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Copyright © 2018 by Aitana Moore

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Table of Contents

CRIMES OF LOVE

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-NINE

THIRTY

THIRTY-ONE

THIRTY-TWO

EPILOGUE

LESSER CRIMES

This is the third and last volume in the Deadly Lies trilogy.

Some parts of this story were inspired by real events.

I hope you enjoy the end of the trilogy!

~ Aitana

ONE

When the police came, James was asleep.

Lee watched him as he lay next to her on the hospital bed; the staff would have found it impossible to separate them, and six days after her surgeries she had developed no infections.

He, on the other hand, had finally allowed his body and mind to rest after the almost super human effort he had made in the desert, and after the nights of vigil by her side at the ICU.

It was too bad they wouldn’t have more time together, Lee thought as she watched the uniformed officers walking their way. The officers were followed by two men in ill-fitting suits.

"They're fast," she said in a small voice. Her fingerprints had only been taken an hour ago. Perhaps, who knew, they were slow; in any case, she couldn’t run anymore.

And James hadn’t been sleeping so deeply after all. His eyes flew open and he turned to follow her gaze.

She pressed his hand with urgency. "Please believe me, this time I wouldn't have run. All I wanted was to stay with you."

He sat up. “You said it wasn’t serious.”

“I had to say that.”

Getting out of bed, he ran a hand through his disheveled hair and looked at her again just before the police came in. “Lee …”

The men knocked before entering, although they could see the room through the glass wall. One of the suits stepped inside, followed by the other, and addressed Lee. "Are you Lynette Annamae Miller?"

Lee nodded.

"Then we have come to arrest you for the murder of your stepfather, Joseph Warren Keane."

"Lee?"

Her eyes switched from the policemen to James, and she gave a small shrug. “Now you know everything. You know what I'm meant to have done — and I don't think we can make this one go away."

TWO

"We can get out of this together," James said again. "Just trust me — just talk to me."

Lee had been under arrest at the hospital for three days. The lead detective in Joseph Keane's case had arrived to take her to Greensboro, although he had to wait until the doctors discharged her. Detective Cecil Putney was a lean black man of about forty, with a slow, measured way of speaking that gave him a dignified air.

At first he had kept James away and spent time inside the room trying to get Lee to confess — but James had already hired one of the best attorneys in North Carolina, who had forbidden her to talk unless he were present. She hadn't said anything to Putney.

Realizing that he wouldn’t get a confession, the detective had shown a grudging respect for what they had just gone through.

"You really carried her all that way?" he asked James. "How did you do that?"

James shrugged, and Putney nodded.

"Well, doesn't love just perform some crazy stunts?" He glanced inside the room. "I'm not from her town, you know. It's so small it barely has a police force. They had to call us from Greensboro to investigate this. I tell you, it doesn't look good for her."

He motioned James inside, but he was never too far away — or there would be another police officer sitting right outside the room. James wasn’t allowed to close the shades over the glass, but he sat in front of Lee, who was in an armchair wearing a blue nightgown he had bought for her. It touched him to see how young she looked, how frail and innocent, but the feeling didn't last long.

“I understand why you lied about your name,” he said. “It’s appalling.”

She gave a small smile. “Thought you’d think so.”

"We’ll keep to Lee.” She said nothing. “You're not going to talk to me? Not going to tell me what this is about?"

Lee shook her head. "I can't."

Taking a deep breath, James counted till twenty and said, "You didn't do it."

"How do you know?"

Without raising his eyes from his own shoes, he warned her, "Don't start. I know you didn't, you're protecting someone."

Her voice was still hoarse: "You can't know that."

Damn. Furniture was about to start flying out the window — and then Putney would never let him into the room again. James pinched the bridge of his nose. "Why do you do this?"

"James."

Lee’s tone made him look at her. Her knees were between his, their chairs almost touching, and he didn't know whether he wanted to hold her hands or leave her sitting there while he cooled off somewhere else.

What an impossible woman.

"Everything I've done, the good and the bad, was so I would never have to speak about this,” she said. “You must know how much it costs me not to talk to you, after all we’ve been through. After what you did for me."

He wished he could stop the muscle on his jaw from clenching. "That's where you're mistaken. I didn't do anything for you, I did it for me. Because I couldn't stand to let you die. Just as I won't stand by watching you go to jail for something you didn't do. And if there is anything you should trust, Lee, it's people's selfish motives." James leaned forward. "I'm not going to let it happen."

"It will happen," she said almost tenderly, "whatever has to, whether you want it or not."

"Wrong again."

"James—"

He interrupted her. "Lee, if you want something covered up, someone not involved in this, someone who might even be guilty, I can accept that. I can help you."

"And become an accessory …"

Grabbing her chair by the arms, he gave it a shake. "I don't give a fuck!"

She made a small grimace; of course, she still had stitches in places where the smallest movement would hurt her. James leaned back, placing his hands on his own chair. "I’m sorry. But I don't give a fuck about becoming an accessory," he repeated more calmly. "I actually don't care if you killed the man, because if you did, I know you had good reason. I don't care about lying, if someone else killed him and you want to protect that person. What I want is for you to include me. For you to tell me and trust me."

"You just said you'll never allow me to go to jail. That means you'd use what I tell you, if it came to that."

"So, you admit you didn't kill him."

She shook her head, almost like a child, and James stood abruptly, his chair flying to the floor. The policewoman outside looked in and opened the door, frowning.

James smiled. "Just a chair that tipped over."

The woman nodded and closed the door, although she watched them for a moment.

"Being with you is like playing a stupid board game for children," James said in a low voice as he walked to the window. "I take a card and it's back to square one, like nothing ever happened." He turned toward her and let his eyes show the fury he felt. "I'd have died by your side and you think I wouldn't keep a secret, if it was this important to you?"

"It's not my secret to give away!" she cried, locking hands on her lap.

"OK, you didn't do it, but — I know! It’s been a couple of weeks! Must be sacrifice time again."

She only shook her head until he wanted to wrench it off.

"Don't make me—"

"Don’t say anything else then.” He leaned over her. "Not to me."

Lee knew him well enough. She knew he was going to lose it in a second, and she said nothing. He opened the door so suddenly that the policewoman gasped. Nodding at her, at the doctors, at Putney who was by the coffee machine, he kept walking until he was outside; until he had put some distance between himself and Lee.

Five days later, he was sitting in a diner, across from the attorney he had hired. Luckily, Carter D. Paxton practiced in Greensboro, where Lee's preliminary hearing would take place.

"To claim self-defense for hitting a man on the head with a fire poker, from behind ..." Paxton sat back on the red upholstery of their booth and stretched his legs. "It's tricky."

James managed to tear his eyes away from the man's tie, which depicted black ostriches over a white background. Despite his choice of attire, Paxton was at the top of his profession.

"Honey," Paxton said in his soft voice as the waitress went by, "Susan, honey, you know I’m dying for the blueberry pancakes. Will you have some, James?"

Smiling, James shook his head. Paxton had offered him extravagant amounts of sugar every time they had met, and James’ refusal always made Paxton pout a little, his round face taking on the look of a puzzled baby's. The attorney also called everyone honey, sweetheart and dear — even other men, although he was a conservative husband and father.

James rather liked it. He nearly always liked eccentrics.

"That's one of the main reasons I know she didn't do it," James said, returning to Paxton's statement about the murder. "Lee almost died because a man attacked her and she couldn't accept that she needed to hurt him."

"That was an old man. Joe Keane was forty-five and able-bodied. She might not have wanted to risk a confrontation with him. Maybe she preferred to get rid of him when his back was turned. If he had been beating her or her mother — or her sister — that might be self-defense, in a way. Whack him when he can't do anything about it so that he stops forever. But that's not how it's going to play out in court."

"You think it will go to trial, then?"

"She does a run and leaves her fingerprints on the crime weapon? And leaves Keane dead at the foot of the stairs after she threatened to kill him in front of several witnesses?" Paxton raised fair, bushy eyebrows. “The DA has plenty of probable cause, and Lee hasn’t really given me much to go with so far. But the thing is still to avoid a trial, of course.”

James toyed with his coffee spoon. "It would be a bloody waste of time. She didn't do it."

“We can't be that sure of people, you know. I have seen angels turn out to be devils more often than I'd care to recall."

