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Parsons inside the store.
    There was an unsettled feeling, almost a crustiness, in me as I made my way to the Germany Cafe. A bowl of hamhocks and lentils did nothing to improve my mood, even though the Germany serves the best lunch in Tule Bend. And the stranger who interrupted my dessert added enough to the crust to make it thicker than the one on the slab of peach pie I was trying to eat.
    First off, he was rude. He came waltzing up to my table, planted his feet, and said in a hard, snappy voice without any preamble, "I was told I could find the town constable here. That you?"
    I looked him over before I answered. He was not much to look at. Youngish, leaned down, black hair almost as long as an Indian's, thick mustache, icy blue eyes. Wearing a dented derby, a shirt with frayed cuffs, a brocade vest with one of its buttons gone, a pair of gold butternut trousers, and boots that hadn't had polish or cloth put to them in a long while. There was something vaguely familiar about him but I could not have said then what it was.
    "It would," I said, slow. "Lincoln Evans is the name. Something I can do for you?"
    "I just arrived from San Francisco."
    "That so?"
    "Don't know yet who I am, do you?"
    "Should I?"
    He sat down without being invited, poked his head halfway over to my pie plate, and said, "You sent me a wire two days ago. I'm Emmett Bodeen."
    So that was why he had struck me as familiar. There was not much resemblance between him and the hanged man lying over at Obe Spencer's, just enough to stamp them as brothers. "Well, Mr. Bodeen," I said, "I was beginning to despair that the wire never reached you."
    "It reached me."
    "Might have wired me back before you left Stockton," I said mildly. "We were about to make our own burial arrangements—"
    "Never mind that. You sure the dead man you got here is my brother Jeremy."
    "Seems that way. There was a letter from you among what we believe to be his belongings. And I'd say you resemble him."
    "Where's the body?"
    "Spencer's Undertaking Parlor."
    "I want to see it. Now."
    I did not care for him or his manner, but then it wasn't a close relative of mine we were discussing. Without saying anything I pushed my chair back and got up and went to pay for my lunch. Bodeen didn't wait; he walked straight out into daylight. He was leaning against one of the posts in front when I came out.
    Neither of us spoke on the short walk to Obe Spencer's. Obe fussed some when he realized he might have a paying customer, instead of having to bill the county for a potter's field burial at a reduced rate. But this Emmett Bodeen shrugged him off the same way you would a bothersome fly. "Just show me the body," he said, nothing else.
    Obe led us back into his embalming room and lifted the rubber sheet covering one of the tables. Emmett Bodeen stared down at the hanged man's corpse for more than a minute; the look of him was all the confirmation I needed, even though I would have to ask the question anyway. His face turned ruddy and sweated. His eyes blazed and yet underneath they were still cold, so that gazing into them made you think of fire burning on ice.
    I said, "That your brother, Mr. Bodeen?"
    The words jerked his head away from the table. He said to Obe, "Lower that sheet," and then aimed a nod in my direction. "Those marks on his neck—they come from a rope?"
    "Afraid so."
    "Hanged or dragged?"
    "Hanged."
    "Christ. Tell me what happened."
    I told him as much as we knew. Few men would take such news well, but not many would take it the way Bodeen did. That fire in him got even hotter, so hot that it started him shaking. I began to feel uneasy. There was violence inside that man, close to the surface and highly explosive. Mr. Emmett Bodeen was a stick of human dynamite, I thought, with a weak cap and a short fuse.
    He blew a little just then, too. Stood there shaking and fulminating and then surprised me and startled the hell out of poor Obe by lunging at the nearest wall and hammering at it