He lowered the gun.

"I think so too," he said. Now he looked more astonished than anything, as if it amazed him that I would think about what I'd seen that day, think about Deedra's last moments after I'd reported her death. It appeared that in Clifton Emanuel's estimation, I was so tough that the death of a woman I'd known for years wouldn't affect me. It would be wonderful, I thought, to be that tough.

He holstered his gun. He didn't apologize for drawing on me, and I didn't ask it of him. If I'd been in his shoes, I'd have done the same.

"Go on," he invited me.

"I found myself thinking that..." I paused, trying to phrase it so he'd understand me. "We're meant meant to think that a man came out here in Deedra's car with her." to think that a man came out here in Deedra's car with her."

"Or maybe arranged to meet her out here," he interjected, and I nodded, waving a hand to show I conceded that.

"Howsoever. So, she's out here, and so is the murderer, however he got here. And then, we're supposed to think that this killer got Deedra out of the car for a little s.e.x, told her to take off her clothes. She strips for his pleasure, tossing her clothes at random, pantyhose here, blouse there, pearls, skirt. . . and she's out here in the middle of the woods naked as a jaybird. Then she has s.e.x with him, and he's using a condom unless he's a complete moron. Or maybe they don't have s.e.x? I don't know what the autopsy said. But at that point, something goes wrong."

Clifton was nodding his big head. "They argue about something," he said, taking over the scenario. "Maybe she threatens to tell his wife he's s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g her. But that doesn't seem likely, since everyone agrees married men didn't appeal to her. Maybe she tells him she thinks she's pregnant, though she wasn't. Or maybe she tells him he's a lousy lay. Maybe he can't get it up."

That had crossed my mind briefly before, when I'd considered Deedra's artificial violation with the bottle. When Clifton Emanuel said it, the idea made even more sense. I looked up at the deputy in surprise, and he nodded grimly. "For some people, not performing would be reason enough to go off the deep end," he told me darkly.

I looked off into the shadows of the woods and s.h.i.+vered.

"So he shows shows her potency," Emanuel continued. "He strikes her hard enough in the solar plexus to kill her, and while she's dying he hauls her into the car and then shoves the bottle up her . . . ah, up her." He cleared his throat in a curiously delicate way. her potency," Emanuel continued. "He strikes her hard enough in the solar plexus to kill her, and while she's dying he hauls her into the car and then shoves the bottle up her . . . ah, up her." He cleared his throat in a curiously delicate way.

"And then he leaves. How?" I asked. "If he arrived in her car, how does he leave?"

"And if he came in his own car, it didn't leave any trace that we could find. Which is possible, especially if it was a good vehicle with no leaks. The ground was dry that week, but not dry enough to be powdery. Not good for tracks. But it just seems more likely that he was in the car with her, that he wouldn't risk being seen pulling in here with her. So he must've had his car already parked somewhere close. Or maybe he had a cell phone, like yours. He could call someone to come pick him up, spin some story to explain it. Someone he trusted wouldn't go the police with it."

I spared a moment to wonder why a law-enforcement officer was being so forthcoming with speculation.

"She wasn't pregnant," I muttered.

He shook his heavy head. "Nope. And she'd had s.e.x with someone wearing a condom. But we don't know if it was necessarily the killer."

"So you think maybe he couldn't do it, and she enraged him?" But that kind of taunting didn't seem in Deedra's character. Oh, how the h.e.l.l did I know how she acted with men?

"That's possible. But I did talk with a former bedmate of hers who had the same problem," Deputy Emanuel said, amazing me yet again. "He said she was really sweet about it, consoling, telling him next time would be okay, she was sure."

"That wouldn't stop some men from beating her up," I said.

He nodded, giving me credit for experience. "So that's still a possibility, but it seems more unlikely."

Emanuel paused, giving me plenty of eye contact. He had no interest whatsoever in me as a woman, which pleased me. "So," he concluded, "we're back to the question of why anyone would do in Deedra if it wasn't over some s.e.xual matter? Why make it look like the motive was s.e.x?"

"Because that makes so many more suspects," I said. Emanuel and I nodded simultaneously as we accepted the truth of that idea. "Could she have learned something at her job? The county clerk's office is pretty important."

"The county payroll, property taxes... yes, the clerk's office handles a lot of money and responsibility. And we've talked to Choke Anson several times, both about how Deedra was at work and about his relations.h.i.+p to her. He looks clear to me. As far as Deedra knowing something connected to her job, something she shouldn't know, almost everything there is a matter of public record, and all the other clerks have access to the same material. It's not like Deedra exclusively..."

