She shrugged, then said something to him in a low voice that sent him loping down the midway to eel through two concessions at the end where he disappeared from my view. A cluster of travel trailers and eighteen-wheelers were parked out there beyond the line of game booths—“stores,” in Tally’s usage.

The newly arrived officers immediately began stringing yellow tape to establish a perimeter around the tent, and Dwight told two of them to start collecting garbage bags from all the trash containers.

“I don’t know if a weapon was used, but if it’s been dumped, I want it found. Any bloody rags or paper napkins, too.”

Normally, Dwight’s so slow-talking and laid-back that most times you’d never know he spent several years in Army Intelligence. He makes it easy to forget that they don’t take just anybody and they don’t give rapid promotion just because they like your looks.

“Hey, Deborah,” said my nephew Stevie. “What’s happening?”

“Somebody at the Dozer get hurt?” asked Eric Holt.

“Looks like it,” I said noncommittally. “Did y’all play it tonight?”

A glance passed between them.

“Yeah, for a few minutes,” said Stevie. “Then we decided to do more rides.”

“Was there someone here making change?”

“Yeah, a guy about our age, maybe a little older. Is that who got hurt?”

Before I could answer, Dwight borrowed the hand mike from the game next door and addressed the crowd. “Anybody who played this game tonight, we ask you to speak to the officer over here to my left. The rest of you can go on home. There’s nothing more to see here.”

Even before he spoke, I’d noticed several don’t-want-to-get-involved types melt away toward the entrance, but Dwight had already posted someone there at the gate to take down the names of everybody still on the lot. He wouldn’t be able to catch them all, of course. The place was too porous. But with close questioning and crosschecking, I was willing to bet he could come up with the names of ninety-five percent of the people who’d come to the carnival today and surely one of them would have seen something.

I looked around for Stevie and Eric but they were gone.

Without telling the deputy they’d played the Dozer.

All this time, there was an eerie glow from the floodlights aimed at the floor inside the wagon, and now the photographer stepped out to let a colleague start collecting any physical evidence. He handed one of the instant prints to Dwight, who showed it to Dennis Koffer, who confirmed my original guess.

“It’s Braz, Tally.”

“Braz?”At first she seemed incredulous. Then her head began to shake back and forth in denial. “No! Oh God, no! How? What happened?”

She tried to duck under the yellow tape, but was held back.

Across the lot, I saw Val Ames returning with a wiry man of middle height and a receding hairline.

Pushing through the stragglers who probably wouldn’t leave till they were chased with a stick, he roared, “What the hell’s going on, Dennis?”