The pharmacist left her alone, and she ripped open the envelope, prepared to be entertained by somebody's outrage at her attempt to save a black man.

She wasn't entertained. She was confused. In fact, she was angry.

The note was on plain paper, the printing old-fashioned cut-out magazine letters. As for the message, it lacked originality.

STOP NOW BEFORE YOU GET HURT

Stop what? Saving black guys? Grabbing guns?

For God's sake, Timmie thought in disgust. Like I don't have anything better to do than put up with this crap.

She should have tossed the card. She didn't. She must have stood there for a full five minutes, tapping it against her hand and watching out the window and wondering just who was threatened enough by her actions that they'd feel compelled to communicate with her.

She didn't, in the end, find illumination. She did get the privilege of seeing Van Adder's date step out of the truck. Timmie was so preoccupied, though, that she made it all the way out the door before it dawned on her just who it was she'd seen.

"Oh, shit," she said, coming to a dead stop out on the dark, blowing street. "What the hell do I do about that?"

Chapter 4

Murphy as not a joy-runner. After doing it damn near every day of his life since his fifteenth birthday, he didn't really believe those assholes who said they got out there and ran ten miles because they loved it. He did it because he figured that if he lived through it at the crack of fucking dawn, the rest of the day couldn't possibly get worse.

It had been a hell of a lot easier to do when he'd lived in L.A. First of all, he'd been younger. He'd run on much newer legs and pinker lungs. Second, L.A. didn't have winter. Not really. Murphy hated winter. He hated dark skies and leafless trees and the way the air never seemed to dry out. It didn't matter that it was only halfway through October. It was cold and it was wet, and Murphy knew it could only get worse.

"Morning, Mr. Murphy," one of his neighbors greeted him as she bent in an old bathrobe at the end of her sidewalk to get her morning paper.

Panting and gasping his way back up Maple Street, Murphy couldn't manage more than a nod and a wave. Not only was it wet here, it was hilly. Why hadn't anybody told him how hilly Missouri was? How the hell could it keep flooding if it had so many goddamn hills?

"You got company this morning," the woman let him know.

Murphy lifted a hand again and kept slogging uphill toward the place he rented from Sherilee. Great.

Company. He never managed constructive thought until he made it back into the kitchen and downed his first quart or two of coffee. There was no one on earth he wanted to talk to until that was accomplished.

Then he reached the pillored, redbrick Victorian that commanded the top of the hill and turned into the driveway. There, sitting nose to ass with his old Porsche, was a shiny new Puckett police car.

That kind of company. Shit. Murphy stopped right there and wheezed.

The officer in question was just turning back down the stairs from the apartment Murphy had over Sherilee's garage. A skinny guy with slick brown hair, big "do-me-baby" eyes, and the hypermilitary gait that was so favored by certain suburban cops, he walked with one hand firmly wrapped around his utility belt, as if he were balancing himself with it.

A cop who liked female civilians much better than male civilians, Murphy guessed from the tight fit of the black-on-black uniform. But only if they were sitting on his lap in a bar or on his face in the backseat of a squad car.

Murphy lurched back into motion. "Can I help you?" he asked, heading onto the grass.

The policeman didn't bother to change his pace. "You Daniel Murphy?"

"Yep."

"I'd like to talk to you."

A master of the obvious, too. Murphy wiped the sweat from his face and walked over to the stairs as the cop hit the bottom step. "Well, then, come on up. I have coffee on, Officer..."

"Adkins." He didn't bother to hold out a hand or ease his judgmental expression as he and Murphy changed places on the steps. "I'd prefer you come to the station."

Not an invitation. A heavy-handed command.

Attempted intimidation at six-thirty in the morning. Murphy wondered what he'd stirred up. "No thanks," he said, climbing the steps. "Unless you have a warrant in your hand, I'm going to get some coffee and a shower. And I've never found that police stations do either very well."

The inside of Murphy's apartment was nothing inspiring. Murphy wasn't into inspiring these days. He was into uninvolved. Uninteresting. Unstressful. He had two rooms and a john, all painted white with curtains that looked like old Handi Wipes. The furniture consisted of castoffs from Sherilee's main house, a mishmash of chintz and Southwestern that had washed up from the high tides of her various attempts at redecoration.

Murphy had supplied the artwork, two pen-and-ink sketches he hauled around with him, one of the American Bar in Bangkok, the other of his two daughters, who lived with their mother in New York. Other than that, he had a good stereo, a bad television, and a state-of-the-art laptop he rarely opened anymore.

"I can offer black coffee or black coffee," he said, pulling NYPD mugs from the white metal cabinets and filling them from a saucepan. "Drawback of living alone. I don't plan for company."

Adkins was still bristling. "Black's fine."

"Sit down. God knows, I have to. I'm gettin' too fuckin' old for the kind of hills you got around here."

Standing at parade rest by the door, Adkins didn't: seem to be able to let go of his belt long enough to accept the mug. A real problem, Murphy figured. With all the macho cop shit he had clipped to the thing, it must weigh a good twenty pounds. If Adkins let go, his pants might damn well hit his ankles.

He'd brought a brown manila envelope in with him. Smiling like a waitress looking for tips, Murphy directed the mug toward the hand that held the envelope in an effort to help Adkins make the decision.

"You were at the horse show," Adkins said as he let go of his belt for the cup without noticeable disaster. "You saw the shooting?"

Setting down his own mug on the overcarved and underused Colonial kitchen table that never held more than old bills and new catalogues, Murphy nodded. "In living color."

He took a second to shrug out of his old Marine Corps sweatshirt and toss it toward the bedroom before pulling out one of the chairs and dropping down. His T-shirt was soaked, and he smelled like a wet horse. But if the good Officer Adkins wanted to talk to him, that was what he got.

"I'm looking into the incident," Adkins said, not moving.

Murphy pulled over a half-finished pack of cigarettes and shook one out. "About time somebody did."

Lighting his first of the day, he sucked in enough tar and nicotine to clear all the clean air out his lungs and waited for the cop to make his move.

Murphy had asked a couple of questions around town the day before, the "Why would somebody try and shoot Dr. Raymond?" variety, just for the article he'd prepared on the benefit. The reaction he'd gotten had been polite bemusement. Nobody knew. Certainly nobody would hurt Alex Raymond. Nobody would jeopardize the hospital, which was the county's biggest employer, the area's civic pride, the drum major in the town's parade of progress.

But, oddly enough, no one had shown outrage. Not even the fat, garrulous old fart named Bub something who was the town's chief detective. The only person even slightly distressed by Murphy's questions had been the little lady at Vital Statistics. Murphy had stopped by to check the figures on local death rates. The poor little woman manning the desk had reacted as if Murphy had asked the name of every underage virgin in town.