EPILOGUE.

The bust at the Honky-Tonk didn't come down for another six months. A federal grand jury returned a fifteen-count indictment against Tim Littenberg and a twelve-count indictment against Scott Shackelford for manufacturing counterfeit credit cards, which carries a minimum five-year prison term and a $50,000 fine for each conviction. Both are currently free on bail. Carlin Duffy was arrested and charged with voluntary manslaughter and he's awaiting trial in the Santa Teresa County jail, with its volleyball, indoor tawlits, and color television sets.

Mickey died on June 1. Later, I sold his handguns, pooling the proceeds with the cash and gold coins I'd lifted from his apartment. Mickey'd never bothered to change his will and since I was named sole beneficiary, his estate (including some pension monies he'd tucked in a separate account, plus fifty thousand dollars in life insurance) came to me. Probably out of guilt, Pete Shackelford made good on the ten grand Tim Littenberg owed Mickey so that, in the end, there was quitea substantial sum that I turned over to the Santa Teresa Police Department to use as they saw fit. If he survived, I suspect Mickey would have been one of those miserly eccentrics who live like paupers and leave millions to charity.

As it happened, I sat with him, my gaze fixed on the monitor above his bed. I watched the staggered line of his beating heart, strong and steady, though his color began to fade and his breathing became more labored as the days went by. I touched his face, feeling the cool flesh that would never be warm again. After the rapture of love comes the wreckage, at least in my experience. I thought of all the things he'd taught me, the things we'd been to one another during that brief marriage. My life was the richer for his having been part of it. Whatever his flaws, whatever his failings, his redemption was something he'd earned in the end. I laid my cheek against his hand and breathed with him until the last breath. "You done good, kid," I whispered, when he was still at last.

Respectfully submitted, Kinsey Millhone.