Ned’s Bucket O’ Blood. The name suggested a real class joint. The typical Southern road house, sat on a secondary highway, about fifty feet off the blacktop in a dog-eared neighborhood.

Large clumps of Dallis grass dotted the gravel parking lot, and a bumper crop of ragweed grew along the exterior walls of the bar.

A half dozen vehicles, four of them pickup trucks, were scattered around the lot in no particular order. I parked near the door and walked in.

The smell of stale beer and old cigarette smoke could have gagged a maggot.

The occupants of those six parked vehicles perched on stools and lounged at tables throughout the dingy gin mill.

A not quite pretty blond in a short black dress sang her rendition of It Takes Balls to be a Woman. Her guitarist wore a fancy two-tone cowboy shirt and looked vaguely like Stephen King, if Steve hadn’t washed his hair in a decade.

I took a stool at the close end of the bar.

“What’ll ya have?” the bartender asked as he dropped a stained coaster in front of me.

I placed him somewhere between forty and sixty, broad and short with a crew cut and a walrus mustache. From the twists of his nose, you could count the number of times it had been broken. His teeth were stained yellow as were two fingers of his right hand. He might have single-handedly accounted for the nicotine stink inside the Bucket O’ Blood.

“What do you have on tap?” I asked.

“Bud.”

“That’s it?” I gave him a friendly smile.

“Uh-huh.” He didn’t return the smile.

“How about in a bottle?”

“Bud Light . . . an’ more Bud.”

“A company man, huh?” I managed another smile.

“Do what?” Still the same blank expression from him.

So far a tip was out of the question.

“I’ll have a pint of Bud.”

“Don’t got no pints.”

“Okay, make it easy on yourself.” I grew tired of our erudite debate.

He took three steps to the tap handle and came back with a twelve ounce mug.

The beer was cold and fresh. The bartender went to check on his other customers and I looked over the room. It probably wasn’t the worst place I’d ever seen, but it made my bottom ten.

As the blond ended her song, the barman walked back toward me drying a glass.

“Are you Ned,” I asked.

“Nope, I’m Jake. Ned won’t be here till mebbe eight-thirty, nine o’clock.”

“Got a few minutes to talk?”

“Ain’t exactly got a crowd takin’ up my time,” he said.

“I need some information.”

My statement caused a wrinkle on his brow and a general look of distrust to alter his expression.

“You the po-leece or sumpthin’?”

“Or something,” I said, and showed him my badge. “You know a guy named Melvin Kite? I understand he comes here.”

“Melvin Kite? Hmm, not sure.”

Jake’s momma taught him how to play hard-to-get.

“How much was that beer?” I asked.

“Two-fifty.”

I took a twenty from the folded wad of cash in my pocket and placed it on the bar.

I grinned and said, “I guess you could keep the change . . . if you knew something about this Melvin Kite guy.”

Jake liked that idea; finally his turn to smile.

“Melvin Kite? Melvin Kite? he said. “Sounds familiar now. He a short, stocky guy with a scar on his chin?”

“Sounds like my man, but the picture of him I saw was almost five-years-old.”

“I know him,” Jake said. “What’s he done?”

“I’m not sure he’s done anything,” I lied. “Someone reported a hit-and-run and gave his plate number. I need to find him and straighten that business out.”

“Why don’t you go to his home?”

Jake was a practical thinker.

“All the addresses I can find are old. Melvin moves around a lot.”

“Comes in here some,” Jake said, “exspecially when they’s live music. I ‘spect he’ll be here tonight t’ see Marla.”

He used his chin as a pointer and gestured toward the stage where the blond flipped through the pages of a spiral notebook and Steven King tuned his guitar.

“You’ve been a big help, Jake,” I said.

He took hold of the twenty with his thumb and forefinger. I grabbed the opposite end and tugged. I won.

“I done thought you said . . .” Jake looked surprised and disappointed.

I tore the twenty in half, gave one part to Jake, and filed the second half in my top pocket.

“Give me a wink, Jake, old buddy, when Mr. Kite shows up. Then the other half’s yours, okay?”

