"That's the oil biz, sweetheart," Remo told the body.

He walked around the desk, pulled a blank sheet of paper from the top left corner of Hefferling's desk, and found a Flair marker in the dead man's inside jacket pocket. In black, he wrote across the sheet of paper. With a piece of Scotch tape, he attached the paper to Hefferling's forehead, first wiping away the perspiration with a piece of the man's desk blotter.

He folded Hefferling's hands across his lap. At the door, he turned back to survey his work. There was Hefferling's body, sitting up neatly. On the paper dangling from his head was written:

DON'T TREAD ON ME. SUCH IS THE VENGEANCE OF EVERYMAN.

24

When Remo walked back outside, Marsha turned anxiously toward the door. When she saw him, she smiled. There it is again, she thought, that feeling in the pit of her stomach.

"Hi, Marsha," Remo said.

"Hello. You wanted to . . . talk to me?"

"Actually, no, Marsha. I wanted to kiss you."

She felt herself getting dizzy as he bent over her and placed a hand between her shoulder and her neck. She waited anxiously for his lips to touch hers. She thought she felt his breath on her forehead and then there was a gentle pressure on her throat and she felt nothing more.

Remo placed her head gently on her desk, cradling it on her arms. When she woke, she would feel fuzzy and dazed and find it difficult to remember what had happened in the last half-hour. Later, she would tell police that she had fallen asleep with her head on her desk and had dreamed about a man, but she could not describe him, except to say that he made her stomach feel funny.

"I think your head is funny," one of the cops would growl, but he would write in his report, "No witness to Hefferling murder."