“I’ll buy it,” Corman said suddenly. “Driving up here from the road with their lights off, Walsh and Burzak couldn’t have seen her from the police car.”

There was a swish of tires and a splashing of water as a heavy car turned from 17-E to stop in front of the diner.

Corman said, “We might as well go inside. The morgue wagon is here.”

“Do you mind if I talk with Mrs. Gherigis?” the captain asked.

“Go ahead,” said Corman.

The captain stood and listened while two men carrying a stretcher went in through the diner door. Corman went in with them.

When the granite of anger set in Maclain, he ceased to be a human being and turned into a machine. He was blind, but with the inexorable blindness of justice. He hated a killer, but in his code there were worse . . .

Maclain was part of the rain and the raging wind as he took the keys from Corman’s car and the ambulance. There were none in the car that had brought the technicians, so the captain swiftly raised the hood of that car and jerked the distributor wires loose, disabling the machine. A moment later he sped around the diner and was down on all fours, crawling about to pat the ground beside and underneath Walsh’s and Burzak’s official car. Then he got to his feet, opened the door, and removed the keys.

Beside him, Burzak’s gritty voice said suddenly, “What are you doing?”

“I was about to put your slicker back in,” said Duncan Maclain.

“Wait till Walsh hears this one,” Burzak said. “You lying bum, I knew that you could see!”

The captain hit him, one straight right, backed with one hundred and ninety pounds of fury. It landed just an inch and a half underneath the sound of Burzak’s words.

He slid out of the dripping slicker and draped it over the fallen trooper, then stepped into the vestibule and pulled the main lightswitch beside the door. His feet made no noise as he sped past the washroom, across the pantry, into the insulated closet.

There wasn’t even the tiniest snip as he shut himself in by pushing up the button and releasing the Yale lock on the inside of the door. He brailled the closet with frantic speed and stopped with every sense alert at three big, round cans set together on a shelf before him.

They were fastened with little tin hasps, like those on a bread box. The captain tried to lift a can and found it wouldn’t move. He opened the hasp and raised the lid to stick in a probing finger. Sugar—but only on top! His finger had struck a metal bottom less than an inch and a half down.