“I don’t know that it would,” Stone said. “Given the evidence we’ve got, I’d much rather defend him than prosecute.”

“This is very convoluted,” Dino said. “Not only do we not know if he was in the witness protection program, we don’t even know what name he was using before he went in.”

“I don’t understand,” Liz said.

“Okay, he gets out of being hanged in St. Marks, and he returns to this country. He’s not going back to using Paul Manning for a name, he’s going to pick another one. Then he gets involved in whatever ends up getting him into the program, and he gives the feds that name, not Manning. They change it to another name, then he skips out of the program and changes it again. And there may be a couple of other name changes that we don’t even know about.”

“Holy cow,” Lundquist said. “I didn’t know what I was getting into when I came down here.”

“You probably wanted a little nice weather, like me,” Dino said. He waved an arm. “And look what we got.”

Lundquist gazed through the transparent curtains as lightning lit up Lake Worth. “I might as well have stayed in Minneapolis.”

“Well,” Chief Griggs said, “if it’s any consolation, I think we’ve got enough to run him out of Palm Beach.”

“You sound like an Old West sheriff,” Callie said.

“It’s a little different,” Griggs replied. “In the Old West, I’d have threatened to shoot him if he showed his face in town again. Nowadays, I’d just make sure the local and Florida papers heard the whole story, and once everybody had heard about it and gossiped about it, he wouldn’t be able to show his face in town again. We had a guy down here a few years back that had kidnapped his young kids when a divorce didn’t go his way. Established himself here under another name and stayed for years until his wife caught up with him. Now he’s persona non grata among the people he knew best. That, I can do to Bartlett, or whatever his name is.”

“It isn’t enough,” Liz said. “He could still try to kill me.”

Lundquist turned and stared at her. “Just when I thought I had a grip on this story . . .”

“Mrs. Harding was once married to Paul Manning,” Stone said. “We didn’t mention that before.”

“Oh,” Lundquist said, tonelessly. He was massaging his temples, like someone trying to hold on to his sanity.

“Maybe your lab will come up with something else in the car,” Stone said.

“Maybe, but I’m not going to count on it,” Lundquist replied. “We do have the fact that he got his wife to cancel the prenuptial agreement and make a new will. That’s motive.”