1864, in a secret meeting in one of the courtrooms, Sean Findley, Chief?s grandfather, had turned
Dunetown over to General Sherman without a shot, after Sherman agreed to spare the city from the
torch. It was a story Teddy loved to tell, although the way he told it, old Sean?s role in the surrender
came off more selfish than patriotic. Others apparently thought so too. The old man was assassinated
on the front steps of this same courthouse as he was being inaugurated as Dunetown?s first post-war
mayor.
So much for history.
The DA?s suite was on the first floor, protected by a frost-panelled door and little else. The door to
Galavanti?s office stood open. The tough little district attorney „as poring over a sheaf of legal
documents as thick as an encyclopaedia, her Ben Franklin glasses perched on the end of her nose. I
leaned on the edge of the door and rattled my fingers on the jamb.
“Hi, kiddo,” I said. “Send anybody to the chair today?” She glowered at me over the top of her
glasses.
“I?m not your kiddo, Mr. Kilmer,” he said. “We?re not that familiar. How about the Harry Raines
tape?”
“A bust,” I said. “Nothing but a lot of rataratarata.”
She narrowed her eyes as if she didn?t believe me and said, “I should have guessed that would
happen.”
“Now that?s no way to talk to someone who just laid the biggest case in the county?s history right in
your lap,” I said.
She leaned back, still staring warily at me.
“And just what case is that?”
I paused a little for effect, then said, “The State versus Sam Donleavy.”
She leaned forward so quickly that her chair almost rolled out from under her.
“You busted Sam Donleavy?” she said, her tone sounding like I had Just accused Billy Graham of
indecent exposure.
“He?s being booked right now,” I said, as casually as I could make it.
“On what charge?”
“First-degree murder.”
She jumped up, all five feet of her, and stood with her mouth dangling open.
I held up a forefinger and repeated the news: “Murder one.”
She gulped. I had never heard anybody gulp before, but she definitely gulped.
“Who the hell did he kill?”
