"Medical examiner says Stark stabbed himself downward, not straight in," Tenns said, demonstrating the thrust with his right hand. "Odd. Awkward."

"I didn't know the man," I said.

"Nothing else you want to tell me?"

"No."

"I talked to the kids," he said. "Girl was asleep. Boy can't remember anything."

"We're not talking about murder here," I said.

"Doesn't look like we've got a case there, does it?" he said. "But she did run away with the kids, did shack up with a man with a record, probably screwed him in front of the kids. Husband wants to take the kids and leave her here. And..."

"And?"

"Why did Stark want to kill himself?" Tenns asked.

"Drunk, depressed, suddenly saddled with responsibility, guilty about running away with his partner's wife. Maybe the ME can do some exploratory and find out he was dying of something."

"Maybe," Tenns said. "I checked. Stark was single. Wife divorced him twenty years ago and moved to San Diego. Business he was in with Severtson is booming. No confirmation so far that he was alcoholic. Some evidence from people the Sarasota police checked with that he wasn't. Some evidence from the same people that Stark wasn't the kind to feel guilty about running away with his partner's wife. People he worked with say Janice Severtson wasn't the first wife to spend a weekend with Andrew Stark. But with two kids along, it looks like Stark was in for a lot more than a weekend."

"And what does Mrs. Severtson say?"

"Dialogue right out of one of the soaps my wife watches when she isn't selling costume jewelry," he said with a sigh. "Janice Severtson says she thought she loved Stark, but then again maybe she was just running away with him to get away from her husband."

"You've been busy."

"Very," he said. "I'm faxing a report to the Sarasota sheriff's office. I'm sending the Severtsons home. I'm telling them not to think about moving out of the state. I'm signing off on this as a probable suicide but I'm keeping the file open. My board's full. I've got a bruised thigh. I couldn't sleep last night and there's a drooling drug dealer with an att.i.tude in another room waiting to tell me lies. I'll get back to Stark's death when I get a chance, and I will get a chance."

Tenns got up, scrunched his empty coffee cup, and threw it in the wastebasket near the c.o.ke machine.

"I checked a little deeper on you, Fonesca," he said, turning and looking at me over the tops of his gla.s.ses. "Lost your wife, went a little nuts, quit your job with the state attorney's office, wound up in Sarasota."

I sat. There was still some coffee in my cup. I was getting hungry.

"So anyway, your story checks out with hers. I'm letting her go."

"I'd like to see her," I said.

"Go back to the waiting room. She'll be there in a few minutes."

"Sergeant, know any jokes?"

"Cop jokes," he said. "Why?"

A few minutes after I was in the waiting room, looking at wanted posters, Janice Severtson came through a metal door. Her hair had been brushed but not well. Her makeup had been applied but not well. Her clothes had been put on but not neatly.

She spotted me and I got up as she moved quickly in front of me.

"They told me Kenneth took Sydney and Kenny," she said. "Where are they?"

"Probably on the way back to Sarasota. You hungry?"

"I don't know," she said, running her fingers through her hair.

"Let's get something to eat," I said.

"I've got to get back to Sarasota," she said. "Talk to Kenneth. Oh, those poor babies. What've I done to those poor babies?"

Everyone in the waiting room was listening to us. Most were looking. Some probably had tales a lot worse than Janice Severtson's. I guided her out the door, down the steps, and to my car, which had about two minutes left on the meter.

We stopped at a nearby Shoney's. She had a salad and a reasonably well-controlled cry. I had a chicken sandwich and a strong desire to be alone.

"You want me to talk to your husband?" I asked while we ate.

"Yes."

"I will," I said, reaching for a sagging fry.

I found a phone near the cash register and called Kenneth Severtson's cell phone.

"You have the kids?"

"Yes, I'm on I-75 just pa.s.sing exit 42. We're going home. What about Janice?"

"You know the First Watch on Main Street?"

"Yes."

"Can you be there at ten Sat.u.r.day morning, without the kids?"

"I can get a sitter, but...Yes."

"I want your wife with you."

I thought I heard the voice of a small boy over the phone but the words weren't clear. I hung up and went back to Janice. She had finished her salad and was shredding a napkin.

"I talked to him. I think you can go home, at least for now."

I drove her back to her car where it was still parked at the hotel. I waited for her to get out of my car, but she just sat.

"I killed a man," she said.

"Yes."

"It doesn't feel real."

"I know."

"My G.o.d, can you really just kill people and get away with it?" she said.

"Happens every day," I said.

I told her to be at the First Watch Sat.u.r.day. I watched her get into her car, start it, and pull out of the hotel lot. She held up a good-bye hand to me. I returned the gesture and headed for the highway.

When I got back to my office, it was a little before one. I thought about calling Dixie for more help but decided I wanted to do this one the old-fashioned way. If that didn't work, there was always Dixie.

It took two phone calls and two lies and I had my answer, not as complete and detailed as Dixie would have given me but enough for me to do what I was going to do.

I can be fooled, but I'm not a fool.

I called Ames McKinney at the Texas Bar and Grill. I told him to bring a gun, something not conspicuous.

8.

I SAT AT MY DESK, thinking, listening to the window air conditioner, and looking at the small painting of the dark jungle and small orchid. I knew that over my shoulder Charlton Heston and Orson Welles were looking down at me.

