“Every charge was dropped,” he said.

“They often were, before the law changed and state’s attorneys pursued cases even when the women decided they didn’t want to go forward.”

“Yeah, women say shit and people believe them. They say you hit them, and how are you going to prove you didn’t? They bump their leg on the kitchen counter and wear shorts the next day, and all of a sudden you’re the worst guy in the world.”

“Or they say they had your baby and blood tests bear them out.”

“Blood tests.” He tossed back the rest of his beer and a fresh one materialized. The bartender was hovering close-protective of Troy, his regular customer. “I don’t believe ‘em. I bet one day we’re gonna find out it’s all bullshit, this DNA, just some crap the government made up to stick it to regular guys. I mean, how you gonna argue with it, you know? You’d have to be a scientist or something. And it’s never a hundred percent. Nothing is ever a hundred percent.”

“Did the cops know about the arrests, the blood test? Did they press you on this stuff?”

Her prey retreated at such direct questions. Plunkett was back in profile, staring at the television.

“I’m sorry. I know this isn’t something you want to talk about. But you’re making money, remember?” She indicated the two twenties, still beneath her elbow. “I need to know. Did they really treat you like a suspect, or was it enough for them that you and your lady friend agreed on your whereabouts?”

“They didn’t bother me much. Because I didn’t do it.”

“Did they bring you in more than once? Administer a polygraph?”

“They talked to me at my house, and they poked around in all the Plunkett houses. When they didn’t see any new appliances, they knew I didn’t do it. You know how far I’d have to go to sell some brand-new refrigerator without someone knowing who I was? Pretty far. Besides, that’s not my gig. You checked my records, right?”

Tess nodded, taking her lie to the next level.

“Okay, then. So you didn’t see no burglary charges. I don’t steal.”

“No, you just hit women and refuse to pay child support.”

He turned back to her. His eyes had the heavy-lidded, sleepy look that some call bedroom eyes. But there was nothing sensual in this look.

“Let me explain something to you. A man has to assert himself in this world. I’ve hit other men, standing up for myself. If I had a child-and I don’t happen to believe I do-and he talked smart to me, I might hit him. Women are always talking about equal treatment. Well, that’s what I give them. They get above themselves, I bring them back down. The only thing that keeps me from teaching you a lesson, right now, is that Joe doesn’t let anyone fight in his place, and I respect his rules. So maybe you ought to leave before I take it in my head to follow you out of here.”

“When you hit a woman, she knows she’s been hit,” Tess said, mocking his earlier boast.

“I don’t do things halfway.”

“What was her name?”

“You already said it: Tiffani. Tiffani Gunts. Dumb Gunts. Her brother was in my little brother’s class over at the high school. You’re such a smart lady, I bet you can guess what they called Wally Gunts when he was a kid.”

Tess could. “I didn’t mean Tiffani. I meant the woman you were with, your alibi.”

“Shit, I don’t remember. It was five years ago.”

“Six.”

“That just makes it one year harder. Can you imagine how many women I’ve been with in the past six years?”

“I don’t know. How many women in Frederick County have IQs under a hundred?”

The question slid by him. “Whoever she was, she was just someone to spend a night with. Which is all Tiffani was to me. That’s what bugs me about women. You’re trying to have a good time, nothing more. They tell you they’re all fixed, you don’t have to wear no rubber. Then she shows up with a baby she knew you never wanted, trying to play house. That’s not for me.”

Tess, having seen the Plunkett estate, couldn’t disagree.

“What do you do? I mean, for a living.”

“Whatever I can. There’s a lot of work off the books, if you know where to find it.” For the first time, he looked panic-stricken. “Hey, if you’re from the IRS-”

“I’m not. I told you the truth. I’m a private investigator. I’m second-guessing the police, not you.”

“Well, I hate to give them credit, but our dumb-ass sheriff did his job as far as I was concerned. They would’ve loved for me to do it, tried to hang it on me every which way. But I didn’t, and they couldn’t.”

Tess slid the money down to him. “Consider this a gift. I don’t want you to feel you have to report it on a 1099 at year’s end.”

Her conversation with Troy Plunkett would end up being the day’s most productive. As Tess had feared, the investigators who had handled the Gunts murder had moved on. Not up, just on. One was now a traveling salesman for a home security outfit, the other had gone back to school to become a pharmacist.

“A pharmacist?”

“He heard there was a shortage,” said the sheriff, who was new in the job, as of the last election. He even looked new, very spick-and-span, with a shiny well-scrubbed face and glossy white hair. “What’s your interest in this old homicide? Did some information come to light? It’s an open case. If a civilian knows something, we’d expect you to cooperate.”

“It’s a routine matter. Almost like an accounting thing.”

“Life insurance, something like that.”

“Yeah,” Tess said. “Something like that.”

“Well, I can’t open the file to you-it’s an open case, you know. Homicides stay open forever. But it’s the kind of thing that’s not gonna get solved until the man who did it gets taken in on some other charge, decides to confess. Could be years. Could be never. That’s how it works sometimes. Public doesn’t like to hear it, but we’re human. There’s only so much we can do.”

“Can you at least tell me if her former boyfriend was questioned, the one who fathered her child?”

He looked at the file. “Troy Plunkett? Oh, most certainly. Troy’s well known in our offices.”

“What about the fiancé, Eric Shivers?”

“Appears so. Two deputies drove down to Spartina that morning, where he was staying in a motel. One of the deputies had to drive his vehicle back. Boy just fell apart. He was a mess. I’ve heard that part of the reason they looked so hard at the old boyfriend is because they didn’t want the new one to go after Plunkett. They had to convince him it wasn’t anyone he knew. Between us, they looked at her father and her brother, her co-workers from the Sheetz store. Whatever these boys were, they weren’t sloppy and they weren’t lazy.”

“What about the crime scene? Investigators who don’t have a lot of experience with homicide can disrupt crucial evidence.”

The sheriff drew himself up. “Look, miss, I didn’t care for the gentleman who had this job before me. That’s why I ran against him. But we’re not a bunch of dumb hicks out here. We know how to do our jobs. Sometimes a person’s just in the wrong place at the wrong time. If your insurance company wants to fight a claim, that’s between you and your conscience. But don’t drag us into it.”

It wasn’t what Whitney’s board wanted to hear, Tess realized, but she wasn’t being paid to bring home what they wanted. That’s why being a private investigator was better than being a reporter. The bosses couldn’t fault you when reality didn’t match the story they envisioned in their heads.

Tess had decided to spend the night closer to where she would begin her next day, in Sharpsburg. There was an overdone inn on the West Virginia side of the Potomac with wonderful German food. The only problem was that it didn’t allow dogs, which meant she would need the cover of darkness to smuggle Esskay into her room. To kill a little time on her way out of Frederick, she stopped at the development of town houses where Tiffani Gunts had died and called Crow on her cell phone. “How’s it going?”