“I don’t mean to be rude,” Emerton told me. “It’s just that I am sick and tired of answerin’ questions about my wife, okay? I mean, I have problems of my own, okay? I can’t sell my house unless I practically give it away. The insurance company won’t pay off on my claim; one day it’s because without a body I can’t prove Alison is dead and the next it’s because they think I killed her—shit, make up your mind. And my friends, suddenly they’re all too busy to check out a ball game or go out for a beer, and you know why. It’s because of Alison, damn her.”

I felt the anger start in my stomach and work up. I fought to keep it down.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Emerton continued. “I’m sorry she’s dead. But hell’s bells, man, give me a break. People make out like she was Mary Poppins or somethin’. She was cheatin’ on me, you know? Forget that sexual harassment shit. She was sleepin’ with that little jerkoff, and when he started gettin’ serious, she burned him. That’s why he did her, man. Any idiot can see that. It’s not like she didn’t deserve it.”

I envisioned Alison’s photograph, which was sitting on the front seat of my car, and thought about the expression on her face, the look of incredible despair in her eyes. Then I thought about how much fun it would be to pop Stephen Emerton in the mouth. I stood up.

“What? You leavin’? I thought you had questions to ask.”

Self-control. You need self-control in my business. I reminded myself of that as I moved to the large map hanging on the wall, a map of the seven counties that make up the Minneapolis–St. Paul metropolitan area. About two dozen pins were stuck in it. Red flags were attached to the pins.

“What do these represent?” I asked.

“Targets of opportunity,” Emerton explained. “Quick lesson: A female mosquito—the female mosquito is the only one that bites, did you know that?—a female mosquito bites you and sucks your blood so it can lay eggs containin’ about three hundred baby mosquitoes. Follow? The eggs then turn into larvae. Now, larvae live in water. A tablespoon at the bottom of a beer can is enough, but the more the better. Are you still with me? Okay, a larva is transformed into what we call a pupa. A pupa is like a cocoon. It’s in a pupa that the mosquito becomes a mosquito. What we do is, we gas the suckers while they’re still in the larval and pupal stages. Those flags, those are low-lyin’ swamp areas where we’re takin’ ’em out.”

“What is this blue flag?” I asked, pointing to a pin surrounded by red.

“Oh, that’s what this guy works for … Where does that jerkoff work?” he asked himself, searching his desktop, finding a business card. “The Mosquito and Fly Research Unit at the Medical and Veterinary Entomology Research Laboratory of the Agricultural Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He’s a wimp. He thinks he can get rid of mosquitoes with genetic engineerin’. Good luck. Man, there are one hundred trillion of the little buggers out there. I say gas ’em all.”

“Gas them all?” I repeated. “One hundred trillion?”

“Hell, yeah. Why not? That’s what insecticide means, okay? Kill insects.”

“A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” I told him, and he laughed.

“That’s funny,” he said. “I gotta remember that, that’s funny. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do….”

“Sidesplitting,” I agreed.

I went back to the chair. Emerton sat on the corner of his desk.

“Why are you convinced Alison was sleeping with Raymond Fleck?” I asked.

“A guy knows these things, okay? You can tell. Besides, it’s not like it was the first time.”

“It wasn’t?”

“Hell, no. She was screwin’ some guy at the health place, some doctor I think.”

“Huh?” My internal computer sifted through Anne Scalasi’s entire file in about two seconds flat, and all I could come up with was, “Huh?”

“Not long after we were married, neither.”

“Are you—?”

“Sure? You were goin’ to ask me if I’m sure? I told you, a guy knows these things. They say the husband’s the last to know. Forget that. The husband is the first unless he’s a dumb shit. Anyway, she didn’t deny it, okay? I told her I knew she was whorin’ around, and I was going to divorce her pronto. That was like the magic word with Alison: divorce. Her family, man, divorce was like worse than death. They’d rather you died than get a divorce, okay? So, she starts wailin’ and pleadin’ with me, sayin’ she was sorry, and the next thing she ups and quits the health place and gets a job at the dog place.”

“Why didn’t you tell the police this?” I asked him.

“What for? Man, they already thought I did her, okay? I’m gonna be the jealous husband? I’m gonna give ’em a motive?”

“Why are you telling me?”

“You’re not from the cops. You’re from the insurance … Shit!” Emerton jumped off his desk, walked around it, and fell into his chair like he had been pushed there. He covered his face with his hands. “I’m never going to see my money now, am I? God, I can’t believe I said that.”

I believed it. I’ve seen stupid before. Especially in killers. It’s like the act of murder freezes their brain cells. The mystery writer Dashiell Hammett, who once was a Pinkerton, called it “blood simple.” On the other hand, despite the degrees hanging on his walls, maybe Emerton was just plain simple.

“Who do you suspect?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“The doctor Alison was …” I couldn’t get the word out.

“Fuckin’?” Emerton finished.

“Involved with,” I substituted.

“I don’t know. I’m just guessin’ it was some doctor. Coulda been a janitor for all I know. Hell’s bells, man, I wouldn’t be surprised if she was with him right now on some beach in Bermuda, laughin’ her ass off at how badly she fucked up my life.”

“Wait a minute. First you say she’s dead. Now you say she’s alive.”

Emerton stared at me for a good ten seconds, his jaw muscles working but nothing coming out of his mouth. Then, “She’s dead, man. Don’t go sayin’ she ain’t. You ain’t usin’ that to deny my claim. She’s dead.”

“If you think she’s alive …”

“I didn’t say I think … I didn’t say … What I’m sayin’ is, wherever she is—in hell, man; she’s probably in hell—I’m sayin’ she’s laughing at the joke she played on me.”

“The joke she played on you?”

I wondered if it was too late for the Phi Betas to take their key back.

Stephen Emerton annoyed me. He annoyed me even before I met him. And I sure didn’t like the way he spoke about his wife, discussing her like she was a major appliance that had broken down a week or so after the warranty expired. Except I wanted his story—I wanted it complete and unabridged—so I tried to ignore the blood pounding in my head and listened, encouraging him when he became bored with the topic. I pumped Emerton for more information about the doctor—if it was a doctor—he claimed was “getting into Alison’s pants,” but he turned into a dry well. I gave it up after about an hour and made my way back through the now deserted offices to the front door.

I reached my car and removed Alison’s photo from the envelope. Her eyes spoke to me as they always had. Now, though, along with the despair there was something else, something I hadn’t seen before. It was like her eyes were pleading with me. But for what? Justice? Revenge? Or maybe it was just the gathering twilight that was casting soft shadows across the glossy surface. I returned the photograph to the envelope and started my car.

Emerton’s revelation that he suspected Alison was cheating on him with the phantom doctor and later with Raymond made him an even more likely suspect than before; Teeters would put him through the grinder again and so would the insurance company—and so would the media once they all heard. I looked forward to telling them. Only I didn’t want to annoy the sheriff with yet another phone call. It could wait until the morning.