“His job says that for every murder there has to be an apprehended murderer,” Lowry says. “Too many unsolved crimes and something mysterious happens to Sergeant Brady’s next promotion. It’s a nasty setup, Terry. But it’s a nasty world we live in.”

Terry said nothing. She could not yet bring herself to forgive the man who had so energetically tried to send Bob to the gas chamber, but on the other hand she could not fully hate him either.

As they drove through the little town with the cozy art shops, Lowry said, “Isn’t Laguna a lovely town, so quaint, so artistic and stuff?”

“Yeah,” Brady said. “How’d you get the idea about Laguna?”

“And the rest of the ideas,” Lowry teased. “That was why you wanted to ride back with us, Brady. You wanted to find out what it is that makes smart detectives tick.”

“All right,” Brady grunted. “Be a wise guy. See if I care. How’d you piece all this together?”

They were coming through the other side of the town now. The sun was beginning to sink on the horizon. The sea had changed from its deep blue color to a dark shade of green.

“Nothing to it, Brady,” Lowry said. “If you don’t get scared that the public is going to start beefing about what’s the matter with our police force and pull in the first sucker who looks like he might have been guilty and won’t have much fight in him. But I won’t rub that in now. First, I suppose it was important that I never believed it was McKay because I knew he couldn’t have had any part in Doris Blair’s life. Both Ramirez’ identification of him and Clayton’s were made under such unbelievable circumstances that I knew there could be nothing to them. The first inkling we had of the name of the man who had been mixed up with Doris was when one of Carrol’s girls told Terry that Doris used to speak of a man whom she called Buzzy. Doris’ landlady had heard of Buzzy, too. You probably had heard about Buzzy but you assumed Buzzy must have been McKay, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Brady said sourly.