He trailed off, but I got his point.

"I'm going to tell you something," I said.

"Good," he responded. "I was hoping you would."

Feeling like this betrayal was a necessary one, I told him about Marlon Schuster's strange visit to Deedra's apartment.

"He had a key," I said. "He says he loved her. But what if he found out she was cheating on him? He says she loved him, too, and that's why she gave him a key. But did you ever find Deedra's own key?"

"No." Emanuel looked down at his enormous feet. "No, never did. Or her purse."

"What about you and Deedra?" I asked abruptly. I was tired of worrying about it.

"I wouldn't have touched her with a ten-foot pole," he said, distaste making his voice sour. "That's the only thing I have in common with Choke Anson. I like a woman who's a little more choosy, has some self-respect."

"Like Marta."

He shot me an unloving look. "Everyone else in the department thinks Marlon did it," Deputy Emanuel said quietly. He leaned back against his car, and it rocked a little. "Every single man in the department thinks Marta's blind for not bringing her brother in. They're all talking against her. You can't reason with 'em. He was the last to have her, so he was the guilty one, they figure."

So that was the reason Emanuel was confiding in me. He was isolated from his own clan. "Marlon was with Deedra Sat.u.r.day night?" I asked.

The deputy nodded. "And Sunday morning. But he says he didn't see her after he left to go to church on Sunday. He called her apartment several times, he says. And her phone records bear that out."

"What calls did she make?"

"She called her mother," Clifton Emanuel said heavily. "She called her mother."

"Do you have any idea why?" I asked, keeping my voice soft, because it seemed to me Clifton was about to pull the lid back on top of his loquacity, and I wanted to get everything I could out of him before the well ran dry.

"According to her mother, it was a family matter."

That lid was sliding shut.

"About Jerrell fooling around with Deedra before he dated Lacey?"

His lips pursed in a flat line, Clifton gave an ambiguous movement of his head, which could mean anything. The lid was down now.

"I'm gonna go," I said.

He was regretting talking to me now, the luxury of speculating with another skeptical party forgotten, the fact that he was a lawman now uppermost in his mind. He'd talked out of school and he didn't like himself for it. If he hadn't been so enamored of Marta Schuster, if he'd been in good standing with his fellow deputies, he'd never have said a word. And I saw his struggle as he tried to piece together what to say to me to ensure my silence.

"For what it's worth," I said, "I don't think Marlon killed her. And rumor has it that yesterday Lacey told Jerrell to move out."

Deputy Emanuel blinked and considered this information with narrowed eyes.

"And you know those pearls?"

He nodded absently.

I inclined my head toward the branch where they'd dangled.

"I don't think she would have thrown them around." The pearls had been bothering me. Clifton Emanuel made a "keep going" gesture to get me to elaborate. I shrugged. "Her father gave her that necklace. She valued it."

Clifton Emanuel looked down at me with those fathomless black eyes. I thought he was deciding whether or not to trust me. I may have been wrong; he may have been wondering if he'd have a hamburger or chicken nuggets when he went through the drive-through at Burger Tyc.o.o.n.

After a moment of silence, I turned on my heel and went down the road, all too aware that he was staring after me. I didn't get that uneasy feeling with Deputy Emanuel, that p.r.i.c.kling-at-the-back-of-the-neck feeling that some people gave me; the feeling that warned me that something sick and possibly dangerous lurked inside that person's psyche. But after our little conversation I was sure that Marta Schuster was lucky to have the devotion of this man, and I was glad I was not her enemy.

On my way into town, I was thinking hard. Now more than ever, it seemed to me-and I thought that it seemed to Clifton Emanuel, too-there was something phony about the crime scene in the woods. Though Deputy Emanuel had run out of confidence in me before we'd run out of conversation, he too had seemed dubious about the scenario implied by the trappings left at the scene.

At my next job, Camille Emerson's place, I was lucky enough to find the house empty. I was able to keep thinking while I worked.

That implied scenario: though I'd gone over it with Emanuel, I ran it again in my head. Deedra and a flame go out to the woods in Deedra's car. The flame gets Deedra to strip, which she does with abandon, flinging her clothes and jewelry everywhere.