"Do what must be done," Heston's Vargas character said with conviction.

"Take care of your a.s.s," said Welles's Hank. "No one else will, partner."

I got up and changed into my best work clothes: an old, only slightly frayed pair of blue slacks, well-ironed; a colorful pink-and-white short-sleeved shirt, my best; and the most expensive item I owned, my black patent leather shoes with dark socks.

It took Ames McKinney less than ten minutes to get to me. I was back in the chair behind my desk when I heard his motor scooter come into the DQ lot and park below. I didn't hear him climb the metal stairs to the second floor or hear his footsteps approach my door. Ames McKinney was polite, born seventy-three years ago, a child of polite, G.o.d-fearing Methodists in Texas near the Oklahoma panhandle. Ames knocked. I told him to come in. Ames had once been close to rich and had lost it all. He had trailed the partner who had cheated him to Sarasota, where the partner had changed his name and grown even richer, a steel pillar of philanthropy and high society.

I found Ames's partner, and the two of them, in spite of my attempts to reason or threaten them out of it, had an old-fashioned shoot-out on the beach in the park at the far south end of Lido Key. Ames was the better shot. The former partner took a bullet in the heart. Ames served eight months for having an unregistered weapon and engaging in a duel, a law that still existed in Florida. Ames's age and the evidence of what his former partner had done and my eyewitness testimony about the gunfight had kept the sentence reasonably short.

Now Ames lived in Sarasota, in a room with a bed in the back of the Texas Bar and Grill on Second Street. Ames's job was to keep the place from being broken into at night and see to it that the owner Ed Fairing's gun collection was maintained. Ames got the room, food, and a very small salary. It didn't cost Ames much to live, but even shopping at Goodwill, the motor scooter needed gas, and once in a while a man needs a new toothbrush.

Ames came in, standing tall and lean in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. The jeans were worn white in patches but clean and the shirt was a solid khaki that looked more than a little too warm for the weather. On his head was the battered cowboy hat he had putt-putted into town with three years ago. Once Ames must have been close to six-six. I figured age had brought him down a few inches. Age seemed to be the only thing that could bring Ames McKinney down.

"Have a seat," I said.

Ames sat.

"How've you been?" I asked. "How's Ed?"

Ed was Ed Fairing, owner of the Texas Bar and Grill and collector of antique guns that didn't work, which were on display in the Grill, and the more modern kind, which were kept in a wall-sized cabinet in Ed's office. Ed's face was the color and texture of high-quality tan leather. His hair was clear, pure white and likely recently cut by himself or one of the four-dollar old-time places still trying to compete with First Choice and the other new chains and mens' salons. Ed looked as if he had served shots of whiskey to Wyatt Earp and smiled when he poured a sarsaparilla for the rare teetotaler who wandered in. Ed, in fact, was from New Jersey and gave up a nine-to-five job in Manhattan to follow his dream of owning a saloon.

"Fine," said Ames.

"Got something you can help me with," I said.

"I'm here," he reminded me.

"I'm looking for William Trasker, the county commissioner. You've heard of him?"

"Heard," said Ames, taking off his hat and putting it on his lap the way his mother had taught him back when Hoover was president.

I filled him in on Trasker, Hoffmann, Hoffmann's man Stanley, Reverend Wilkens, and Roberta Trasker.

"I make it clear?" I asked.

He nodded.

"Gun?"

He patted his bra.s.s belt buckle. It was about four inches across, had an embossed little gun on it and the letters "FA" over the word "Freedom Arms."

Ames reached down with his right hand, clicked something on the buckle, and the embossed gun popped off the belt and into his hand.

"Five shots, .22 caliber, single-action. Stainless steel," he said, holding up the weapon. "Uses black powder or Pyrodex. Accurate, deadly at close range."

"Where did you get that?"

"Freedom Arms, Freedom, Wyoming. No federal forms or record keeping. Ed just charged it on his credit card and it came three days later."

My plan was simple. Go to Roberta Trasker, try to find out why she had backed away from getting her husband away from Kevin Hoffmann, and get her to go with us to Hoffmann's to get William Trasker out of there and, if necessary, to the hospital.

With Ames riding silent shotgun, I drove to the Spanish-style house with the turrets on Indian Beach Drive. A blue-black Mercedes was parked in the driveway. I pulled up next to it and we got out.

There was a smell of rain in the air and the clouds were starting to come darkly together.

I pushed the bell b.u.t.ton next to the door, with Ames behind me. There was no answer. I kept pushing. I tried the door. It wasn't locked. I opened it enough to peek in and call out.

"Mrs. Trasker?"

There was no answer. I thought for a few seconds and went in, calling out, "Mrs. Trasker? It's me, Lew Fonesca. Your door was open. I need to talk to you about your-"

She was lying on the white tile floor, splats of blood on her neck and chest. One arm was straight out, the other at her side. She had her head turned. She looked very dead. She looked very beautiful.

I heard Ames behind me clicking his little .22 off of his belt.

I knelt at her side to be sure of what I was already sure of. She was dead. She was also pale and cold.

"I know her from someplace," Ames said.

"Claire Collins," I said, nodding at the picture on the wall. "She was in the movies."

I was still on my knees. I wanted to tell her that I'd never forget her in that one scene with Glenn Ford. I wanted to ask her who had killed her and I wanted her to answer me. I stood up.