She worked them on, so consumed by what she was doing that she was unaware of anyone around her or the tow truck that was slowly rolling up to haul the Lincoln to the police department for processing. West had not worked crime scenes in years, but she had been good at it once. She was meticulous, tireless, and intuitive, and right now she was getting a weird feeling as she looked at the clutter left by the killer. She lifted a USAir ticket by a corner, opening it on the car seat, touching as little of it as possible as her misgivings grew.

Mauney had flown to Charlotte from Asheville today, arriving at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport at five-thirty P.M. The return, for tomorrow afternoon, was not back to Asheville, but to Miami, and from there Mauney was flying to Grand Cayman in the West Indies. West carefully flipped through more tickets, her heart picking up, adrenaline coursing. He was scheduled to fly out of Grand Cayman on Wednesday and stop over in Miami for six hours. Then he would return to Charlotte and, finally, to Asheville. There were more disturbing signs that were likely unrelated to Mauney’s murder but pointed to other crime possibly surrounding his life.

This was always the bitter irony in such cases, she couldn’t help but think. Death ratted on people who were closet drug abusers, drunks, or having affairs with one and/ or the other sex, or those who liked to whip or be whipped or to string themselves up by pulleys and nooses and masturbate. Human creativity was endless, and West had seen it all. She had gotten out a ballpoint pen and was using it to turn pages of other paperwork. Though her forte was not cash and equivalents, treasury and agency securities, derivatives, investment banking, commercial and corporate banking, West knew enough to get a sense of what Mauney might have been intending on his travels.

In the first place, he had an alias, Jack Morgan, whose picture I.D.s on passport and driver’s license showed Mauney’s face. There were a total of eight credit cards and two checkbooks in the names of Mauney and Morgan. Both men seemed to have a keen interest in real estate, specifically a number of hotels along Miami Beach. It appeared to West that Mauney was prepared to invest some one hundred million dollars in these old pastel dumps. Why? Who the hell went to Miami Beach these days? West flipped through more paperwork, perspiring in the humid heat. Why was Mauney planning to drop by Grand Cayman, the money-laundering capital of the world?

“My God,” West muttered, realizing that Grand Cayman was three syllables.

She stood up, staring at the bright skyline, at the mighty USBank Corporate Center rising above all, its red light slowly blinking a warning to helicopters and low flying planes. She stared at this symbol of economic achievement, of greatness and hard work on the part of many, and she got angry. West, like a lot of citizens, had checking and savings accounts at USBank. She had financed her Ford through it. Tellers were always pleasant and hardworking. They went home at the end of the day and did their best to make ends meet like most folks. Then some carpetbagger comes along and decides to cheat, steal, hoodwink, make out like a bandit, and give an innocent business and its people a bad name. West turned her attention to Hammer and motioned to her.