"She is neither angel nor devil. But hers are lesser crimes than murder, and she has a lot of courage. I have no doubt that she would hit a man facing her, not one walking away."

"Well, maybe she has changed. Besides, she isn't denying that she did it."

It's what I am meant to have done, Lee had said. She had phrased it that way because she hadn't done it. She was protecting someone else. And she was now at a detention center, awaiting the preliminary hearing which would take place in another week.

"She has asked about you," Paxton said, as he studied the pancakes that had been set before him. "You won't be visiting her?”

"No."

Paxton looked up from his dish. "Not at all?"

"No, but you need to tell her that she shouldn't worry about any legal fees. It would be hard for her to get hold of her money, and I will take care of things, no matter what."

"Anything else?" Paxton asked, a fork poised above the stack of pancakes.

"Yes." James placed his elbows on the table, nodding slowly. "There is something else I want you to tell her …"

THREE

Today, Paxton wore a bow tie with multi-colored polka dots and a navy-blue suit — but like James, Lee wasn’t concerned about his clothes. Paxton belonged to a type she knew well: the scion of a ruined patrician clan. His family had once been rich, but their fortune had followed the fall of tobacco, or something like it, until they had been left with crumbling mansions, debts and good antiques.

Many families would then sell their heirlooms or part of their land to ensure a good education for a promising boy such as Paxton must have been. Half those boys would amount to nothing, too used to thinking of hard work as something beneath them. Others would triumph, as Paxton had. And then people, at least in the good old Tar Heel State, would recognize and accept their eccentricities. Their eccentricities would, in fact, advertise their qualities.

I’m so good at this that I can dress funny, talk funny and act funny.

James had gotten her the very best attorney money could hire. Paxton’s eyes could go from vague to suddenly keen, showing that he was very much on the ball; he had been idly asking her questions for half an hour, but his expression became sharp now.

“I’ll need help from you if I’m to help you,” he said. “We need to present an alternative to the judge, to get rid of probable cause.”

“There isn’t much more I can say,” Lee told him.

Paxton glanced at his partner, Ava Cuthrell. She was in her early thirties and smelled of hair spray and of a soft, floral perfume that was nevertheless expensive, as was her dark pink dress. Despite her large blonde curls and gentle voice, Lee knew that no one should make the mistake of underestimating Ava either.

“You need to give us something, honey,” Ava said kindly. “Just a little something to go with.”

Lee would have liked to help them do their job, but instead she shrugged. “What can I give you?”

“The DA will come with photos of a man bludgeoned to death, with a weapon that has your fingerprints on it and with your priors.” Paxton pulled several sheets and turned them toward Lee. There was her photo at seventeen, the only time she had been arrested. “What can we go with?”

“Any mitigating factors, honey?” Ava asked, her forehead crumpling in sympathy. “Did your stepfather beat you? Did he try to rape you?”

“No. And I don’t think he’d be capable of that — the rape or molestation thing.”

“Did he threaten your little sister?” Ava pursued.

“The day before he was killed, he pushed her inside her room, locked the door and kept her without food.”

The two attorneys exchanged a look.

“Is that all?” Paxton asked.

“Well, that’s why I went to the bar and told him that if he touched her, I would kill him. That’s the reason.”

“And he had never touched her before, and he didn’t beat her or threaten her?”

“No.”

“But we know that he beat your mother, because we have the 911 calls.”

“He pushed her around. But I think she beat him worse than he beat her.”

Paxton threw his hands in the air. “Sweetheart, are you going to defend the man you’re supposed to have killed?”

Lee tore a paper napkin into small strips. “I didn’t love Joe, but I didn’t hate him. He wasn’t the worst man — the worst person I’ve ever met.”

Ava softly tapped the table, her hand close to Lee’s. “Are you saying you didn’t kill him? Because it looks to all the world as if you did.”

“That doesn’t really matter now,” Paxton said, leaning back in his chair as he stroked his chin and looked outside. It was December, but the weather was mild. Crazy Piedmont weather that could go from mild to snow in a space of a few days. The snow would never stay on the ground for long.

“We won’t escape a trial, in any case,” Lee said.

“Not like this, we won’t,” Paxton agreed. The front legs of his chair hit the ground again. “All right, you don’t have an alibi. But who can we call on your behalf? Your mother?”

Lee wished she could help her bitter, lopsided smile, but she couldn’t.

“Your grandmother?”

Laughing out loud, Lee motioned toward her seventeen-year-old self. “That rap sheet was her doing.”

“You stole a valuable ring from her,” Paxton pointed out.

“It’s what she says.”

Lee sounded stubborn and rebellious — as if she had never grown beyond seventeen or left that place. It made Paxton gaze at her thoughtfully.

“If she says you stole it, it’s your word against hers,” he remarked.

“Her word will win every time, too.”

Ava was patient. “If we can show that you didn’t steal the ring, then we can show that you hadn’t really embarked in a life of crime before the murder.”

“I took the ring,” Lee said. “I can’t deny that.”

“There would also be the charges of battery.” Paxton shifted papers to look at the photos of a middle-aged man with bruises on his face and skull. “How did these happen?”

“I didn’t like how he touched me without my consent.”

“And you couldn’t just denounce him?”

This time it was Ava who looked at her senior partner, raising her eyebrows.

“Oh, all right,” Paxton said. “I get it. No one would have listened.”

“What about your sister?” Ava asked. “That’s a good story to tell. You took care of her.”

“No!” Lee cried. “No, Cora is to be kept out of this.”

“But do you know where she is?”

Again, Lee didn’t answer. Paxton stood up, shoving his hands in his pockets, and circled the room. “No witness to anything good you’ve ever done, several witnesses to assault, battery, robbery. No alibi for the night of the murder: you freely admit you went to your mother’s house, where the murder took place — and according to the last people who saw you, you’d have made it there in plenty of time to kill Joe. No sign of your sister to testify on your behalf, your mother was asleep that night, plenty of people saw you threaten Joe for just pushing your sister into a room and leaving her without food for a while.”

He stopped and turned toward Lee, cocking his head.

“I guess it doesn’t look good for me,” Lee said, still tearing the napkin.

“Well, there is a lot of time ahead,” Paxton replied. “We might find out things, when we get discovery. James has said money will be no object, so we can have all the evidence the prosecution will hand over triple-examined by the best people in the country. In the world, maybe.”

James. He would never ask for her permission to go through her life. James would always decide on his own; he would always act. If he ever learned her reasons, he would dismiss them. He wouldn’t be able to understand why things had to be just so. Why she was willing to go to jail so that they would remain just so.

Lee couldn’t allow James to decide, but there was nothing she could do to stop him, except refuse the counsel he had hired. She could do that.

“I need to see him,” she said.

Paxton took his place across from her again. “He’s in Charlotte getting your bail. It’s a million dollars cash, and that needs some engineering by major banks. But in any case, he said he won’t come.”

“Tell him he has to. Tell him I need to speak to him.”

“I’ve told him several times. And he doesn’t look like the sort of person to change his mind once it’s made up.”

No, he wasn’t that sort of person at all, and he was angry — which made him even more stubborn. James was determined that she should not waste her life in prison, and he wasn’t going to let things go because she asked him.

Paxton cleared his throat. “He told me to give you a message, though.”

“What?”

The attorney interlaced his fingers. “He said to tell you that if you refuse counsel, or if at any part of this process you plead guilty, you will never see him again."

FOUR

“Do you swear to say the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

“I do.”

James had heard the sentence in just about every cop show or legal drama he had ever watched. It was now being said in a small courtroom with wooden paneling and a large American flag. He had also seen more flags than he could count since arriving in North Carolina: inside buildings, outside private homes, on lapels, on bumper stickers. There had also been a few Confederate flags stuck to the windows of trucks on the highway.

Twenty people were in the courtroom, apart from the DAs, defense attorneys and officers. A couple of people who looked like reporters were taking note for a state or city newspaper, James supposed, although Joseph Keane’s murder was a five-year-old story that hadn’t raised an enormous amount of interest even in a relatively peaceful county like Guilford.