Jake nodded. He liked that idea, too.

I looked at my watch; 7:30. I had some waiting to do. I picked up Jake’s copy of the News-Sentinel and took that and my beer to a table in the far corner of the room. There wasn’t much light to read by, so I looked at the pictures.

Marla and Steve started playing again; something with a Nashville sound. I heard lyrics about a cheatin’ man, a pickup, and possibly a ratchet wrench – but I’m terrible at music comprehension.

At 8 PM a stocky, blue-collar guy dressed in the ubiquitous outfit of the Smokies walked into Ned’s. Washed-off blue jeans rode low on his wide hips. A faded orange UT jersey hung outside his pants, and a dirty Atlanta Braves ball cap sat on his head.

He bellied up to the bar and grabbed the mug of Bud Jake had ready for him. After taking a sip, he did a right face and stepped over to an unoccupied table.

I looked at Jake. He put a finger up to his nose and nodded. My twenty dollar signal. He must have learned that gesture from Paul Newman in The Sting.

I folded the paper, picked up my mug, and headed toward the bar. I dropped my half of the twenty on the counter, winked at Jake and touched my nose. Robert Redford all the way.

After waiting thirty seconds for Marla to finish her song, I took a short walk to Melvin’s table and sat down.

He swiveled his head and gave me a surprised look.

“Hi,” I said, “I’ll bet you’re Melvin Kite.”

“Do what?” was the best he came up with.

“My name’s Jenkins, but you can call me chief – as in police chief – from beautiful downtown Prospect, Tennessee.”

“I ain’t done nuthin’” he said, shifting in his chair to look at me square on.

The dark hair sticking out from under his cap needed a trim, and his five o’clock shadow looked several hours old.

“Sure you have, Melvin,” I said. “Let’s start out on the right foot. I won’t bullshit you so don’t bullshit me. Okay?”

“What the hell ya talkin’ about?”

“Copper, Melvin, I’m talking about copper.”

“Oh,” he said, and his shoulders dropped three inches.

“Where’d you get all the copper you’ve been selling at Knoxville Scrap Metal and Salvage?”

“I ain’t sold much there, not but a few pounds.”

“Goddamnit, Melvin, now you’ve gone and pissed me off. I thought we had a no bullshit treaty.”

He frowned at that.

“If we weren’t in a public place,” I said, “I’d have taken offense to that lie and smacked you upside the head with this mug of beer. Wanna try answering that question again?”

“Whatcha wanna know?” he asked.

“The salvage yard has records of you bringing in hundreds of pounds of copper. Where’d you get it?”

“I guess ya done already figgered that out.”

“Yeah, ya think?”

Marla started another tune and Steve closed his eyes as he strummed his guitar.

“Now why don’t we listen to the young lady sing about her shithead boyfriend, finish our beers, then take a ride to my office and talk about your midnight scrap metal business?

The parking spots next to the PD back door allow us to walk suspects and prisoners inside without giving them much chance to escape. I used one when Melvin Kite and I pulled in behind the municipal building.

We bypassed the squad room and I led Melvin directly to my office. We sat in the guest chairs in front of my desk and faced each other. I didn’t offer to make coffee.

“Okay, Melvin,” I said, “let’s talk copper.”

Somewhere in my town, someone was dragging a really big cow behind his pick-up truck. That didn’t make me happy.

“How the hell can someone steal a fourteen-foot, brown and white cow and not be seen?” I asked.

“Beats me, boss. If I had time to get into this I wouldn’t have called you,” Sergeant Stan Rose said. “After midnight we go on overtime and that doesn’t make the mayor happy.”

“Where’s Mr. Patel now? He owned the cow didn’t he?”

“Not exactly. When he remodeled the store and advertised his grand re-opening, the dairy sent the cow over to draw attention to the business.”

“They sent the cow? It travels alone?”

“Don’t break my chops, boss. They hauled the cow here with a truck. You must have seen it somewhere before. It’s on wheels and has a trailer hitch.”

