“What was the ex-boyfriend’s name?”

“Bonner. Bonner Flood.”

“Sounds like someone out of a Faulkner novel.”

“He wishes. He’s a creep, but a petty one. As I said, the police never charged him. He works in one of the marinas, when he can hold a job.”

Tess got up to go, then remembered she had one more thing she wanted to ask. “Did you ever get to interview Alan Palmer?”

“No, but he was the best thing that ever happened to Lucy, apparently. She was working some minimum-wage job, didn’t even have her GED, when he came along. Hey, I have a question for you. What do you think of Margo A. Duncan?”

It was always a bad sign, someone speaking of herself in the third person.

“I think… you’ve been a great help,” Tess ventured.

“No, I mean the name. I think my byline might be holding me back. I want something more New York Timesian. My middle name is Alice, which doesn’t really work that well, but M.A. Duncan sounds like I’ve got a master’s in doughnuts. Or I could go with M. Alice Duncan.”

Tess didn’t have the heart to point out that this would simply turn Margo into Malice. “Sounds great,” she said, edging toward the door. “I’m sure it will make all the difference.”

CHAPTER 13

The man with the tattooed arms ended his day with a cheeseburger and a beer, which he all but inhaled, so that a gob of the head stuck to his nose. It was a long pointy nose, like a hound’s. That nose would turn out to be the only sharp thing about Bonner Flood.

When he put down his glass and saw Tess, holding out her card, he sighed. “I don’t wanna,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Whatever it is you want, I don’t wanna talk about it. I’m off, okay? This is my time, my dinner.”

“I’ll buy you dinner.”

“I don’t wanna.”

“And give you some cash for your time.”

“I don’t wanna,” repeated this modern-day Bartleby. “Come back tomorrow.”

“I don’t wanna,” Tess said, taking the seat opposite him in the booth. It had not been too hard to find out that Bonner Flood took his evening meal in this diner on Route 40, an authentic one with hand-lettered signs advertising the specials and not a speck of self-conscious charm. The Riverview Diner might be a find, but it could just as well be a dump, staying in business by cultivating a clientele that cared more about prices than food. A waitress shuffled over and, looking much put-upon, took down Tess’s order of a Coke, a cheeseburger with everything, and french fries with gravy.

“Lucy Fancher,” Tess began.

“Tell Carl Dewitt to go fuck himself.”

“Excuse me?”

“My lawyer said he’s gotta stop doing this shit to me. If the cops want me, they can jack me up official-like. But they gotta let me live my life in peace.”

Dewitt again. It seemed impossible to have a conversation about Lucy Fancher without having one about the former Toll Facilities cop as well.

“I don’t know the man,” Tess said. “And he probably doesn’t want to know me, given that I’m here to examine his work. I’m looking into how some cops do their job.”

“Yeah?” That brought his nose out of his beer mug. “I can tell you how. Like it’s Nazi Germany, that’s how they do their job around here. Like a man’s got no rights at all. Dewitt won’t stop, and he’s not even a cop anymore. Not that he was ever a real cop.”

“He hounded you, then?”

“I almost filed police brutality charges against him.”

“He hit you?”

“Well, he was dogging me. He talked to me over and over and over again. He knew I didn’t do it, from the first. He said as much. But for some reason he just likes to hear me tell the story. I took a polygraph. Passed it, too. But a week didn’t go by that I didn’t see Carl Dewitt staring at me. Down at the marina, in the bar up the street, here. Like a little freckled ghost, following me around.” Then, as an afterthought, “I hate freckles.”

Flood finished the rest of his beer with one deep inhale and wiped the back of his mouth with his arm. The tattoos had once been discrete designs. But there were so many crowded together, and the lines had faded over time until his arms looked more discolored than anything else. The right was blue-purple, like a bruise, the left more reddish, as if he had been badly burned.

Tess sipped the beer the waitress had brought in lieu of her Coca-Cola. Bad sign. She drank so Bonner Flood might feel more companionable. Now that was something to tell Dr. Armistead: She had to drink for her job sometimes, even when she didn’t want to. What would he make of that?

“I’m Tess Monaghan,” she said in her best voice, a sweet, serious tone she knew men liked.

“Bonner Flood,” he said. “But you seem to know that.”

“Tell me about Lucy.”

“I thought you weren’t here to hound me.”

“Not about her death. About her, her life. What was she like?”

“She was okay. We were together two-three years, off and on.”

Tess had done her homework at the district court this time. She knew the “off” times Flood alluded to usually came on drunken weekends when he threw Lucy around the living room. By Monday morning, he was sober and she was forgiving.

“You break up with her, or did she break up with you?”

“Neither. I ended up in jail for six months.”

“Assault?”

“Uh-uh, more serious. Poaching.” There was not a wisp of a smile on Flood’s face. “I had to do a little county time while waiting trial, and then I got time served. I come out, Lucy’s got this new guy. And I’m glad, you know, I’m just glad for her. Plus, it makes her somebody else’s problem. I don’t have to hear any more about how I should be doing this or doing that. You see, Lucy wasn’t any better’n me-but she wanted to be.”

“Where was she from? I couldn’t find any other Fanchers in these parts.”

“Virginia? North Carolina? Somewhere south of here, I know that much.”

“And you weren’t mad when you got out of jail and found out she had a new guy?” The cheeseburger arrived, but plain, without the “everything.” It barely had cheese. The french fries had come in gravy, as requested, but they were ice-cold on the inside and the gravy appeared to have been salvaged from Jiffy Lube.

“Wasn’t her fault. Truth be told, when I went to jail, she couldn’t make the rent on her own. She had to find a new man. A girl like Lucy, that’s how she lives. Waiting tables, working at the Royal Farm, she’s not gonna make enough to cover her expenses. I took Lucy away from someone, someone took her away from me. She was like Tarzan.”

“Tarzan?”

“She went from tree to tree, and she always knew where the next vine was.”

“Was she pretty?”

Flood stared at the ceiling, as if this question were of cosmic significance. “Not when I knew her. She had a figure-she was one of those tiny girls with big breasts, you know?”

“No,” Tess said.

“You’ve got-” Flood began.

“I’m not tiny,” Tess said, stifling what Flood obviously believed to be a compliment. “You said Lucy wasn’t pretty ”when I knew her.“ Something change?”

“Uh-huh. I saw her at Happy Harry’s, about a month before she died. Her hair was cut different, really short, which I don’t much care for. Turns out she had a pretty little face under all that hair. She’d gotten her teeth bleached and fixed-she’d had a big space between the front two and a snaggle tooth with a gold crown. I didn’t much care for what she was wearing. Like I said, she had a good figure, and she had taken to hiding it away, like it was a secret. I tried to talk to her a little, but she didn’t have time for me. Said she was running late, on her way home from her community college class.”

“Sounds pretty rude,” Tess said.

“It was more than rude. It pissed me off. I knew Lucy Fancher. She wasn’t better’n me.”

“Maybe she was.”

“What? No one’s better’n anyone else. Not in America.”