“They put you in a home for kids, right across the street from the jail. You get clothes, three meals a day, your own little room, play basketball, watch TV, go to class. You want a doctor, a shrink, they give it to you. How bad’s that? Oughta hear the kids on the street. Vacation. Where you been, man? Man, I been on vacation. Rotten little bastards.

“Now kids, I’m afraid of. Been beat up, robbed, rolled, cut on, kicked in the nuts. One time they set me on fire for the helluvit. And what happens to ’em? They go away on fucking vacation for two, three weeks. Come right back out, laughing, strutting under streetlights, big wads of cash in their pockets.”

“I don’t want to go on vacation,” Weed said.

“You want to die?”

“No. Uh uh, Pigeon. I don’t.”

“Then get locked up somewhere ’fore the devil gets you,” Pigeon said. “Maybe by the time you get out, someone will’ve got him first. People like him don’t live too old.”

Three blocks south on Spring Street, Brazil and West were inspecting a section of fence encircling the final resting place of presidents, governors, Civil War heroes, Richmond’s first and finest families, and more recently, citizens of all sorts who wished to be interred there, realizing, of course, that all lots with river views were taken.

Early morning sunlight was touched by cool fingers of shade in a remote section of Hollywood Cemetery where low-lying ground gave way to brambles and the river. West and Brazil had discovered a hole in the fence that was big enough to allow unlawful passage to an average-size adult. But there was too much rust to suggest the chain links had been cut in recent months or possibly years.

“He didn’t come in this way,” Brazil decided as he looked around.

West was irritated by the deduction, mainly because she had not made it first.

“Didn’t realize you were a detective. Thought you were flack,” she said.

“I’m not flack.”

“All right, P.R., a reporter, a novelist.”

Brazil was reminded of the op-ed piece due pretty soon and he hadn’t even started it. He couldn’t do anything about the newsletter for the website, either, because the computer system was still frozen on the same fish map. Nor had Brazil given even a moment’s thought to the computer manual he was supposed to help write, as if it mattered right now, anyway.

“My obvious point is he certainly could have gotten in easily,” West said.

Brazil stepped through the hole, careful not to snag his uniform or cut himself.

“You’re right,” he said. “You coming in?”

“No. This is your hunch, not mine. I, for one, don’t think he’s going to return to the scene of the crime, as you put it. What makes you so sure of that?”

“Because what he did was very personal and emotional,” Brazil said. “I think he won’t be able to resist taking another look. To him the statue’s not Jeff Davis. It’s a monument to Twister. There’s got to be a lot of stuff going on inside Weed’s head, and I intend to get to him before the Pikes find him first.”