Andy didn't comment as he tried to discern whether the story was heartwarming or simply depressing.

"It's not a name that's helped me out much, you want to know the truth," Pony continued. "The other inmates make comments about it 'til they figure I'll fight 'em if they think for one minute they gonna ride me in the showers, you know what I mean?" He shook his head and grinned, several gold caps gleaming in the dark. "I had my share of scuffles, but I'm stronger than I look. Did some prizefighting when I was younger, know karate pretty good, too."

"How long you in for?" Andy asked.

"Another two years, unless the governor lets me out. And he could, but he won't. Thing is, I do a good job and none of the Crimms want someone else. They're used to me. And if I do a bad job, they'll just send me back to lockup. So I'm kinda stuck." He flicked an ash. "I should never have stole that pack of cigarettes." He shook his head again and sighed.

"You're in jail for stealing a pack of cigarettes?" Andy couldn't believe it.

Pony nodded. "It violated my parole. Before that, it was two pints of apricot brandy at the ABC store. So I pretty much ruined my life over things that ain't good for me anyway. It runs in my family."

"Stealing?" Andy asked.

"Self-destruction. How 'bout you?"

It was rare anyone asked about Andy's life and he had always been cautious about what he revealed.

"Tell me about yourself, Mister Andy," Pony encouraged him to talk. "What about a girl? You got someone special?"

Andy dug his hands into the pockets of his uniform winter jacket and hunched his shoulders against the unseasonable chill as helicopters churned up the night.

Clouds had moved on, and the moon was a sliver that reminded Pony of a gold smile.

"Not at the moment," Andy said. "I was on and off with an older woman I met in Charlotte. But we're finished."

"I guess she still in Charlotte?"

"I don't know where she is. I wanted to be friends, but she's not that way. I don't understand women," Andy confessed. "They're always saying men don't know how to be friends, but when I try to be a friend, they act weird about it."

"That is the truth." Pony slowly nodded his head. "You tell it, brother. Women never say what they want or mean what they say or admit to even wanting-unless it's something they don't want or they want you to think they do or don't want. So they can play you, know what I mean? My wife's a sweet woman when she's not too wore out from doing the First Family's laundry or mad at me for going back to lockup during my vacations and holidays. But to look at it from her side, I know I don't always shoot straight with her, either.

"Sometimes I ought to just come out with it and say, 'I sure do love you, baby.' Or 'You sure do look good to me right now, baby.' Or 'I carry this sickness in my heart, baby, 'cause I know I've spent most of our good years behind bars, and that's not fair to you and you got no idea how much I just ache for you when I'm away like that.' And I guess, Mister Andy, I don't want to admit to her or myself that I probably fucked up my life forever, you know what I'm saying?" He sucked on the cigarette. "You know, it's probably too late and I'll probably never get out of lockup 'cause the governor will forget or the next one will or the one after that.

"And I guess I don't got sense enough to cause trouble in the mansion and maybe get fired and then sue the Comm'wealth for discrim'ation, which would entitle me to lawyers who would take me on for a cause and look into my prison record and discover there's some mess-up in the Department of Corrections computer and I would be a free man. As is, I don't got no money for no lawyer and right now I ain't no cause. My point being, if I did the wrong thing, everything would turn out all right for me."

"I know exactly how you feel," Andy agreed. "But you've still got to do the right thing, Pony. Look at Trooper Truth. He did the right thing by telling the truth about Major Trader, and now the governor suspects Trooper Truth of doing something wrong."

"I hear you. I wish I knew Trooper Truth," Pony said with a sigh. "He sounds like one fine person, and it's 'bout time someone blew the whistle on Trader. I've known all along he's a rotten apple up to no good. Yes sir, I wish I knew Trooper Truth. Maybe he could fix my mess with the Department of Corrections."

"Why don't you call DOC yourself and see if you can get someone to look into the matter?" Andy asked.

" 'Cause I ain't allowed to make no personal calls from the mansion. And they don't listen to inmates, anyhow. Everybody in trouble says there's been a mistake, so why should I be any different?"

Regina was hiding behind an ancient boxwood and heard every word. She had lost interest in pool and wished she had thought to wear a coat when she'd decided to sneak out into the garden and eavesdrop. She had a special talent for spying on others, and was hoping to gather a little intelligence that might be useful to her.

But as she listened to Andy talk to Pony, she felt herself go soft inside and forgot her original motive. She, too, had been frustrated in her occasional efforts to make friends and often felt wrongly accused.

Regina was shivering uncontrollably, her breath rising in frozen clouds. Her stomach was feeling funny, too, and her intestines were tacking this way and that as they filled with an ominous wind that seemed to have gusted up from the sewer.

"If I were you," Andy was saying to Pony, "I'd send Trooper Truth an e-mail and see if he can get to the truth of why you're still in lockup."

"You think he'd do that for me?" Pony noticed that a boxwood was shaking and smoke was rising from it.

"It can't hurt to ask."

"Well, I don't got access to e-mail, either." Pony watched the shaking, smoking boxwood with growing alarm. He thought of the fisherman and panicked. "I think that boxwood over there's about to blow up!" he exclaimed as a loud, dull detonation sounded from behind the shrubs.

Andy sprang from the stone bench and raced over to the smoking, foul-smelling bush as Regina gave up her cover and rose like a mountain.

"What are you doing?" Andy demanded.

"Practicing investigative techniques," she replied as she clutched her huge quivering gut.

"Well, don't you be hiding behind things and looking like you might explode, Miss Reginia," Pony said, weak with relief. "Lord, you had me going for a minute, thought that crazy man had planted a pipe bomb in the garden and we was all gonna burn up."

"It's time for me to go," Andy said.

"Pick me up first thing in the morning so we can start working this case," Regina said. Even when she wasn't feeling well, she had a manner of making suggestions as if she were ordering an air strike. "I'll be waiting for you early."

"Not possible," Andy replied. "I need to go to the morgue first thing to check on what the medical examiner finds in the case of the man who was killed at the river. You certainly don't want to see something like that. It's very unpleasant."

"Of course I want to see it," Regina said with inappropriate enthusiasm.

"It's very, very unpleasant and upsetting." Andy tried to dissuade her. "You ever smelled a dead animal that has flies all over it? Well, it's much worse than that, and the stench has a way of clinging deep up in your sinuses so that every time you get around food, the smell wakes up and makes you quite nauseous. Not to mention the sights and sounds in the morgue."

"I'm going!" Regina would not take no for an answer.

Andy's mood was very dark as he drove through downtown. He was beginning to wish he had never met the Crimms at the steak house the night before. There was no one he would have avoided more arduously than Regina, and now it appeared that he was going to have to be around her constantly. Not to mention, the governor was contemplating that Trooper Truth might be Trader's poisonous accomplice, on top of some psycho's carving Trooper Truth into a dead body and then leaving evidence at Andy's house.