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abstractedby some new notion, then strode purposefully to the back door of the house and withdrew yet another set of keys and unlocked the door of the house and went inside and pulled the door to after him.
    Tyler didn’t plan his next move or even think about it. There was just something in the careful way Breece had stowed away the briefcase. If Tyler had thought about it, he wouldn’t have done it, but the keys were still in the trunk of the Lincoln and in an instant he had darted across the carport and wrenched up the trunk lid and seized the briefcase. He was already fleeing with it when the door of the house opened and the undertaker came down the steps.
    Tyler was running full tilt up the grassy slope toward theline of trees with the briefcase swinging choppily along and his shirt blown out cartoonlike behind him like some halfcrazed and ill-dressed commuter chasing a fleeing train. He was holding his breath and expecting the crack of a gun and buckshot snarling about him like angry hornets but all that came was a hoarse cry like the cry of some wounded animal hopelessly snared, a strangled ululating shriek of outrage or despair.
    Once he reached the cover of trees he kept on going, crashing through brush with saplings whipping past him and his breath coming ragged, and when he thought how ludicrous the picture of portly Fenton Breece leaping brush and fallen trees was he stopped and sat on a stump to catch his breath.
    He listened intently but all was silence save the hammering of his heart against his ribcage. He sat for a time staring at the briefcase. He had to see what manner of beast he had here. There was a businesslike lock on the strap buthe didn’t even try forcing it. He just took out his pocketknife and cut the strap and looked inside.
    Papers. He leafed hurriedly through them, glancing occasionally at the woods. Invoices, bills of lading, receipts. Copies of orders placed with various firms for chemicals, caskets, clothing. Curious the trades men follow. Beneath the sheaf of papers lay a flat zippered pouch of the sort businesses use to carry deposits to the bank. His heart sank. A sack of goddamn money, he thought. I take a chance on getting shot and get chased through the woods by a fat undertaker and all I’ve done is prove I’m a thief.
    He unzipped it with trepidation.
    The first thing he saw was a pair of lavender silk panties. They were discolored up one side and hip with a fadedrustbrown stain that had long soaked into the very texture of the fabric and appeared very old. He didn’t even want to know what it was or how it came to be there. He laid them aside and stared at them in a kind of appalled wonder.
    Here was more. A rubberbanded stack of glossy black-and-white photographs. He slipped off the rubber band to rifle hastily through them.
    He dropped them suddenly as if they’d seared his hand. Or he’d been handling one of those clever medieval boxes with their springloaded needles cunningly hidden and tipped with curare. He felt infected, poison freezing his nerve and brain.
    The photographs had scattered, some face up. He stared at them in fascinated revulsion. They were all of nude women. Some young, some old. Some pretty, some not. They were arranged in grotesque configurations they’d probably not aspired to in life and they were all unmistakably dead. Legsspread flagrantly, some grouped in mimicry of various acts of sexual congress. Their faces painted in carmine smiles. Their weary eyes, their sagging flesh. He’d used some sort of timer with the camera for here was Breece himself, nude and gross and grinning, capering gleefully among the painted dead.
    He picked the photographs up carefully by their edges and replaced the rubber band and just sat holding them. What to do with them. These trading cards from beyond the river Styx, picture postcards mailed from Hell.

    She took the underwear up delicately by its unstained hem. Laid it aside.
    Where do you suppose he got them?
    He