“How?”

“He knows things. Before he worked for us, he worked for Hailey Prouix. He knows things. He won’t tell me all he knows, but he knows more than we do. He can help.”

“That’s good, Victor, because after what you pulled today in court, I think we could use all the help we can get.”

“Exactly,” I said.

“THE QUESTION,” I said, when my brain trust was reassembled in the well of my living room, “is why. Let’s assume that Cutlip sent Bobo out to do the killing. We still have to figure out why. Why? Why?” I turned to look at Skink. “Why? And how does it relate to what happened to Jesse Sterrett?”

“Maybe she was threatening to tell someone what had happened,” said Beth. “Maybe he had crossed some line and she was about to tell the whole story.”

“Not bad,” I said, “except there’s nothing to back that up. She was still taking care of him, was still apparently close to him. He was still the beneficiary on her insurance. There’s no indication she was ready to do such a thing.”

“Look at the money,” said Skink. “It’s usually about money, innit?”

“Yes, it usually is,” I said. “The insurance money was pretty high, and he seemed pretty damned interested in it when we came to visit.”

“But she was the goose laying his golden eggs,” said Beth. “Why would he kill her for money when she was giving him everything he wanted as it was?”

“Maybe he was worried it was running out,” I said. “Especially with Guy starting to raise questions about the missing funds. Or maybe he was sick of the place, Desert Winds, maybe he thought it was some sort of pre-morgue and he felt halfway already on the slab. Maybe she was using her support as a cudgel to keep him there, and he thought he could gain his freedom and a stake both with one fatal blow. He and Bobo would have themselves a hell of a time before the insurance money ran out and Cutlip’s body fell apart.”

“An interesting idea, that,” said Skink. “A man used to freedom, as was our Larry Cutlip, it must chafe like a pair of iron knickers to be supervised, sanitized, and anesthetized in a place like that.”

“You know him?” said Beth.

“Who, Cutlip? Yeah, I knows him. But the thing about your insurance theory there, Vic, is that he wasn’t even sure he was the beneficiary before she died and he got a gander at the policy. He was just hoping.”

“How do you know that?” said Beth.

“I just do, is all. I just do.”

“What’s he like?” she said. “I apparently met him, but after the accident I don’t remember a thing about it.”

“He’s a saint,” I said, “just ask him. Oh, he’s done some tough things in his life, gone through some hard stretches, but everything he’s done he’s done for the right reasons. He sacrificed his best years to take care of his nieces, and he did the best he could, and he needs you to know it. Anything that went wrong, it was some other person’s fault. The dead father, the meddling local minister, his sister, the girls themselves. But he provided a firm hand when a firm hand was needed. When he thinks tears will be effective, he’ll break down and cry. When he thinks he can bully you, he’ll get as vicious as a cornered rat. His surface is all ornery and hard, he doesn’t like Jews much, or lawyers, or, really, anyone, but he likes to have someone around who will stroke his ego and tell him how good, how strong, how important he is, even as he sits in a wheelchair in a sad desert boomtown with a line feeding oxygen into his withered lungs.”

“Sounds like you didn’t like him much,” said Beth.

“Actually, I was suckered. Before I knew the truth, I admired what he had done. I bought into his act. I guess he didn’t spend fifteen years banging around Vegas without learning how to con gullible folk from back east. It was you who didn’t like him, not at all.”

“I didn’t?”

“For some reason I couldn’t fathom he terrified you, as if you had seen something in him that I completely missed. You said he reminded you of Murdstone.”

“Murdstone?”

“From David Copperfield.”

“The stepfather?”

“Yes, and you seemed particularly concerned with some of the things he said about Jesse Sterrett’s death. He called it an accident, but you kept asking questions. He didn’t like that, didn’t like that at all. It was those questions, in fact, along with the letters, that started me digging in West Virginia.”

“Wasn’t I the perceptive little thing?”

“And then, while we were riding out of Henderson, you said you wouldn’t be surprised if…”’

“If what?”

“I don’t know. It was just before the accident. You never got a chance to finish.”

“What I meant was that I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Guy and not Hailey who was supposed to die.”

Skink and I looked at each other for a moment and then back at Beth. “How do you remember that?”

Beth herself look stunned. “I don’t know. I’m not sure. I was just listening to what you said about Cutlip and the beginning of the sentence and something slipped out of the recesses of my mind and became clear, and that was it.”

“What a strange idea,” I said.

“Is it, now?” said Skink. “Is it, now? Wouldn’t that change everything? We’re wondering here about motive, because why would Cutlip want to kill his loving niece? But Guy, now, that’s a different story, ain’t it? There are half a dozen blokes who wouldn’t have minded seeing Guy Forrest bite the proverbial big one. And wouldn’t Cutlip be one of them? Guy was starting to ask questions about where his money had gone. Guy was threatening his luxury existence. And the worst crime of all is that Guy was pumping it to Hailey – no offense, ma’am – pumping it to Hailey just like Jesse Sterrett was pumping it to Hailey. They was two men she was looking to marry. Maybe he killed them both.”

“Out of some raw emotion,” I said. “Something beyond him, something he couldn’t control.”

“Slow down,” said Beth. “She was on the mattress right in the middle of the floor. You couldn’t shoot her from outside the room, and you couldn’t step into the room without seeing her there, clear as day.”

“Really, now,” said Skink. “Clear as day, you say. Vic, you was the first one to see her after Guy, right?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Was the light on?”

“Of course, the overhead light.”

“Not a lamp or anything else, just the overhead.”

“As far as I remember, yes.”

“Guy told us,” said Beth, “that after he hit her, Hailey told him to turn out the light, and he did.”

“Then, what about if it was Guy himself who turned it on, that overhead light, not the killer?” said Skink. “Think about that. Maybe it was off when she was killed.”

“But still, even in the imperfect darkness,” Beth said, “it would be hard to mistake petite Hailey Prouix for a lummox like Guy.”

“Yeah, maybe, except our suspected shooter, Bobo, ain’t no Einstein, is he? If you wanted a killing to be messed up to hell, I suppose he’s the one you’d send to do it. And maybe there was another reason he made the mistake. You got the forensics reports hereabouts?”

“As a matter of fact,” I said, “the lab technician is testifying Monday.”

“Let me see it. And the autopsy report, too.”

“What for?”

“Just haul them out and let me have a look-see.”

The reports were in the trial bag I had brought with me from the office. Skink spread them out on the coffee table in front of the couch and riffled through them, one at a time, as he searched for the specific items he was interested in. It was a wonder to behold, Phil Skink in full calculating mode. His mouth twitched, his eyes blinked, he scratched his greased blue-black hair as if it were infested with lice – he looked like a deranged mainframe on the verge of a nervous breakdown. And the whole of the time he was letting out little verbal explosions. “Mmmmmbop,” he said, or “Blip, blip, blip,” or “Now, there’s something, innit?” or, most strangely, “Parlez-vous to me, you frog bastard.”