Swami Rain offered green tea in an earthen mug, which I took him up on. The aspirin from earlier in my office had long since worn off, and I couldn’t get Darby’s dead eyes out of my head or the queasy thought that I may have pushed too hard in the wrong place, resulting in his murder. The tea was supposed to fill me with calming energy. Frankly, it would have to be a magical brew to accomplish that, but I sipped it, anyway, while seated at a small round table beside Jung’s moveable couch barricade, glaring at him. Jung and Swami Rain sat across from me, a united front. I was at the table to find out what Jung thought he was playing at; Swami Rain was there in case the tea didn’t work.

I set the mug down, folded my hands in my lap, right reason restored. The chase was over. I’d found Jung. Even the desire to tighten my hands around his scrawny neck was dissipating. “Okay, let’s have it.”

Jung leaned forward, crossing his arms on the table, the picture of conviviality, like this was a routine social call and we were here to chew the fat. I glowered at him and he slowly eased himself back again.

“I’m feeling a little under pressure here,” he said.

I managed a weak smile. “I’ll start you off. You called me in the middle of the night, for the second time, making no sense, babbling something about the police, the marina, and your innocence, and then you hung up on me, leaving no forwarding number. Days went by. Days. And nothing. I checked your apartment, I badgered your friends. I called hospitals, I checked the morgue. The morgue.” I stopped, took another sip of tea, waited for it to settle in my stomach. “A witness saw you on Tim’s boat. The police now think you burgled it. And, were they inclined to believe Tim was murdered, you would likely be their prime suspect for that, too.”

Jung’s eyes got as big as dinner plates and he lost what was left of his coloring. Swami Rain gasped, turned to him. “Dude, major karma kill.”

“Suspect? Me?” Jung screeched. “Are you serious? Why would I hire you to find out what happened to Tim if I’m the one who killed him? That’s crazy. Okay, I didn’t exactly have a key to the boat, but it was totally innocent. It had nothing to do with anything. The place was wrecked when I got there. Honest. I could hardly find anything in that mess.” His words tumbled out, one over the other; it was difficult to keep up. “I’ve never killed a thing in my life—okay, maybe a bug, but that’s it—nothing with feet, nothing human. I’m a peaceful guy.”

“What were you looking for?”