“And the dairy just left it here, unlocked, and unattended? Anyone could back up a truck, set the hitch on their ball, and drive away with a fourteen-foot Jersey cow in tow?”

“Yep, that’s about it,” he said.

“And now we’ve got to find it.” I really didn’t sound happy.

“Isn’t our motto, to protect and serve? I guess this comes under the broad category of serving.”

I nodded and scratched my head, not having a clue why I should care.

“It must be pretty hard to hide a fourteen-foot cow,” I said.

“If it was me, I’d put it on my front lawn so my neighbors could see it.”

“Yeah, but that’s you,” I said. “You’d probably buy one for your lawn if they sold them.”

“I’d rather have a dozen pink flamingoes.”

“Sure you would. Where’s Patel now?”

“He’s home, won’t open the store again until seven o’clock tomorrow morning. He’s waiting for you.”

“I’m too old for this shit, Stanley.”

“I know, boss. Sorry to call you out, I just thought …”

“Where’s he live?”

Stan gave me Sanjev Patel’s address. Patel owned and operated the Git-N-Go market and gas station in Prospect, Tennessee.

With the nearest super-market twelve miles away in Maryville, Patel’s store became the place most everyone in town shopped for their small grocery orders.

You wouldn’t have to know much about East Tennessee to infer that Sanjev Patel wasn’t a native of Southern Appalachia. Originally, he came from Madras, India.

I’m not a Tennessee native either. I’m from New York. Stan Rose – he’s from Los Angeles. Stanley and I share one thing in common; we’re cops for the City of Prospect. I’m the chief and he’s the road sergeant on the four-to-midnight shift.

At 11:45 on a Tuesday night – three quarters of an hour after Patel closed his store, we stood in the Git-N-Go parking lot staring at the empty spot where the big cow once stood. Twenty minutes earlier, Stanley called me about the larceny of that fourteen-foot-tall, trailer-mounted mascot from Richfield Dairies of Philadelphia, Tennessee.

I felt tired. Most middle-aged men are tired at 11:45 PM after they’ve worked a full day. I felt a little extra drowsy that night because for dinner my wife Kate and I made a crab-meat casserole with chopped artichoke hearts and fresh mushrooms in a Parmesan white-sauce with sherry. And we drank a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc with it. For dessert I sipped one of my St. Patrick’s Day favorites, Bailey’s Irish Cream and vodka on the rocks. More in the mood to snuggle up with my good-looking wife then play detective and find an oversized cow, I had less than a positive attitude. But that night Prospect paid me to locate the mammoth bovine. I played detective.

* * *

After a few minutes of questioning, I learned neither Mr. Patel nor his twenty-year-old son, Narang, a full-time college student who worked in the store after classes, could offer any leads. Neither saw anyone hanging around the store or the cow before closing.

During the days prior to the theft, no one noticed a customer with an abnormal fondness for king-sized cows. In short, I got bupkis from the proprietors.

Actually, I got much more than bupkis. Mrs. Patel made chicken korma for dinner and warmed up the leftovers for me. With a piece of Nan bread, mango pickle, and a cup of spiced tea, I enjoyed a great midnight snack.

At 7:45 Sergeant Stanley Rose and I sat in my unmarked Crown Victoria parked in a lonely clearing in the hinterlands of Prospect. Once the hideout of moonshiners, that wooded area changed its economic use from untaxed liquor to a different cash crop until the DEA busted up a lucrative marijuana growing business.

After the pot disappeared, the desolate woodland, connected by makeshift trails, accommodated clandestine lovers and the occasional thief needing privacy. And then it became a place for me to meet informants.

“Wonder what John Deere has this time?” Stan asked.

“He wouldn’t say. Likes to play the man of mystery. Who knows, maybe some old man with a still is back in business.”

“Hope the mosquitoes don’t find us when we get out of the car.”

“You’re a born pessimist. Didn’t mosquitoes bite you when you were an LAPD cop?”

“Not me.”

Stanley is six-four. Few creatures would dare to bite him.

“I think our boy is heading this way,” Stan said.

