“He was drunk. There was an almost empty bottle of scotch on his desk, in his study. That’s where he did it. He was out on his own recognizance. Left here about one with his lawyer. Shot himself a little before four. Thirty-two caliber. The slug entered an inch above his right ear. He lived about an hour. You never know about head wounds. Unpredictable.”

Hook said nothing.

The sergeant picked up the note and put it in a drawer and then locked the drawer. The matter evidently was closed. They could move on to those loose ends the sergeant had said he wanted to tie up. But apparently they were going to be left hanging, for the only other thing he had Hook do was sign a release freeing the department of responsibility for any damages to Hook’s rented car, which they had towed in early that morning. Rider said that the nephew had insurance, so Hook would have no problems there. Beyond that, all the sergeant wanted to do, he said, was get the hell out of the office as quickly as possible. And to that end, he offered to drive Hook to the airport.

Unlike the garrulous cabbie who had brought Hook into the city two weeks before, Rider was glumly silent throughout the fifteen-minute drive. And in fact he waited until after Hook had picked up his ticket and the two of them had settled in over lukewarm coffee in the airport grill before he opened up. He had experienced some heat earlier in the day, he said, heat not from his superiors so much as from theirs, the political movers and shakers who had awakened that morning and found the lead horse in their stable dead.

“The gist of it,” Rider said, “was I had leaned too hard on the poor fellow. I hadn’t been politic. I should’ve gone out there to his fancy house and discussed the situation with him, like one gentleman to another. Or maybe I should say like servant to gentleman—I guess that’d be more accurate.”

Hook knew he should try to say something, try to help Rider along, but he could not do it.

Rider went on without him. “I don’t mean it was my bosses that felt this way, but the others, the power boys. Anyway, I blew my stack. I told them to shove it. I even went so far as to suggest that if any of them commit manslaughter in this county, I’d have their asses in the slam just as fast as Douglas’s. Then I stormed out.” He smiled ruefully. “Put on a real show, I did. Joe Rider, the retiree.”

Still Hook said nothing.

“But it’ll work out all right. Don’t sweat it. I’m just burned, that’s all. The chickenshit bastard.”

Hook did not have to ask whom he meant.

“Manslaughter, conspiracy—what would the guy have got? A couple years at most. Maybe even a suspended sentence. But he couldn’t cut it, the chickenshit—”

“I can understand,” Hook broke in suddenly, for some reason angry that Rider would abuse the man now.