“None? No tattoos, scars, that sort of thing?”
“They were buttoned up. One man had a baton.”
“Like a policeman’s?”
“Or an MP’s. He put himself into it.”
“What was it made of?”
“Wood. It had a lanyard.”
“Police officers don’t use that kind anymore.”
“That makes me feel a whole lot better.”
The detective stopped writing in his notebook. “You don’t like us much, do you?”
“I learned to read lips in prison.”
“I’m not quite making the connection.”
“I saw you out in the hall earlier. You was telling a joke to another guy. It was about Miss Bertha.”
The detective dropped his eyes to his notepad and wrote in it.
“What are you putting down?” Wyatt asked.
“That you read lips. That’s quite a talent.”
“What’s your name?”
“Detective Jack Boyd. I don’t have a business card yet. Call the department if you want to add anything to your statement.”
“You took Detective Pepper’s place?”
“What about it?”
“I think they got the right man for the job,” Wyatt said.
MOLLY AND I were clearing the table at sunset when she glanced out the French doors at the backyard. “Dave, come here,” she said.
A man in a slouched cowboy hat was sitting atop the fence that bordered the north end of the pasture. He was drinking from a longneck, tilting it up, letting the foam slide down his throat, his boots hooked on the rail below him. He dropped the empty bottle on the grass and took a second one from the pocket of his canvas coat and twisted off the cap, then put the cap in his coat pocket. Albert’s horses were gathered around a circular water tank on the other side of the fence, their tails whipping at flies. The sky was purple, hung with dark clouds that looked like torn cotton. The man on the fence looked up at the lights in the kitchen and dining area and took a long drink from his beer bottle. “That’s Wyatt Dixon,” I said.
“The one Alafair had the run-in with?”
“The one and only.”
“Why is he here?”
“The day you figure out a guy like Dixon is the day you check yourself into rehab.”
I put on a coat and walked down to the fence. The double metal gate to the pasture was creaking in the wind, the lock chain clinking softly. “You always throw your beer bottles on other people’s lawns?” I said.
“I was gonna pick it up when I left.” He glanced at the cabin in the south pasture. The light was on inside, and you could see Clete’s rubber waders hanging upside down on the gallery. “Where’s Dumbo at?”
“I’d give some thought to what I said about Clete Purcel. What happened to your eye?”
“A guy caught me with a rock. That was after him and two others attacked the woman I was with. She’s at Community Hospital now.”