He walked down that hall and saw a man sitting outside of Danny’s room. When Stone approached the man stood. “Can I help you?”

“You the deputy Tyree put on Danny?”

“That’s right. Wait a minute, you’re that Ben fellow, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I wanted to see Danny?”

“Seeing as how you saved his life, sure, go on in.”

When Stone popped his head in, Danny was sitting up in bed, his face red and his eyes puffy slits.

“Danny? Can I come in?”

He looked over at Stone. He didn’t say anything but waved him in with a feeble sweep of his hand.

Stone pulled up a chair and sat down. “I’m really sorry about Willie.”

Danny didn’t look at him but kept his gaze on the pillow he held over his midsection. When he did speak his voice was heavy and slow. The meds, Stone thought.

“He didn’t deserve to die that way.”

“Nobody does.”

Danny glared at him. “Some people do.”

“I guess you’re right. Maybe some people do.”

“He never hurt anybody, you know that?”

“I know.”

“And Bob. I mean he’s a damn old man. And they blew him up too?”

“Who blew him up, Danny? Who are we talking about?”

Danny glanced at Stone. “Why ask me?”

“Why’d you leave Divine?”

“Fresh start, like I told you.”

“And why’d you come back?”

“My business.”

“You want to tell me about Debby Randolph?”

“What’s to tell? She was Willie’s girl. He loved her, man. They were going to get married.”

“So you knew about that?”

Danny nodded absently. “I was all over his case to get off the drugs. Mine work was killing him. He was in pain, okay, I get it. But I saw what the shit did to my old man. I didn’t want that happening to Willie. And then Debby came along and she got him back on the right track, you know what I mean? He was doing all right. Called me up out of the blue, told me he was thinking about proposing. Asked me what I thought. Part of me wanted to say, ‘No man, run the other way, you’re too young. We got stuff to do. Girls to bed.’ But deep down, I was jealous, man. I got pieces of meat on my plate. He had a woman who loved him.”

“So what’d you end up telling him?”

“I told him to go for it. I knew Debby. She was a great gal. And great for him. He asked me to be his best man.”

“Sounds like you two had patched up your differences.”

“We never had any real differences. It was just crap really.”

Danny fell silent and Stone sat back in his chair and watched him for a while as the darkness fell more heavily outside.