gary cuba within that . . . whatcha call it, that marshal-filly crowd.” “Hamartiaphily.” I’d corrected him at least a dozen times before about the craft name, derived from the Greek, meaning love of sin. “Yes, I personally know quite a few sin collectors out there. But I can vouch that none of them are murderers.” Henderson only huffed in response. He knew the legal line as well as I did. “There’s just one thing I don’t understand,” I said, waving an arm toward the corpse on the floor. “It would have taken a lot of time to do a full wipe. Especially if the victim was so heavily riddled with sins, as you claimed. Why go to all that effort, if only one target sin was the prey?” Henderson shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe the cootie-snatcher could see ‘em but wasn’t experienced enough to type ‘em. So he just grabbed ‘em all, figuring that the target one was in the bunch. I dunno. Just guessing.” He scratched his forehead. “And going along
with that, I suppose he didn’t want to take the easier route, which would have been to remove the body as it was and dispose of it where we couldn’t find it. Too much risk of discovery in that. But sitting here in this dive, he had all the time in the world.” “Makes as much sense as anything else,” I said. “Look, Henderson, I have to get out of this place before I blow my breakfast all over your shoes. The stink of blood is really getting to me. Are you done with me?” Henderson tilted his head toward the door, and I wasted no time leaving the murder scene. •
I hate it when things don’t add up right—and they certainly didn’t in this case. Another scenario had entered my mind at the crime scene, one which I hadn’t floated to Henderson. What if the murder had been committed by an overzealous sin collector, for no other reason than to glom onto a harvest June 2013 - 30