Everard’s mouth twisted in mockery. “People talk about you at the station, you know. They say they’re bored with vandalism and drunk drivers, with the occasional armed robbery for spice, that if we want real crime, we should keep you around. ‘Warshawski’s like a crime divining rod—does she make ’em or find ’em?’ Drugged women, murder victims, people faint when you show up. I wondered . . .”

“If I’d given Dr. Roque a bad disease and walked off with your body?” I said helpfully when his voice trailed off.

He grinned again, a real smile, relieved that I’d taken the kidding in good part. “That’s what the scuttlebutt is. I have confidence in the Lawrence force, certainly in my lieutenant and most of the people in his command. The KBI—Kansas Bureau—has done some impressive work, solved murders that needed a lot of finesse. So I’m not going to say that we need your expertise. We don’t, even though they’re understaffed these days, given the state’s financial crisis. But. Something’s going on that’s making me . . . I don’t know what the word is. If I were your friend on the floor here, the hair on my neck would be standing up.”

He rubbed the back of Peppy’s head with his boot toe.

“What in particular?” I asked.

“The body disappearing, of course. What you said about Gisborne—I don’t know what bug is crawling up his ass, but he’s acting weird. I mean, county, city, we have our own crimes, our own investigations, but we know we’re in it together, and we don’t usually play turf wars with each other. When the word came in from the morgue, though, the sheriff went to Lieutenant Lowdham and told him this was a county matter and Lawrence should stay out of it.”

“And the lieutenant?” I prompted when Everard fell silent again.

“Lieutenant said if any crimes committed in Lawrence tied into McKinnon’s death, we’d have to take the lead, but for now we’d lay low.”

“Sonia Kiel,” I said. “Drugged and left to die outside the Lion’s Pride.”

“You’re tying this to the McKinnon death? What, a drone hovered over your head and a little alien said, ‘Warshawski, Sonia Kiel saw Doris McKinnon die’?”

“I knew it was a mistake to release another Star Wars flick,” I said. “Maybe Sonia did see the murder. She saw something. Listen to the whole story—it’s weird enough without needing to throw in aliens. Do you know a Colonel Baggetto?”

When he shook his head, I told him about running into Baggetto at the hotel last night with Bram from Sea-2-Sea and Dr. Kiel. “Gisborne is doing special favors for Sea-2-Sea. Is that normal for him?”

“What do you mean, normal?” Everard kept veering between hostile and conciliatory; the needle swung to the red again.