Greensboro felt small to a Londoner, although it occupied a good amount of territory. It had a cluster of buildings like the pieces in a Monopoly game and red-brick tobacco warehouses turned into homes or restaurants. Its angular lines and sharp shadows on clean gray sidewalks also made it resemble a movie set. Leafy suburbs sprawled out, with gabled houses and tidy yards.

Judge William Bennett lowered his hand after swearing in the witness. Bennett was fat, his black robe making a triangle out of the body behind the bench, and his eyes were squeezed almost shut in a face that now turned toward the prosecution.

A handsome black woman in a trouser suit stood and moved to a podium between the two desks representing the state and the defense. She introduced herself as Cynthia Williams and addressed the witness, a young police officer in uniform. He had pale eyes, auburn hair cut close to his head and the slightly belligerent look of someone who had a little authority but felt he ought to have more.

“Could you state your name for the court, please?” Williams asked.

“Caleb Samuel Brooks.”

“Where do you work?”

“Hawkshaw police department, ma’am.”

“Were you on duty on the morning of November 29th, 2013?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Did you receive a call?”

“I did, ma’am.”

“What was the nature of the call?”

“Dispatcher advised that there was a man found dead in 247 Howard Lane.”

“Who had called 911?”

“The deceased’s wife.”

“Did you immediately make your way there?”

“I did.”

“Were you alone?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Is that usual?”

“Yes, ma’am. We have a population of about eight thousand and a small police force. There isn’t much that happens in Hawkshaw, so most of the time we’ll be answering a phone call on our own.”

“Even a possible homicide call, like this one?”

“It wasn’t stated that it was homicide, just that a man was dead.”

“Did you know the man?”

“Yes, Joe Keane.”

“Do you mean Joseph Warren Keane?”

“I do.”

“What was your relationship to Mr. Keane?”

The officer shrugged. “I knew him. I reckon I know most everybody in town.”

“Was it Mr. Keane’s house that you were being called to?”

“Yes. I mean, no. I mean, it was his wife’s house. I guess it was his too, ’cause they got married, but it was originally her house.”

“Was his wife the person who made the call?”

“Yes.”

“Could you state her name?”

“April Miller — or April Keane, at the time.”

“Does she go by April Miller or April Keane now?”

“April Keane, ma’am.”

James glanced at the blonde woman sitting two rows behind the prosecution. She had a bit of Lee in her; the eyes were of the same extraordinary green, and her full lips were similar to her daughter’s. But there the resemblance ended: April Keane was in her early forties, but her skin was blotched and her hair both brassy and straggly. She had looked at James with an alert, almost greedy air of curiosity. He had only returned her look once and she had smiled then, half raising a hand as if she knew him.

Her eager greeting, combined with a knowing smile, disturbed him. What, for one thing, was she doing behind the prosecution? Should she not sit behind her daughter, where he was, in a show of support?

Lee wore her hair up and the back of her neck seemed vulnerable to him — pale and still too thin after the ordeal she had undergone. She didn’t belong in a detention center, not after almost dying. The cruel impartiality of the law angered James, but she was now flanked by Paxton and by Ava Cuthrell, two capable people. He needed to think that everything would be all right, and he wanted to concentrate on what was being said.

The bare outline of Joe Keane’s murder was available on the internet. Client-attorney privilege forbade Paxton to tell James what Lee had told him, although it was James who paid him; but Paxton had already explained that Lee hadn’t said much at all.

Lee had kept many secrets, and some of them would be revealed now.

“What did you find when you arrived at 247 Howard Lane?” Williams pursued.

“When I arrived, the door was open, and Mrs. Keane was standing outside in her bathrobe,” Brooks said. “I also noticed that she was wearing some fluffy-type slippers, and that they had blood on them.”

“Did she seem upset?”

“She seemed a little bit …” Brooks looked at April Keane. “A bit hysterical?”

April nodded, encouraging him. Lee turned in profile to look at her mother. Her lashes fell over her eyes almost at once, and she faced forward again. It was as if she were thinking, “What’s the use?”

Stop thinking like that, Lee.

“What did Mrs. Keane say to you then?” Williams continued.

“She said she thought Joe was dead, and that there was a lot of blood all over.”

“Could you describe what you saw upon entering the house?”

“Well, right away when you enter, to the left a little bit, you have the stairs. Joe was lying at the bottom of the steps on his side, and there was blood beneath his head, sort of pooling, you know? And there were spots and then smudges of blood on the wall, and then drops of blood leading to the door and out.”

“Did you notice all that as you walked in?”

“I did, ma’am.”

“And what did you do?”

“I … I went to the body first, to see if he was really dead, because April —Mrs. Keane — couldn’t swear one hundred percent that he was. She said that she hadn’t had the courage to touch him. I sort of crouched by him and tried to see if he was breathing — and Mrs. Keane ran and found me a metal tray so I could put it to his nose, but I couldn’t see it being clouded by breath. I had to touch his neck, but he was very cold, and the blood was all congealed.”

“Meaning that it looked like he had been there a while?”

“Yes, as far as I could tell.”

“And did you turn the body, to feel his pulse?”

“No, I felt it on his neck, same way he was lying on the ground. I ascertained at that point that he really was dead.”

Brooks pronounced words like “congealed” and “ascertained” syllable by syllable.

“Did you inform Mrs. Keane that her husband was dead?” Williams asked.

“I did.”

“How did she react?”

“She put her hand to her mouth and cursed a few times. Then she backed away and started to cry.”

“What did you do?”

“I was going to call it in, but I heard someone moving on the floor above and I asked her if it was her daughter.”

“Which daughter?”

The officer shot a quick look at Lee. “I asked her if it was Lynette.”

“Do you mean the defendant?” Williams asked, motioning toward Lee.

“Yes. I said, ‘Is Lynn up there?’ And she said it was probably Cora.”

“What did you do then?”

“Well, Cora was only eight years old, and if she was waking up she was going to see her stepfather just lying there dead and a lotta blood, so I called out for her to stay put, and I climbed up real quick, grabbed her, asked her to keep her eyes shut and carried her downstairs.”

The judge, who had been listening to him with chin on hand now asked, “Did you disturb the stairs by running up to stop her coming down?”

“Yes, sir. Although I avoided the blood on the carpet of the stairs so as not to mess up the crime scene.”

“Did you know it was a crime scene?”

“Well … I didn’t know, no sir, not at the time when I told Cora to stay in her room. I thought Joe had fallen down the stairs or something. It was only after that I saw the poker.”

“Do you mean the fireplace poker, which has been established as the crime weapon?” Williams asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Where was it?”

“It was by Joe’s body. Like it had been dropped next to him.”

“Did you see any blood on the poker?”

“Yes, ma’am. The end of it, the pointy part and the part that curves as well — all that was bloody, up till maybe one half of it?”

Williams raised her eyes from the notes she had placed before her. “What did you do then?”

“I asked Mrs. Keane what happened. And she said she didn’t know, she had woken up, brushed her teeth and her hair, and when she went down the staircase she saw the blood marks on the walls and the blood on the carpet, and round the bend she saw Joe. She said that she managed to go down and see he was unresponsive, and that’s when she made the call.”

“What did you do then?” Williams repeated in a monotone, returning to her notes.

“I called the station and told them we had a dead body, and then I started to bag the evidence.”

“Is that standard?”

“Again, ma’am, it’s a very small town — and we hadn’t really had any murders. It doesn’t happen there. But it’s what we’re taught to do, bag the evidence, photograph things as they are and keep anyone from messing the crime scene until a homicide detective and a forensics team from Greensboro can come.”

“Did someone else come at that point, from your station?”

Brooks nodded at a young man with dark hair and a uniform jacket stretched over muscular shoulders who sat among the public.

“Yes, ma’am. My colleague, Officer Noah Wright, came over to help.”

“I’ve no more questions, Your Honor,” Williams said.

The judge turned to the defense desk. “Mr. Paxton?”

Paxton took his place behind the podium and leaned on it with his left elbow as his right hand idly played with his glasses. “Officer Brooks, how do you know the defendant?”

The witness’ pale eyes flew to Lee and back to Paxton. “How do I know—?”

“How do you know Lynette Annamae Miller? When did you meet her?”

“In school.”

“Do you mean Andrew Jackson Junior High School?”

“Yes.”

“I believe you were twelve and she eleven at the time?” Paxton put on his glasses to consult his notes. “Both of you in sixth grade?”

