“Did you have a nice Christmas, Lieutenant?”

“Not bad.”

“Me too. I went back home. Expensive, but the wife and I thought it would feel strange having Christmas here.”

I couldn’t think of anything stranger than Christmas in Florida.

We drove beyond the hospital and turned left onto Clark Avenue. Ahead, halfway down the block, two cruisers and an ambulance blocked the road, their sparkling colored lights imitating some cockeyed Christmas scene. I noticed discreet lights on in several neighboring houses. It was 3:48 A.M.

I slid out of the car’s warm cocoon and stood in the snow for a moment, watching Smith return to Canal Street. His rear lights glowed fiercely just before he got to the corner and cautiously swung right. The day, despite the darkness, had begun.

I looked over to the house. By New England standards, it was not old-maybe built in the forties-but it looked ancient. Its skin was peeling and blotched with rot. The roof line, mercifully covered with snow, sagged in the middle like a swayback horse. Where boards had once met squarely with precision, time and neglect had instilled a blurry vagueness. I doubted the entire building contained a single intended ninety-degree angle.

A shadow detached itself from a tree near the street. “Hi, Joe.”

“Stan, Stan, the newspaper man. Hot on the trail?”

“I heard about it on the band. What happened?”

“You tell me. I just woke up.”

“Can I tag along?”

“Nope.” I walked across the sidewalk and up the uneven porch steps, nodding to the patrolman guarding the door. Once inside, I was standing in a hallway running the length of the house. At the far end were the shattered remains of the back door, its top half looking like an artillery target. In the middle of the floor halfway down the hall, lays, he hall a toppled hardback chair. Next to it was a shotgun.