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out, in the night, to dispose of a corpse. Having a gun would be reassuring.”
    Loogan studied Kristoll’s face in the dim light. “There’s another reason,” Loogan said, “but maybe it’s best left unstated. You don’t want me to go into it.”
    “Go ahead.”
    “It’s all right, Tom. You can keep your secrets.”
    “Sounds like it’s too late for that. Say what you want to say.”
    “All right,” said Loogan. “You took the gun because the gun was inconvenient. Your story was shaky in the first place, but the gun makes it laughable. A man breaks into your house, presumably to rob you. If he’s any kind of thief at all, he has to realize that someone could be in the house. He’s brought a gun with him; he ought to keep it in his hand until he’s sure no one’s home. But he doesn’t. If he did, you wouldn’t be able to kill him with a bottle of Scotch.”
    Loogan shifted his gaze from Kristoll to the grave. “And that means you knew him. He wasn’t a thief. You let him in the house. He felt safe. He didn’t need to hold the gun. It was enough to have it in the holster on his ankle. That’s the only way it makes sense. That’s why we had to bury him. If he was a stranger, we could have dumped his body somewhere. What would it matter if he was found? No one would suspect you. But we had to bury him, because you knew him.”
    Kristoll took a long breath, let it out. “I’ll tell you who he was, if you want to know.”
    “You don’t have to tell me,” Loogan said. “But you need to think about the gun. It’s his gun. There’s probably a way to trace it to him. If you keep it, then it connects you with him.”
    “You’re right, David. I’ll get rid of it.”
    “Do it now. You’ve got it here, don’t you? If I had to guess, I’d say it’s on your ankle.”
    Kristoll let the rake fall to the ground and stepped his right foot forward. The denim of his pant leg rose, revealing in the light of the flashlight first the brown leather of the holster, then the nickel finish of the pistol’s grip. Kristoll got down on one knee and worked the strap, then stood up and drew the pistol out. He handed the holster to Loogan.
    “It’s a small-caliber, obviously,” Kristoll said, weighing the pistol in his hand. “A twenty-two or a thirty-two, I suppose. I ought to know more about guns than I do.”
    Loogan wiped the holster with his shirt and dropped it into the grave.
    “I don’t know if it’s loaded,” Kristoll said. “Or even how to check if it’s loaded. I imagine it is.”
    “There should be a catch on the side, to release the clip,” Loogan said. “But it doesn’t matter whether it’s loaded or not, unless you plan to use it. There’s nobody here but us. Are you going to shoot me?”
    Kristoll’s hand closed around the grip. He aimed the pistol at the ground.
    “I haven’t the energy.”
    “Then wipe it down and toss it in,” Loogan said. “Let’s finish this and get the hell out of here.”

Chapter 5
    “YOU WERE WRONG ABOUT ONE THING, DAVID. HE WAS A THIEF. I WASN’T lying about that.”
    They were driving west in Tom Kristoll’s car: Kristoll behind the wheel, in a fresh T-shirt and fresh jeans; Loogan beside him in a borrowed gray jogging suit. They had left the blue Civic on the street in front of a run-down apartment building.
    “His name was Michael Beccanti,” Kristoll said. “I met him three years ago. ‘Met’ isn’t the right word—we corresponded. He read some things he liked in Gray Streets and wrote in to say so. I wrote a polite reply. Then he sent a story. The spelling was awful and it was scribbled out longhand on a legal pad, but the basic idea was sound—a revenge story, as I recall—a drug dealer kills a man’s wife, and the man stirs up a war between the dealer and one of his rivals. I worked with him on it, and we knocked it into shape. I published it.
    “He wrote two or three others. They needed a lot of work, but he had plenty of time for