“Yes.”

“And she was arriving from Raleigh to live here?”

“That’s right.”

“Did you become friends?”

Brooks shrugged. “Not very much.”

“What about later? In High School?” Again, Paxton consulted his notes. “James K. Polk High School. Did you make friends then?”

The man’s eyes again sought Lee’s, but she wasn’t looking at him.

Paxton raised his eyebrows at Brooks. “Well?”

“Yes, we made friends.”

“More than friends? Were you, in fact, her boyfriend for two years, between 2009 and 2011?”

Brooks cleared his throat before saying, “Yes.”

“As a matter of interest, who broke up with whom?”

Williams stood. “Your Honor, how is this relevant?”

The judge waved a hand, allowing the question. He was interested in the answer and leaned forward to hear it.

“We broke up a few times,” Brooks said with a scowl.

“The last time — the definitive time: who broke up?”

“She did.”

“And did you at that time, and at several other times in front of witnesses, tell her …” Paxton looked at his notes, although James suspected he didn’t need to. “ ‘You’ll never be rid of me except in your grave, Lynette’ — or variations of that sentence?”

Brooks shrugged. “That’s just stupid stuff people say when they break up.”

“But did you not say to the defendant about three weeks before Joseph Keane’s death, two full years after she had broken up with you, and I quote: ‘I will make your life hell, you know I can do it?’ ”

The officer looked over at Bennett, as if appealing to him, but the judge waited for his answer with hooded eyes.

“It’s stupid stuff, you say it to your ex or something, or she says it to you without meaning it.”

“Two years after breaking up? I suppose that time has a different meaning in a small town with relatively few girls around your age.”

Officer Brooks’ look had turned sullen. “There were other girls. She wasn’t the only one in town, no matter what she thought.”

“And then you are the one who answers a distress call at her mother’s house,” Paxton went on, ignoring him. “And you are the one who — without the slightest previous experience of homicide cases — ‘bags,’ as you called it, the evidence. You’re the one who stays in charge of the murder weapon and the crime scene.”

Williams stood again. “Your Honor, this is a preliminary hearing to establish probable cause. Discrediting a witness should be done in front of a grand jury at a trial.”

Paxton turned an innocent face to Bennett. “But Your Honor, I am stating facts. The officer who answered the call and bagged the evidence was the defendant’s boyfriend for two years and was heard telling her he could make her life hell. He had no experience in homicides, and yet he was in charge of the evidence. Nevertheless, as far as we are concerned the witness is excused.”

Wasting no time, Williams returned to the podium. “The state now calls on April Marjorie Keane.”

Officer Brooks left the witness box and swaggered past the defense table, staring at Lee. His eyes fell on James, too, and two deep vertical lines appeared between his brows. He took a seat across the way and smoldered as April took the stand.

Mrs. Keane swiveled a little toward the judge and gave him a coy look, like a woman who still takes a man’s admiration for granted even while no longer being able to rely on it. Bennett swore her in, going back to the slight boredom he had displayed before. Williams once again asked the witness to state her name and her address; again, the day of her husband’s death was discussed: she had woken up, found him at the bottom of the stairs and called the police. Her account did not vary from Brooks’, and her accent was broader than anyone else’s so far.

“Who was in the house with you that night?” Williams asked.

“My daughter Cora Emily Miller.”

It was as if Lee’s stillness had increased at the mention of Cora, although she had sat motionless through most of the questioning; it was as if she were afraid that a slight movement from her might make her sister materialize in the courtroom, when she was across the ocean in Switzerland.

William asked, “How old was Cora?”

“She was eight years old at the time.”

“What was the relationship between Joe and Cora?”

“He was her stepfather.”

“How long had you been married to him at the time of his death?”

“We had been married two years, but I had known him three. Since Cora was five.”

“Did she call him ‘Dad’ or consider him her father?”

April wriggled on the chair, her lips curving downward in disapproval. “No. She couldn’t, you see, because Lynette wouldn’t let her.”

“Could you clarify that statement? Did the defendant forbid her sister—?”

“Not forbid. She just kept reminding Cora who her real daddy was.”

“Who was Cora’s real father?”

“His name was Nathan Tyler.”

“Were you ever married to him?”

“No, ma’am. That’s why Cora’s last name is my maiden name, Miller, just like Lynette’s.”

“Was Nathan Tyler the reason you moved to Hawkshaw?”

“Yes. We met in Raleigh, where I was living at the time, but he got a job in Greensboro.”

“He convinced you to move here?”

“Yes, when I got pregnant. But he turned out to be a good-for-nothing — lost his job, went off to Texas with someone else and hardly paid child support or visited her at all. And that’s why I thought that Joe was a better father to Cora, but Lynette just kept reminding her that Joe wasn’t her father.”

Lee wrote something down and pushed it toward Paxton. Her mother’s sharp glance at her was like the sudden flick of a whip, but April’s features quickly resumed their previous docility as Williams went on, “At the time of Joe’s death, then, you had been seeing him for three years, and for the past two you were married. How would you describe your relationship to him?”

April sighed. “We were very much in love.”

“But you placed four calls complaining of domestic violence in those years.”

The woman on the stand shrugged. “We were passionate. We fought, we made up. I didn’t ever press charges, Officer Brooks can tell you that, his partner Noah would tell you that, all the other officers. I never pressed charges; it was just the heat of the moment.”

“How would you describe Cora’s relationship to him?”

“Well, in spite of what I said before, that she didn’t call him daddy because of Lynette, I think they had a good relationship. He even took her out sometimes, when she wanted to go to the aquarium or the museum. He was good at math, and he would help with her homework. When we had barbecues, he would always cook corn on the cob — he’d say, ‘That’s what Coralina likes.’ He called her like that, Coralina.”

“How would you describe the defendant’s relationship to him?”

For a moment April sat looking at Lee. “It’s hard to say. When Lynn lived in the house …”

Bennett interrupted her: “Wait, let’s back up a bit. Give us a sense of timing here. How old was the defendant when you met Joe, when he went to live in the house, all that.”

“All right,” April said, with the eagerness of a teacher’s pet. “I didn’t exactly ‘meet’ Joe, because as Officer Brooks says the town is small — so I’d seen him around by the time we started dating. He moved into the house when Lynette was sixteen, ’cept she was at the hospital. Cora was five, like I said. We got married the year after. And by the year after that, Lynette wasn’t living with us anymore.”

“Where was she living?”

“Well, that was 2012, the year Lynette turned eighteen. It was the year she married Billy.”

FIVE

Married.

Married to Billy.

Who the hell was Billy?

Why wasn’t Billy in any of the articles, and why hadn’t Paxton told James that Lee was married?

Why hadn’t Lee told him?

Paxton threw a glance over his shoulder and gave a small apologetic shrug, as if saying he couldn’t have breached client-attorney privilege. Lee, on the other hand, didn’t move at all. She might have imagined that she couldn’t keep her marital status a secret during an investigation of her life.

And where was Billy now? Had they gotten a divorce? Was he dead? Gone?

Bloody hell.

Out of the corner of his eyes, James spotted Officer Brooks watching him, and he kept calm. In fact, he floated in a sea of calm. There would be an explanation, he was sure; all in good time. And, knowing Lee, there would also be more surprises, and he braced himself for them.

“All right, proceed,” Judge Bennett told Williams.

 “I was asking you about the defendant’s relationship to the deceased,” Williams told April. “What was it like?”

“Like I said, Lynette wasn’t really around either when I started dating Joe,” April continued, clearly enjoying everyone’s attention. “She got real sick right before and it was hard for me to take care of her and of Cora at the same time, so her grandma had to step in and take her back to Raleigh. Lynn was in the hospital there a while. When she came home, she did find Joe all installed, you know, and I guess she didn’t expect that. And I guess she was just recovering, too. She was a bit difficult at first, telling me I was making a mistake again, and why couldn’t it be just the three of us girls?”

“Would you say she was jealous, or felt displaced?” Williams asked.

“I guess. I guess she thought he would turn out not to be any good. But Joe was working, unlike Cora’s daddy.”

“What was his profession?”

