Sawyers was gesturing with one outstretched hand and saying: “… that’s right, over here: You want to tell us what it’s been like down here today?” He held out the mike to the fisherman.

Beside me, the radio was saying: “Thankfully, there are only two known victims this time—Harry Bunim …”

Still clutching his harmonica, the fisherman leaned over Sawyers’ microphone: “This is a pretty peaceful place, like, mostly. After a little fightin’ and a little fuckin’, there ain’t really—”

“Come on, now.” Sawyers pulled the microphone back sharply. “Let’s watch the language. We’re on the air. Teddy, cut! Okay, pick it up … from: Why don’t you tell us something about what it’s like down here?”

“Eh … well,” the fisherman said, much more slowly. He’d lowered his harmonica about to his belt. “People fight some. Sometimes they … you know, mess around. But usually it’s pretty peaceful.”

“Until tonight?”

“Well, this here tonight is just terrible.”

“And can you tell us where you were when the screaming started?”

“Down on my boat, playin’ on my mouth harp.” He gestured with the instrument, caged in ten dark fingers. “And I heard Miss Mona scream. And then the shootin’.”

“What did you do?”

“I was scared as a—” He looked at the microphone. “Well, I was real scared. You know, you don’t hear nothin’ like that around here much.”

Beside me, the car radio said: “… are hoping out there, that he has not been hurt. We’re going to talk now with Mr. Andy Prescott, who works on a boat not far from the barge on which the most recent multiple slaughter took place. Mr. Prescott told me earlier that he comes from Mitchuan, Kansas, but that he’s been a fisherman out of Crawhole for the past seven years. We’re going to be talking to Andy in just a moment now. Come right on, yes, that’s right, over here: You want to tell us what it’s been like down here today?” Somewhere in there was a click, but it went by pretty soft.

“Eh … well. People fight some. Sometimes they … you know, mess around. But usually it’s pretty peaceful.”

“Until tonight?”

“Well, this here tonight is just …”

But the assistant was leading Andy from the man with the microphone, while another was escorting up a black policeman. Sawyers was saying: “… you, very much. We’re going to talk now with Officer Horace Pelham, who was the first police officer at the scene of the crime; who was, indeed, the first person to enter the barge cabin: Without getting too gory, Horace, can you tell us what you saw when you went in?”

“I wasn’t the first one in,” the cop said. He looked pretty sober. “It was another guy, one of the dock cops—one of the guys who works Crawhole regular. I told him that.”

The man with the microphone grimaced at the assistant. Behind the cop’s shoulder, the assistant shrugged.