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work computer revealed that she had logged off at 4:52 P.M. The gallery was to close at five o’clock. Best guess was that the killer entered the building during those eight minutes. In addition to the locking of the doors, the victim would have turned on the gallery’s alarm system at five o’clock, but a check of the alarm company’s opening and closing records revealed that the alarm was never turned on during the evening of the sixteenth. According to the preprogrammed schedule, the alarm system was to be on from 5:00 to 11:00 P.M. , so the system must have been turned off before five on Friday.
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    On the street and at police headquarters, the initial thinking was that there might be a connection between the murder and the Sarasota Film Festival, which had attracted upward of thirty thousand strangers into town. Investigators thought it doubtful that robbery was the motive. There wasn’t any money in the galleries. Transactions were made with checks or credit cards.
    The other best theory was that Wishart’s allegedly abusive ex-husband, whom she hadn’t seen in years, was responsible for her death. Many locals, in fact, were hoping that the ex-husband had done it. Though tawdry, it was a solution that would have ended the fear. The alternative was that there was a psycho on the loose, perhaps still walking among them.
    Anyone who’d seen the crime scene knew that there was a madman on the loose, a pseudo-artsy psycho who had confused destruction for creation. Those officials knew that the posing of Joyce Wishart’s remains had been a sad and sick swipe at art.

Chapter 4
    Sarasota Nerves
    Sarasota women, used to going out at all hours without fear of danger, were now nervously looking over their shoulders and asking men to escort them to their cars.
    Neighbors of the Provenance Gallery were in shock. During the days following the discovery of Wishart’s body, Jamie Jones, of the St. Petersburg Times, interviewed some of them, including Vicki Krone, who worked at Admiral Travel on North Palm, “just across the driveway” from the murder. She explained that police had asked her if she’d seen anything unusual during the past week. Her first reaction was, she’d never seen anything unusual ever. This was the very last place on Earth she would expect something like this to occur.
    Now that it had occurred, Krone was looking at every stranger in a new light. “Now I find myself looking out the window, wondering about people. It’s changed our everyday pattern,” she said.
    Police and reporters canvassing Palm Avenue crossed paths; and when they could, they exchanged information. Officer Europa spoke to sixty-three-year-old neighbor Allyn Gallup, who recalled last seeing Joyce Wishart on the afternoon of January 15, the previous Thursday. The deceased had been in her gallery.
    Europa spoke to sixty-year-old Phyllis Becker, two doors down, who didn’t remember when she last saw Joyce. “I’m certain that I didn’t see her yesterday, because her shop was closed yesterday,” Becker said.
    Two witnesses who knew Wishart—one walking his dog, the other driving by—noted that on Friday night that the lights in the rear of the Provenance were on, and it wasn’t like Wishart to work late.
    Europa interviewed thirty-nine-year-old Bart Winer, the building’s valet supervisor, the one who had informed Nancy Hall of Joyce Wishart’s unmoved automobile. He didn’t remember the last time he had seen Joyce Wishart. Winer explained that among his jobs was washing the residents’ cars, so he had a reason to pay attention to Wishart’s car during the days before and after the murder. He’d noticed that there was a nail on one of Wishart’s tires. It wasn’t between treads however, as it would probably be if someone had purposefully attempted to flatten her tire.

    At eight-thirty, Thursday morning, the day