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off duty, Wes, what did I tell you?”
    â€œYou said take a couple days off—”
    â€œThen do it. We’re under control here. I’m not about to have you come down with exhaustion. I’ve told you—more than once—this isn’t a one-man department. Believe it or not, I’ve got ten other men most as good as you.”
    â€œFour of them trainees.”
    â€œThat’s my problem. You leaving under your own steam, Wes, or do I have to run you out?” Secco looked as if he could do it. He was almost sixty but he had a steer’s build and a tough face under the gray crewcut. He was homegrown New Bradford like most of the force. His father had been a dairy farmer and he had grown up tossing hay bales and stripping teats. He still had a knee-buckling grip.
    â€œAll right, John, but just one thing. How does it look to you?”
    â€œAn outside job, I make it. I didn’t tell Mrs. Howland, but I think Howland was in on it and got crossed. That’s why I asked you if he seemed nervous this afternoon. Now get out, will you?”
    â€œYou can’t leave me hanging, John! What’s the indication of that?”
    â€œEd Taylor says Howland all of a sudden sent him into town for coffee. Ed thought nothing of it at the time, but after he got slugged and came to it struck him funny. Howland never did that before. Looks to me like a setup: Howland got Ed out of the way so he could let the robbers into the plant. He’d probably dickered for a cut of the loot, and after making the deal they shot him down. Go home.”
    â€œAny hard evidence?”
    â€œNot yet.”
    â€œMrs. Howland have any ideas?”
    â€œShe can’t see two inches past her own miseries. Go home.”
    â€œWho’s at the plant?”
    â€œTrooper Miller. He’s waiting for the state lab men and the coroner. Go home, Wes!”
    Malone left on dragging feet, not all from fatigue.
    He walked east to the corner, turned right, did the one block past the Ford agency to Three Corners, and started up Lovers Hill.
    How did a man get to the point of kicking his whole life away? Even a life as rotten as Howland’s? Or maybe that was the answer. Howland’s wife was a drag and a drain, his job was a lot of nothing, he was going nowhere, he was in his upper fifties, and he handled a lot of other people’s money. It made some sort of cockeyed sense if you were in Howland’s shoes. He had never seen a happy look on Howland’s face, even at the times when he dropped into El-wood’s for a coffee on a cold night and caught the guy playing up to Marie Briggs.
    He wondered if the Briggs girl was involved. No, Marie was too smart. Besides, she had a thing going with Jimmy Wyckoff and it looked serious. Jimmy was a good-looking kid who pulled down a good salary as a machinist at Compo Copper and Brass. If there was anything between Marie and Howland it had all been in Howland’s head.
    Malone felt a rush of affection for his own girls.
    Suppose I didn’t have them? Suppose Ellen had turned out a nag and a spender like Sherrie-Ann? And as lousy in bed as she must be? Suppose Ellen had miscarried with Bibby, as she had done twice before and once since Bibby was born, when Dr. Levitt advised her not to get pregnant any more? There would be no little girl with copper curls and a valentine for a face and those big honey eyes full of love for the hero in her life. (And hadn’t Ellen been floored when, at the age of six, Bibby had climbed into his lap and clutched him around the neck and looked deep into his eyes and asked, “Daddy, do you love mommy more than you love me?” He could still see the expression on Ellen’s face.)
    Malone turned up into Old Bradford Road.
    No, life would be as big a zero as Howland’s without his girls. Until he had met Ellen, with her snapping Irish eyes and tongue, he had never been serious about a girl. He had never had a