A solitary figure suddenly appeared on the trail no more than a hundred feet from where we sat. John Deere, as we called him, appeared to be in his forties, of medium height and build. The bright green and yellow baseball cap with the tractor manufacturer’s logo sat on his head. His wardrobe consisted of a plaid short-sleeve shirt and blue denim overalls.

We got out of the car and met him in the middle of the trail.

“Howdy,” I said, trying to embrace the local culture. Stanley nodded to him.

“Whatcha say?” he responded and waited.

“You understand I don’t have money to always pay for information.”

“I done tol’ ya, I owed ya one more favor for the extry cash ya got me. Ya coulda kept it yerse’f. We been through that.”

“I know.”

“Don’t know if ya gonna like what I show ya, but it’s a good’un. Ya gotta foller me.”

“We driving?”

“No, it ain’t fer.”

He turned and walked down the trail.

Stan and I followed. When we reached the narrow gravel road he turned right. The daylight began fading, but even under the forest canopy, enough light filtered through for us to follow him without using our flashlights.

A few minutes walk put us in a clearing ten times larger than the one we left.

“This here’s where they used t’ grow the mary-wanna,” he said. “Look over yonder at this.”

In the upper left corner of the circular clearing I saw a pile of hastily mounded leaves. We walked closer. Poking out from the bottom of the leaves, I noticed a two-tone brown cowboy boot.

“What the hell?” I said. “Stan, give me some light here.”

Both our flashlights probed the pile of leaves. Directly opposite the boot I saw a hand. I turned my light to where our informant last stood. He was gone.

We didn’t disturb much of the scene and it didn’t take long for us to learn that the man under the mulch was dead.

Stan called it in, requesting a county crime scene unit and a medical examiner. He arranged for Officer Will Sparks to meet them both on the main road near the Prospect Air Park and guide them into the clearing.

Crime Scene Investigators Jackie Shuman and David Sparks, Will’s cousin, set up enough portable lighting to illuminate a night baseball game. They puttered around processing and photographing the crime scene while Stan and I looked on with interest.

The on-call pathologist, Dr. Morris Rappaport and his assistant Earl Ogle, represented the ME.

“Wild guess, Mo,” I said, “how long’s he been dead?”

“I don’t mean to be either didactic or pedantic–or facetious, for that matter, but how many homicides have you investigated, Sam, both here and back in New York?” The doctor spoke with a New Jersey accent.

“I don’t know–lots.”

“As well as I, you know when a body goes into rigor and when it relaxes. You can read lividity, and you have a working nose. How long do you think?”

“Couple of days.”

“Ah, a couple of days–bingo, that would be my guess, too. I’ll only know more after the autopsy.

“God bless you, Sam-a-la, you’re a credit to your profession. I say that with all sincerity.”

“Thanks for the compliment. You’ve boosted my ego for another thirty days. Have you found any bullet holes, knife wounds, bludgeon or ligature marks, tire tracks, blah, blah, blah?”

“You’ll plotz when I tell you, but you know what first comes to mind?”

“How could I possibly know, Morris?”

“Vampires.”

The doctor stared at me with a smug look. Earl frowned, perhaps wondering if Morris had been serious, and Stan shook his head, probably wishing he’d taken a vacation day.

The farmhouse on Beasley Road didn’t look like the ramshackle, gothic home Norman Bates inhabited. But I wouldn’t have been there at eleven on a November Sunday morning, had the resident not been victim of a slash-and-stab, Psycho-like killing.

I turned left into the driveway and parked my unmarked Ford near the morgue wagon, crime scene van, and a Prospect PD cruiser.

“Hey, boss,” PO Bobby Crockett said. “Sorry ta bother you, but you’ll wanna see this. Or maybe you won’t.”

“That why you’re out here?” He nodded. “What happened?”

“The vic’s name’s Richard McBath, a teacher at Heritage High. His daughter did a sleepover at a friend’s house. This mornin’ ‘bout ten, the girlfriend’s mother brings the kid home and finds Richard stabbed to death.”

“Where’s that woman now?”