“He was a traveling salesman. He represented some small chemical and plastics companies round here, on a commission basis, and he was bringing money home. So Lynn didn’t know what she was talking about, and I told her to mind her own business.” April seemed to address the room, where only a few curious souls gathered, apart from the other witnesses. “I’m a mother, and I’d do anything for my daughters, but I don’t think I ought to be expected not to marry again, not to love anyone ever again and not to live with a man, especially if he’s a decent man.”

Williams nodded. “Then you’d say their relationship had its ups and downs.”

“I would, yes. Sometimes Joe would say Lynn was a good kid. Sometimes he’d say she was a right pain in the ass.”

That just about summed up Lee, if one were at a loss for words.

“And were they ever violent to each other?” Williams pursued.

“You mean physically?”

“In any way.”

“Well, when Joe and me got into arguments, Lynn would act up. I told her it wasn’t her business, that men and women fight sometimes. That husbands and wives sometimes fight so bad and so loud, it looks like they’ll kill each other. They can say the worst things to each other at those times and not mean it. But she’d be trying to come into the room, if we were locked up in there. Or she’d scream she was calling the police.”

“She took the fights seriously then,” Williams observed. “Was there any time that things got so bad that she threatened Joe?”

“One time he hit me in the kitchen, in front of the girls. He just lost it, you know, and just hit me with the back of his hand. And I don’t know what people who make movies are thinking of, but if a man hits you like that — well, you fly. It’s not like you stand there and your head turns a lil’ bit! I hit the cupboard and I cried out because of my neck, and Joe kept screaming, and my mouth was bleeding, and I just saw Lynn grab a saucepan to throw the food at him. Hot food, too, though not boiling. He got mad as hell and started screaming at her, and she wasn’t afraid at all. She was just holding that saucepan and swiping it at him like she’d gone crazy. And he started walking back and back till he was out of the house.”

James rubbed his lips to hide a smile.

 “What did the defendant say to him then?”

April had the grace to lower her voice and her eyes. “She said ‘You touch my Mama again and I’ll kill you.’ ”

Williams cocked her head, as if she had never heard the story. “Then the time when she threatened him, just before the murder, wasn’t the only time she threatened him?”

“No. No, it wasn’t. There was this time, but I know she was trying to protect me. She thought Joe might hurt me or something.”

“And when did Joe return?”

“A few hours later. He just went to the bar and cooled off. And I had talked to Lynn, and told her if she butted out, everything would be fine.”

“Is that what she did?”

“For the most part. Sometimes she’d tell me it wasn’t worth being with someone if you didn’t get along.”

“And they forgave each other for that night?”

“Yes, everything seemed normal.”

“Was there another fight between them?”

“Well, she could never accept that we fought the way we did, but since I had told her to butt out and she’s proud, she’d just walk out of the house when there was trouble and take Cora. Sometimes they wouldn’t come back in a while. They’d go to Billy’s house, I think.”

“So the next time she threatened him, it was because of Cora?”

“Yes, and that was huge overreaction. Cora was just being impossible. She kept saying she wanted her dinner, she wanted her dinner. And Joe lost it and pulled her by the arm, pushed her into her room and said, ‘You’ll have no dinner now.’ Cora tells Lynn, and Lynn goes over to the bar, to Nelson’s, and starts screaming in Joe’s face that if he ever touches Cora again she’ll kill him. I mean, really …” She shook her head at Lee. “Really, sweetheart. As if Joe would ever hurt Cora.” April looked around for effect. “That was the day before my husband died.”

“Could anything have happened between the defendant and the deceased one day later that would have made her really furious at him — furious enough to hit him with a poker as he went down the stairs?”

April looked startled. “I don’t understand what you’re asking me.”

“Was there any possibility of your husband acting badly toward either of your daughters?”

“He never hit them!”

“I mean, could he have molested them?”

“Are you crazy? How can you ask me that?” April looked around at the judge, at the stenographer, at the guards as if expecting them to be as outraged as she was. “He wasn’t a pig like that! Lynette, you will please tell them that never happened? My husband was in love with me, and me with him. He wouldn’t touch my children, he wasn’t no degerenate.”

“Calm down, Mrs. Keane. These are standard questions,” Bennett said.

The witness sniffled. “That’s just sick.”

“Then, Mrs. Keane,” Williams said, “if the defendant was living with her husband, William Jonathan Wheeler, at the time of your husband’s death — why was she at your house that night?”

April still sniffled and answered in a low voice, “I didn’t see Lynn at my house that night.”

“Let me rephrase that: Lynn went to your house and left her fingerprints on the murder weapon and her shoe prints on the floor and outside, took your car and later abandoned it near the airport in Charlotte. Was there a reason for her to have gone there that specific night?”

“There was no reason for her to be at my house that specific night, but sometimes she’d drop by. Maybe she wanted to bring Cora or me something, or maybe she needed something that she kept there. She would do that, sometimes. She was free to come and go.”

“All right, so you were not expecting her, but it would not be unusual for her to drop by without warning.”

“That’s correct.”

“And how was it that you did not hear her that night, or hear the deceased falling down the stairs?”

“That night I took a sleeping pill. I was fast asleep by eight o’clock and I never woke up till the next morning. And I tell you, if I usually sleep like the dead, with a sleeping pill an earthquake wouldn’t have waked me up.”

“Why did you have to take a sleeping pill that night, Mrs. Keane — and so early?”

“I was very upset. Joe and I had a fight. One of the bad ones.”

“Did the deceased hit you during this fight?”

“It was one of the worst ones. He did push me around. I pushed him too and threw things at him. Then he slapped me hard across the face a few times. We said we would kill each other.”

“Who was present in the house during this altercation?”

“Just Cora. She was in her room all locked up.”

“What time did this fight take place?”

“It was a bit ongoing, between six and eight p.m.”

“And you took the sleeping pill right after?”

“Right after Joe left the room saying he was going out, yes.”

“Could Cora have telephoned the defendant to tell her about this fight? Perhaps to say that she feared for her own safety or yours?”

“Maybe. If she was afraid, I think she’d call Lynn. I think so.”

Bennett leaned his chin on his hand once more. “Where is Cora right now, Mrs. Keane?”

“She’s in Swizerland.”

“Switzerland? The country?”

“That’s right. She goes to school there.”

Bennett raised both eyebrows. “I understood you lived with limited means.”

“A boyfriend of Lynn’s committed to pay for her education.” April motioned in James’s direction. “You saw, she has rich boyfriends. A million dollars in cash is nothing to them, so this other one set up a fund for Cora to go to school.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“Almost four years ago. But we speak regularly on Skype.”

Nodding at Williams, the judge allowed her to continue as he scribbled something on his pad. It would be bad for April if it became known that she had allowed Lee, a fugitive from justice living under a false identity, to be Cora’s de facto guardian. Perhaps Bennett was making a note to have that piece of the puzzle investigated by other authorities, and April craned her neck to see what he was writing. Williams’ next question, however, called her attention back to the podium.

“And you didn’t hear or see anything else that night?”

“Out like a light.” April gave a sob, almost as an afterthought. “And I never saw my Joe alive again, and my baby Cora was in the house when murder was done.”

“What do you think happened that night?”

“Immaterial,” Paxton protested calmly.

“Yes, what she thinks happened is immaterial,” Bennett chimed in. “By her own admission, she was out like a light.”

“Then just one more thing,” Williams told April. “When was the last time you used the murder weapon — the fire poker — or saw it used?”

The question didn’t seem gruesome to April, who had stopped crying as suddenly as she had started. “Oh, not for a long time. When Joe died, it was just about same time of year as now, and not cold at all. Besides, we have heating! I think it might have been more than a year since anyone had touched it. We didn’t use it much.”

“Thank you. That’s all from me, Your Honor.”

Bennett sighed and shuffled papers as Williams took her seat. “Mr. Paxton?”

Paxton returned to the podium, but this time he seemed to need no notes. “What was the fight about between you and the deceased on the night of his death, Mrs. Keane?”

April bit her lip and shrugged. “I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember the last fight you had with your husband on the night he died? Let me put it this way: was it about another woman?”

The beautiful eyes on April’s ravaged face flicked toward Lee again. “Sometimes we fought about something like that. But I wasn’t the only one who was jealous.”

“I’m sure, but that day, the 29th of November 2013, were you the one who was jealous?”

