“As far as it went. Sure, it was all right.” The cabdrivers in Manitou worked at getting steady customers. Even when he was late, Leland rode with Everett, if Everett was around. The responsibility for keeping faith was the customer’s, and you had to have a reason if you wanted to change drivers. Everett, a moonfaced fanner’s son in his forties, was all right. Leland had talked him into voting Democratic in the last election.

“Do you know anything about that little girl? It’s a hell of a thing. I can’t even talk about it with my wife.”

“Just don’t build up her hopes,” Leland said.

“Yeah? Shoot, I had hopes of my own. She’d better not ask me if I saw you. Did you ever work on a case like it? I guess not, it would be in the paper.”

Leland flicked his ash out the window, then rolled the window up again. “I saw one, before I went into the service. A teen-ager killed a little girl, then hanged himself. The girl was nine. Her parents knew him, or knew that she had been seeing him, I forget now how it went.” He had seen it by accident; he had been downtown when the bodies had come in. He had been told to go downstairs to take a look.

Now he glanced out the window again. They had reached Senapee Street, the center of the shopping district. It was a broad street, practically empty at this hour. The sky was overcast and boxes of trash were piled at the curb for collection. The street looked bleak and once in a while a neon sign was on, making the sky seem darker than it was. The wind came up the side streets from the river, buffeting the taxi.

Everett steered around a trolley car stopped to pick up a single passenger. “I guess those girls are pretty bad off,” he said. “Before they’re killed, I mean. My wife doesn’t understand how a man does it. Physically. Neither can I, for that matter.”

Everett was curious. “The girls are dead or unconscious before the action begins,” Leland said.

“Dead? I don’t understand that at all.”

“It’s called necrophilia,” Leland said. “I don’t understand it, either.”

Everett glanced in the mirror, saw Leland watching, and looked away guiltily. “Hey, what about the Leikman case?” He was trying to be casual. “They’ve always talked about the crazy stuff that went on in that one. What was that about?”

Leland grinned. He couldn’t let Everett con him; there would be no end to it. “You don’t want to know about that,” he said.