But I caught myself scowling at the sponge mop while I squeezed it out into the mopping bucket. I couldn't make a convincing case against Jerrell, no matter how much I tried. While I could see Jerrell hitting Deedra with a handy two-by-four, even taking a gun to shoot her, I couldn't see Jerrell planning the elaborately staged scene in the woods. The strewn clothes, the positioning of the body, the bottle... no, I didn't think so.

Birdie was back and babbling again now, but I wasn't listening. I was mentally examining what I'd just said to myself, and I was forming a little plan.

It was a Monday eerily like that other Monday; it was clear and bright, and the air had a little touch of hotness to it, like standing just the right distance away from the burner on a stove.

Instead of parking out on Farm Hill Road, I turned into the graveled trail. I didn't want to risk my worn-out suspension on the ruts, so I parked right inside the edge of the woods. I sat in my car, just listening for a minute or two. No bobwhite today, but I heard a mockingbird and a cardinal. It was a little cooler in the shade.

I sighed and got out of my car, removing the keys and stuffing them in my pocket for safekeeping. It never hurts to be careful.

Then I was moving down the trail again, telling myself that this time there wouldn't be a car sitting in the middle of the woods, knowing there was no way a car would be in the same spot again... .

But there was a car there, parked just where Deedra's had been, and like hers it faced away from me. I stopped dead in my tracks.

It was a dark green Bronco, which explained why I hadn't picked it out before. There was someone sitting in it.

"Oh no," I whispered. I shook my head from side to side. This was like one of those dreams in which you are compelled to do something you dread doing, something you know will end in horror. When my feet began moving forward, my teeth were clenched to keep them from chattering, and my hand was over my heart, feeling it hammer with fear.

I drew abreast of the driver's window, standing well back so I wouldn't catch the smell again. I didn't think I could stand that without throwing up, and I didn't want to put myself through it. I leaned slightly to look in and then I froze. I was looking into a gun.

Clifton Emanuel's eyes were just as round and black as the barrel of the gun, and almost as frightening.

"Don't move," he said hoarsely.

I was too shocked to say anything, and I wasn't about to move a muscle. A lot passed through my mind in a second. I saw that if I acted instantly I could disarm him, though he was equally ready to pull the trigger. But he was a law-enforcement officer and my tendency was to obey him, though I knew from experience that some people in law enforcement were just as wrong headed or corrupt as the sociopaths they arrested.

On the whole. ... I remained frozen.

"Step back," he commanded, in that eerie voice that told me he was wound as tight as a coil could be wound.

If I stepped back I wouldn't be frozen anymore, but I decided it wasn't the time to quibble with him. I stepped back. Marshall had always warned us that no matter how skilled you became in martial arts, in some situations the man with the gun would rule.

I watched, hardly breathing, as Clifton Emanuel opened the car door and emerged from the car. Though he took great care to keep the gun trained on me, there was one point at which I could've begun to move, but my uncertainty held me paralyzed.

Though I just didn't think the deputy was going to shoot, I remained tense and strung up for action. His eyes were showing a little too much white to suit me. But when I figured he'd heard me coming up the trail, drawn his gun, and sat in the car waiting for me to approach, it wasn't surprising he was squirrelly.

"Up against the car," he ordered. Now that I felt sure he wasn't going to shoot me out of hand, I began to get mad. I put my hands against the car, spread my legs, and let him pat me down, but I could feel my tolerance draining away with my fear.

He frisked me as impersonally as I could want, which was saying a lot.

"Turn around," he said, and his voice was not so hoarse.

I faced him, having to look up to gauge his emotional state from his expression. His body was relaxing a little, and his eyes looked a trifle less jumpy. I focused on looking nonthreatening, trying to keep my own muscles from tensing, trying to breathe evenly. It took a lot of concentration.

"What are you doing out here?" he asked.

He was in plainclothes, though I noticed that his khaki slacks and brown plaid shirt were not too far from the uniform in spirit.

