“They’re not going to fire you,” Ryker said as if reading her mind.

“You don’t know that.”

“But I know Maggie. And I know Maggie believes in you,” he replied. “There is no way in hell she’s going to let them do you like that.”

“It may be out of her hands.”

He arched an eyebrow, an incredulous expression on his face. “Have you met Maggie? Nothing is out of that woman’s hands,” he said. “She’s not going to sit back and let them and Alex Ricci railroad you. You can bank on that.”

“I know. But she’s one vote on the council and, unfortunately, she doesn’t have the final say. If the council wants me gone, I’m gone.”

Ryker took a sip of his iced tea, and though he put up a strong front for her, Spenser could see the concern in his eyes.

Spenser took a bite of her salad and glanced around the café, catching people turning quickly away after stealing furtive glances at her. Others looked at her openly, curiosity on their faces. While nobody had been overtly hostile toward her, many of them looked at her accusingly. She was sure Ryker would say she was being paranoid, but Spenser noticed that people weren’t being as open and friendly with her as they normally were.

“I guess more people read the Dispatch than Amanda thought,” she muttered.

“The Dispatch is a garbage rag that nobody takes seriously.”

“Look around, it sure seems like people around here take it seriously.”

“Forget them. People are fickle. Always have been, always will be,” he said. “When the truth comes out, they’ll realize they were wrong. Trust me.”

She offered him a small smile. “I do trust you.”

“I’m glad you do,” he replied. “Speaking of the truth coming out, have you been able to get a bead on Alex yet?”

Spenser shook her head. “No sign of him anywhere. He’s lying low. I’ve talked to Kyra Foster again and she won’t tell me where he is. But she did say he’s still talking to her.”

“Why not deploy your deputies? Maybe they can find him.”

“Lying to a reporter isn’t a crime. And because he hasn’t committed a crime in town, that would be using my department for my own benefit, which would be an abuse of power,” Spenser told him. “Right now, it’s on me to find him on my own time. With Alex gunning for me and trying to ruin my reputation, I have to be sure I color inside all the lines.”

“Talking with a tabloid reporter is a pretty radical shift from leaving bullets on your porch.”

“It is. And I’m curious to find out what made him switch tacks.”

“You can ask when you find him.”

“I’m starting to get the feeling when he’s ready to be seen, he’s going to find me,” Spenser said. “He’s going to pop up out of nowhere like some evil clown in a jack-in-the-box in a horror flick or something.”

“Well, if he does, I have no doubt you’ll handle him.”

“I’m kind of hoping I don’t have to,” Spenser said.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket with an incoming text message. Spenser gave Ryker an apologetic shrug as she pulled it out and quickly read the message.

“I have to go,” she said. “The tox screen came back on Seth Hamill.”

“Go do your job, slacker.”

She got to her feet and placed a quick kiss on his cheek. “Sorry I have to go, but thanks for lunch.”

“I’ll see you later this evening.”

“You will.”

Spenser tucked her phone into her pocket and headed out of the café, anxious to see what the results of the blood panel had to say.

“Good afternoon, Sheriff.”

“Afternoon, Doc.”

He quickly minimized a screen on his computer as Spenser stepped over to the small workstation Swift kept in his autopsy suite. She was pretty sure that, unlike a lot of guys, he wasn’t looking at porn. Knowing Swift the way she did, she was relatively certain he was checking out conditions on one golf course or another. For him, that was porn.

“We got the results back from the crime lab?” she asked.

“We did.”

“And?”

“I haven’t looked at them yet,” he said, then quickly added. “I was waiting for you, Sheriff.”

Spenser had to stop herself from rolling her eyes.

“That was thoughtful,” she said dryly. “Shall we have a look then?”

“Of course.”

Swift opened up his program and clicked on the email from the crime lab. Knowing she’d need a copy for her files, he printed a pair of copies of the report.

Despite lacking a medical degree or any sort of formal training, Spenser read through the report, hoping she’d pick up on something. It also gave Swift time to go through the report himself knowing he’d understand everything he was reading. He took a couple of minutes and as he read, his expression grew more troubled, and when he was done, he set the page down on the table, his thin lips curled down.

“What is it?” Spenser asked.

“Mr. Hamill was free of illicit drugs and alcohol. But there was an alarmingly high level of tetrahydrozoline in his system at the time of his death.”

“Tetrahydrozoline,” Spenser mused.

Knowing she’d heard of it before, she thought about it for a beat, trying to figure out where. And then it hit her.

“Tetrahydrozoline is the main ingredient in eye drops,” Spenser said.

“Yes, it is. But I don’t understand what it’s doing in his system. Not in this amount.”

“There was a case in Wisconsin relatively recently where a woman used eyedrops to kill a friend of hers for the money,” Spenser said.