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it?”
    Nick nodded.
    Dr. Koh smiled. “If you don’t mind, gentlemen, I’d like to continue my examination further, and you might not enjoy its thoroughness.” His dark eyes playfully pinpointed the aging chief as he reached for the shiny bone cutters atop his metal tray.
    Nick instantly took a shine to the tall, thin coroner. At least he possessed a sense of humor about his morbid profession.
    “Of course. What’s your theory, Chief Rollins, or is it Chief?”
    “Doesn’t matter. You can call me either or. Everyone else does.”
    They moved away from the examination room, and Nick spied Dr. Koh carefully slicing into Thad Fisher’s chest cavity.
    “I suspect,” said the chief, warming to the subject, “that Thad was mugged, and the murderer couldn’t get the ring off, and therefore had to remove the finger violently. That alone would have been motive enough for the crime, considering the value of the ring.” The police chief kept jingling change in his pocket as if he wanted to say something more but was afraid to.
    “Though you must agree, a screwdriver is a strange instrument for a mugger to choose, isn’t it? And a screwdriver can’t remove a finger, so the murderer must have had access to several tools. Plus, the wound was relatively dry—the mayor was murdered elsewhere. I believe he was buried under the magnolia tree during our full moon this week. The murderer used a wheelbarrow and worked alone. Is there something else you wanted to say, Chief?” urged Nick.
    “You are quick. Roger said you were good. Well, I’m sure it means nothing, but there was another you know,” offered Richard vaguely.
    “Another?” asked Nick blankly. “What do you mean?”
    “Another body we found, twenty-five years ago when Jeremy Fox was police chief.”
    Nick had heard about the legendary Jeremy Fox. He’d been a massive man at 6’5” and totally white-haired by age thirty. The police chief of Monroe for ten years before he’d quit and started his own investigative firm, his integrity and grit were still marveled at by his successors. He’d worked for a while in Berkley and then come back to his hometown of Monroe City. While Nick had never met the man, his reputation had permeated all the law enforcement agencies in the area—that, and his spectacular murder. He and his son Lane had been investigating a Russian gang seeking to infiltrate several of the large agricultural firms that dotted the Big Valley. Jeremy and Lane had been found hanging from a makeshift gallows near Rancho Mandesto, far from their home. The sensational crime had made headlines, even in San Francisco.
    His interest now thoroughly aroused, Nick turned his dark brown eyes to Richard’s watery blue ones. “Another similar murder where the ring finger was removed happened during Fox’s day?”
    “Yes,” whispered Richard, suddenly visualizing the victim. “It was horrible indeed. The victim was a young runaway by the name of Ashley Peebles found buried by an irrigation ditch out near Highway 4. Two scumbag drifters, Luke Cambridge and Deke Rhodes, were convicted of the crime. They’d been working the spinach fields not two miles from the main highway where her body was dumped. It didn’t seem just like the normal murder-rape story; in fact, the girl didn’t seem to have been recently assaulted. The unusual thing was that her left-hand ring finger had been hacked off.
    “Interesting. But you say her murderers were apprehended?”
    “Yup. Sentenced to the Big House for life. Deke died about twenty years ago in prison. Bled to death in some brawl inside the prison laundry, but Luke, he’s still serving time.”
    “So, what was their motive?” asked Nick.
    “Motive?”
    “Yeah, you know, the reason she was killed? Most killings outside sexual assault, robbery, or unbridled passion have a reason.”
    The Chief bristled. “Wise guy, aren’t ya? Of course there was a reason. It was jealousy. One was seeing her, and the other