He moved slowly through the basement. The dog whimpered again, and Virgil saw a hole next to a wall going down through the concrete floor: a sump.

The sump was damp, but with no standing water. Normally, there’d be a little water in it, but the dog must have drunk it, which answered that question. Virgil remembered . . . a bowl? Up on the landing?

He went back to the stairs, saw a stainless steel bowl that he’d ignored on his way down the basement. He picked it up, ran back down the stairs, went to a laundry sink, filled the bowl with cold water, and carried it to the dog.

The dog whimpered again and edged toward the bowl and drank. And drank. And drank. And then edged away from the bowl and lay down again, his head stretched out in front of him between his paws, his eyes rolling up to Virgil.

—

A man shouted, and Virgil almost jumped out of his skin.

“Virgil! Virgil Flowers!”

Virgil shouted back, “Down in the basement.”

“Holy cow, it stinks in here . . .”

A deputy appeared on the landing, one hand pinching his nose. “What’s that?”

“Collie,” Virgil said. “He’s alive, but not by much. I got him some water.”

“Ah, man . . . I gotta get out of here.”

“Go back out through the mudroom,” Virgil said. He touched the collie on the head: his hair was matted and felt almost like plastic broom bristles. “We’ll be back, boy,” he said.

—

Outside, the deputy said, “Another guy’ll be here in a minute. I don’t know if I can go back in there until we air it out.”

“Let me give you some Vicks,” Virgil said.

5

Zimmer stood in the kitchen, his nostrils slick with Vicks, and looked at Andorra’s body with disgust: “He was a good ol’ boy, and that’s no way to end up, all rotten and falling apart.”

“I talked to my boss, and he’s sending down the crime scene crew, so we gotta stay out of there,” Virgil said. All the deputies had wanted a look. “They probably won’t be here until late.”

Zimmer nodded, and said, “I’ll keep a couple of cars in the yard until they finish up and we move the body. You think he killed himself? Or somebody did it for him?”

“Looks like suicide, but if he wasn’t murdered, it’d be a hell of a coincidence,” Virgil said. “I wanted to ask him about long-range shooters.”

Behind them, two deputies came up the stairs, carrying the collie in a blanket they’d stripped off a second-floor bed. They’d folded it like a hammock, with the dog slung inside. One of the cops had a sack of dog treats in his car and he fed peanut butter–flavored cookies to the collie, who ate them slowly, but wanted another. And another.