“You had plenty of time to remove it from the truck before we found you,” Gisborne said.

“People tell me you’ve been a good sheriff here,” I said. “I can’t believe you didn’t inspect my car before my lawyer got there to demand a warrant. Which leads me to another question: How did you know I was at the riverbank?”

Gisborne scanned the lobby, as if it would give him an answer. “Someone phoned to report suspicious activity.”

“Someone saw suspicious activity around a half-submerged truck hidden under shrubs? It’s not visible from the road. You can do better than that, Sheriff.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” His jaw jutted out at an ominous angle. “That’s a working farm up above. Someone could have seen you.”

“Someone could have, but that doesn’t mean they did.” I pulled my phone from my pocket. “Look at your smart devices to see what data you’ve got from the trackers you’ve put on me. They’ll tell you why you’re gathered at the river.”

Gisborne and Pinsen both reached for their phones, but Baggetto shook his head. “She’s goading you, Marlon. Don’t let it get to you.”

“No one’s told me you’ve been a good detective,” Gisborne said to me. His voice was thick, as if someone had stuffed mashed potatoes against his tonsils. “You think you’re funny, and you’re not, so I don’t see you making a living doing stand-up. In fact, I don’t see you doing anything that jumps out as special. Unless you did shoot Doris McKinnon and figured out a clever way to cover it up.”

“I’m hoping I can learn from you,” I said earnestly. “Say, for instance, about Doris McKinnon. I thought her body disappeared from the morgue before Dr. Roque’s backup could perform the autopsy. How do you know there was a bullet in her head? She was pretty badly damaged when I found her. I couldn’t tell she’d been shot.”

The three men stood as though a taxidermist had suddenly squirted them full of formaldehyde. Pinsen recovered fastest.

“The woman in McKinnon’s truck, that’s what he meant,” Pinsen said quickly.

“Everyone here has been wondering what you guys had on your minds that was so secret.” I gestured at the county employees, who’d been joined by a good half-dozen members of the public. “I’m betting you just realized it was Doris McKinnon in her truck, which raises a truly interesting question: Who was lying dead on her kitchen floor last week?”

Gisborne jumped on that like a flea on Peppy. If I knew it was McKinnon in the truck, then my protestations of stumbling on the truck by accident were exactly what he’d said all along, a smoke screen to cover up the fact that I’d killed her.