Tally Ames had been watching him, and now she burst into tears, rushed to him, and buried her head on his shoulder. “It’s Braz. He’s been hurt bad, Arn. He’s dead.”

“Arnold Ames,” Dennis Koffer told Dwight. “Tally’s husband. Arn, this is Major Bryant of the Colleton County Sheriff’s Department. He and the judge here were playing your Dozer when they found Braz in the hole.”

Colleton County’s in the process of switching away from the old coroner system, and the doctor who’s acting as interim medical examiner came over and told Dwight that he was ready to have the body transported to Chapel Hill for autopsy as is required in cases of violent death.

Uniformed officers of the Dobbs PD moved people back even further so that the boxy EMS truck could move in closer. The techies had draped the still form before lifting him out onto the gurney. As they transferred him into the ambulance, Tally Ames’s low sobs were the only sound until the ambulance drove slowly away and murmured speech returned to the onlookers.

The crime scene technician went back inside in case there had been anything under the body that he’d missed the first time. When he came back out, he extinguished the floods, packed up the van, and told Dwight he was finished for now.

“I’d like to come back tomorrow morning, though. In the daylight.”

Dwight nodded, then asked the Ameses if there was someplace private where they could sit down and talk.

Tally Ames looked around. “Dennis?”

“You could use the cookhouse,” he suggested, pointing toward the one food stand that offered places to sit down and eat. Four wooden picnic tables with attached benches stood beneath a yellow tent. “We can close the flaps so you can be private.”

“What about the Dozer?” asked Mr. Ames. “We got close to five hundred dollars in quarters there.”

“I’m going to leave a guard here for tonight,” said Dwight, “but if it’d make you feel better, you can let the sides down. I assume they lock? I’ll ask you not to go inside till we’re finished tomorrow morning.”

The man nodded and looked around for some of his help. “Binga? Herve? Raggs?”

The three men slipped under the tape. Inside their glass boxes, the Dozer blades moved back and forth until one of the men disconnected the power cord that snaked from the back side.

As the men lowered the sides of the game and locked them in place, the carnival’s patch asked Dwight, “What about tomorrow? Saturday’s usually our biggest day. You’re not going to keep us from playing tomorrow, are you?” He glanced at the Ameses. “No disrespect, Tal, Arnie, but you know we can’t afford to close tomorrow.”

“We know,” Arnold Ames said grimly.

“We’ll get someone to cover for you,” said Koffer, and murmurs of agreement from the other carnies backed him up.

“There’s no reason you can’t open the rest of the carnival,” said Dwight. “If we keep these tent flaps shut, we can come in and out without anybody hardly knowing we’re here.”