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from the deathly pallor on his face as he stood before the old black man and his boy, that he had never seen anything quite like this.
    Driven by equal parts excitement and impatience, Pete stood first, leaving his father sitting alone on the small wicker bench in the hall. "She alive?" the boy asked, searching but not finding the answer in the aged doctor's expression.
    Wellman was so thin his limbs were like broom handles snapped over someone's knee, his chest a deflated accordion topped by a long face writhing with wrinkles in which small blue eyes, magnified by a pair of rimless spectacles, shone with surprising alertness. Those eyes looked troubled now as they found the boy's face. Pete had expected to be ignored, that whatever the doctor said would be directed toward his father, and so was pleasantly surprised to find the doctor addressing him directly. "Yes," he said in a quiet voice. "She is, but barely."
    "Will she make it?" Pete persisted.
    "I think so, though she's lost quite a bit of blood."
    The boy let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
    "Who did this to her?" Wellman asked, frowning. "I can't imagine anyone..." He trailed off, and put a hand to his mouth as if censoring a line of thought that would yield answers he preferred not to hear.
    "Animals," Pete's father said again, as if he'd been programmed to give that response whenever the question was put to him.
    The doctor dropped his gaze from the boy to his father. "Not unless we got animals in this state can work a knife, Jack."
    Pete looked to his father to see how this news had affected him. It hadn't, or if it did, he was doing a fine job of hiding the fact. In the dull gray light through the windows in the hall, all he saw on the old man's face were shadows.
    "No," Wellman said, "Wasn't animals did this. Poor girl's been cut up something terrible. Beaten too. She's got a concussion, multiple fractures, and a couple of busted ribs. Whoever took a blade to her used it to take out one of her eyes and lop off a few of her fingers and toes. If it was an animal, the wounds would be ragged, Jack. No." He sounded as if he didn't believe it was possible or didn't want to believe it, but knew there was no other explanation. "Someone real angry wanted her to die, and die slow." He shook his head and touched a pair of trembling fingers to the small silver crucifix that hung around his neck. Then he sighed and stepped away from the boy. "Either one of you called the Sheriff?"
    Pete shook his head. "I guess we wanted to get her here 'fore it was too late."
    "Well that was the right thing to do, but we'd best give Hal a call now. Need to tell him he's got some kind of lunatic out there running around chopping up women." He started to move down the hall, but Jack stood and put a hand on his arm. Wellman looked at it like it was a strange species of exotic spider that had just dropped from the ceiling.
    With a pained expression on his face, Pete's father leaned in close to the doctor and said in a low voice, "You can't. Not 'less you want more people in that room of yours tonight."
    Puzzled, Wellman slowly withdrew his arm from the man's grip. "You know something I don't?"
    Jack licked his lips and nodded slowly. "I do, but might be better if you didn't hear it." His gaze, which Pete was shocked to see was one of fear, dropped to the floor. "Now if you're sayin' that girl's gonna make it, I reckon me and Pete's done about all we can and we'll just head on home and leave her to you."
    Wellman studied Jack's face. "What's going on?"
    "Leave it, Doc. Please. It's the best thing to do."
    "The hell it is, Jack. Someone's gonna be missing that girl and I don't know where to start. That's Sheriff's work right there, and how's he gonna help if he don't know about it?" He glanced at Pete and a funny look passed over his face. "You boys didn't have anything to do with this, did you?"
    Pete felt as if he'd been punched. "Hell no, Doc. We found her just like that,