"I could ask the same," I said, trying not to sound as confrontational as I felt. I don't like feeling helpless. I don't like that more than I don't like almost anything else.

"Tell me," he said.

"I wanted to look at the spot again because ..." I faltered, not happy at explaining what had really been an unformed feeling.

"Why?"

"Because I wanted to think about it," I finished. "See, I was thinking..." I shook my head, trying to formulate what I wanted to say. "There was something wrong about this."

"You mean, besides the murder of a young woman?" he asked dryly.

I nodded, ignoring the sarcasm.

He lowered the gun.

"I think so too," he said. Now he looked more astonished than anything, as if it amazed him that I would think about what I'd seen that day, think about Deedra's last moments after I'd reported her death. It appeared that in Clifton Emanuel's estimation, I was so tough that the death of a woman I'd known for years wouldn't affect me. It would be wonderful, I thought, to be that tough.

He holstered his gun. He didn't apologize for drawing on me, and I didn't ask it of him. If I'd been in his shoes, I'd have done the same.

"Go on," he invited me.

"I found myself thinking that..." I paused, trying to phrase it so he'd understand me. "We're meant to think that a man came out here in Deedra's car with her."

"Or maybe arranged to meet her out here," he interjected, and I nodded, waving a hand to show I conceded that.

"Howsoever. So, she's out here, and so is the murderer, however he got here. And then, we're supposed to think that this killer got Deedra out of the car for a little sex, told her to take off her clothes. She strips for his pleasure, tossing her clothes at random, pantyhose here, blouse there, pearls, skirt... and she's out here in the middle of the woods naked as a jaybird. Then she has sex with him, and he's using a condom unless he's a complete moron. Or maybe they don't have sex? I don't know what the autopsy said. But at that point, something goes wrong."

Clifton was nodding his big head. "They argue about something," he said, taking over the scenario. "Maybe she threatens to tell his wife he's screwing her. But that doesn't seem likely, since everyone agrees married men didn't appeal to her. Maybe she tells him she thinks she's pregnant, though she wasn't. Or maybe she tells him he's a lousy lay. Maybe he can't get it up."

That had crossed my mind briefly before, when I'd considered Deedra's artificial violation with the bottle. When Clifton Emanuel said it, the idea made even more sense. I looked up at the deputy in surprise, and he nodded grimly. "For some people, not performing would be reason enough to go off the deep end," he told me darkly.

I looked off into the shadows of the woods and shivered.

"So he shows her potency," Emanuel continued. "He strikes her hard enough in the solar plexus to kill her, and while she's dying he hauls her into the car and then shoves the bottle up her... ah, up her." He cleared his throat in a curiously delicate way.

"And then he leaves. How?" I asked. "If he arrived in her car, how does he leave?"

"And if he came in his own car, it didn't leave any trace that we could find. Which is possible, especially if it was a good vehicle with no leaks. The ground was dry that week, but not dry enough to be powdery. Not good for tracks. But it just seems more likely that he was in the car with her, that he wouldn't risk being seen pulling in here with her. So he must've had his car already parked somewhere close. Or maybe he had a cell phone, like yours. He could call someone to come pick him up, spin some story to explain it. Someone he trusted wouldn't go the police with it."

I spared a moment to wonder why a law-enforcement officer was being so forthcoming with speculation.

"She wasn't pregnant," I muttered.

He shook his heavy head. "Nope. And she'd had sex with someone wearing a condom. But we don't know if it was necessarily the killer."

"So you think maybe he couldn't do it, and she enraged him?" But that kind of taunting didn't seem in Deedra's character. Oh, how the hell did I know how she acted with men?

"That's possible. But I did talk with a former bedmate of hers who had the same problem," Deputy Emanuel said, amazing me yet again. "He said she was really sweet about it, consoling, telling him next time would be okay, she was sure."

"That wouldn't stop some men from beating her up," I said.

