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Chapters (20)
  1. Prologue
  2. CHAPTER 1
  3. CHAPTER 2
  4. CHAPTER 3
  5. CHAPTER 4
  6. CHAPTER 5
  7. CHAPTER 6
  8. CHAPTER 7
  9. CHAPTER 8
  10. CHAPTER 9
  11. CHAPTER 10
  12. CHAPTER 11
  13. CHAPTER 12
  14. CHAPTER 13
  15. CHAPTER 14
  16. CHAPTER 15
  17. CHAPTER 16
  18. CHAPTER 17
  19. CHAPTER 18
  20. CHAPTER 19

She had enlarged the images of the safe dial to the size of an old-fashioned alarm-clock face. The numbers were clear enough in the first three. In the fourth, Wells’s index finger covered the critical digit.

“So it’s seventy-four, forty-four, twelve, and something between

say, fifty-five and seventy.”

“Hang on.” I got my drawing box, dug around, and came up with a compass and a set of dividers. Using the compass, I drew the missing portion of the dial over Wells’s intruding finger. With the dividers, I measured the intervals between the visible numbers and marked them off around the rim of the dial.

“If this is the centerline,” I said, indicating the line with a ruler and a sharp pencil, “then the digit is

sixty-six. Give or take a digit.”

LuEllen looked at me and grinned. “You do have your uses. Other than sexual, I mean.”

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 11

It was all coming together. Smoothly. Too smoothly, LuEllen said. She was born and raised in Minnesota and was automatically suspicious of pleasantness. No matter how nice the summer is, winter always comes

With the printouts of the Longstreet books in hand, I called John and Marvel. We agreed to drive to Greenville, where we could meet in a motel without dodging the Longstreet locals.

LuEllen stayed with the boat. There’d be new people in Greenville, and she was paranoid about her face becoming known. At two o’clock Marvel let me into her room at the Sea-B Motel. John was there with Harold and a man I hadn’t met before.

“This is Brooking Davis,” Marvel said, nodding at the stranger. Davis was a slender, bird-boned man with a square chin, a dark mustache, and the liquid eyes of an Arab. “He’s a lawyer and does appraisal work for the county assessor’s office. Brooking will be our first appointment on the council. If Harold and I don’t know where the bodies are buried, Brooking will.”

“Well, we found you some grave sites,” I said, handing over the printouts. “It looks simple enough, but I don’t know how it breaks down.”

Davis had two boxes full of city budgets, memos, and reports. He unloaded them on a credenza, and Marvel and Harold pulled chairs up to the bed. In two minutes the three of them were in deep discussion, comparing numbers on printouts with expenditures and collections in the city reports.

“How’d it go with Brown?” I asked John.