LITMIR.BIZ

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huh? Well, I dunno. This ain’t the city.”

      The crowd was quiet now. This was official talk and they wanted to hear it.

      “Do you get out of the way, or do I have to walk over you?” I asked quietly.

      A pink hand jerked the brim of the Stetson up. It was a western hat and a western gesture, but this wasn’t the west. The deputy looked me up and down and said, “Aw, shoot, you can go in there, I reckon.”

      I said, “Thanks, podner,” and did so. Someone in the crowd tittered, and the deputy was looking nasty again as I went by. For a minute there he had looked just plain scared.

      It was dimly lit inside the Lagoon, but not cool. The dry heat of outdoors was replaced by a damp, sodden, beer-smelling wet heat.

      “D.A.’s office,” I said to one of the waiters lounging around uneasily. “What’s the trouble?”

      He jerked a thumb. “Sheriff’s back there, mister.”

      I went the way he had pointed. At first I didn’t get it. There was a bar on one side and some booths on the other, all of them empty. Beyond them in one direction was the door to the kitchen. Nearby a jukebox wanted to know why I didn’t love it. A second sheriff’s deputy was leaning against the jukebox, polishing his star with the lapel of his seersucker jacket. He was hatless and balding. Beyond him was a little alcove with two doors marked “Boys” and “Girls.”

      “You want what?” the deputy said.

      “What happened to the people who were here?”

      “Before the beating you mean? Who’re you, Ace?”

      “D.A.’s office,” I said. “I was to meet a Miss Townsend here.”

      He shook his balding head. “Only one or two customers. Yeah, two of ’em. They’re out front with the waiters. Both men.” Then he shifted his weight forward away from the jukebox and said, “Holy Jesus, did you say Townsend?”

      A lump of ice formed in the pit of my stomach. A blowout, I thought irrelevantly, irrationally. You had to go and have a blowout.

      The deputy went down the little hall to the door marked “Girls” and poked his head in to say, “Guy out here wantsta see Miss Townsend. Says he’s from the D.A.’s office.”

      He listened for a moment with his head out of sight beyond the door, then came back to me and said, “You claim you’re from the D.A. Now convince me.”

      I showed him my wallet and he pointed like a hunting dog, with his face, toward the door he had just left. I went back there and then turned around and looked at him. He nodded and gave me a lewd grin to take in with me. I opened the door and went in.

      The walls were white-tiled and bounced back the reflection of a fluorescent ceiling light. There were two private cubicles, closed, and two sinks with a long mirror over both. There was one of those electronic drying gadgets. There was a strong disinfectant smell. There was another door, beyond the sinks, leading outside, probably to the parking lot. My guess was the sheriff had locked it, because it was closed and locked.

      The sheriff watched me come in. I had met him once or twice when our paths crossed officially, but we were bare acquaintances. His name was Merz and he was a big man with a lot of once-solid beef going soft as he approached middle age ungracefully. He was hatless and wore what looked like a faded denim work shirt, open at the collar to reveal matted graying hair. There were tufts of hair protruding from his nostrils and other tufts in his ears. There seemed to be an overabundance of hair everywhere except on his head, which sported a scant fringe around back between the ears. His eyes were as expressive as the reverse sides of campaign buttons.

      He said, “This the lady you’re looking for?”

      She was on the floor between the sinks and the closed cubicles. Her knees were up and her skirt had slid over her thighs almost to her waist. Her shoes were off and one of them was in the sink, the high heel twisted and broken. She had been beaten with them brutally.

      Her legs were black and blue. The summery print dress she wore was torn from neckline to belt down one side. The elastic strap of her bra had torn too, or the snap had parted, exposing the untouched white and pink of her right breast. It was the only untouched part of her I could see. Even her face was battered and swollen beyond recognition. I recognized her by the long, beautiful tawny hair.

      “Did a good job, didn’t they?” Sheriff Merz asked.

      I could feel a vein in my temple begin to throb with anger. “Who did it?”

      The sheriff shrugged. “They were gone by the time anybody found her. Must have come in from the parking lot, beat her up and run out again. They beat up on her too hard, son. She’s dead.”

      I got down beside her. I don’t know why I did it. The sheriff was looking at me. He wanted to say something, but didn’t. I lifted Gloria Townsend’s hand and put a finger on the wrist. At first I wasn’t sure, because my hand was trembling.

      Then I felt it. A faint but rapid flutter of pulse.

      I stood up. “This girl isn’t dead, you damned fool! Send for a doctor.”

      “She’s dead, son. Felt for the heartbeat myself.”

      “Damn you, get a doctor!”

      “Don’t bust a gut, son. Coroner’s coming. He’s a doctor.”

      Just then Gloria Townsend groaned. The sheriff looked at me, then turned and casually spat into the sink. “Well, what do you know about that?” he said.

      I couldn’t help wondering what would have happened if I hadn’t come.

       chapter four

      THE COUNTY CORONER arrived a few minutes later, a sharp, waspish little man named Dr. Samuel Bowers. Usually politicians stick together, and coroner is just as much a political job as sheriff. But apparently Bowers was a doctor first and a politician second. He took one look at Gloria Townsend and turned the air blue.

      “You said over the phone you had a corpse!” he yelled at Sheriff Merz. “I’d have been here twenty minutes ago if I’d known the woman was alive. Get those ambulance attendants in here with a stretcher. Fast!”

      The sheriff jumped as though someone had given him a hotfoot. He didn’t have to take orders from the coroner, but he decided to anyway. Unlocking the door to the parking lot, he trotted off like an obedient messenger boy. I didn’t blame him. The waspish little doctor was in such a towering rage, I think I’d have jumped to run an errand too, if he had snapped an order at me.

      An ambulance had showed up because the county didn’t own a morgue wagon. When a corpse had to be delivered to the county morgue, they sent an ambulance from Ross Memorial Hospital, the county hospital. This one had come expecting a leisurely trip back to the morgue. Instead it headed for Ross Memorial Hospital with its siren wide open.

      Dr. Bowers rode off in the ambulance with Gloria, and Sheriff Merz returned to his old laconic self as soon as the coroner was gone.

      “Well, son, guess that winds this up here,” he said to me.

      “Winds them up?” I said. “You haven’t even started your investigation yet.”

      He shrugged. “Can’t do much until the gal gets conscious so I can talk to her.”

      “You could check this rest room for fingerprints. With all this tile and porcelain, practically anywhere you touch would leave a print.”

      He snorted. “Must be a couple of dozen people a day come in here. Couldn’t sort out all the prints in a million years.”

      I pointed to the broken-heeled shoe in the sink. “Somebody held that in his hand when he beat the girl. It’s black patent leather, a perfect surface for prints.”

      He glowered at me. “Listen, son, I know how

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