He nodded, giving me credit for experience. "So that's still a possibility, but it seems more unlikely."

Emanuel paused, giving me plenty of eye contact. He had no interest whatsoever in me as a woman, which pleased me. "So," he concluded, "we're back to the question of why anyone would do in Deedra if it wasn't over some sexual matter? Why make it look like the motive was sex?"

"Because that makes so many more suspects," I said. Emanuel and I nodded simultaneously as we accepted the truth of that idea. "Could she have learned something at her job? The county clerk's office is pretty important."

"The county payroll, property taxes... yes, the clerk's office handles a lot of money and responsibility. And we've talked to Choke Anson several times, both about how Deedra was at work and about his relationship to her. He looks clear to me. As far as Deedra knowing something connected to her job, something she shouldn't know, almost everything there is a matter of public record, and all the other clerks have access to the same material. It's not like Deedra exclusively..."

He trailed off, but I got his point.

"I'm going to tell you something," I said.

"Good," he responded. "I was hoping you would."

Feeling like this betrayal was a necessary one, I told him about Marlon Schuster's strange visit to Deedra's apartment.

"He had a key," I said. "He says he loved her. But what if he found out she was cheating on him? He says she loved him, too, and that's why she gave him a key. But did you ever find Deedra's own key?"

"No." Emanuel looked down at his enormous feet. "No, never did. Or her purse."

"What about you and Deedra?" I asked abruptly. I was tired of worrying about it.

"I wouldn't have touched her with a ten-foot pole," he said, distaste making his voice sour. "That's the only thing I have in common with Choke Anson. I like a woman who's a little more choosy, has some self-respect."

"Like Marta."

He shot me an unloving look. "Everyone else in the department thinks Marlon did it," Deputy Emanuel said quietly. He leaned back against his car, and it rocked a little. "Every single man in the department thinks Marta's blind for not bringing her brother in. They're all talking against her. You can't reason with 'em. He was the last to have her, so he was the guilty one, they figure."

So that was the reason Emanuel was confiding in me. He was isolated from his own clan. "Marlon was with Deedra Saturday night?" I asked.

The deputy nodded. "And Sunday morning. But he says he didn't see her after he left to go to church on Sunday. He called her apartment several times, he says. And her phone records bear that out."

"What calls did she make?"

"She called her mother," Clifton Emanuel said heavily. "She called her mother."

"Do you have any idea why?" I asked, keeping my voice soft, because it seemed to me Clifton was about to pull the lid back on top of his loquacity, and I wanted to get everything I could out of him before the well ran dry.

"According to her mother, it was a family matter."

That lid was sliding shut.

"About Jerrell fooling around with Deedra before he dated Lacey?"

His lips pursed in a flat line, Clifton gave an ambiguous movement of his head, which could mean anything. The lid was down now.

"I'm gonna go," I said.

He was regretting talking to me now, the luxury of speculating with another skeptical party forgotten, the fact that he was a lawman now uppermost in his mind. He'd talked out of school and he didn't like himself for it. If he hadn't been so enamored of Marta Schuster, if he'd been in good standing with his fellow deputies, he'd never have said a word. And I saw his struggle as he tried to piece together what to say to me to ensure my silence.

"For what it's worth," I said, "I don't think Marlon killed her. And rumor has it that yesterday Lacey told Jerrell to move out."

Deputy Emanuel blinked and considered this information with narrowed eyes.

"And you know those pearls?"

He nodded absently.

I inclined my head toward the branch where they'd dangled.

"I don't think she would have thrown them around." The pearls had been bothering me. Clifton Emanuel made a "keep going" gesture to get me to elaborate. I shrugged. "Her father gave her that necklace. She valued it."

Clifton Emanuel looked down at me with those fathomless black eyes. I thought he was deciding whether or not to trust me. I may have been wrong; he may have been wondering if he'd have a hamburger or chicken nuggets when he went through the drive-through at Burger Tycoon.