“No doubt about it,” Bell said. “We had the photographs, and when the state crime lab checked Arnie’s gun, they found it was the same one that was used to kill the black woman. Test bullets matched the ones they took out of her body, and Arnie had powder traces on his hands and face, like you get from firing a gun. And a couple of boys who worked out there said, ‘Yeah, it looked like a gun Arnie sometimes shot out there.

“Hill was nuts,” I said. “I kept telling people that. I don’t know about St. Thomas.”

“You were right about Duane, though I didn’t see it at the time,” Bell admitted. “All the river towns have a Duane Hill somewhere. I knew he was rough, but I didn’t know he was insane. Not until they did the autopsy on the black fella.”

“Hmmm?”

“They couldn’t figure out what killed him at first. After Hill was killed in the vacuum box, the pathologist down at Greenville suddenly had an idea what it might have been. They did some tests, and sure enough, it seems like the black fella had been killed in a vacuum box. Just like a big old German shepherd.”

“I love the South,” I said, finishing the ice cream on my plate. “Your ways are so quaint.”

“Well, I just thought you might like to know how it came out, you having left so soon after, and all.”

“It is interesting, in a sort of distant way. I mean, not being from here, and all,” I said. Time to change the subject. “Nice bridge you’ve got there,” I said.

The bridge’s superstructure was painted with a reddish anti-corrosion paint. You could see the top of it over the park trees, glowing in the setting sun.

“It’s the mayor’s doing, and it’s gonna save my financial butt,” Bell said. He looked across the grass at Marvel, standing behind the table with a scoop in her hand. “The empress of ice cream.”

“I saw her picture on Time magazine when she got it,” I said. “She’s a pretty woman. The Red Marvel, they called her.”

“Time magazine. We couldn’t believe it. The only American town with a Communist mayor.”

“She says she’s not.”

“Yes, yes, she says she’s a social democrat. Nobody believes it. Not down here. ‘Course, she’s got reelection locked up, since she brought in the bridge, and the way the council went and gerrymandered the new election districts. But I don’t care, as long as the bridge comes along.”

“Time says the state legislators were stumbling over themselves, approving the funding.”