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know somethin’ nobody else knows.”
    Yeah, whether the mayor likes to be the lamb or Little Bo Beep when he —
    â€œI know somebody who was there when that murder happened.”
    â€œWhat murder?”
    â€œAt the Fore-And-Aft.”
    Not a muscle in my body moved. I stared at her.
    â€œYou know, when that guy got shot.”
    â€œTwo guys were shot.”
    â€œThe Leaman guy.”
    Leaman? It was Graham Scott who got shot: he took two bullets to the head. Leaman put a bullet in his own brain — I would not have described that as getting shot. “That was a murder and suicide,” I said. Did she know I was involved in the case? I doubted it. Ross Trevelyan’s was the only name that had been mentioned in the media, as far as I knew.
    â€œYeah, right.” Yvette snickered. “The
suicide
.”
    â€œThat’s the way the medical examiner saw it.”
    â€œThat’s ‘cause the medical examiner wasn’t down on his knees in the parking lot doing some young dude when Leaman got iced.”
    Oh, Christ. What was she saying? She sat back, triumphant, arms folded against her scrawny chest. I took a deep breath.
    â€œTell me.”
    She made a “maybe I will, maybe I won’t” gesture, but I sat tight. It wasn’t long in coming.
    â€œThat bitch Wanda is gonna be sorry she fucked with me at my trial. She thinks nobody knows she was there. But she didn’t count on me doin’ my duty as a good citizen, just like she done on the witness stand. Wanda was with this guy —”
    â€œWho was the guy?”
    â€œBeats me. Anyway she was doin’ him around the back of the bar. They just finished when they heard voices and then a gunshot. The guy she was with zipped up his pants and took off. She vamoosed in the other direction. She didn’t want to see nuthin’. And didn’t want nobody seein’ her. She was on probation for a whole lot of charges, and she was breachin’ her probation just bein’ out at that time of night. Let alone bein’ high. Eckcetera, eckcetera.”
    â€œLet me get this straight. What exactly did she hear?”
    â€œGuys hollerin’ and a gunshot.”
    â€œA shot or shots?”
    â€œA shot, I think she said.”
    There was one bullet in Leaman, two in Scott. Did this mean Leaman was shot first and Scott appeared some time later? Or did Wanda hear the first round fired at Scott? If so, what accounted for the gap between the shots?
    â€œAnd you said guys were shouting?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œWhat were they saying?”
    â€œI don’t fucking know. I wasn’t there.”
    â€œWhat did Wanda say?”
    â€œJust that they were hollerin’ and then blam! End of conversation.”
    â€œWhat time was this?”
    â€œLate. Three, four in the morning.” She fixed me with a slightly wall-eyed gaze. “So I figure the killer don’t know there was a witness. Witness Wanda. And she sure as hell ain’t talkin’. And there’s the john, too. Whoever he was.”
    â€œHow do you know this?”
    â€œShe was bombed one night and started blubbering to me about it. Scared the killer knew she was there and would come and get her. Guess she got lucky. ‘Cause she’s still walkin’ around. Let’s hope for her sake her luck don’t run out.”

Chapter 2
    This is the day I’m gonna roll the dice.
    â€” Mel “Snake Eyes” Rooney
    The conversation haunted me all the way home. I decided not to add to the obvious stresses in Ross Trevelyan’s life until I had to. He was counting on this case as an account receivable, and as a beacon sending out the signal that Ross was a lawyer who specialized in the potentially lucrative business of plaintiff-side personal injury litigation. I would leave him in peace for now and do a bit of investigating on my own.
    First thing Monday morning, I retrieved the file from