She loved her flowers. They bloomed all around the house in every season.

“Then I saw the blue letter again and people were talking in whispers. They were going to fix everything so no one would know.”

By killing Cass, who never did you any harm and never would.

“Somebody threw a rock and hit her on the side of the head. She never cried, never said a thing. It didn’t seem real – like TV with no sound. Another rock hit her in the shoulder. Then somebody put a rock in my hand. It was just there in my hand, and this voice whispering in my ear, ‘Do it, do it.’ And I threw the rock and hit her in the knee. That one brought her down. She fell so quiet.”

“And then what did you do?”

Jimmy looked up at the sheriff, with faint surprise. “Well, I went back to the flower bed to get another rock.” As if that were the most obvious answer, the most natural thing to do, for he had thrown his rock and needed another one, didn’t he? Jimmy turned to Riker. “And that second rock was the one that broke her front teeth.”

Riker smiled and nodded in approval.

Behind Jimmy’s head, the sheriff’s hand was rising like a club. Hate was everything now. Charles Butler was getting up from the table. Riker only touched the sleeve of the large man’s shirt to restrain him. “Stay out of it, Charles.”

Jimmy looked up to see the sheriff’s large fist hanging over him. He stared down at his own hands neatly folded in his lap as though he were on best behavior in church. His shoulders stiffened, bracing for the beating. His voice was calm and reasonable when he said, “I’m sorry for it now, but I didn’t want them to know what he did to me.”

The sheriff’s hand was suspended in space.

In the same reasonable voice, Jimmy said, “The dog forgave me.”

Riker held up more blue sheets. “The kid was raped. He says his uncle did it – a lot.” He passed the papers down the table. “It didn’t stop till he was thirteen. There were other kids, too.”

So that was what Jimmy had run from, and what he had delivered the boy back to. Now the sheriff read a blue sheet with an account of the blood workup for a six-year-old boy, identified only by a number.

“Another case of hepatitis.” And now he looked at the other sheet for the same child, bearing a later date. It was a positive test for syphilis “Why would Cass test a six-year-old boy for VD? How did she make the jump from hepatitis? We’ve had hepatitis in the schools before. It’s pretty common.”

Charles said, “Not the blood-borne variety. Small children get a highly infectious form transmitted with clumsy toilet habits. Even that one would be rare in the upper grades, Jimmy’s class. You’d have to be sexually active or shooting drugs to fall into a high-risk group for hepatitis B. It was a glaring marker for abuse in a six-year-old.”

The sheriff turned to the last sheet, a positive VD test for a nineteen-year-old man. He looked up at Charles and held out the sheet. “There’s no name. You’re sure this one is Babe?”

Charles nodded. “It matches Cass’s patient file number for previous treatment.”

Now he looked from one sheet to the other. The six-year-old was the most recent infection of syphilis. Jimmy’s was older – second-stage and apparently not contracted during his brief flight from home.

“Babe’s infection was the oldest,” said Riker, “even at the time of his famous VD party at the Dayborn Bar and Grill.”

“I gather he never completed the treatment,” said Charles. “That would explain the advanced case at the time of his death.”

Riker was talking, explaining the remaining evidence to support the motive for murder, the illegal activities which would not stand up to any investigation, and the pedophile with a preference for small boys.

The sheriff was not listening. His rancor was curiously absent as he picked up another set of papers from the table. This was the handwritten statement of Jimmy Simms. At the bottom of the final page, all of Cass Shelley’s murderers appeared in a neatly printed column. His eyes moved listlessly from one name to the next, and then the sheets dropped from his hand and landed on the table.

This was not the outcome he had been anticipating, feeding on for all this time.

What a cheat.

He had expected something larger, more on the grand scale of Lilith’s stone avenger in flight. The long-awaited moment had finally come, and it was not enough.

Lilith remained to guard the weeping prisoner. Tom Jessop left the room with the hollow feeling that he had missed a meal. No – a great many meals – years of them.

He led Riker and Charles back down the short hallway to the reception area, speaking mechanically, all business now. “Me and my deputy are gonna take Jimmy out the back way. I think he’ll be safer in a New Orleans lockup. We might be a while. I’ve got to scare up warrants for twenty-three people, and I don’t know a single judge that owes me a favor. Riker, could you mind the store and stay close to the phone? I might need the backup if a judge is gonna buy this story.”

“No problem,” said Riker.

As the small group entered the reception area, they encountered Jane’s smiling face. She was seated on the bench by the door and holding a covered tray on her lap. “Hello, Tom. I saw your new prisoner come in. I thought you might want to feed him.”

“No need, Jane. I turned him loose ten minutes ago. But you just send me the bill for that tray, all right?”

Jane’s smile was undiminished, and that told him she wasn’t going away with nothing for her trouble but the price of the tray.

When the door closed behind her, he turned to Riker. “Whatever she heard, it’s gonna be all over town before lunchtime.”

“How fast can you get the warrants?”

“Not fast enough. Babe’s funeral is tonight in Owltown – just family, but that’s at least a hundred drunks. It’s a better idea to move in real early tomorrow morning with state troopers. We’ll pick up the suspects when they’re all hungover and sick.”

At one o’clock, Charles returned to the sheriff’s office, carrying their lunch and coffee in paper bags from Jane’s Cafe. “I didn’t hear any gossip going around. Maybe Jane didn’t hear anything either.”

“Fat chance.” Riker’s eyes never left the window on the square as he groped in the brown paper bag and pulled out a sandwich. He was staring at one of Jane’s customers. The man had just walked out of the cafe and now he slowly turned to face the sheriff’s office.

Charles was in good spirits as he sipped his coffee. “So Mallory did it by the book.”

“I count three felonies in the paperwork gathering. Whose book are we talking about?”

“Well, she didn’t hurt anybody.”

Didn’t she?

Riker said nothing. The sandwich lay on the desk, untouched. He was intent on the man in the square, who had been joined by a friend. There was no conversation between them, nor any curiosity. They were only keeping watch on the sheriff’s door – sentries.

“Riker, you don’t still think she – ”

“Mallory came back here to get those bastards, and now she has a complete list.” He slumped back in the sheriff’s chair and put his feet up on the cluttered desk. “I wish you’d go back to Augusta’s and keep her occupied for a while.”

Another man had joined the watchers in the square. They moved back to the fountain and perched on the rim of the basin like a row of Augusta’s birds on the paddock fence.

Riker turned away from the window to face Charles, his next problem, and such a large one. How to get rid of him?

“Why can’t you trust her?” Charles was pacing now, unaware of the watchers, but adding to the tension. “You know she won’t do anything to compromise this case.”

“Charles, what does it take to get through to you? For Christ’s sake, she’s telegraphing everything.” It was a fight to keep his eyes from straying back to the window, to the watchers. “You’ve seen the gunslinger outfit. You think Mallory’s playing dress-up? She’s the real thing, Charles – the genuine article.”