“Yeah.” Ricci told him how he’d seen Brewer in the car with his graph paper and laptop, gone over to check it out, and gotten a look at the crime scene diagram on Brewer’s computer. “It was all right there for me on his screen. The stain on the floor. Its location and measurements. And an outline of a dog. The word greyhound lettered right over it.”

Thibodeau was shaking his head, his brow creased.

“A dog,” he said. “Don’t get it. Erickson said—”

“I heard what Erickson said. Kept it nice and vague for us. Except vague only works when it’s consistent, and he wasn’t making sense. The blood left behind isn’t Julia’s and he’s thinking about other possibles. Maybe one of her attackers, maybe not. But if not, who? If he isn’t looking at anybody besides Julia being in that store when things went down, it would’ve had to belong to whoever came after her.”

Thibodeau tugged at his heavy beard as it all sank in.

“Be damned,” he said. “Be damned if it didn’t slip right by me.”

Ricci stared out into the rain.

“At first I figured he was lying straight out. That the cops had somebody in custody and wanted to keep it secret,” he said. “Wouldn’t have guessed those possibles he mentioned didn’t include human beings.”

Thibodeau was quiet a moment, still plucking his beard.

“We got to be concerned with Erickson. He hear tell about what you did . . . how you did it . . . he gonna shut us out altogether.”

Ricci shrugged.

“Let him,” he said. “Gives me one less person to second guess.”

Thibodeau shook his head some more. “I ain’t trying to start a gripe, just saying you might’ve warned me. Never know when we gonna need him. We’d put our minds together, consulted, we might’ve figured a way to get the information out of him so we don’t lose his trust—”

Ricci pitched a glance across the seat at him.

“I don’t want anybody’s trust,” he said. “Just want to know why the cops are keeping that dog’s body under wraps. And where it is.”

Thibodeau started to say something, quickly cut himself off.

“Any thoughts about how you gonna do that?” he said with a kind of yielding resignation.

Ricci thrust his key into the ignition and brought the Volkswagen to life.

“Yeah,” he said. “I do.”

ELEVEN - VARIOUS LOCALES

ELEVEN

VARIOUS LOCALES

“THIS THE STREET?”