He didn't know a goddamned thing.

Kate shifted and murmured something.

Except that he had a ferocious and apparently perpetual itch that it seemed only this woman could scratch. He raised his head. "Kate?" he said softly. "You awake?"

"No, she isn't awake, you moron," Bobby's voice hissed from the far corner, "and if you don't fucking shut up and settle down, I'm going to toss you outside on your goddamn ear."

It was a long night.

He was shoveling in Dinah's ambrosial French toast and Bobby's caribou sausage links the next morning about nine o'clock when Dandy Mike came rushing up the steps.

Jim hung his head over his plate, wishing Dandy away. "No," he said.

It didn't work. "Jim!" Dandy said. "You've got to come!"

"Haven't we done this before?" Jim wondered out loud.

"You have to come! John Letourneau is dead!"

There was an electric moment. Jim's eyes met Kate's. "I beg your pardon?"

"John Letourneau is dead!" Dandy said again, impatient. "Come on, you have to come!"

Jim, still holding Kate's gaze—did she look as heavy-eyed as he felt, or was it just his imagination?—said, "John Letourneau is dead? Where?"

"At his house," Dandy said, calmer now. "I went over to borrow his grill for a party I'm throwing this afternoon, and when he didn't answer the door, I went around the back to find the grill, and I saw him through the window."

"You're sure he's dead?"

Dandy flushed. "Yes. I checked this time. His heart's not beating and he's cold."

"Anybody with you when you went?"

"Scottie Totemoff." Naturally. Scottie Totemoff was Dandy Mike's boon companion. He wondered how Demetri and Billy, both hardworking, responsible men, good providers, good husbands, good fathers, had managed to produce two of the biggest layabouts the Park had ever seen. "He was going to help me with the grill. And the party."

"Of course he was," Jim murmured. Undoubtedly, and the drinking.

"I left Scottie to keep watch, make sure nobody gets in to contaminate the scene." He waited to see the effect caused by this mastery of the language of his newly adopted profession.

"There's no hurry, then," Jim said mildly, and drank his coffee. "I might as well finish my breakfast."

Scottie was waiting for them on the deck, pacing back and forth. "About time you got here," he told Dandy. "I'm freezing my ass off."

"Why didn't you go inside?"

"There's a dead guy inside!"

"You'll have to get used to that if you want to work with us," Dandy said importantly. "Right, Jim?"

"What?" Kate said.

"Let's take a look," Jim said, and went inside.

John had been hurled backward out of his chair by the force of the blast, which had sheered off the left side of his chest. The room was spattered with most of it. Dandy's tracks between door and body were very clear.

The shotgun had fallen with him. His finger was still hooked inside the trigger guard.