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could look at it every minute—out of his dark suspicion of guilt. Probably, he decided. If his mind were opened like a walnut and all its contents examined, probably.
    Wintone stood, started to put on his tan uniform hat, then remembered the heat outside and tossed the hat onto his desk. He left the office and walked down the street to Mully’s, where he found old Bonifield still using his talk of the boy’s death to milk the other customers for free drinks.
    “Ain’t it like I told you, Sheriff?” Bonifield asked in a voice a shade taunting. “We’ns was just talkin’ about it.”
    “Like you told,” Wintone said, taking a stool at the long bar. It was cool in Mully’s, and Wintone accepted a mug of beer and sat watching the soft shadows of the revolving overhead fan blades play on the rough wall near the ceiling.
    Bonifield’s heavy boots clopped on the plank floor as he came over to sit at the bar near Wintone. “Any ideas?” the old man asked, his face an eager, serious mask.
    “No inklin’ yet,” Wintone said. He knuckled some foam from his beer off his mustache.
    Luke Higgins settled down on the other side of Wintone. “A hard thing for that Larsen family,” he said. “Lil told me the man cried. Doc Amis had to give him somethin’.”
    “Can’t blame him.”
    “Guess not.” Higgins stared at the backs of his hands on the bar. “Listen, Sheriff, it’d be best all ways if you didn’t let some creature story out now, with the tourists an’ all. Lotta money comin’ in an’ around Colver ’cause of the forest fire up north, an’ some of these folks might come back next year—if they ain’t spooked away this year.”
    “Nobody’s sayin’ anything about a creature except Bonifield here,” Wintone said. “I ain’t said anything cause I don’t know anything yet, but I’m not coverin’ anything up, either.”
    Higgins started to say something else, then lapsed silent.
    “Higgins’s got a point, though,” Frank Turper threw in.
    “Good point,” Bonifield said. “Main point.”
    Wintone suddenly wanted shed of Mully’s. He drained his beer and got off his stool. “You shouldn’t have any trouble if you shut up old Bonifield,” he said as he walked toward the door.
    “Ain’t been worth hog slop since his wife died in that car wreck,” Wintone heard Bonifield say as he stepped out into the heat. Through the window he saw Frank Turper buying Bonifield a drink.
    Wintone walked back toward the office with long strides, slowed down when he realized he was working up a sweat that was making his clothes stick to him.
    He wondered what it was curdled the soul in a man like old Bonifield. Age, maybe. Age coupled with loneliness. Something Wintone might be able to learn about firsthand.
    Lately there’d been so much he wished hadn’t happened. Etty’s death … the Larsen boy’s … the fire that had brought the tourist invasion of Colver …
    Despite his slower pace, Wintone was sweating again.

SIX
    A FTER BREAKFAST THE NEXT day Wintone stepped out of Turper’s Grill into the comparative coolness of morning just as Sarah Ledbetter was passing.
    “Billy,” she said in greeting, with a smile of pleasurable surprise. She was wearing her white uniform dress, pulled tight with a sash about her lean waist.
    “On your way to work?” Wintone asked her.
    “Been an’ goin’ back,” Sarah said. “Had to go out to buy some plant food for the office ferns.” She held up a small, folded white bag. “Doc’d have a fit if those things died.”
    They stood for a moment, moving awkwardly out of the way as several breakfasted fishermen exited from Turper’s.
    “Walk me back, why don’t you?” Sarah asked.
    Wintone walked beside her, adjusting his stride to her pace. They were on the shaded side of the street, their own dark shadows merged with the stark black outlines of the buildings. Wintone felt good walking beside Sarah.
    To the right, down Hawk Street, green hills rose behind