“Junior escorted her home. The McBath girl’s with her.”

“Hear anything about Richard having a wife?”

“Not a word.”

“The ME and crime scene guys been here long?”

“Half an hour.”

“A bad one, huh?”

“Ain’t never seen nothin’ like it. Lord have mercy. The blood, the smell, it’s a mess.”

“I’ll hold my nose and take a look.”

I’d seen houses like that before, not only in Tennessee, but back on Long Island where I’d worked as a cop for twenty years. It was one of the kit-homes people picked from a Sears-Roebuck catalog in the 1920s.

Entering the side door, I found myself in a large eat-in kitchen. In the living room, I found Jackie Shuman, a crime scene investigator, and his partner dusting for latents and taking blood samples.

“Jesus H. Christ,” I said. “How many people got killed here?”

Jackie was kneeling near to me, dusting a lamp table.

“All this blood—looks like a bunch o’ people, but it’s jest one. You doin’ aw rot today?”

“I was before I got here. Who’s the ME?”

“Doc Rappaport’s upstairs. Earl’s with him.”

I pulled on a pair of latex gloves and started up the stairs. On the third step I stopped. “Jackie, you photograph the staircase yet? I don’t want to tromp on this blood before you do your thing.”

“Did it first off. Y’all think yer dealin’ with an amateur?”

“Perish the thought.”

I continued up the stairs and found lots of blood splattered on the runner. Red smears and hand prints showed on the wall along the staircase.

The previous day had been cool, but not cold. Luckily, the heat hadn’t been turned up. But the unmistakable smell of a violent crime hung in the air. A warmer house would have created a really nasty-smelling environment.

I guessed our victim had been butchered sometime during the previous afternoon or evening.

The further up I went, the more blood I saw. The smeared hand prints on the walls were augmented with more intense splattering. On the upstairs landing, it looked like the victim slammed into the wall, leaving a red smear.

To my left was a bathroom, to the right, the largest of three bedrooms. The medical examiner, his helper, and our victim were all in that big room.

“Hey, Morris, what’s a nice Jewish boy like you doing in a place like this?”

The doctor said, “This is a bad one, Sam. Such a mess. I haven’t seen many like this.”

I looked around the room. The victim, a medium-sized man, lay on the floor next to a queen-sized bed. From the blood stains on the coverlet, I knew he started off on the bed, got stabbed, and then slid off onto the floor. A night table stood next to the bed, its top drawer open.

“I’m not pushing you, Mo, but can you give me something?”

“Sure, he’s dead.”

“And you know this after how many years of experience?”

He ignored my humor.

“I haven’t counted yet, but I’m guessing thirty to forty stab wounds and who knows how many cuts.”

“Find the weapon?” I asked.

“Yeah, in the shower, a butcher knife. Jackie says it fits the wooden block in the kitchen.”

“Why’s the drawer open?”

“Who knows?”

“If you want help getting him downstairs, give a shout. I’ll muster the troops.”

“Thanks. And my lower back thanks you, too.”

I began my search with the bureau drawers. In the top drawer, among T-shirts and boxer shorts, I found a box of Remington .38 Special cartridges. Twelve of the original fifty rounds were missing.

“You guys come across a handgun?” I asked.

Neither Morris nor Earl had seen one. I checked the night table with the open drawer and found only the personal trinkets that end up in everyone’s night table. No gun.

I tossed the closet; under the mattress; under the rug; the bottoms, backs, and sides of all the drawers; and everywhere else in the bedroom someone could look for clues—nothing.

I tried the second bedroom and found the closet full of women’s clothing, neatly arranged. Four empty hangers hung on the pole. When I opened the bi-fold doors, the heady smell of lavender attacked my senses. All the drawers in that room contained more women’s clothes. I thought it strange, a young couple with separate bedrooms, and so far no mention of a wife.

I looked at a nine-inch chef’s knife that lay on the shower floor. A shower still wet from use. I opened the glass door and smelled lavender—not as strong as the sachet in the closet, but unmistakably the same, perhaps from a soap or shampoo.

