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In the trailer with the door shut, Danny has a sudden fit of the shakes and has to sit down.

It’s the first one since his drinking days, when he used to get the shakes on mornings-after until he got his first cup of coffee into him.

Also some aspirin.

And of course he had them when he woke up in that Wichita jail cell, and there was no coffee or aspirin to banish them.

That was when he decided he had to quit the booze or he was going to get into even more serious trouble.

So he quit, and look at the mess he’s in now.

No good deed, et cetera.

He doesn’t bother making coffee, but there’s a sixpack of Pepsi in the fridge.

He chugs one down, lets out a ringing belch, and the shakes start to subside.

The lawyer’s name is Edgar Ball and he’s local.

He doesn’t expect to get Ball—it’s past 5 PM on a Friday evening—but the recorded message gives him a number to call if it’s urgent.

Danny calls it.

“Hello?”

“Is this Edgar Ball? The lawyer?”

“It is, and I’m just about to take my wife out to dinner at Happy Jack’s.

Tell me why you’re calling and make it brief.”

“My name is Daniel Coughlin.

I think the police believe I murdered a girl.” He rethinks that.

“I know they believe it.

I didn’t do it, I just told them where the body was.

I’m supposed to go in for questioning tomorrow at the Manitou police station.”

“Manitou PD wants to—”

“Not them, KBI.

They’re just going to use a room at the Manitou station to question me.

They’re giving me tonight to stew, but I think they might arrest me in the morning.

I need a lawyer.

I got your name from Bill Dumfries.”

A woman calls something in the background.

Ball says he’ll be there in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.

Then, to Danny: “I’m a real estate lawyer, did Bill tell you that? I haven’t handled a criminal case since the first year I hung out my shingle, and back then it was mostly DUIs and petty larceny.”

“I don’t know any other—”

“What time is your interview?”

“They want me at ten.”

“At Manitou PD on Rampart Street.”

“If you say so.”

“I’ll represent you at the interview, I can do that much.”

“Thank y—”

“Then, if they don’t just drop this, I’ll recommend a lawyer who deals with criminal matters.”

Danny starts to say thank you again, and maybe ask Ball if he could give him a ride to the police station, but Ball has hung up.

It isn’t much, but it’s something.

He calls Becky.

“Hey, Beck,” he says when she answers.

“I’ve got a little problem here, and I wondered—”

“I know about your little problem,” Becky says, “and it doesn’t sound so little to me.

I just got off the phone with Cynthia Babson.”

Of course you did, Danny thinks.

“She says the cops think you killed that girl they found up north.”

She stops there, waiting for him to say he didn’t do it, that it’s ridiculous, but he shouldn’t have to do that.

She’s known him for three years, they have sex once a week, sometimes twice, he’s picked her daughter up from school, and he shouldn’t have to do that, end of story.

He says, “I’m supposed to talk to them tomorrow, these two investigators from KBI, and I wondered if I could borrow your car.

They took my truck to Great Bend and I’m not sure when I’ll get it back.”

There’s a long pause, then Becky says, “I was going to take DJ to the High Banks Hall of Fame tomorrow.

You know she loves those funny cars.”

Danny knows the place, although he’s never been there.

He also knows Darla Jean has never expressed the slightest interest in seeing a bunch of midget racing cars, at least not to him.

If it was a doll museum, that would be different.

“All right.

No problem.”

“You didn’t have anything to do with that girl, did you, Danny?”

He sighs.

“No, Beck.

I knew where she was, is all.”

“How? How did you know that?”

“I had a dream.”

She kindles.

“Like Letitia in Inside View?”

“Yes.

Just like her.

I have to go, Becky.”

“You take care of yourself, Danny.”

“You too, Beck.”

At least she believed me about the dream, he thinks.

On the other hand, Becky seems to believe everything she reads in her favorite supermarket tabloid, including how the ghost of Queen Elizabeth is haunting Balmoral Castle and about the intelligent ant-people living deep in the Amazon rainforest.