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just wants to get rich; and they could give a hoot about their fellow man.”
    “You’re right, the world would be a better place if other folks believed as you do, Walt,” Rosco told him. The opinion that the gullible might also be poorer, Rosco kept to himself. “How did you give her the money? Was it a check or cash?”
    “It was a wire transfer from my bank into her account.”
    “And you have that account number, I take it.”
    “No.”
    Rosco reached for his pad and pen. “Not a problem; your bank will have it on file. So I gather you haven’t seen Ms. Davis since you gave her the money?”
    Gudgeon held up his hands. “Wait, hold on there, Rosco. Dawn didn’t steal this money from me, if that’s what you’re thinking. I saw her quite a few times after the funds were transferred. She was very insistent about telling me how she was doing: what the prognosis was and so forth, how much better she was feeling knowing she was going to be cured . . . And she kept telling me how bad she felt about taking the money. She . . . she wanted to make it up to me . . . had all sorts of payment schedules she’d made up—every one of which would have outlasted me.” He stopped and smiled, and again Rosco noted the tenderness of the expression. “Anyway, the operation wasn’t scheduled until a little over three weeks ago. I drove Dawn to the hospital myself. She’d had the money in her account for almost a month by then. If I was being conned, she would have skipped town long before that.”
    “Okay,” Rosco said. “I’m just not convinced that Newcastle Memorial plays that kind of hardball in situations such as you described. Failing kidneys aren’t anything to fool around with. I don’t see them turning a patient away for lack of funds. There are agencies that can step in to help indigent patients.”
    “They had another match for that kidney,” Gudgeon argued, raising his voice. “They didn’t need her. They had Dawn on the ropes. They were going to go with the person who could pay. Health care’s changed; it’s big business now. They don’t care about the little guy.”
    “Did you visit Ms. Davis in the hospital?”
    “No. She didn’t want any visitors.”
    “Phone her?”
    “No. She had no phone in her room.”
    “And when exactly did she disappear?”
    “That was it. I dropped her off at Newcastle Memorial, and I haven’t heard from her since.”
    “Did you call the hospital and ask about her status?”
    “Yes. They said she checked out the next day.”
    Rosco shook his head slowly. “I don’t know much about this kind of major surgery, but leaving the hospital after twenty-four hours seems like an unlikely scenario for what you’re describing.”
    “It seemed odd to me, too; I admit that. I tried to get more information, but they won’t release details except to next of kin. I didn’t want to push them any further. I didn’t want to go on record as asking.”
    Rosco rolled his chair closer to the desk, leaned on his forearms, and leveled his gaze on Walt’s. “You’re sure you don’t want to go to the police with this?”
    “Absolutely not. I don’t want my children to hear a word of this.”
    “If, and I’m not saying you have, but if you have been conned out of this money, there is virtually no way you will be able to reclaim a nickel if you refuse to pursue it through the legal system; I have to tell you that, Walt.”
    “I haven’t been cheated. I’m an old man who’s fallen for a young girl who needed my help. Maybe I was a fool, okay, but I only want to know that Dawn’s safe and well.”
    “Had you been intimate with her?”
    “That’s nobody’s damn business.” Gudgeon bristled, then added an abrupt, “What’s this going to cost me?”
    Rosco closed his notebook and said, “Let me first see what I can find out. I’ll work up a fee schedule later.”

CHAPTER
    4
    Friday lunchtime at Lawson’s Coffee Shop was without a doubt its busiest two hours of the