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inviting path. But how would he carry a man in broad daylight down a street filled with inquisitive eyes?
    Impossible, she decided. Unless the killer had some kind of elaborate way to disguise him, Jimmy Ryan had been taken to the church in a car.
    The sidewalk had been shoveled clear but she kept her eyes left,looking for footprints emerging from behind one of the frame houses that receded into the distance. The yards were of two varieties: either choked with snow-covered weeds, rusting bikes, even what looked like stalks of alfalfa pushing through the icy crust—or clean, bushes trimmed under the caking snow. People who’d given up or moved away, and the holdouts still grimly keeping their plots of land respectable.
    “What’re you doing here?”
    Abbie turned. A dapper old man stood looking at her from under an Irish walking cap.
    “Buffalo Police,” Abbie said, pulling her badge from her inside pocket. “Do you live around here, Mr.—?”
    “Right across the street,” the man said, turning to point at a dark-green frame house with white trim. “James O’Malley’s my name.”
    Everyone in the County was named James or John. She’d have to keep them all straight.
    “Is this about Jimmy Ryan?” O’Malley said.
    Abbie sighed. “Yes, it is.”
    “Well, I don’t know anything about that.”
    “I hadn’t asked you if you did.”
    He said nothing, only smiled.
    “Were you in the neighborhood on Monday afternoon?”
    “Where else would I go? Yes, I was here.”
    “See anyone on the street? Strange cars in the church parking lot? Anyone you didn’t recognize?”
    The man eyed her from underneath his walking cap. “Only the usual lot. The kids have no jobs these days, you know that.”
    “Interesting. Which kids?”
    “Oh, I don’t know their names.”
    “Mm-hmm. Anyone out of the ordinary, Mr. O’Malley? Not from the neighborhood?”
    “You mean the black men?” he said with a merry glint.
    “Which black men?”
    “The garbagemen! They come every Tuesday. County boys can’t get those city jobs anymore, I guess. Terrible shame.”
    “Plenty do.
You
know that. Anyone else?”
    “No.”
    “Uh-huh. And did you hear anything? Screams?”
    “I’m hard of hearing, sorry.”
    “You seem to be doing pretty well today.”
    “It comes and it goes, miss.”
    “Detective.”
    He seemed amused by that.
    “Let me ask you a question. What was the purpose of you coming out of your house for this little conversation?”
    “We’re friendly people around here. And what concerns the Ryans concerns us.”
    She took out a card and offered it to the old man.
    “That’s good to know. Please let your neighbors know we need their help to catch the killer.”
    The man only looked at the card fluttering slightly in the wind. “God willing, he’s burning in hellfire already.”
    O’Malley tipped his hat and turned. Abbie watched him walk off, his shoe heels striking off the pavement like iron.
    After stopping by headquarters downtown, Abbie parked in front of the Department of Health, ran in, and spoke briefly with a bow-tied clerk at the information desk. A few minutes later, he emerged from the warren of cubicles and handed her two pamphlets. She thanked him and walked back to her car, tapping the pamphlets against her open palm and thinking about the wounds on Jimmy Ryan’s face. She took the Skyway back to the County, white-knuckling it all the way, and parked in front of the house of the mountain man who cut up roadkill. She walked up onto the swaybacked wooden porch, noted the peeling of the paint on the house front, and lifted the thin metal lid of his mailbox. She placed the two brochures, “Disease Precautionsfor Hunters” and “Wild Game Hunting and Food Safety,” inside.
    When she got back in the car, she started the engine, then looked up at the third-story window with the Dora stickers. The curtain didn’t move.
    What if he can’t read?
she thought.
What good will the pamphlets do then?