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it, and he sure wasn’t going to put it in the yard sale he was planning on having next Saturday “before going to California.” He laughed. That was a good one. And everybody believed it. Or anybody who gave a rat’s fart what he did or where he went. He had told so many people he was pushing off for California that he halfway believed it himself.
    He knew Bitch wouldn’t starve to death in the woods. She was a smart dog and could probably catch something to eat, coons or possums or squirrels. He thought of the three fifty-pound bags of Purina Dog Chow that he had taken the trouble to tote up to the Madewell place, one hundred and fifty pounds of doggie nuggets just to feed Bitch with. Hell, if she was so damn smart she’d probably get it into her head to go on back up to the Madewell place and get in there somehow and chew open one of those bags of Purina. He wouldn’t be a bit surprised to find her there with a big grin on her face the next time he came back.
    But more’n likely she’d just keep on a-walking until she came to somebody’s house who would feed her. The nearest house in this direction was a mile or more, down toward Parthenon, and he didn’t even know for sure who lived there. It was an old farmhouse some ways beyond where this trail met up with the dirt road from Wayton to Parthenon. He rarely saw the folks who lived there; he’d waved at the woman once or twice as he went by. If the woman had happened to notice him driving the truck up the road so many times loaded up with stuff, she might have wondered. But once he got that davenport and those chickens up there, assuming the poor truck could make that next-to-last trip, she’d never see him go by again, because the last trip would be made in the dark of the wee hours, with his passenger.
    He’d be “gone to California.” Which is where near about everybody from this part of the country had gone anyhow. His mom and dad had gone out there, and died out there. His sister Betty June wrote him once or twice a year from some place called Santa Monica, where she was doing real well. He figured he’d probably have to answer her latest letter, which he hardly ever did, just to let her know that he didn’t live in Stay More any more and not to write him there any more. He wouldn’t tell her he was “gone to California” or she’d expect him to come visit her.
    But now he could go spend a couple more nights at home and get ready for that yard sale and heft that davenport up onto his back experimentally just to see if it would fit and how heavy it was. He knew he didn’t need to have the yard sale, not for the money anyhow. The only reason he was having it was to make it look a little more convincing that he was really leaving for good. He’d had a realtor’s FOR SALE sign in his yard for weeks now, and might not ever find a buyer for such a rundown old place, but he didn’t need that money either. He didn’t need any money. He’d bought himself a steel fireproof Sentry ® security chest and put all the money in it, except for what he thought he’d need to buy whatever he needed to stock his new home, and he’d buried it under the front porch up there at the Madewell place, and he didn’t expect he’d have to dig it up for a good long while. It was dirty money anyhow, probably collected from all kinds of poor folks addicted to the dope that they’d had to buy with it.
    His CID buddies—not friends because he didn’t have a one but good old acquaintances from way back, Lieutenant Morrow’s men in Company e of the Criminal Investigation Division at Harrison—had been puzzled about what had become of the money, but they hadn’t suspected him, or even questioned him about it. His twenty years of service were spotless, and made him eligible for the retirement he’d taken, and nobody thought to make any connection between his retirement and his shooting of that drug runner, except that, as he’d put it, he was damned tired of being