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She turned her hand and directed her pistol toward the deck immediately behind her.
    “You have no reason to trust me, and I have no reason to trust you,” said Chang with what sounded like a perilous degree of despair.
    “You have every reason to trust us,” said Michael. “We’re nice people.”
    As Carson squeezed off a shot, she dropped toward her knees, intending to fling herself flat on the deck.
    Chang screamed in pain and fired a round the instant he was hit.
    Maybe Carson didn’t really feel the bullet sizzle across her scalp, but there was muzzle flash, the smell of burnt hair.
    She sprawled facedown, rolled on her back, sat up with the pistol in a two-hand grip, saw Chang flat and Michael on top of him with a knee in his back.
    “My foot, my foot,”
Chang screamed, and Carson said urgently, “Michael, is my hair on fire?” and Michael said, “No, his piece is on the deck,
find it!”
    Carson found the weapon—“Got it”—and Michael said he needed to vomit, which he had never done in his years as a cop, so Carson knelt beside Chang and put her pistol to his head, which she greatly enjoyed. Chang kept screaming about his wounded foot, and Michael leaned over the railing and spewed into the bay. In the distance a siren rose, and when Michael had purged his stomach, he announced that he had called 911 from the quay, and then he asked Carson if she needed to vomit, and she said she didn’t, but she was wrong, and she vomited on Chang.

    
chapter
10

    Mr. Lyss pointed a finger at Nummy. His fingers were long. They were more bone than flesh. The nails were the color of chicken fat.
    Squinting down his arm, along his finger, right into Nummy’s eyes, Mr. Lyss said, “You’re sitting on my bunk.”
    “I figured this must be my bunk.”
    “You figured wrong. You’ve got the top one.”
    “Sorry, sir,” Nummy said, and he got to his feet.
    They were eye to eye.
    Mr. Lyss’s eyes were like the gas flames on the kitchen cooktop. Not just blue, because lots of nice things were blue, but blue and hot and dangerous.
    “What’re you in here for?” Mr. Lyss asked.
    “For just a little time.”
    “Moron. I mean what’d you do to land here?”
    “Mrs. Trudy LaPierre—she hired a man to break in her place and steal the best she’s got.”
    “She hired her own damn burglar?” Mr. Lyss chewed his pale, peeling lips with his dead-charcoal teeth. “So it’s an insurance scam, huh?”
    “Insurance what?”
    “You’re not that dumb, boy, and the jury will know it. You knew why she hired you.”
    Mr. Lyss’s breath smelled like tomatoes when you forget to pick them because you don’t like tomatoes, and then they rot on the vine.
    Nummy moved away from Mr. Lyss and stood by the cell door. “No, she never done hired me. Who she hired is Mr. Bob Pine. She wanted Mr. Bob Pine to steal her best, then beat Poor Fred to death.”
    “Who’s Fred?”
    “Poor Fred. Grandmama always called him Poor Fred. He’s Mrs. Trudy LaPierre’s husband.”
    “Why’s he Poor Fred?”
    “He got a brain stroke years ago. Poor Fred can’t talk no more, and he gets around in his walker. They live next door.”
    “So this Trudy wanted him killed, made to look like it happened during a burglary.”
    “Mr. Bob Pine he was going to put stolen stuff in my house, I’d go to prison.”
    Eyes pinched to slits, shoulders hunched, head thrust forward, like one of those birds that ate dead things on the highway, Mr. Lyss came close again. “Is that your story, boy?”
    “It’s what almost happened, sir. But Mr. Bob Pine he got a cold in his feet.”
    “In his feet?”
    “Such a bad cold, he didn’t feel good enough to do the stealing and killing. So he goes to Chief Jarmillo, tells him all what Mrs. Trudy LaPierre hired him for.”
    “When did this happen?”
    “Yesterday.”
    “So why are you here?”
    “Mrs. Trudy LaPierre she’s dangerous. Chief says she’s got a history of dangerous, and she’s all