People had been deprived of their lives. Never mind that they were cruds—useless people nobody even missed. They had been people, and now they were something less than gaping holes in the fabric of life here. And if Wally Inglass had died alone somewhere, if his death too had seemed like an accident, things would have gone on as usual, without discernible change. As it was, Precious’s plight was little more than a diversion—something to gas about over a couple of cans of squaw piss in the Rusty Hinge, or while folding dried socks and towels on the brown Formica folding tables at the Super Lunderette.
Even Stu Sawyer was using the case as a mere object lesson for Ewerton’s youth, like those dramatic audiotapes the guidance counselors used to play for Anna and her classmates back in junior