I made my way into the third bedroom, the little girl’s. I found nothing related to the crime.

Downstairs, in a storage room adjacent to the kitchen, I found lots of cardboard boxes with items unnecessary to everyday life in the McBath household. But I noticed an interesting thing: two suitcases—one large, one medium—and a void, a space that made me think a third suitcase had been removed, a smaller one.

I went through the kitchen door, and out to the side yard.

“Bobby,” I said, “did you run the plate on that truck in the driveway?”

“Yessir, comes back to the victim.”

“You check the garage?”

“Yeah, nothin’ ‘cept all the garagey stuff you’d expect.”

“You get any more info on our guy or his family?”

“Not yet.”

“I’m going to call Bettye and get her to fire up the computer. How do I find the woman who called this in?”

He gave me the information.

Bettye Lambert and I walked arm in arm along the Prospect Greenway at 6:15 on a moonless Thursday night. Leaves from poplar, maple, and elm trees floated down, littering the isolated blacktop path, illuminated only by the occasional overhead mercury vapor lamp.

Further up the trail, we stepped over golden-brown sycamore leaves, some the size of dinner plates and all garnished with julienned slivers of willow.

“You walk too fast,” she said. “It’s more romantic to walk slow.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“Then let’s slow down.”

“You want to look romantic, let’s sit on the next bench and neck.”

“Sammy, darlin’, it’s not even forty degrees out here.”

“I know. I’m from New York. I walk fast and the cold doesn’t bother me.”

We walked for another hundred yards. Bettye told me how her son signed up for freshman wrestling at Heritage High School and I told her I just bought a new set of Pirelli radials for my ’67 Austin-Healy.

“Not many people are out on a Thursday night,” she observed.

“Yeah, people are funny. If they walk or run or bicycle three times a week, they do it on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The other days don’t get much action.”

The Smith & Wesson Chief’s Special in my jacket pocket felt cool from the brisk evening temperature. Acorns crunched under our feet as we walked on and passed a narrow path leading to McTeer’s Station Pike.

Sixty seconds later I said, “I think we’ve got company.” Footsteps slapped the pavement behind us.

I whispered, “I’m turning around. Take a quick step forward and to the right.”

“Okey dokey.”

I spun around abruptly and looked at a stocky man not more than ten feet behind us.

“Excuse me,” I said. “What time is it?”

He stopped in his tracks; his unshaven face partially hidden by a hooded sweatshirt worn under a brown Carhartt jacket.

The man looked shaken, but stared into my eyes and recovered quickly. He stepped closer and whipped a hand out of his jacket pocket. I heard the sharp click first, and then saw the brushed silver blade of a push-button knife shine in the lamplight.

“It’s time to gimme your wallet.” His voice sounded low and menacing.

“Hey, take it easy,” I said. “What do you want?”

“I want ya money, stupid. Gimme yer wallet and yer watch or I’ll cut yew and yer perty woman here.”

He pointed the blade roughly six inches above my stomach.

“Oh, I’m so glad you cleared that up, asshole.” I leveled the stainless steel .38 at his chest. “You’re under arrest.”

“Oh, shit!” he said, and tossed the switchblade at me, the point catching in the fabric of my new ninety-dollar Storm Chaser jacket, making a short slice in the cloth.

Looking down at my ruined windbreaker, I said, “Son of a bitch! Don’t you run on me.” I fumbled momentarily getting the revolver back into its holster as I began trotting. Bettye followed close by with a small blue steel .38 in her hand.

“Are you hurt?” she asked.

“No, but I’ll kill him for cutting my jacket.”

I sprinted off after our would-be robber.

“Police. Stop!” I yelled, as the chunky felon ran awkwardly along the path.

He had no where to go but straight ahead. To our left, Crystal Creek gurgled along over rocks and tree roots. To our right, beyond thirty feet of woodlands, a six-foot chain link fence blocked access to the road.

