I smiled seraphically. “It’s in the air, Sheriff. Everyone keeps telling me how everyone in the county knows each other’s bra size and so on. I’ve been here a week, and I’m already catching on.”

He eyed me measuringly, as if he were picturing us in the Old West with me in a noose on a makeshift gallows.

I stopped smiling, looked at him seriously. “I actually came here in the hopes I could read the autopsy report on Jenny Perec.”

“Gertrude Perec didn’t want her daughter cut open. Since it was clear that Jenny had drowned, we let her bury her daughter and get on with her life.”

“Thirty-three years ago, and you still remember. No wonder they keep reelecting you.”

35
Knee-Deep in Water

“You know, Warshawski, Lieutenant Lowdham was curious enough about your real mission that he called a couple of people in Chicago to ask about you.” Sergeant Everard walked out the side door with me.

Sharene’s face dropped as we moved out of earshot: everyone would have liked to know what the Chicago cops said about me.

“The consensus seems to be that you’re honest, you get results, you’re reckless. And you’re a pain in the ass.”

“If I die down here in Kansas, make sure they chisel that on my tombstone,” I said.

“It could happen.” Everard looked at me seriously. “I don’t know what is keeping you here, since no one has caught a whiff of Ferring or her cameraman. But something about the land around the silo is causing Gisborne to act more like the Sheriff of Nottingham than the guy we all love to reelect every four years. Besides which, the town is crawling with strangers who pop up in places you wouldn’t think they belonged.”

“That would be Colonel Baggetto and his odd-job man AKA Pinsen.”

“Not to mention you,” Everard said. “Why do you call him AKA?”

“There’s no mention of him in any database I have access to, and I have access to quite a few.” I told him about Pinsen’s arrival at the hospital. “He showed up so patly you’d almost think he was listening in on someone’s phone—mine, for instance.”

I looked directly at Everard, who flung up his hands, surrender position. “Not guilty. But don’t you think you’re a little paranoid? Why would he tap your phone? Maybe he was listening in on Dr. Kiel’s. Or maybe Kiel called Pinsen. If they’re involved in something together, Kiel would make sure Pinsen was in the loop.”

“Something that includes keeping tabs on Sonia? I don’t buy it. What is Kiel’s role in all this?”

Everard shrugged. “I don’t see any role for him at all, except for maybe his daughter stumbling into the middle of the picture.”

His lapel phone rang; I could hear a woman’s scratchy voice on the other end.