hound, his TV, his lounger, his books, and his guns.