As we approached a dog-leg to the left and a wooden footbridge over the creek, the tarmac walkway puckered in all directions from the overgrown roots of a giant tulip poplar. The cracked pavement offered an obstacle to the fleeing subject. I was only twenty feet behind him when the toe of his sneaker caught the elevated blacktop and sent him sailing.

He landed, letting out an “Ooof,” as he hit the ground, but immediately began low-crawling toward the grass verge and the woods beyond.

I caught up to him before he wiggled ten feet.

“Stay where you are, damn it.” I said, puffing from the run.

As he continued his comical escape, I lunged forward and caught a handful of his hoodie. He struggled and grunted and I slammed my fist into his kidney.

“Goddamnit, you prick, hold still,” I said.

But he still tried to crawl further, all arms and legs flailing in four directions, no doubt hoping to escape the inevitable. I heard Bettye’s footsteps behind me and hit him twice more, same spot.

“Ooof! Oh! Je-sus have mercy!” he cried. “Okay, okay. No more. I give up. You got me.”

From behind me I heard, “For God’s sake, Sam, don’t beat him to death.”

“Bastard ruined my new jacket and he thinks I’ll let him get away!” I slapped him on the head and yanked his right arm behind him to hook up a handcuff.

Less than five minutes later, Officer Will Sparks met us in a marked Prospect PD cruiser sitting at the main intersection of the four trails that made up the city greenway.

I led our defendant toward the open back door of the police car, his hood now hanging behind his head.

“Hey, boss. Hey, Miss Bettye. Y’all got yerse’fs a perpetrator.” Young Sparks sounded cheerful. He looked like a thirty-year-old version of Opie Taylor.

When we reached the cruiser, Will said, “Hey, I know this ol’ boy.”

The man in cuffs hung his head. Will took off his PPD ball cap and ran a hand through his reddish hair.

“Uh-huh, name’s Virgil Terp. I locked him up once fer . . . Cain’t remember. Stolen property or some such.”

“Virgil Terp?” I recalled a historical character with a similar name.

“Yep, that’s him,” Sparks said.

“He only matches the description of the subject in one of the robberies on the greenway,” Bettye said.

Her blonde hair looked shiny in the bright parking lot lights.

“We’ve got three more stick-ups done by someone three inches taller and forty pounds lighter,” I said. “Will, you know if he hangs out with someone about that size?”

Virgil stood at about five-nine and weighed at least two hundred pounds. We needed someone closer to my height, six-foot or even taller, and thin, no more than a hundred and sixty.

“Got him a brother named Morgan,” Will said. “He’s taller and perty thin.”

“Morgan and Virgil Terp?” I said. “You gotta be kiddin’.”

“Nosir. The Terp family’s been around Prospect fer years.”

“Is there a third brother named Wyatt?” I asked.

“Not that I know of,” he said, missing my inference.

Bettye smiled and her hazel eyes sparkled.

I pushed Virgil into the backseat of Will’s car and slammed the door.

“Take him in and start the paperwork,” I said. “We’ll be back at the barn shortly. I’ll write the prosecution worksheet. On your way in, call Stanley and ask him to meet us at the PD. And call in the next cell guard on the list. This guy’s not going anywhere tonight.”

As Will drove away, Bettye and I took the short walk to my unmarked Ford.

“You may want to spend some time on the treadmill, darlin’. You were puffin’ by the time you caught ol’ Virgil,” she said.

“I don’t like treadmills. I get up early three days a week and walk.”

“Then maybe you ought to run.”

“Gimme a break.”

“Bein’ tall, dark, and handsome’s not enough, Sammy. You need to be healthy.”

“Are you my sergeant or my mother?”

I don’t know why she laughed at that.

“Have you gained weight recently?” she asked.

“I have not, and you know it. I’m the same hundred and eighty pounds I’ve been since I was a kid.”

“Just askin’.” She chuckled.

“You were just harassing me.”

“Sammy, would I do that?”

“Yes.”

“I said tall, dark, and handsome, sugar. But there’s a lot more gray up there since you started workin’ here.”

“That’s because of you. Now leave me alone.”

She laughed again. I wished I had Virgil handy. I would have smacked him.