Legally Dead by Edna Buchanan Page A

he had plunged into an alligator-infested lake. He clearly intended to disappear without a trace and would have succeeded, had Venturi not stumbled upon the scene.
    Keeping an eye on the gators just offshore, Venturi checked the campsite. There had been a small fire at the center. Papers had been burned, and the fire stirred until all had been incinerated and reduced to ash. Even the FBI lab would find it impossible to resurrect evidence from it.
    The clues were few. He was a Marlboro man. He’d left a Bic lighter and two of the brand’s flip-top boxes, one empty, the other half full. He was neat. The empty pack held a small pen knife and a pair of fingernail clippers.
    It appeared as though he had been there for hours, maybe days, trying to find the strength to complete his plan.
    He had left two untouched sandwiches, both American cheese on white bread wrapped in plastic, and a half pint of blended whiskey. The bottle was empty, the final toast consumed.
    It must have been to bolster his courage. It was not enough to anesthetize him.
    Venturi found the man’s shoes, a bent steak knife, and the gun, a small-caliber two-shot Derringer in the shallows at the lake’s edge. The gun was empty. No trace of anyone else.
    He went back to the boat.
    The moaning stranger struggled to sit up, making his wounds bleed more. His hair was dark brown, his eyes light brown. He looked oddly familiar.
    Venturi opened his first-aid kit and began to check the man’s injuries. The first shot was probably a test to see if the gun worked. When he fired the second, his hand must have been shaking.
    Venturi wrapped a Curlex compression dressing around the man’s left wrist, tight enough to stop the bleeding but not enough to cut off circulation. The patient tried to jerk his arm away.
    â€œNo! Don’t do that. Let me die,” he pleaded in English.
    â€œYou’ll be all right,” Venturi assured him. “I’ll take you to the hospital. They’ll fix you up, then you can talk to a shrink.”
    â€œNo way!” Tears mingled with the water glistening on his face and dripping from his hair.
    â€œWay,” Venturi said firmly. “What’s your problem?”
    â€œI’m having a bad day.”
    â€œBetter than no day at all. You just came damn close to being gator food. Not a good way to go, man. Life can always get better. Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary situation.”
    The man seemed about to laugh but winced instead, as Venturi cleaned his scalp wound with a Betadine-soaked swab. “My life is over,” he blurted, “dead in the water. The way I should be. No hospital. I can’t go there. Word will get out. The vultures will be all over me.”
    Venturi gazed at him curiously. “You mean the press?”
    The man nodded, gasping. “Please,” he said, despair in his voice, “just go away. Leave me here.”
    â€œThat’s not an option.”
    He struggled feebly to hurl himself out of the boat. Venturi easily restrained him, held him down with one hand, and warned him to stop or he’d be handcuffed.
    â€œYou’re a cop?”
    â€œNope. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have handcuffs.”
    The man maintained a defeated silence nearly all the way back to Venturi’s place. He sat hunched over across from Scout, who watched him, his expression grave.
    â€œI had a dog like that once,” the man mumbled, his voice breaking.
    Venturi nodded. “You were lucky.”
    â€œHe’s all wet. Did he pull me out of the water?”
    â€œNo. He’s not Lassie.” Venturi smiled at the private joke. “He was too busy barking at the gators that were about to drag you under.”
    â€œYou should have let ’em.” His voice sounded hollow. “My life is broken and can’t be fixed.”
    â€œAnything can be fixed,” Venturi lied, acutely aware of so many things that never can be