e all right………！'
〃Yes； thank you；〃 Marjorie said。 〃But you tell the Lord to wait long enough for you to put me through to the high sheriff's office down Tefton； all right？〃
The Trapingus County high sheriff was a whiskeynosed old boy with a gut like a washtub and a head of white hair so fine it looked like pipe…cleaner fuzz。 I knew him well； he'd been up to Cold Mountain plenty of times to see what he called 〃his boys〃 off into the great beyond。 Execution witnesses sat in the same folding chairs you've probably sat in yourself a time or two； at funerals or church suppers or Grange bingo （in fact； we borrowed ours from the Mystic Tie No。 44 Grange back in those days）； and every time Sheriff Homer Cribus sat down in one； I waited for the dry crack that would signal collapse。 I dreaded that day and hoped for it； both at the same time； but it was a day that never came。 Not long after … couldn't have been more than one summer after the Detterick girls were abducted … he had a heart attack in his office； apparently while screwing a seventeen year…old black girl named Daphne Shurtleff。 There was a lot of talk about that； with him always sporting his wife and six boys around so prominent e election time … those were the days when； if you wanted to run for something； the saying used to be 〃Be Baptist or be gone。〃 But people love a hypocrite； you know … they recognize one of their own； and it always feels so good when someone gets caught with his pants down and his dick up and it isn't you。
Besides being a hypocrite； he was inpetent； the kind of fellow who'd get himself photographed pet that point； running southeast through low； wooded hills where families named Cray and Robite and Duplissey still made their own mandolins and often spat out their own rotted t