Then a quarrel occurs. Perhaps the man can't perform s.e.xually, and Deedra taunts him (though Emanuel had testimony and I agreed that such taunting was unlike Deedra). Maybe Deedra threatens to tell the flame's wife, mother, or girlfriend that Deedra and the flame are having s.e.x, period. Or possibly the flame is just into rough s.e.x, killing Deedra in a fit of pa.s.sion. But would that tie in with the catastrophic blow that stopped her heart?

I was so tired of thinking about Deedra by that time that the last explanation tempted me. I didn't want to think Deedra's death was anything more than pa.s.sion of one kind or another, pa.s.sion that had gotten fatally out of hand.

But as I finished dusting the "collectibles" on Camille Emerson's living-room shelves. I caught sight of myself in the mantel mirror. I was shaking my head in a sober way, all to myself.

The only injury Deedra had sustained, according to every source, was the killing blow itself. I knew all too well what rough s.e.x was like. It's not one blow or act or bit of brutality, but a whole series of them. The object of this attention doesn't emerge from the s.e.x act with one injury, but a series of injuries. The bottle insertion had happened after Deedra was dead. Therefore, I realized, as I carried a load of dirty towels to the laundry area, that little nasty, contemptuous act was no more than window dressing. Maybe the equivalent of having the last word in a conversation.

That said something about the person who'd performed the insertion, didn't it? I covered my hand with a paper towel and pulled a wad of bubble gum off the baseboard behind the trashcan in the younger Emerson boy's room.

So, we had someone strong, strong enough to kill with one blow. The blow was probably purposeful. Evidently, the person had meant meant to kill Deedra. to kill Deedra.

We had someone who despised women. Maybe not all women, but women in some way like Deedra. Promiscuous? Attractive? Young? All of the above?

We had someone who had no regard for human life.

And we had someone clever. When I turned it over in my mind yet again, I could see that the staging was successful if you didn't really know Deedra. Deedra wouldn't throw things around like that, even if she were stripping for someone, which I could very well imagine her doing. Even then, she might sling a blouse, but it would land on something that wouldn't tear or dirty it. She wouldn't toss her pearls around. And the woods . . . no, she wouldn't do that in the woods! Where was the lap robe or blanket for the lovers to lie on? Why ask Deedra to strip if the goal was a quick screw in the backseat of the car?

I concluded that whoever'd killed Deedra hadn't thought anything at all about her character, had only known facts: that she was promiscuous and biddable. He hadn't thought of her fastidiousness about her surroundings, hadn't thought about her care for her possessions, the care that had never extended to cover her own body.

As I closed the Emersons' door behind me, I realized that now I knew much more than I had this morning. What to do with it, how to make it work for me, was still mysterious. These pieces of knowledge were not evidence to which anyone else would give credence, but at least Clifton Emanuel had listened. I was relieved to know he had been wondering, as I had been, if the whole scene in the woods was a setup.

A setup to serve what purpose?

Okay, the purpose had to be, as the deputy and I had hinted to each other in our conversation, to misdirect. The scene had been staged to make it appear that Deedra had been killed for a s.e.xual reason; therefore, if the scene was false, Deedra had not not been killed because she was s.e.xually active. been killed because she was s.e.xually active.

She had been killed because . .. she worked at the county clerk's office? She was Lacey Dean Knopp's daughter? She was the granddaughter of Joe C Prader? She was easily led and promiscuous, so she was an easy target? I'd hit a mental wall.

It was time to dismiss Deedra from my thoughts for a while. When I was sitting in my kitchen at noon, that was easy.

My house felt empty and bleak without Jack in it. I didn't like that at all. I ate lunch as quickly as I could, imagining him riding back to Little Rock, arriving at his own apartment. He'd return his phone messages, make notes on the case he'd just finished, answer his E-mail.

I missed him. I seemed to need him more than I ought to. Maybe it was because for so long I had done without? Maybe I valued him more deeply because of what I'd gone through all those years ago? I saw Jack's faults; I didn't think he was perfect. And that didn't make a bit of difference. What would I do if something happened to Jack?

This seemed to be a day for questions I couldn't answer.

Chapter Twelve.

At karate cla.s.s that night, I wasn't concentrating, which called down a scolding from Marshall. I was glad we didn't spar, because I would've lost, and I don't like to lose. Janet teased me as I tied my shoes, accusing me of being abstracted because I was pining for Jack. I managed to half-smile at her, though my impulse was to lash out. Allowing thoughts of a man to disrupt something so important to me was ... I subsided suddenly.

