I shuddered at the common horror of it. “Can you find out?” I wanted to know this women’s fate, the final details. Knowing, no matter how brutal, would be better than imagining.

“Yes, I can,” Joanne answered.

“Tell me.”

“I will.”

“Maybe I should try to get some sleep,” I said shakily. I was suddenly aware that Joanne looked tired. She hadn’t been to bed yet either. I didn’t think she would leave me alone in the woods with my Scotch and trembling hands.

“Do you want me to hold you?”

“No, I’m okay,” I lied. Joanne, behind her glasses, dressed in the sober clothes of a policewoman, seemed too distant. I wasn’t sure just who the woman was who kissed me last night, but she had vanished with the morning light.

“Look at me. Look at me and say that,” she caught me.

I couldn’t. I glanced across the clearing. Joanne put her hand under my chin and turned my face back to her.

“I’m not okay. How the hell can you be?” she said.

I started crying. Joanne put her arms around me.

“Do you want me to make love to you?” she asked with simple directness.

Of course, I wanted her to make love to me, more now than last night. My desire had gone frighteningly beyond want to need.

“No,” I said, afraid to be so vulnerable. Then, “How did you know?” and finally, “Yes…yes, I do.”

She took off her glasses. Her eyes were unhidden, the flecks of blue in the dense gray brought out by the morning light. Then she kissed me, slowly, no haste or hurry, no sense of obligation on her part, not blatantly sexual.

But desire could not long remain absent. I put my arms around her, pulling her tightly to me, wanting the taut edge of passion to blunt my thoughts. Joanne responded to my need, her kisses no longer gentle, but heavy, fierce. She pushed me back so that I lay across the stump, feeling its rough ridges as her weight pressed down on me.

She opened my shirt, exposing my breasts to the morning light and the touch of her hands. Leaving my mouth wet and open, she moved her lips to my nipples, tonguing them as her hands undid my pants.

I felt the pressure of her hand cover me, first over the cotton of my underwear, then flesh on flesh, her fingers twining in my hair. Her other hand pulled my pants down, pinning me between the cool roughness of the stump and the warm smoothness of her hand spreading my lips. Her mouth was on my stomach, moving down. Then her tongue went between my lips, her hands pushing on my thighs, spreading my legs open.

I gasped at her probings, the suck and tickle of her lips, the breeze that pulled at the wet spots her movement left open to it. I shuddered, then unbidden, through the relaxation of sensual pleasure, the stark image of the woman eaten and flayed by the creatures of the night struck me, catching and jerking my thoughts away from the present morning to the past night.

I lay still, trying to push the macabre image aside, to immerse myself in the merely physical. But I couldn’t. The harder I tried to thrust her memory aside, the more insistent the image became. Until I sat halfway up, to tell Joanne to stop.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just don’t seem able to…” I trailed off. Stop thinking of a dead woman.

“Want me to try something different?” she offered.

“No, that’s okay.”

“Is it something I did?”

“No,” I answered quickly, not wanting her to think it was her failure, when it was mine alone. “No, you’re great. It’s me. I can’t help thinking…about the scene in the woods.”

“I see,” she replied. “Try something for me?”

“Sure, if you want. But you really don’t need to waste—”

“I’m not wasting anything,” Joanne cut me off. “Lie back down.” I did. “Watch the trees, the light through the branches. Now, the only thing you can think of is what I do between your legs. I want you to concentrate on that. Understand?”

“Yes,” I replied.

I felt Joanne’s mouth cover me, warming where the breeze had threatened to cool. Then her tongue, a hard spot in the midst of her warmth. I closed my eyes, feeling only what she was doing to me, the pure carnal pleasure of her long strokes moving against me. Up again and away, until all I knew were a few inches of flesh and the rising heat from her friction. Then she touched me, held me, sent a bolt of sensation through me, a feeling that was pleasure, but more than that, release, a powerful relinquishing of tension, holding me until I had to jerk up and roll away from her, having nothing more to let go of.

I lay motionless, gradually becoming aware of the call and cry of morning birds, and Joanne beside me, holding me.

“Thank you,” I finally said.

“I like you, Micky,” she replied. It was the best thing she could have said. Then she pulled a handkerchief out of one of her pockets and gently wiped me off. She stood up. “Time to head back. The others will be looking for us before they leave.”

“What about you?” I asked as I sat up.

“You owe me.”

“Of course I do. But aren’t you…?” I asked.

“A bit. Alex and I made love earlier. She knows to expect it whenever I have to go look at dead people.”

“Oh,” I said, nonplused at her admission. “I feel like I took advantage of you,” I finally said.

“Hardly. Remember, I offered.”

“That doesn’t mean I didn’t.”

“Micky, needs and emotions are such a tangle, particularly sex, at times, it’s impossible to say who’s right or wrong. Do you feel used?”

“No, I don’t. I feel a hell of a lot better than I did an hour ago.”

“So do I. Why don’t we leave it at that?”

“Okay,” I said. “Thank you.”

“I think Danny’s going to hang around for a while. But I know Alex and Nina want to get out of here as soon as they can,” she said as we started walking back to the house.

“Poor Nina,” I said, remembering the abject terror on her face as she stumbled from the woods. “Nothing like walking into the scene of a horror movie.”

We were back on the lawn. I could see Danny and Elly over near their car. Then Cordelia, Alex, and Nina appeared from around the house carrying suitcases. We walked up to the cars, Joanne’s parked next to Danny’s, Cordelia’s several yards away.

Danny eyed the bottle of Scotch that I was carrying back with me. I put it in her trunk.

“Here, you look like you need this more than I do,” I said.

She picked up the bottle, examined it, then shrugged her shoulders and put it back in the trunk.

“Have you had any sleep at all?” Cordelia asked, coming up behind me.

“No. I couldn’t sleep. It’s okay. I’m used to these kinds of hours,” I joked to hide my discomfort at her presence, sure it was obvious I just had sex with Joanne.

“You look tired,” she said.

“So do you,” I replied, glancing at her. Her hair was wet and brushed back from a recent shower, but her eyes were bloodshot and circled.

“I am. I thought I would catch up on my sleep this weekend.”

“Go home and take a nap,” I advised. I didn’t like to see her so tired, no glint in her blue eyes.

“You heading back?”

“No, I’m going to stay out here and help Emma. Clean up and stuff.”

“Come on, C.J., time to blow this joint,” Alex called to her.

“Take care, Micky,” she said.

“You, too,” I answered, then half-turned, pretending it was perfectly okay for Cordelia to leave, that our good-bye wasn’t important. Too late, I saw her start to lift her arms to hug me, then quickly drop back, when I moved away. She went back to her car.

“Get home safely,” Elly said as she got in. Nina joined her in the back seat.

Alex hugged Joanne good-bye. Then, with an indecipherable glance at me, she said, “See you back in town, Micky. Don’t get into any trouble. So long, Danny.” Then she got into Cordelia’s car.