“What if I was? What does that have to do with anything? You can’t be thinking—”

“Answer the question, please,” Bennett instructed.

“I didn’t like that he had been out the night before, and that Jada Phillips had been there. I know her kind, and I was just warning him that I was not going to go ’round town like a fool. I can put up with a lot, but I’ve never been able to put up with that.”

“I’m sure,” Paxton remarked smoothly. “In fact, you did cause injury to the mistress of your former partner, Nathan Tyler? You did pull her by the hair and bang her face against a door frame?”

“I did. But I—”

“And you did several times cause bodily harm to the deceased as well?”

“Well, look at me, Your Honor! Joe was twice my size!”

Paxton paced in front of the podium, holding his glasses. “Did you throw a lamp at him on one occasion? On another occasion, did you throw a pair of kitchen scissors at him? Did you hit him on the side of the head with the waffle maker? Did you throw hot coffee at him but missed? Did you run after him with a baseball bat?”

April shook her head. “How on earth has that become about me when—?”

“Answer the questions, Mrs. Keane,” Bennett repeated. “Did you do any or all these things?”

“I probably did. I said we drove each other mad.”

“Let’s move on, then,” Paxton said. “You say that the fire poker, the alleged murder weapon, had not been used in a year, more or less. That would have been when the defendant still lived in the house?”

“Could be.”

“And who normally cleaned the house when the defendant lived with you?”

“We both did.”

“Would you say that Lynn was more thorough than you? More inclined to make it all spick-and-span?”

“She was less tired than me,” April said, one eyebrow raised.

“Would you say she was more likely to try and clean the fire poker, the fireplace, all that?”

This time, April shrugged with both shoulders. “Maybe.”

“So, conceivably, her prints might have been the only prints on that poker, if she — a year before — had wiped it clean and then put it back on its stand?”

“Could be.”

“Thank you,” Paxton said, turning to Bennett. “The defense has no more questions, Your Honor.”

SIX

"The prosecution would like to call Detective Cecil Putney to the stand, Your Honor," Cynthia Williams said.

Putney stood and buttoned his suit jacket, taking his place at the witness stand after being sworn in by Bennett, who said the words of the oath even more quickly than the previous time. Williams followed the same careful line of inquiry about Putney's movements on the 29th of November 2013, after he explained that he had been deployed by Greensboro to answer the request for help from Hawkshaw.

"What time did you get to 247 Howard Lane that day?" Williams asked.

"I got there around 2 p.m."

"And the body had been found by Mrs. Keane at around 8 a.m., and Officer Brooks had arrived at the scene of the crime at 8.17 a.m.?"

Putney looked down at several sheets of paper. "That's what my report says, yes."

"What is it you found when you got to 247 Howard Lane?"

"I found Mrs. Keane sitting outside in the yard with her daughter Cora, smoking a cigarette and drinking bourbon. I found Officer Brooks with them, as well as another local policeman."

"Would that have been Officer Noah Wright?"

"The report says so. It was years ago, and I don’t know them personally."

"What happened then?"

"Officer Brooks told me pretty much what he has told the court, that he had arrived and found Mrs. Keane in shock, and the deceased in the position he was still in. He ascertained that Joseph Keane was in fact dead and found a bloody fire poker next to the body. Officer Brooks bagged the poker, and Officer Wright photographed the scene. He also said that the stairs had been a bit disturbed by having to climb up for Cora, but that he hoped that his few, inevitable footprints would be easy to separate from the perpetrator's."

"What did you make of the scene?"

"Well, it wasn't more disturbed than most crime scenes I've seen. In fact, it seemed pretty tidy."

"So you'd say that Officer Brooks and Officer Wright had done a good job of keeping the crime scene undisturbed."

"No, I wouldn't say it was undisturbed. I'd say it didn't look like a big mess."

"Was there a forensics team from Greensboro with you?"

"They arrived soon after."

"And they collected fingerprints, DNA evidence, photographed the scene as usual?"

"Yes."

"And all the evidence was then handed to the Greensboro Police Department?”

"It was."

“And the body?”

“Went to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, as usual in cases of violent death.”

"Did you interrogate Mrs. Keane and Cora at the time?"

"I asked them questions, yes. Mrs. Keane told me the same things she has stated here."

"Concerning her claim of being asleep under the influence of sedatives, did you perform a blood test?"

"We did. She volunteered for it. The result was positive for diazepam."

"Did she ask about the defendant at any time?”

"She did.”

"Did you or anyone know the defendant's whereabouts?"

"A unit had been dispatched by Hawkshaw to Billy Wheeler's house, but the defendant wasn't there. She had called her husband. Her sister-in-law, who was at the house, claimed that the defendant had called saying that she was going away because she was in trouble."

"That's what the defendant said, that she'd be away and that she was in trouble?"

"The defendant didn’t speak directly to the sister-in-law but to William Wheeler, her husband — so what the witness told me was based on what she heard of her brother's side of the conversation."

"And what did Mr. Wheeler say?"

"Later, when he spoke to me, he said that the defendant had called saying she was going away, and that she would call him — but without saying what had happened. And I got out of him that she sounded very distressed."

"And that was the last anyone saw of the defendant in Hawkshaw until her arrest, correct?"

"It is what they claim."

"And they never heard from her either?"

Putney shrugged. "That would be impossible for us to know for sure. We didn't employ wiretapping or any means to keep a tab on their communications. As you know that’s expensive and legally very difficult to do.”

"I do know. Then they might, in fact, have spoken to her during these years? Or, at least, her husband might have done?"

"And her mother. And her sister. Anyone, for all we know."

Williams waved a hand in the air, dismissing her own line of questioning, and changed it. "What clues did you have as to her whereabouts?"

"She had taken her mother’s car, so we put out an APB and the car was found in a parking lot near the airport in Charlotte. We were able to ascertain that she had paid for a plane ticket to New York, and there the trail grew cold very quickly. Once again, you know how difficult and expensive it gets to find a criminal, or a suspect. They would have to use their credit card or their ID to check into a hotel or rent a car, and she had emptied her savings account in Charlotte early the morning after the murder, so she had approximately three thousand dollars cash with her."

"Did she own a passport at that time?"

"She did not. She never owned a US passport."

Williams turned to the judge. "And yet we know, Your Honor, that she crossed the Arizona border from Mexico recently. We also know that she did not enter Mexico under her own name. She might have crossed into Mexico under a false identity and been there all the time — or elsewhere."

"I guess you won't know that until you investigate her for the trial," Bennett said, adding, "If it comes to that. Proceed."

"Detective Putney, please walk us through what forensics established in relation to the manner of Joseph Keane's death," Williams requested.

Putney sat back, consulted his notes for a moment and began: "Time of death was estimated to fall between eight and eleven p.m. The lacerations on the victim's skull were consistent with the use of an instrument such as the fire poker that was found next to the victim. However, the pathologist ruled the actual cause of death to be a broken neck due to Joseph Keane's fall from the stairs."

Bennett interrupted him, "So he didn't die from the lacerations themselves, and he didn't bleed to death?"

"No, Your Honor. He broke his neck when he fell — after being hit on the head from behind several times with an instrument such as the fire poker."

"Go on."

"The blood on the poker was his, as was the blood all over the stairs, the blood in the footprints and the drops of blood leading to the door and outside. The fingerprints on the poker were the defendant's. The footprints were a mixture of Mrs. Keane's, Cora Miller's, Officer Brooks' and the defendant's. The defendant's bloody footprints led to the door and her partial bloody footprints were found outside and on the driveway. Likewise, there were more of the defendant’s bloody footprints inside her mother’s car, as well as her bloody fingerprints."

"Clearly, then,” Williams concluded, “the defendant had been in the house on the night that Mr. Keane was murdered, had stepped on his blood and had held the poker, which was the murder weapon."

"Yes."

"Was this unequivocally stated in the forensic report?"

"Yes."

"And before the defense asks, could her fingerprints on the murder weapon have been put there sometime before, when she might have touched the poker during a routine cleaning?"

"Not the bloody fingerprints.”

Cynthia Williams rested her elbows on the podium to lean forward. "Detective Putney, what was your conclusion about this murder as an experienced homicide detective?"

