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was Pryce like?” Louis asked.
    “I told you. He kept to himself, so none of us really got to know him. He always seemed, I don’t know, uncomfortable with us. He was...intense, off in his own world, a classic Type A personality.”
    Louis didn’t answer, his eyes still on the little girl.
    “Personally, I always thought maybe he considered himself an outsider because he was black,” Jesse said.
    Louis turned. “Was he?”
    Jesse hefted up the uniforms. “Shit, no, not from our side,” he said. “I just always thought he needed to lighten up.”
    “Lighten up?”
    “Christ, Kincaid, you know what I mean. You know, like a guy might make a joke or something, about color or something, but they don’t mean anything by it. But Pryce never saw it from that point of view. He just couldn’t, you know...”
    “Lighten up,” Louis said.
    Jesse sighed. “No way am I going to get this right.”
    “Okay, here’s a soft-ball pitch for you. What kind of cop was he?”
    Jesse thought for a moment. “Civil, even to the dirtbags. He was the kind of cop that polished his badges, his buckles and probably his balls with Brasso.”
    Louis smiled slightly. Jesse’s mouth curved up gratefully.
    “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Jesse said. “Chief’ll ream me a new asshole if he finds out we were here.”
    Outside on the porch, Louis held the uniforms as Jesse pulled the door shut and tested it to make sure it was locked.
    “Do you think the chief would let me see Pryce’s old case files?” Louis asked.
    “What for?”
    Louis shrugged. “A fresh pair of eyes maybe.”
    Jesse slipped his sunglasses back on and stared at Louis. “We tried, Kincaid. We talked to local criminals, retired criminals, local mental cases, Pryce’s relatives. We even visited the Rambos up at Lake Orion.”
    “Rambos?”
    “You know, those weird Vietnam vets who live in the woods. Chief thought maybe they just decided to start popping cops. I’m telling you, we talked our asses off. And we didn’t find squat.” Jesse started down the porch.
    “Jesse.”
    He stopped and turned.
    “I wasn’t implying you didn’t try.”
    “Sounds like it.”
    Louis hoisted the uniforms. “Sorry.”
    Jesse turned and walked to the cruiser. Louis followed, laying the uniforms across the backseat. They drove in silence, heading back to Main Street.
    Louis pulled the photograph of the Pryce kid from his pocket.
    Jesse noticed him looking at it. “I keep thinking of his kids,” Jesse said quietly. “I keep thinking of those kids and hoping they didn’t come down those stairs.”
    “Yeah,” Louis said.
    They were silent again. The radio crackled as a call came for another unit to assist a man who had fallen on some ice.
    “You know,” Jesse said, “more cops are killed during December than any other month.”
    Louis didn’t respond. They headed back onto Main, starting into the business district.
    “Hey,” Jesse said suddenly. “I almost forgot to show you the most important place in Loon Lake.”
    He did a U-turn and pulled up to the curb. “Ground zero,” he said with a grin. “Dotty’s Blue Star Café. The state’s biggest deposit of natural gas.” He grabbed the mike. “Florence, this is L-13. We’re 10-7 for a few.”
    Louis slipped the photograph back in his pocket. His mind was working back, replaying his job interview with Gibralter, wondering if the chief intended to appoint someone to take Pryce’s investigator job. If he himself had been interviewing for it, he wished Gibralter had mentioned it. Maybe Gibralter had been doing just that and he hadn’t picked up the clues. He had worked for only two men before. His first chief in Ann Arbor had been as easy to read as a telephone book. But his experience with the sheriff in Mississippi had told him that impressions and, worse, assumptions about character, could be dead wrong.
    Gibralter...what in the world was he? Soldier? Scholar?
    Louis shook his head. Whatever Brian