She set her jaw. “He was supposed to be at my house at six. He didn’t show up until after seven.”

“You see him on the factory yard after five o’clock?”

She looked over her hood. “No.”

The sheriff put one hand on her open door and the other on the roof and hung his hound’s face above her. “How’s Paul?”

“When I was walking out, the doctor said his kidneys and heart were working adequately.” She flicked her eyes up at him. “I think he’s got a chance.”

“Bucky’s just started making some real money with that place he’s got. He can hire a good lawyer. Unless we got a eyewitness, he’ll never do time. I ran his record, and he’s clean.”

“What if Paul can tell us he did it?”

The sheriff took off his hat and wiped sweat from his bald head. “How’s he gonna know? He was in the damned boiler.”

“Maybe he was forced in at gunpoint.”

“No, baby. He had all his tools in there with him. A lot of people will say it was an accident. This kind of thing happens. A man’s inside a machine and someone comes along, sees an access hole open after quitting time, and closes it up.”

She put a hand out and lightly touched his uniform shirt. “When Bucky came to my house, he smelled like boiler fuel.”

The sheriff gave her a coy expression. “How you know what boiler fuel smells like?”

“I lived with a man who came home covered with it. I washed his clothes.” She put her face in her hands. “I made love with him.”

He put a thick palm on her back and patted her. “I’m sorry. But someone like Tyler will never do time on an attempted-murder charge.” He leaned in and put his face close to hers. She could see what looked like cracker paste in his bottom teeth. “But federal pollution violations are another matter.”

“What?” She put her ear to his mouth as if she wanted him to kiss it. She remembered that he was the young patrolman who, the day she was born, had taken her mother to the hospital.

“I got a phone call two weeks ago—a question from a Washington man. People up there are interested. That’s all I’m going to say. You a smart girl. You can figure what to do.”

“Wait a minute. Who’ve you been talking to?” But he put his hat back on and straightened up, looking around again, waving to a middle-aged couple walking into the lot from the hospital.

“See you later, baby,” he said. “I got to check on Paul and his family.”

*   *   *