Putney put down his notes once more and cleared his throat. "After interviewing witnesses who saw the defendant threaten the deceased the night before; after finding her fingerprints on the murder weapon, her footprints leading outside with drops of blood from the defendant which might have been transferred to her garments or her hands; after finding her abandoned car full of the deceased's DNA, and after finding that she had fled Hawkshaw abruptly and cleaned her bank account, the only possible conclusion is that Lynette Annamae Miller murdered Joseph Keane."

Cynthia Williams nodded slowly. "And did your investigation open any other avenues or point toward any other suspects?"

"No. The evidence only pointed to the defendant."

"Do you believe anyone else may have committed the crime?"

As Paxton opened his mouth to protest, Williams raised her hand and again changed the question, "Do you believe, Detective Putney, that a case could be made for someone else having committed the murder?"

"Like I said, the forensic evidence points overwhelmingly to the defendant and, most importantly, she ran away right after the murder and was never seen again until now."

"I'd say that was an open-and-shut case," Williams said. "Thank you."

"Your turn, Mr. Paxton,” Bennett said.

Lee held on to Paxton's arm. She gave a small shake of the head without looking at him. James watched as Paxton remonstrated with her in a low voice, but she only shook her head again.

Her gesture could only mean that she didn't want Paxton to incriminate April, although that was what a good attorney would have done. Paxton would have asked about the diazepam in April's blood: whether it could be stated beyond a shadow of a doubt that she had taken it before nine or ten in the evening — before she might, in fact, have committed murder. He would have asked about the history of violent fights between the couple, and April's repeated physical aggressions against her husband. He would have asked about her jealousy.

He would have created an alternate case, the possibility that someone else had committed the murder: April Keane. But Lee did not want him to do that.

"We have no questions, Your Honor," Paxton said from his seat.

"Does anyone else need to be called?" Bennett asked.

Williams stood again. "At this time the people call Kevin Owen Hunter, Your Honor."

A bald, thickset man, sitting a row behind Brooks, stood and moved to the stand.

"Mr. Hunter, how did you know the defendant?" Williams asked once he was sworn in.

"I employed her in my bar in Greensboro in 2012."

"Could you state the name and location of your bar?"

"Hunter's on 12 Sunfield Street."

"What kind of bar is it?"

"Just normal. Drinking, a pool table, some live music."

"In what capacity did you employ the defendant?"

"As a singer."

"Did you always have live music?”

"Thursday, Friday and Saturday only."

"Could you describe how you met the defendant?"

"I had advertised for singers and she came in for an audition."

“What happened then?"

"Well, Lynn's voice just blew me away."

James crossed his arms over his chest; it wasn't difficult to imagine what was coming. Lee at eighteen, in some dark and dank bar that belonged to that thing.

"And you employed her right away?"

"Right then and there, yeah."

"When did she start working?”

"About three days later."

"And how did it go? Was she a good employee?"

"She showed up on time and all that, rehearsed with the band — just someone on piano and someone on bass. It was meant to be jazzy, you know, classy stuff. And then she sang that week, three times."

"And people liked it?"

"Yeah. Yeah, say what you want about her, but she really has a voice. It’s different. Special."

"And what happened the following week?"

He wriggled in his seat, locking his hands before him. "Well, I ... I kind of liked her, you know. She was pretty, she had an amazing voice. I just wanted something more, so I tried. I know maybe employers aren't supposed to do that, but I told her I liked her. I asked her out."

"And what happened then?"

"We were in the back, where it's a bit messy. Where we keep the crates for the booze."

"She had agreed to go back there with you?"

Hunter's eyes shifted sideways. "Yeah. Then I said I wanted to kiss her, and all of a sudden she grabbed a crowbar and hit me over the head with it."

A short bark of laughter rang out, and James realized a bit late it had come from him. He pressed his lips together. Brooks glanced at him with a scowl and Williams half turned, while Bennett only said, "Silence," without trying to see where the disturbance had originated.

"Mr. Hunter, could you lower your head?" Williams requested.

He did, and Williams pointed. "As you see by the scars, Your Honor, before Joseph Keane’s murder the defendant had hit a man over the head with a blunt instrument, with little concern as to whether she hurt him or outright killed him."

"I had to have stitches," Hunter complained, rubbing his skull. "That's what left the scars."

Again, the judge looked to his left. "Mr. Paxton?"

This time Paxton faced Hunter squarely, hands on either side of the podium. "Mr. Hunter, really?"

The man was confused. "What?"

"You want to go with this story? Are you sure? All right. Then tell me, where was the restroom for employees in your lovely establishment?"

"It was in the back."

"Anywhere near those booze crates?"

"Just beyond them."

"Perhaps then the defendant hadn't gone to the back with you, she had gone there because she needed to use the powder room, correct?"

"Maybe.” Hunter shrugged. “I don't remember."

"And I suppose you also don't remember that, far from asking her nicely if she wanted to be your Valentine, you pushed her against the wall, putting your hand on her buttocks."

"Fucking pig ..."

The muttered insult had come from Brooks, and it helped James hold on to his own temper. Poor Magpie, it had all been sordid and brutal, one way or another. No wonder you liked shiny things.

Thrusting his bulldog head forward, Hunter said, "That's her word against mine.”

"And I suppose we won't find any other women saying that you ever did that to them?" Paxton wondered.

Hunter pointed at his own chest. "I'm not on trial here. I just came to tell you she could kill a man. She could have killed me. She's crazy."

"What a terrible loss that would have been," Paxton remarked breezily.

"Your Honor!" Williams protested again.

But Bennett chuckled. "Your joke is overruled, Mr. Paxton. Is the witness excused?"

"Yes, indeedy, Your Honor."

"Let's put a close to this, shall we?" Bennett requested

"Certainly," Paxton said. "It is the defense's contention, Your Honor, that the state has failed to prove that the murder was committed by the defendant. We would argue that the evidence was both questionable and tainted: collected at first by the defendant's resentful ex-boyfriend, an officer with no experience of homicide or crime scenes. A forensics unit from the good city of Greensboro got there hours later, when all sorts of people had been up and down the stairs and around the house.”

He stopped and pursed his lips, as if considering his next words, then charged ahead, “We must not forget, Your Honor, that at that time we had no state-of-the-art regional crime lab, and we routinely waited months to get results from the lab in Raleigh. Without casting aspersion on the valiant team there, how much attention, I wonder, could they have given this case, which seemed to have a clear prime suspect?”

Williams scoffed. “That’s without causing aspersion!”

“Well,” Paxton said, raising an innocent hand. “I’m quoting the state crime lab itself, as late as 2015. They were overwhelmed, they claimed.”

The DA shook her head and swung her foot in disapproval, but Bennett only waited for Paxton to continue.

“The defense would furthermore argue that the defendant may have, as the prosecution puts it, hit another man on the head but while facing him and trying to escape a dangerous situation, such as potential rape. She attacked Joseph Keene face to face with a saucepan, while trying to defend a mother she loves. It has not been proved at all that she would have the tendency to treacherously hit a man from behind, as the murderous attack on Mr. Keane was committed.”

Paxton stopped playing with his glasses and swiveled to look at the witnesses behind him, and at the members of the press and public who now hung on his words.

“Finally, Your Honor,” he said as he turned back to Bennett, “and most strangely: Detective Putney himself has confirmed that he followed no other lines of inquiry in this case because the defendant fled. The detective did not, for example, find any other reasons for the defendant's flight, such as feeling threatened by whoever might have murdered her stepfather, or even by her ex-boyfriend.”

Brooks shook his head. “Bullcrap.”

Paxton didn’t hear him or pretended not to. “While the prosecution accepts that the defendant and the deceased did not have a violent relationship, the defendant is meant to have suddenly and brutally beaten her stepfather to death, when there are others who might certainly have had reason to feel greater wrath against him. We believe, Your Honor, that there is no substantial credible evidence for a bind over in this case."

“All right, thank you, Mr. Paxton.” Bennett looked over to his right. "Ms. Williams?"

The DA stood and replaced Paxton at the podium as he sat down, patting Lee's hand.

"Your Honor, I think the evidence is clear,” Williams said, smoothing her jacket over her body. “There is a murder weapon, and it has the defendant's fingerprints. She had attacked the deceased in the past with a saucepan when he hit Mrs. Keane. The night before, she had threatened to kill him if he harmed her sister, and it is probable that her sister called her on the night of the murder to tell her that Joseph Keane had beaten their mother again. She had previously assaulted a man in the same manner, with a blunt object over the head — whether she did it from the front or the back cannot be said to constitute an unbreakable tendency.”

