"Odd. Interesting," Virgil said.

"So, I was going to set it up," Coakley said. "But early the next morning, I got a call from the jail. He'd hanged himself. He was dead."

"Nobody checking during the night?" Virgil asked.

"Oh, yeah. The overnight deputy. Jim Crocker. Jimmy Crocker. He said Bobby was fine at five A.M., dead at six o'clock." She set her coffee cup down and looked away from him. "Just… appalling. I couldn't believe it. But there he was. I went down and looked at him-Crocker didn't touch him, because it was obvious that he was long dead when Crocker found him."

"It happens," Virgil said. He turned the Diet Coke can in his hands, rolling it between them. "I could come up with a bunch of theories about what could have happened, especially if the kid was gay. Gay people can have a pretty hard time when their situation starts becoming undeniable. Especially small-town kids. Especially small-town jocks. Willie Nelson even has a song about it."

"'Cowboys Frequently Secretly,'" she said. "I've heard it. Makes me laugh."

"So are you looking for an outside opinion?" Virgil asked.

"No, I'm not. I'm looking for a hard-nosed investigation. See, we sent B.J.'s body up here to Ike and…" She stopped talking, looking for the thread of her story, and then said, "First, let me say that Jim Crocker used to be the chief deputy. When Harlan announced he was going to retire, Jim thought he'd automatically get elected to be the new sheriff. Well, he didn't. I did."

"You were a town cop in Homestead…"

"Yes. I was the lead investigator for the city. Anyway, I got elected, Crocker didn't. He said some things both before and after the election that made it impossible to keep him on as chief deputy. It wasn't legal to fire him, and he'd always been a bureaucrat, more than a street cop or an investigator, so I moved him into a staff job. Anyway, he was working the overnight.