It would be quite natural. It would be normal.

But picturing Jack in the shower wasn't what had distracted me. I'd been thinking of Deedra-her face in death, her positioning at the wheel of her red car. I didn't know what I could do to help her. I had done all I could. I finished tying my shoes and sat up, staring across the empty room at Becca, who was laughingly instructing her brother in the correct position of his hands for the sanchin dachi sanchin dachi posture. She motioned me to come over and help, but I shook my head and gathered the handles of my gym bag in my fist. I was ready to be by myself. posture. She motioned me to come over and help, but I shook my head and gathered the handles of my gym bag in my fist. I was ready to be by myself.

After I got home I resumed the task of scanning Deedra's tapes, since I had promised Marlon that if I found the one that featured him I would give it to him. I found myself feeling a little sick at the idea of him keeping a video of him having s.e.x with a woman now dead, but it was none of my business what he did with it. I disliked Marlon Schuster, though that was maybe stating my feeling for him too strongly. It was more accurate to say I had no respect for him, which was quite usual for me. I had found nothing in him to like except his tenderness for Deedra. But that was something, and I had made him a promise.

I almost dozed off as I looked at the videos. I found myself looking at things I'd never seen before: talk shows, soap operas, and "reality" shows about ambulance drivers, policemen, wanted criminals, and missing children. After viewing a few tapes I could predict what was coming next, her pattern. It was like an up-ended time capsule for the past couple of weeks in television land. When I'd transferred the videotapes into a box, the most recent ones had ended up on the bottom.

Most of the videos weren't labeled-the ones she'd already watched, I guessed. The labeled ones had abbreviations on them that only gradually began to make sense to me. I discovered that "OLTL" meant One Life to Live One Life to Live and that "C" meant and that "C" meant Cops, Cops, while "AMW" was while "AMW" was America's Most Wanted, America's Most Wanted, and "Op" was and "Op" was Oprah. Oprah.

After I'd scanned maybe ten of the tapes, I found the one of Marlon and Deedra. I only watched a second of it, enough to confirm the ident.i.ty of the couple. (That was all Marlon needed, to get a tape of Deedra with another man.) I put the tape aside with a discreet Post-It.

Since I'd started the job, I kept on with it out of sheer doggedness. I was able to weed out one more home movie-Deedra and our mailman, in partial uniform. Disgusting. All the other videos seemed to contain innocuous television programming. When I got to the bottom, I realized that I could match these shows with the synopses in Jack's old magazine. These were things Deedra had taped during the week before she died. There was even an old movie Deedra had taped on Sat.u.r.day morning at the end of one tape.

Deedra had had at least two tapes with previous Sat.u.r.day night shows on them in her film library. She'd taped the same pattern of shows each weekend. So where was the tape from last Sat.u.r.day night? She hadn't died until Sunday; she'd been alive when Marlon had left her Sunday morning, he'd said. Even if I didn't want to believe Marlon, she'd talked to her mother at church, right? So where was the Sat.u.r.day night tape?

It was probably an unimportant detail, but unimportant details are what make up housecleaning. Those details add up. A s.h.i.+ny sink, a neatly folded towel, a dustless television screen; this is the visible proof that your house has been labored over.

I was beginning to get a rare headache. None of this made sense. I could only be glad I wasn't on the police force. I'd be obliged to listen to men tell me day after day about their little flings with Deedra, their moments of weakness, their infidelities. Surely watching a few seconds of homemade p.o.r.n was better than that, if I was still obliged to clean up after Deedra in some moral way.

It was a relief when the phone rang.

"Lily!" Carrie said happily.

"Mrs. Dr. Friedrich," I answered.

There was a long pause over the line. "Wow," she breathed. "I just can't get used to it. You think it'll take people a long time to start calling me Dr. Friedrich?"

"Maybe a week."

"Oh boy," she said happily, sounding all of eighteen. "Oh, boy. Hey, how are you? Anything big happen while we were gone?"

"Not too much. How was Hot Springs?"

"Oh ... beautiful," she said, sighing. "I can't believe we have to go to work tomorrow."

I heard a rumble in the background.

"Claude says thanks for standing up for us at the courthouse," Carrie relayed.

"I was glad to do it. Are you at your house?"

"Yes. We'll have to get Claude's things moved soon. I told my parents about an hour ago! They'd given up hope on me, and they just went nuts."