‘So who is it?’ Glitsky asked when he’d finished.

Drysdale shrugged. ‘Some guy,’ he said. Then, to Hardy, ‘What’s to talk about?’

‘How about if he was killed?’

‘How about it?’

‘You think he was killed?’ Glitsky asked.

‘I think he’s dead at least. How he got that way I don’t know. I wondered if you’d heard anything.’

‘I heard a good new song the other day,’ Glitsky said.

Hardy turned to Drysdale. ‘I thought the coroner might have come up with something.’

Drysdale frowned. ‘I doubt he’s even looked at it.’

‘It sounded like Garth Brooks, but it could have been Merle Haggard. A lot of these country guys sound the same to me.’

Hardy chewed some ice. ‘Yeah, well, if it does turn out to be a homicide, I wouldn’t mind drawing the case.’

‘Homicide’s a pretty long shot,’ Drysdale said. ‘Guy might have drowned, anything.’

‘I know. I just wanted to put the word in.’

Drysdale thought about the proposal. ‘You haven’t had a murder yet, have you, Diz?’

Hardy shook his head. ‘Not close.’

‘It could have been Randy Travis, though,’ Glitsky said. ‘Sometimes when he sings low he sounds a little like the Hag.’

Drysdale appeared to think hard a minute. Glitsky was humming the first few bars of his song. Finally Drysdale looked at the last inch of beer in his glass and finished it off. ‘Sounds fair,’ he said to Hardy. ‘You found it. If it’s a murder, it’s your case.’

Glitsky stopped humming. ‘Hardy makes the big time,’ he said, reining in his natural enthusiasm.

Hardy fished in his pocket and dropped a couple of quarters into the console in front of him. ‘Have another game,’ he said to Drysdale, ‘and this time let him win.’

Hardy sat on the Navajo rug on the floor of his living room, way up at the front of the house. His adopted daughter Rebecca was in his lap, her tiny hand picking at the buttons of his shirt. In the fireplace, some oak burned. Outside, the cocoon of fog that wrapped the house was darkening by degrees. Up in the kitchen, he heard Frannie humming, doing the dishes from their dinner.