'This weather's a pistol. It don't get any better.'

'You're not going to try to mess me up today, are you?'

'I wouldn't dream of it, Billy Bob.'

He slipped the scarlet rose from the top buttonhole of his shirt and rolled it by the stem between his fingers. Where the rose had been was a hole that glowed with a bloodred light, like a votive candle burning inside red glass.

'It was an accident,' I said.

'That's what I keep telling you. Get rid of this for me, will you?' He drew the rose across my palm. My fingers constricted as though the tendons had been severed by a barber's razor.

Ten minutes later I heard an automobile in front. I opened the door and looked down the flagstone walk that dissected the wall of poplars at the foot of the lawn, and saw the sheriff's deputy named Mary Beth Sweeney getting out of her cruiser. She fixed her campaign hat so that the leather cord drew tight against the back of her head, pushed her shirt down inside her gunbelt with her fingers, and walked toward me. She had a walk that my father would have referred to as a 'fine carriage', her shoulders erect, her chin lifted, her long legs slightly accentuating the movement of her hips.

'How you doin'?' I said.

'You going to use a PI in discovery?'

'Probably… You want to come inside?'

'Out here is good. At the river, night before last? The scene investigator picked up a vinyl bag-load of beer cans. They're not in the evidence locker.'

'Why are you telling me this?'

'That kid's going down on a bad bounce. I'm not buying into it.'

'You can lose your job for this.'

'Look, you know all these things. The victim's teeth were broken. Your man didn't have any cuts on his hands. There was no weapon. When we cuffed him, he was too drunk to stand up.'

'Criminal Investigation Division, huh?' I said.