McMichael looked out the window to the pretty green hills of the reservation land, the little lake they'd built off to one side of the casino, the cloudless blue sky. He felt a shadow float over his soul. Motive and opportunity, he thought. Patricia might have had both.

"You see anybody feeding the dog, besides Sally Rainwater?" asked Hector.

"I gave him some mushrooms, I think. What's that got to do with anything?"

"He died that night of strychnine poisoning," said Hector. "We figure someone at the party did it."

"What the hell for?"

"Maybe get him out of the way."

"That's ugly, man. I didn't see anybody feed the dog except for me and Sally. Last I saw of the dog, Pete had him in his arms, dancing with him. Come to think of it, the dog didn't look too good. He was panting a lot, tongue hanging out."

McMichael pictured a drunken Pete waltzing with his poisoned dog. "How were Patricia and Pete with each other that night?" he asked.

Dejano shrugged again, big shoulders stretching the fabric of his shirt. "Old man kind of ignored her. Patricia, she gets along with people. In control of herself, you know? She brought a big bunch of flowers in a nice glass vase. Pete clipped one of them off with his pocketknife, stuck it in his lapel."

Driving back through Rio Verde, McMichael looked out at the poverty and neglect, wondered how much gambling money was coming back to the people. What did they need with two million dollars of stock in Pacific Transfer when their own school bus stood broken down by the side of the road, tires flat and windows broken? What would it take to fix it- one hour's worth of casino profit?

"I didn't see Patricia or Garland as possible suspects," said McMichael.

"Me neither," said Hector. "But if Old Grothke's telling us the straight story, then the nurse's cut has to come out of someone else's."

"It doesn't read right to me," said McMichael. He thought of Garland Hansen's heated reaction to seeing him with Victor that night at the Waterfront. He'd assumed that Garland was just eager to lay the blame for Pete on the most obvious person- Sally Rainwater. But laying the blame on Sally could be part of a show.

"That would be funny, wouldn't it?"

"What's that, Heck?"

"Us putting the wrong person in jail."

Back at his desk, McMichael had two more phone messages from newspaper reporters and one from a local television news station. He couldn't believe they were onto him and Sally Rainwater so fast, but what else could it be? Was Sally's lawyer behind it, lighting the fires? He screwed up his courage and called them back, grateful to get two answering machines and only one live body, who told him that the television news reporter was in makeup and not available.

He got through to Charley Farrell, who had sold three wine-colored SUVs in the last three months. McMichael took down the names, addresses and phone numbers of the proud new owners: Andre Proulx of San Diego, Dawn Bigley of Carlsbad and Eqbar Quatrah of La Jolla.

Then he logged on to VICAP for an update on Dylan Feder. Thirty-four days into his parole skip and he still had not been seen.

McMichael talked to Feder's Dade County parole officer, a rough-voiced man named Norm Briggs. Briggs said he had thought Feder was going to play it straight, because he'd checked out of prison and into his designated Miami motel, contacted his P.O., went out and got a job selling advertising space in an adult newspaper. He'd found a girlfriend, passed four drug tests, seemed to be turning things around.

"Then he cut out," said Briggs. "Now he's looking at eighteen more months in lockup, just for skipping out on a job and a girl and me. Stupid. Another year he'd have been free and clear."

"Any idea where he went?"

"I got a maybe from Dallas PD, and I got a maybe from Tucson PD."

"Coming west."

"Sally still in San Diego?"

"We just arrested her in connection with a robbery-homicide."

McMichael explained the basics.

"That surprises me," said Briggs. "I had her for a pretty good lady with bad judgment when it comes to men."

"Probably so," said McMichael.

"Feder's terms don't let him within fifty miles of her. That's good for the rest of his life. He never said one word to me about her. But hey, a hundred bucks to a PI and he's got an address and phone."

"Where's he likely to show up?"

"He's a ladies' man. Clubs, bars. Anywhere there's women to prey on. He was selling space in one of those dating tabloids here in Miami. Doing pretty well for himself. You might look into the local skin rags."

"Are the VICAP mugs good?"

"He changes his facial hair a lot- mustache and a little Vandyke- there one day and gone the next. He's a body guy, too, always in the gym. Big muscles, tight clothes. You know the type."

"No aka's?"

"None he's used before. But you can bet he's got at least one now."

It took McMichael just two calls to get Dade County Juvenile Court judge Paul Ramos on the line. He remembered Sally Gaglosta and was also surprised to hear of her arrest.

"How good was her self-defense story?" McMichael asked.

"It was her against him. She was lucid and specific and credible. He was dim and contradictory. She told me she hit him with the dull side of that cleaver so she wouldn't hurt him too bad. I believed her, and thought it was a remarkable thing to be thinking, under the circumstances. Trouble is, the dull side's the heavy side and she hit him where the skull was weak from the motorcycle crash. Now, he'd been a pillar before the accident- degree from the University of Florida, worked in a local bank, churchgoer. Sally, she came from bad circumstances in Pike County, Kentucky. I talked to her mother, one of her sisters. Sad, troubled lives. I thought it was to Sally's credit that she'd risen above those circumstances as far as she had."

McMichael thought a moment. "Did you have any evidence that she was working it somehow- stealing, or manipulating him?"

"The investigators turned everything upside down at least once and didn't come up with anything. Not long after, her boyfriend tried to kill her. To be honest with you, I wasn't surprised."

"How so?"

"Sally Gaglosta has bad luck. Pure and simple. Just being born into that family was bad enough. Then the attack, then this boyfriend shooting her. I'm not saying she's a bad person at all. She's not, in my opinion. Just, some people, they're lightning rods for trouble. She's one of them. Miami's no place to be with luck like hers."

While McMichael thought about this thing called luck, he ran records checks on Proulx, Bigley and Quatrah. Bigley and Quatrah came back clean.

But Proulx popped with convictions for assault and soliciting prostitution.

Boom, thought McMichael. The other kind of luck.

McMichael looked through Sally Rainwater's phone records. Most of her calls for November, December and early January were local. With the help of a reverse directory and the security departments of both the cell and landline phone companies, he put names to all of them.

An hour later he'd run warrant and records checks, finding all but one of them clean. There were calls to the school friend she'd talked to from Ye Olde Plank on the night of the murder. Two sisters back East. She'd called Dr. Jonathan Bailes of the University of California at La Jolla twice in November. She had called her mother in Hagville, Kentucky, just once, at noon PST on Christmas day. And her brother- the convicted pot farmer- in Pikeville a few minutes later.