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  “I killed him,” Rob said.

  “Clea will be so grateful,” Rachel said.

  In the green light from the dashboard, she saw Rob’s face change from panic-stricken to panic-thoughtful.

  “There you go,” she said. “Always looking on the bright side of life.”

  At eleven-thirty Phin was in bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to the drumming rain and waiting for Sophie to call, when the phone rang. He picked it up and said, “If this is an apology, you better be naked.”

  “It’s not an apology,” Wes said. “I’m at the Tavern. Pete Alcott just ran over Zane Black.”

  “Oh, Christ,” Phin said. “I suppose Zane was too drunk to move out of the way.”

  “Too dead,” Wes said. “He appears to have been murdered first. Ed’s going to do a preliminary right away and an autopsy tomorrow.”

  “I’ll meet you at the infirmary,” Phin said. “Maybe Ed’ll decide Zane died of a heart attack.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Wes said. “There’s a bullet in his back.”

  Zane didn’t look good dead. He was damp and pasty and slack-jawed and squashed as he lay on Ed’s table under the unforgiving fluorescent light.

  “He was wearing your letter sweater,” Wes told Phin when he came in.

  “He can keep it,” Phin said.

  “A lot of people didn’t like this guy,” Ed said from behind the table.

  “Nobody liked him,” Phin said. “But I didn’t think they’d kill him because he was an asshole.”

  “You taking this down, Duane?” Ed said, and Wes’s deputy nodded. “Starting at the top of the head, there’s a contusion on the left temple with wood fragments in it.”

  “Somebody hit him with a club?” Wes said. “What about the bullet hole?”

  “Getting to that.” Ed pointed to Zane’s eyes. “Somebody also sprayed a corrosive at him. See the red patches around the eyes? Probably Mace, but not necessarily.”

  Mace. Sophie.

  “And there are bruises on his throat where somebody choked him,” Ed went on.

  “That would be me,” Phin said. “He was still alive after that.”

  Ed looked at him with the contempt he deserved. “Thought you’d gotten over that temper.”

  “He annoyed me severely,” Phin said.

  Ed nodded and went on. “Then there’s the bullet hole in his shoulder. A .22. Which appears to have been fired at close range from behind and below.”

  “Close range? Somebody shot him in the shoulder with a popgun?” Phin shook his head, incredulous. “Why? To get his attention?”

  “And there are also several cuts and scrapes on his arms and hands,” Ed finished. “And his ankle is swollen. Looks like a bad sprain.”

  “That’s not funny,” Wes said.

  “No, but it’s true,” Ed said. “And here’s something else you’re not going to like: None of that would have killed him. But he was definitely dead when Pete and somebody else ran over him.”

  “ ‘Somebody else’?” Wes looked annoyed.

  “Looks like two different tire tracks to me. Pete’s truck and somebody’s car.”

  “Then what did kill him?” Phin said. “The combination of wounds?”

  “I’ll do the autopsy tomorrow,” Ed said. “My best guess right now, given the state of his clothing, is that he drowned.”

  Wes scowled. “Very funny.”

  “No. His clothes are damp clear through. He spent some time in the water.”

  “It’s raining like hell out there,” Phin said.

  “No,” Ed said. “He’s been underwater, not just rained on.”

  “River or bath?” Wes said, and Ed said, “What am I? A magician? After the autopsy, maybe; when the lab report comes back, definitely.”

  “That’ll be Monday, at least,” Wes said gloomily. “Probably later. It’s Labor Day.”

  “Okay, then,” Ed said. “Here’s a guess: The river. That would make sense with all the scratches, that he fell through some brush.”

  “Yes, but who’d do all this?” Phin said. “If you tried to kill somebody by shooting him almost point-blank and missed, you wouldn’t drop the gun and reach for the Mace. You’d shoot him again. And if that didn’t work, you wouldn’t pick up a club. And you sure as hell wouldn’t drown him.”

  “More than one attacker?” Wes shook his head. “Okay, Zane pissed off everybody in town, but I find it hard to believe they all decided to get even in the same two hours.”

  “Maybe they, like, planned it,” Duane said.

  “Conspiracy?” Phin snorted. “You couldn’t get four people in this town to agree to kick him on the shin on the same day, let alone kill him.”

  “I heard he caused a ruckus at the Tavern,” Ed said.

  “A ruckus, yes,” Wes said. “But nothing to make anybody shoot him.”

  Phin thought about Georgia, white with rage and shame. “Maybe.”

  Ed pulled the sheet back over Zane’s body. “Could you two go argue someplace else? I have to operate on this guy in the morning.”

  Phin looked back at Zane lumped on the table under the sheet and felt a confusion of sympathy, regret, distaste, and exasperation. Zane had done nothing but make trouble since he’d come to town, but he didn’t deserve to die for it. And now here he was, with people who didn’t like him arguing over his body, and nobody to mourn for him. “Clea’s his next of kin. Somebody should tell her.”

  “That’ll be me,” Wes said, standing up.

  “Want some company?” Phin said.

  “Oh, yeah,” Wes said.

  Sophie had showered and was knocking back her second cider and peach brandy when the squad car pulled up. She’d been okay until they’d unwrapped Zane, and then he wasn’t a fish-covered bundle anymore, he was Zane, cold and stiffening with his eyes wide open, wearing Phin’s letter sweater. They’d left him propped on the slope behind the Tavern in as lifelike a position as they could manage, but as they’d pulled away, Davy had said, “Damn. He fell,” and Sophie had gone green again.

  Davy looked out the screen door now. “It’s Wes. And Harvard. The gang’s all here. Suck it up, Soph. You’re a Dempsey.”

  “Right,” Sophie said, and hit the brandy again.

  Phin didn’t look happy to see her, and he didn’t say much. Wes asked to see Clea, and when Amy went up to check Clea’s bedroom, she was there, alone. That was so strange as to make anybody suspicious, but Clea’s performance after that was so good that even Sophie had to give her points. She didn’t play the grief-stricken widow, but she looked shocked, stunned, and all the other appropriate emotions on being informed that somebody she’d once slept with on a regular basis was now sleeping permanently.

  “I can’t believe it,” Clea said. “He was always having those blackouts, but I thought that was just for attention.” She put her hand to her eyes as if to block out the pain, and Sophie saw Davy’s face twist just for a moment. He can’t still care about her, Sophie thought, and then Wes took her attention again.

  “Uh, we’re pretty sure it wasn’t a natural death, Clea,” Wes was saying. “He was assaulted before he died.”

  “Assaulted?” Clea blinked up at him, her china-blue eyes opening and closing like an expensive doll’s. “But why?”

  “We’re working on that,” Wes said. “Right now we’re just trying to get some information. When was the last time you saw him?”

  “At the Tavern.” Clea sniffed. “He was so awful, and I couldn’t stand it anymore so I had Rob bring me here.”

  “And you didn’t see him after that?” Wes was patient but not stupid.

  “I saw him,” Davy said. “About nine. I followed him back after that mess at the Tavern, but he was being a real butthead, so I left him alone. He took that sweater and went out the back door and headed out past the dock.”

  “Toward the Old Bridge?” Wes said.

  Davy shrugged. “Toward something. He wasn’t wandering. He was going somewhere,