Then, on the way back from the county landfill, he'd stop at Wal-Mart and buy himself a gun.

"You wouldn't happen to have herbal tea, would you?" "The best I can do is coffee," Karl Rolvaag said. "Poison," said Rose Jewell with a frown. "No thanks."

She was about forty years old and fearlessly attractive. The detective office had come to a standstill when she'd walked in-white cotton pullover, tight stonewashed jeans, high heels. Her hair was a wattage of blond unknown in Minnesota, the land of blondes. Even Rolvaag was slightly nervous.

"I'm Joey's best friend. Was Joey's best friend," Rose said, "and I just want you to know, she would never, ever kill herself. If that's one of your theories."

"It's too early for theories," Rolvaag said, which wasn't true. He was certain that Charles Perrone had pushed his wife off the Sun Duchess. He was equally sure that proving it would be impossible without a corpse, evidence or eyewitnesses.

Captain Gallo had thought it interesting that Mrs. Perrone's fingernails were found embedded in a bale of marijuana, but he said it proved only that she'd survived the plunge-not that she had been shoved. Her husband giving the wrong time she'd left their room was suspicious, Gallo agreed, but it wasn't enough on which to file charges.

"And she didn't get bombed and fall off the ship, either," Rose was saying. "I saw that business in the newspaper about her having all that wine-what a bunch of bull! I've never seen Joey drunk, not even close to drunk. Not since her DUI."

"How was her marriage?"

"Chaz Perrone was a total slut. He cheated on her all over town."

"Did he ever try with you?" Rolvaag asked, somewhat startled at his own nerve. Perhaps Rose's frankness was contagious.

She smiled and crossed her legs in a way that made the detective feel like a fumbling teenager. "If Chaz ever laid a hand on me," she said sweetly, "I would've kicked him in the raspberries. But no, I never even met the guy."

Rumors of multiple infidelities did not, in Captain Gallo's biased view, automatically make Charles Perrone a murder suspect. In three weeks Rolvaag would be heading back to Minnesota, and it was dismaying to know that his final case in Florida would end in failure-a cold-blooded killer escaping justice. The captain had made it plain that he saw the Perrone investigation as a dead end and that no more time or manpower would be committed.

Often Rolvaag imagined Mrs. Perrone alone in the ocean, clinging so fiercely to that floating bale that the tips of her nails snapped off one by one. The daydream was more haunting for its detail, since Chaz Perrone had provided a snapshot of his wife to the police and Coast Guard. In the photograph, taken on a beach somewhere, Joey Perrone was dripping wet. The morbid irony had been lost on her husband but not on the detective, who could now envision Chaz's victim-her blond hair slicked back, her cheeks sparkling with beads of water-as she must have looked when she burst to the surface after that long, harrowing fall.

Except for the smile. Joey Perrone would not have been smiling after her husband threw her overboard.

Rolvaag said, "What do you think happened on that cruise, Miss Jewell?"

"I know what didn't happen. My friend didn't jump and she didn't fall." Rose stood up and slung her handbag over her shoulder. "I just wanted somebody to know, that's all. I wanted it written down in a file somewhere."

"It will be. I promise."

Rose touched his arm. "Please don't give up on this case," she said, "for Joey's sake."

Rolvaag didn't have the heart to tell her that it would take a miracle for him to nail Charles Perrone.

On the way home, the detective stopped at the downtown branch of the library to read up on the Everglades. It seemed peculiar that a man so openly averse to nature would study biology and then take a job in a humid, teeming swamp. That Perrone didn't even know which way the Gulf Stream flowed betrayed a certain flimsiness in his academics. His ideals were no less murky and suspect. Rolvaag was particularly bothered by Perrone's casual comment about running over snakes with his gas-sucking SUV, and also by the flippant manner with which he'd dismissed the notion of recycling a pop bottle. Was this a guy who cared about the fate of the planet?

How odd that Chaz Perrone had aimed his career toward the study of organic life when he displayed no concern for any other than his own. However, if a clue lay in the sad and complicated story of the Everglades, Rolvaag couldn't find it. Perrone's connection to such inhospitable wilderness remained a riddle, and time was running short.

Driving back to his apartment, Rolvaag recalled his own failed marriage and found it impossible to imagine a scenario under which murder would have been an option. In this exercise the detective felt handicapped by his heritage-Norwegians were natural brooders, not given to the sort of volcanic emotions associated with domestic homicides. But then, Rolvaag hadn't understood the majority of criminals he had sent off to prison, regardless of their crimes. Shooting an icecream vendor for thirty-four bucks and change was no more comprehensible to him than launching one's attractive (and, by all accounts, faithful) spouse over the side of a cruise liner.

Why had Perrone done it? Not for money, as there was no insurance payoff, no inheritance, no jackpot whatsoever. And not for love, either-if Chaz had wanted to dump his wife and run off with one of his girlfriends, divorce would have been relatively easy and painless. Florida was a no-fault jurisdiction that dealt perfunctorily with short, childless marriages. Moreover, Mrs. Perrone's substantial personal wealth made her an unlikely candidate for alimony.

Gallo's right, Rolvaag thought. I've got zilch for a motive.

When he arrived home he saw that a newspaper clipping had been slipped under his door. It was the story of a man in St. Louis who had been strangled and then nearly devoured by an enormous pet python, which he had foolishly neglected to feed for several months. The snake's gruesome repast had been interrupted by a concerned neighbor, who scampered for help. Paramedics skilled with the Jaws of Life arrived and retrieved the victim's grossly elongated body, dispatching the sated reptile in the process. Above the headline, in violet ink, was a familiar spidery scrawl: "This should happen to you!"

Rolvaag chuckled, thinking: That makes two people who'll be happy to see me go-Chaz Perrone and Nellie Shulman.

The detective's own two snakes were coiled together in a large glass tank in the corner of the living room. They were not pure white in the way of some albinos, but rather a creamy hue with exotic tangerine saddle marks. In the urban outdoors their unnatural brightness could have been a fatal trait, but the pythons were safe in Rolvaag's apartment. They displayed no gratitude whatsoever, and seldom moved a muscle except to eat or re-position themselves in a shaft of sunlight. Still, Rolvaag enjoyed observing them. That a twerp like Perrone would purposely kill something so primal and perfect angered the detective in a way that surprised him.

He shoved a frozen lasagna into the oven and picked through the papers in his briefcase until he found the scrap he was looking for. He dialed the Hertz office in Boca Raton and identified himself to an assistant night manager, who was exceptionally cooperative. By the time Rolvaag hung up, he had obtained the name of the hirsute thug in the minivan staking out the Perrone residence, and also the name of the company that was paying for the rental.

Red's Tomato Exchange, whatever that was.

Joey Perrone shook Stranahan awake. "Mick, I just thought of something!"