Sometimes I look to heaven, imploring,And the howling storm hears my grief.
The rain is cold, and its roar is loud.
“Sing,” cries my heart, “for we shall soon be leaving.”
—From the song “I want what I have not,” poem by Bohdan Zaleski,
music by Frédéric Chopin
Chapter 38Tuesday 23 March
Following another night of only a few hours’ sleep, Drayco was relieved to get a call from the sheriff to meet him at the office for a stakeout. Might be dangerous, he’d said. But adrenaline sure beat a keg of caffeine, anytime. After a brief consultation, they headed off in a squad car toward the southern end of town that gave way to a sparsely populated stretch, dotted with an endless quilt of switchgrass and the pervasive pale, sandy soil.
They parked and headed toward a skeleton-of-a-shack hidde
