“Nursery?” Boldt said, drawing a sharp look from Walt.

“Why not? Sure. Nursery. It looks like what my wife and I use in our vegetable garden: black compost soil mixed with peat moss to hold in moisture. What it is not is the typical roadside dirt you see around here. It’s far more refined than that, and there’s no pebbles, leaf material, sticks. It’s clean.”

“That’s helpful,” Walt said. “Very helpful.”

“Which leads me to the only other thing I’ve got,” McClure said. “And honestly, I probably wouldn’t have noticed without the soil, or maybe I would have, who knows?” He laughed self-consciously, his self-deprecating humor one of the qualities Walt appreciated most about him. Rare in a doctor. “Earwax,” he said, fishing out a small plastic petri dish from the same cardboard box. The petri dish contained four cotton swabs on paper sticks.

“Earwax,” Walt repeated.

“Pollen,” Boldt said, craning his huge body over the desk for a closer look.

“The blue ribbon goes to the sergeant,” McClure said. “Very good, Detective.”

“We’ve used it a couple times. Once in a floater.”

“Pollen most often adheres to sinus membranes, antemortem, and/ or the cerumen-which is doc-speak for earwax-postmortem.” He pronounced it “mor-tem,” lending finality to the sound of the word. “I retrieved the cerumen, but found nothing in the sinuses. Ergo-”

“He was dragged through a garden or a flower bed, or thrown from a truck into a pile of debris,” Walt said.

“I’d go along with the former, but would lay doubt at the foot of the latter,” the doc said. “You can see by the strong orange color that the pollen was thick and apparently consistent. It had to be abundant.”

“This time of year?” Boldt asked. “Isn’t it a little late?”

“In nature, yes,” McClure said. “I’d agree. Quite late. But we have a very shortened growing season here, Detective. Extremely short. I would imagine any number of vegetables, or other flowering plants might be pollinating at this time, but I’m not a botanist. Sunflowers, maybe? The lab may be able to identify the pollen for you. But I thought its existence worth bringing to your attention.” He delivered this to Walt, who nodded and reached out to examine the petri dish.

“I’ll put a rush on it,” Walt said.

“The only other thing worth mentioning, and I think you’ll find this of some interest, is that a good number of the contusions and abrasions are also postmortem. Though scuffs on his knees and face are antemortem.”

“A struggle?” Walt said.

“If I had to guess, I’d say the blow from behind was enough to kill him, but possibly failed to do so right away. He went down. His brain hemorrhaged, but in those few conscious seconds it took the pressure on his brain to overcome him, maybe he managed to turn and get in a few blows on his attacker. They may have fought. I don’t know. His hands and forearms and mouth, all suggest such a struggle, an exchange of blows perhaps. Then the initial trauma caught up to him-any of the rest of us would have gone unconscious with such a blow, I think-it’s something of a medical miracle if he did not, but he was thick-boned and his skull may have protected him somewhat. His brain swamped, and he died.”

“And was dragged through a garden,” Walt said.

“Or a nursery,” Boldt added.

“The lab work should help you there,” McClure said. “I’ll pack it up and get it off.”

“I’ll have one of my guys drive it down there this afternoon,” Walt said, a video of the struggle playing out in his mind’s eye, and the disturbing realization that Vince Wynn had showed no signs of having been in such a struggle.

“If there was a struggle,” McClure said, artfully awaiting the attention of the two, “a guy this size might have gotten in some serious blows. It might be worth checking the emergency room.”

“Or twenty-four-hour convenience stores,” Boldt said, eyeing Walt. “Have you got any of those here?”

“Good suggestions,” Walt said.

As he and Boldt were approaching the Jeep, Boldt stopped and waited for Walt to turn. “The woman at the nursery-”

“Maggie Sharp.”

“-was wearing a lot of makeup. You notice that?”

“I did.”

“Struck me funny at the time, an outdoor person like that bothering with cosmetics. But if she was covering something?”

“And while you were thinking that, I was thinking about Boatwright. The caretaker was tearing up a perfectly good garden and replanting it, supposedly at Boatwright’s request.”

“That certainly plays a little differently now.”

“Blunt trauma,” Walt said. “I keep coming back to a baseball bat. Marty Boatwright’s a football guy, and he’s old. I don’t see him clubbing Gale from behind.”

“His gardener maybe? An ax handle.”

“What if Wynn was right? What if Gale was here poking around old wounds? Wynn scares him off so he moves on to Boatwright. Caretaker sees a trespasser and takes a club to the back of the guy’s head without introductions. Boatwright realizes who it is, and for whatever reasons of his own, doesn’t want anything to do with this and tells him to dump the body and remake the garden, because in the struggle the garden got trashed.”

“There’d be an evidence trail a mile long,” Boldt said. “If Boatwright or his man owns a pickup truck, I’d start there. His man’s clothes and house would be next.”

“Be interesting if Boatwright’s name turned up on the same list server as Wynn: people considered at risk from Gale. That list would help us out.”

“I had a case down there that involved a home for boys. I had contact with some people. I could make a few calls.”

“It’s not your case,” Walt said. “I couldn’t ask you to do that.”

“You didn’t. Not that I heard. And as far as that goes, Gale’s death could easily tie to Caroline Vetta, and that means I’m interested.”

“Boatwright is not going to open his doors for us,” Walt said. “And replanting a garden hardly gives me probable cause.”

“The lab identifies what kind of plant made that pollen and we’ve got front-row seats either at the nursery or Boatwright’s.”

“I can nudge them to hurry it up. But they won’t get started until Monday at the earliest. And only then if I twist a few arms.”

“Looks like you and I are entering a long-distance relationship, Sheriff. And you know how those turn out.”

“In all honesty, it’s been a pleasure.”

“Back at you.”

Walt moved for the car door. Boldt stayed where he was.

“It’s none of my business,” Boldt said. “How do I say this? Your father… when we talked…”

“My father can be a real asshole.”

“He took a kind of holier-than-thou attitude, not with me, but about you. Like I could teach you something by coming over here. As I said, it’s none of my business.”

“I apologize.”

“My point being, he was wrong. Dead wrong. I could give him a call, as a follow-up, let him know how it went over here. Wouldn’t want to do that without your permission. Wouldn’t want to tread where I shouldn’t.”

The pit in Walt’s stomach told him more about himself than he wanted to acknowledge.

“Tread wherever you’d like,” he said, feeling the warmth of sweet satisfaction flooding him. “Kind of wish I had a wire in place for that phone call.”

Boldt barked out a laugh. When he climbed into the Jeep, the vehicle sagged to his side and then leveled. Boldt clipped into the seat belt, let out a sigh, and said, “I’m going to miss this place.”