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knocked him backward? How had he depressed the trigger, and why hadn’t the shotgun slid farther away with its recoil?
    I decided to stop asking myself questions. I had no expertise, no way to answer them. That was Dexter’s job, anyway, and he wasn’t busting his ass to gather evidence.
    I looked over at him. He stared back and I knew that he’d been following my eyes, reading my thoughts. I canted my head to beckon him closer to me, to see things from my angle. Hayes shook his head, started back toward the walkway.
    “I guess I’m through,” I said loudly.
    He stopped walking, tilted his head, but didn’t turn to face me. “Is that, like, you quit?”
    “Why should I be interested? You sure the fuck aren’t.”
    Now he turned, began to walk closer, but kept his eyes on his marine recovery team. From fifteen feet away: “Did you kill the mayor, Rutledge?” Then, a twist of his head to check my response.
    I read his conjecture on the spot. I pulled a boarding pass stub from my pocket, fluttered it at him. “I was out of town, Dex. I flew to the big city and back. But you force me to ask, do you think anyone killed him?”
    “No, I damned sure don’t,” he said. “I’d bet you my car that Steve killed himself. But if he didn’t, and I’m out a car, I’ll bet you two more cars that his killer’s out front, part of that political melee we both have no time for. Since your alibi’s airtight, I’d just as soon go where the action is, to do my phony-baloney job. Is that okay with you?”
    I nodded.
    “I liked the man,” he said. “He dealt square and played fair. I don’t trust a single other member of the city commission. What I’m saying is: My job is going to change, somehow or other, and not for the good. I will miss him. If he didn’t pull that trigger, I will find the man or woman who did.”
    He didn’t wait for my answer. He turned and left the patio.
    Vegetation blocked line-of-sight for most of my scene-setting photos. I shot one roll eastward from the barbecue, another from the opposite end of the seawall. In several photos I included the home’s Florida room with its old-fashioned jalousie windows.
    I focused on the jalousies and a short woman inside, whom I assumed to be Yvonne Gomez, the estranged wife. She wore a black slacks and white blouse combo, which, over the past thirty years, had become the uniform of Conch women working at the city, county, or local utilities. Cootie Ortega stood next to her, patted her shoulder, looked to be speaking calmly, comforting her. He glanced in my direction, then toward the police boat team, and then back to me. I was glad not to be in his shoes.
    Do estranged wives become unestranged widows?
    Another question I couldn’t answer.
    I wanted to limit my detail shots to the area near the painted outline. I placed my compass and short ruler next to a chalk line, took a close-up, and backed off for two that included the seawall. I ran three to show scrapes on the concrete, then noticed similar marks the length of the walkway. Gomez had moved yard furniture, or had loaded a boat for a cruise. I didn’t want to spend all evening documenting gouges. I ran a poor man’s panorama, eight overlapping frames, to show the canal and the hammock on the far bank. Without stepping on the softball-sized bloodstain, I got five wide angles from the point of view of a man about to die.
    I repacked my cameras, took a last look. I couldn’t imagine having time to create such a garden, or finding the time to appreciate it. Ten years ago a boatload of Cuban refugees had found its way into this canal. Sunburned, destitute, they had appealed to a resident for help. They had no way to know that their benefactor, the man who had given them Cokes and snacks, chairs on a shady porch on dry land, was Jimmy Buffett. I wondered what they had thought of his home, his hospitality. Or what they would have thought of Gomez’s equipment shed, a structure that could house a family of