She continued looking through the crime-scene reports. There were two partial footprints outlined in blood lifted from the linoleum floor. The chair tread of the soles had been identified as coming from a pair of hightop Reebok basketball shoes, sized between nine and eleven.-The soles were of a style manufactured within the past six months. Some cloth fibres had been uncovered sticking to the swatch of blood that had littered the old man's chest. They were of a cotton-polyester blend commonly associated with sweat clothes. Entry to the house had been accomplished through the rear door. Old, rotting wood had torn apart at the first touch of a steel screwdriver or chisel. She shook her head. This was commonplace in the Keys. The sun, wind, and salt air played havoc with door frames, a fact with which every two-bit burglar frequenting the hundred and sixty miles between Miami and Key West was well familiar.

But no two-bit burglar had performed this crime.

She grabbed a pen and made some notes to herself: canvas the hardware stores, see if anyone purchased a knife, rope, and screwdriver or small crowbar. Talk to all the neighbors again, see if anyone saw a strange car. Check the local hotels. Did he bring the Bible with him? Check the bookstores.

She did not hold out much hope for any of this.

She continued: Check the crime lab with samples of the skin where the throats were sliced. Perhaps a spectrographic examination would show some metal fragments that might tell her something about the murder weapon. This was important. She ordered her thoughts with a military precision: if a killer leaves nothing of evidentiary value, no part of himself, like semen or fingerprints or hair, then to place him in that room, one must find what he took with him – the murder weapon, blood residue on his shoes or clothes, some item from the house. Something.

Shaeffer rubbed her eyes for an instant, letting her thoughts turn toward Cowart. What is he hiding? she asked herself. Some piece of the crime that means something to him. But what?

She drew a portrait of the reporter in her head, sketching in the look in his eyes, the tone of his voice. She did not know much about reporters, but she knew that they generally wanted to appear to know more than they did, to create the illusion that they were sharing information rather than simply seducing it. Cowart did not fit this profile. After their initial confrontation at the crime scene, he had not asked her a single question about the murders on Tarpon Drive. Instead, he had done his worldly best to avoid being questioned. What does that tell you? That he already has the answers.

But why would he hide them from her? To protect someone.

Blair Sullivan? Impossible. He needs to protect himself.

But that still didn't get her anywhere. She doodled on the empty pad in front of her, drawing concentric circles that grew darker and darker as she filled in the space with ink.

She remembered a lecture from her police academy days: four out of five killers know their victims. All right, she told herself. Blair Sullivan tells Matthew Cowart that he arranged the killing. How can he do this from Death Row?

Her heart sank. Prisons are worlds unto themselves.

Anything can be obtained, if one is willing to pay the price, even a death. And everyone inside knows the mechanics of prison barter and exchange. But for an outsider to penetrate the machinations of those worlds was difficult, sometimes impossible. The ordinary leverages of life that a policeman so depended on – the fear of social or legal sanctions, of being held accountable – didn't exist within a prison.

She envisioned her next step with distaste: questioning all the prison people who had come in contact with Sullivan. One of them should be the pipeline, she thought. But what does he pay with? He didn't have any money. Or did he? He didn't have any status. He was a loner who went to the chair. Or was he? How does he pay that debt? And why does he tell Matthew Cowart? A thought jumped into her head suddenly: Perhaps he'd already paid.

She took a deep breath.

Blair Sullivan contracts for a killing and we assume that payment is due upon completion of the contract. That is natural. But – turn it around. Shaeffer warmed suddenly, feeling her imagination trip like so many switches. She remembered the explosive excitement she felt when her eyes picked out the broad, dark shape of the billfish rising through the green-black waters to strike at the bait. A single moment, electric, exhilarating, before the battle was joined. The best moment, she thought.

She picked up the telephone and dialed a number. It rang three times before a groan slid over the line.

'Yeah?'

'Mike? It's Andy.'

'Christ. Don't you even want to sleep?'

'Sorry. No.'

'Give me a second.'

She waited, hearing a muffled explanation to his wife. She made out the words 'It's her first big case before the conversation was obscured by the sound of running water. Then silence, and finally the voice of her partner, laughing.

'You know, dammit, I'm the senior detective and you're the rookie. I say sleep, you're supposed to sleep.'

'Sorry,' she apologized again.

'Hah,' he replied. 'No sincerity. Okay, what's on your mind?'

'Matthew Cowart.' When she spoke his name, she! made up her mind: Don't play your hand quite yet.

'Mister I'm-Not-Telling-You-Everything Reporter?'

'The same.' She smiled.

'Boy, that sonuvabitch has me frosted.'

It was easy for her to envision her partner sitting at the side of his bed. His wife would have grabbed his pillow and jammed it over her head to drown out the noise of conversation. Unlike many detective partnerships, her relationship with Michael Weiss was businesslike and impersonal. They had not been together long – long enough to share an infrequent laugh, but not long enough to care what the joke was.

He was a sturdy man, unimaginative and hotheaded.

Better at showing pictures to witnesses and thumbing through insurance company records. That he'd acquired ten years of experience to her few months was thought she dismissed rapidly. Leaving him behind was easy for her. 'Me, too.' 'So what do you have in mind?'

'I think I ought to work him a bit. Just keep showing up. At his office. His apartment. When he goes jogging. When he takes a bath, whenever.' Weiss laughed. 'And?'

'Let him know we're going to sit on him until we learn what he really has to tell us. Like who committed that

'Makes sense to me.'

"But someone's got to start working the prison. See if someone there knows something, like maybe that guard sergeant. And I think somebody'd better go through all Sullivan's possessions. Maybe he left some- thing that'll tell us something.'

'.Andy, couldn't this conversation have waited until, say. eight A.M.?' Exhaustion mingled with wry humor in Weiss's voice. I mean, hell, don't you want to sleep a bit'

'Sorry, Mike. I guess not.'

'I hate it when you remind me of myself. I remember my first big case. I was breathing fire, too. Couldn't wait to get on it. Trust me. Take it slow.'

'Mike'

Okay. Okay. So you'd rather muscle the reporter than start interviewing cons and guards, right?' 'Yes.'

"See' Weiss laughed, 'that's the sort of intuitiveness that will get you ahead in this department. All right. You go bother Cowart, I'll go back to Starke. But I want

" to talk. Every day. Maybe twice a day, got it?'

'Absolutely.'

She had no idea if she intended to comply. She hung up the telephone and started to straighten her desk, sliding documents into files, organizing reports into neat stacks, clipping her own notes and observations onto the folders, placing pens and pencils into a cup. When she was satisfied with the order imposed on her working surface, she allowed herself a small surge of anticipation.