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Sherbrooke said with elaborate patience. “What is it … Vance?”
    “The jackasses who run this place left the ends off the events tent last night, and a bunch of the posters blew over.” He sniffed indignantly, a sour little self-appointed god judging the mishaps of contemptible mortals.

    I found him annoying on sight, a self-pitying little pocket of poison who sickens the air around him. He made my skin itch. That description may sound just as judgmental as I’ve just accused him of being, but what goes around comes around. Besides, I was by that time in the mood to get petty. I’d been having the granddaddy of all hard days, by all appearances, the shit hadn’t stopped raining in on me yet, and I had no need of duking it out with some banty rooster attitude case. I cocked a shoulder toward him so I wouldn’t have to make eye contact and tapped one foot in impatience.
    Sherbrooke tilted his nose a few degrees higher, as if avoiding an unpleasant smell. “Tell them to put the ends on the tent.”
    “I did.”
    “Then go back there now and make sure it happens. Really, isn’t this something you can handle on your own?”
    Vance slunk away.
    I reasserted my place at Sherbrooke’s elbow and repeated, “My name is Em Hansen, and George Dishey invited me to—”
    “Oh, yes. Hmm. I’m sorry, but I don’t recall seeing your abstract submittal. Which symposium did you say are you in?”
    “My abstract …”
    “Yes, your abstract. The summary of your proposed talk. Even the invited speakers submit abstracts.” He placed a hand paternally on my shoulder, as if to say, You’re being foolish in public, darling, but there, there.
    The floor had now completely dissolved, I was indeed falling, and the earth was eating me for lunch. I had asked George if I needed to send an abstract, but he’d said no, he’d take care of everything, just show up. Well, he’d taken care of things, all right. “Did George even have a symposium scheduled?” I asked, the words clotting in my mouth. My ears began to ring
with the small panic of humiliation, and the odor I was smelling was rat, a great big one.
    “George? No.” He laughed derisively. “When has George ever opened himself to the direct scrutiny of his colleagues?” Sherbrooke lifted his hand off my shoulder to wave at a colleague, gliding over my obvious upset with an attitude that suggested, We’ll just ignore your discomfort and perhaps it will go away. I saw his lips moving, but his words flowed past me like clouds, pale and empty. I blinked, strained to listen, focused in just in time to hear him say, “And just where is our dear George today, ah”—he looked at my badge again—“Em?”
    I snapped free of my shock. “Officer Raymond can tell you better than I,” I said, and stepped aside.
    Sherbrooke shifted his interest to my uniformed escort, who motioned for him to step away from the throng for a moment. It was done subtly, yet with authority. For all his comparative youth, Officer Raymond had the better moves of the two as he fetched the older man to the edge of the room. They communicated in low voices. Raymond watched intently for signs of guilt. Sherbrooke turned gray. His smile went slack and his arms dropped to his sides, giving him the aspect of a life-size doll, gape-mouthed and limp, a jelly man who’d been propped up with a stainless-steel rod up his butt to keep him stiff. As he asked questions, only his lips moved.
    Presently, Sherbrooke turned to face the room. His eyes were wide and glassy.
    Heads had begun to turn. Sherbrooke’s assembled colleagues observed him with the intense curiosity that only people with twenty-four years of schooling and decades of intense devotion to an investigative profession can generate.
    Sherbrooke took a deep breath, lifted his chest like a thespian about to spew Shakespeare, and announced in a booming yet unsteady voice, “George Dishey is dead!”

    Officer Raymond glanced quickly from face to face