I called Hollis next, and got no answer. Considering his earlier exit, as if he urgently needed to be somewhere else, I wondered if he’d had to return to patrol. Or maybe he was just being a cowardly rat bastard? Possibly the sheriff had told him to stay away from me if he wanted to keep his job? Hollis probably did want to keep his job badly enough for that. I tried not to blame him, but I was miserable enough to think that it made him a rat bastard, anyway.

I considered my next course of action. The likelihood that I’d break down crying lurked just over the horizon, trembling and shivering. But that would be counterproductive, and there must be something I could do besides sit in the damn hotel room. I could go beat up Bledsoe; and at the moment I felt like I could dig out his liver with my fingernails. But surely there was something more constructive . . . I considered everything I knew, and then I had it. I called Hollis again and left a message on his machine.

“If you aren’t picking up because you don’t want to talk to me, that’s okay, but know this: I’m going to your house right now, and I’m going to want to search your bookshelves.” I was sorry I’d been honorable enough to return his money, since I could have used that as an extra incentive if I’d kept hold of it.

I ran to Hollis’s house, since I needed the exercise. It might help keep me calm for a while longer. The leg faltered a couple of times, but didn’t give out utterly. There was no truck parked under the carport. I had planned on getting in whether Hollis was home or not, so I didn’t care. But I didn’t want to be arrested while doing it. Fortunately, the back door was fairly well screened from the neighboring small houses by thick bushes. Since it was a working day, quite possibly the neighbors were gone.

For a policeman, he sure had lousy security. I found his spare key in the third place I looked—hanging from a little nail in the roof over the porch. It was in a dark corner, and partially hidden from view, but my fingers patted around until they felt the nail, and in a second the key was in my hand. I was glad to find it; it would spare me from breaking one of the panes of glass in the back door—also a security risk, as any cop should know.