“I was thinking what to say in my note. I figure I should offer a cash reward for the ring. But whoever stole the ring isn’t ever going to come up to me and admit it. Even if I promise not to prosecute, they wouldn’t believe me. So I figured out what I need is a middleman. This is where you come in. So the note would say to bring Mallory Grennan the ring and she’ll give you the reward money, no questions asked. It’ll say they can trust you not to tell me or the police who they are. People know you. I think most folks around here will believe that.” He pushed the envelope at her.

“Forget it, Glen. No one is bringing that ring back.”

“Let’s see. Maybe they were drunk, too, when they took it. Maybe they feel remorse.”

She laughed.

He grinned, awkwardly. His ears were pink. “It’s possible.”

She looked at him a moment longer, then put the envelope under the counter. “Okay. Let’s write your note. I can copy it on the fax machine. We’ll stick it up around the bar, and after a week, when no one brings you your ring, I’ll give you your money back and a beer on the house.”

“Maybe just a ginger ale,” Glen said.

GLEN HAD TO GO, BUT MAL promised she’d hang a few flyers in the parking lot. She had just finished taping them up to the streetlamps when she spotted a sheet of paper, folded into thirds and stuck under the windshield wiper of her father’s car.

The thumbprint on this one was delicate and slender, an almost perfect oval, feminine in some way, while the first two had been squarish and blunt. Three thumbs, each of them different from the others.

She pitched it at a wire garbage can attached to a telephone pole, hit the three-pointer, got out of there.

THE EIGHTY-SECOND HAD FINALLY ARRIVED AT ABU Ghraib, to provide force protection and try to nail the fuckers who were mortaring the prison every night. Early in the fall, they began conducting raids in the town around the prison. The first week of operations, they had so many patrols out and so many raids going that they needed backup, so General Karpinski assigned squads of MPs to accompany them. Corporal Plough put in for the job and, when he was accepted, told Mal and Anshaw they were coming with him.