One of the officers, a deputy, got up and came to the counter.

Hook groped for his voice. “My name’s David Hook. You have a body…”

The word was electric, a charge transforming the deputy from a weary clerk into a grave and efficient servitor. “You’ll want Sergeant Rider,” he said, reaching for a phone, dialing.

Hook nodded. “That’s right—Sergeant Rider.”

“It’s after five—he could be gone by now. If he is, one of us can handle it.” The deputy turned away then, speaking quietly into the phone, probably giving the sergeant the option of being gone.

“The father,” Hook heard. “Here to identify the Hook boy.”

The Hook boy. So they at least were not in doubt as to whose body they had. It was settled in their minds, the identification just a formality to be gotten out of the way.

The deputy hung up. “He’ll be right down, sir.” He moved to open the gate that led behind the counter. “Why don’t you come back here and sit down?”

Hook thanked him but said he would rather stand. He was afraid that if he got off his feet he would need help getting up again.

“You’ve come pretty far, huh?”

Hook knew the deputy was only trying to help him, put him at ease, but he was in no condition to handle small talk, so he just turned away from the man. He wanted to light a cigarette but could not trust his hands to get the job done.

Hook did not know how long it took the sergeant to appear. It could have been ten minutes or only one; he had no idea. All he knew was that a burly authoritative man suddenly had appeared from a hallway beyond the deputies’ desks, and now he was talking with the deputy who had spoken to Hook. The man was only five feet eight or nine, but he was massively built, a weight-lifter type carrying an extra hundred pounds of fat on his belly and broad diva’s chest and loglike arms, which did not hang at his sides so much as stick out, as if ready, eager, for any threat anyone might be fool enough to direct at him. He was Hook’s age or older, balding, crewcut, with small hard laugh-squinted eyes. In one hand he carried a large manila envelope, sealed.

“Naw, I’ll take him,” Hook heard him tell the deputy. “When you make the fancy money we do, what’s a few hours overtime, huh? You’re glad to do it.”

The deputy grinned, sharing his cynicism. Then the man came around the counter. He thrust his hand out at Hook, who took it.

“Sergeant Rider, Mr. Hook. Sorry to put you through this, but we’ve got to have an I.D. on the body, of course. Afterwards, I can release it to you.”

Hook could not speak. It. The word, the gender, struck him like a fist in the stomach.

The sergeant led him out the door and down a stairway to the basement garage, which contained four or five sheriff’s police cars and a couple of unmarked cars. The sergeant led him to one of these. Inside, Rider told him that the county did not have a morgue.