Williams motioned toward the defense table while keeping her eyes on Bennett. “She has a history of violence. She has priors for robbery: at seventeen years of age she stole a valuable diamond ring from her grandmother, the woman who clothed, fed her and paid for her education between the ages of six and eleven; the woman who saved her life by paying for her hospital bills when she had spinal meningitis a few years later. This—" Williams now looked at Lee. "This is a dangerous, amoral woman, Your Honor. The state has shown more than probable cause for this case to be bound over. Thank you."

Returning to her seat, Williams waited. Bennett looked over his notes, then looked at Lee, at Paxton and at the prosecution desk.

"I do find that with the forensic evidence available, especially considering the defendant's flight on the same night of Joseph Keane’s murder, there is enough probable cause for a trial. I will bind all charges over for further proceedings before a grand jury."

Damn it.

Bennett took the gavel to dismiss the court, but Williams stood again. "Your Honor, the state would also like to ask that the bond be rescinded, and the defendant held in prison to wait for trial."

Paxton also stood. "Your Honor, bail was already paid."

"Precisely," Williams insisted. "The defendant has a very rich boyfriend who can pay almost any amount the state sets, including a million dollars cash. She represents a clear flight risk, Your Honor, and she is a danger to society."

Looking aggrieved, Paxton said, "That is gross exaggeration, Your Honor. And the defendant owns no passport. In fact, she recently almost died trying to save the life of another girl in Mexico — a case that has become known to you. Also, Mr. Bryce's payment of a large cash bond shows his devotion to my client and his trust in her. Mr. Bryce is a renowned citizen of the United Kingdom and nobody's fool."

"The defendant might be able to obtain false documents and flee again, and cheat Mr. Bryce, clever and renowned as he may be, out of a million dollars," Williams argued. "I think her previous actions don't put her past that."

"The bail was set and paid, and I won't overturn that decision," Bennett said. "The defendant is free to go, and the date for the trial will be set at arraignment. We're done."

He banged the gavel as Williams turned to Paxton, shrugging. "Had to try ..."

They shook hands as all present stood at the same time as Bennett, who left through a side door. The public began to disperse, murmuring and discussing the case, and Lee didn’t look back as she was escorted out.

SEVEN

Lee was free to go, for a while anyway. Free until a trial that would begin months later, so that the defense and the prosecution had time to build their cases.

"We'll get discovery now," Paxton said as he and Ava walked her to a back door of the courthouse. "We'll have access to all the evidence, and our experts will examine it independently. Do you want a ride home, honey?"

With a start, Lee realized that she didn't know where to go. To Billy? He must know she was there, and the fact that he hadn't shown up in court meant that he was far from well. It would be hard to see him; it would be very hard. And Lee couldn’t expect much mercy from her sister-in-law, Maddy, but it was no time to be a coward — except in relation to James.

Ava noticed Lee’s bewilderment, and her eyes were soft. "We can drive you somewhere, wherever you say."

Was home the house where Lee was supposed to have murdered Joe, and where her mother still lived?

"Lynn!"

Lee turned to find her mother bearing down upon them.

"Do you want to escape?" Paxton asked her in a low voice.

"No, it's all right." Lee pressed his arm and squeezed Ava’s hand. "Thank you."

"We'll see you soon. And we'll pick their case apart, don't worry."

April had caught up with Lee, although she was busy throwing an evil look at Paxton's back as he walked away with Ava. "Nasty man! What was he on about? And how did he know about Jada Phillips and the fight with Joe? Did you tell him?"

Lee could only shake her head slightly. That was the first she had seen of her mother in five years.

"How did he know, then?" April insisted.

"Small town, I guess."

"So disagreeable to have anyone snooping and unearthing things that don't have anything to do with anything."

April's gaze switched to her daughter. In spite of high heels, the top of her head only reached Lee's nose, and she was running to fat through a fondness for booze and junk food. She pulled Lee into a tight embrace, despite having looked as if she feared catching a disease from her daughter just a second earlier.

"It's been hard for me to come and see you," April confessed as she stepped back and rummaged in her cheap bag for a tissue that she applied to the corner of her eyes, although there were no tears in them. "You know, thinking of Joe and all. That was hard, what happened. With Cora in the house, too."

Her green eyes flew up to her daughter's almost identical ones. "Did you do it, Lynn? Just tell me."

"How can you ask me that?" Lee whispered.

"Then who did?"

"We've been through all this before, Mama."

"I know. Just never in person, with me looking at you. I guess I believe you. I’d like to."

Again, Lee said nothing. She wanted to run, but instead she allowed April to caress her arm. Her mother's nails were bubble-gum pink and far too long. She had obviously gone to the salon before the hearing.

"You look good. A lil' bit thin and a lil' bit pale — don't they let you wear make-up in that detention center, not even for court? But you look good enough to eat, like I used to." April gave a small laugh at the silence that followed. "Well, don't rush to tell me I don't look awful."

"You look tired, Mama."

April made a noise of annoyance. "Well, some people don't have millionaire boyfriends just whisking them around."

It wasn't as if April didn't know about the desert and their desperate trek, and about Lee's struggle to survive at the hospital in Arizona. But things were always worse for her than for anyone else, no matter what they had been through.

"Thank God you have that man," April said. "I couldn't have helped with your bail, with your defense, nothing. The house is mortgaged again, you know. It’s the aggravantingest thing."

"How?" Lee couldn't help sounding exasperated. "Mama, it was all paid for."

"How, Lynn? You ask how? Bless your little heart, I don't think you remember what it's like here — what the recession did to this place. I know people who never got a job again. Do you know how much I earn?"

"You've told me many times."

April nodded. "And I guess it just bores you?"

"I've always done what I could."

"All right, all right. Let's not fight." April’s smile was tight. "Have you spoken to Cora?"

"Only once."

"I haven't spoken to her either. I didn't know what to say about—" she motioned toward the courtroom. "About this. Does she think you did it?"

"Mama …"

"All right. Best to wait and see, right? You got some expensive lawyers, the kind that got O.J. off. You should just remember that when trial comes, your sister might be soopenah, and there won't be anything I can do about that. That's not me breaking our agreement, Lynn, that's the law."

"I know."

The nails softly scratched Lee’s sleeve. "And about our agreement—"

Lee interrupted her. "I can't touch my money. It would just be taken away, all of it."

April took a step back and looked around in a pantomime of secrecy mixed with horror. "Then don't say a word about it. Maybe your boyfriend can help?"

"I can't ask James for anything else than what he's doing."

Crossing her arms, Mrs. Keane considered her daughter. "Well, maybe you can drop a hint, just a hint. He wouldn't want your mother to be thrown out on the street, and you to lose the house where you grew up. That house will be yours one day."

The image of 247 Howard Lane made Lee want to laugh. What would James make of that place? She hoped he’d never see it.

"Anyway, I don't think I can have you there," April said pensively. "I think it's not a good idea."

That was true enough. "I wouldn't want to be there."

"No, I guess not. I should have sold that house, but I couldn't." April sighed. "In any case, come and see me. Billy's asked about you."

It took a moment for Lee to speak. "How is he?"

"You haven't seen him in the courtroom, have you?" The corners of April's lips turned downward as she shrugged. Two folds from mouth to chin showed that it was a habitual grimace of hers. "He's not well, Lynn. You'd best prepare yourself." She brightened up. "Anyways, you come see me and you bring that handsome boyfriend of yours. Handsome and rich and devoted. Well, devotion don't last long, I think we both know that. Grab what you can when you can!"

She winked to emphasize her motherly advice, repeated, "Come and see me and Billy," and walked toward the front doors of the courthouse.

Lee would go to Billy, but she would leave through the back. Murders weren’t common in Greensboro, and there might be some attention from the press, although she had only spotted a couple of bored reporters in court.

But as she stepped into the alley behind the courthouse, there he was. There was James, leaning against the wall, hands in his pockets, waiting for her.

He is home.

It was if the back door had opened into an alternate reality where things were as they ought to be. It was the door to a fairy tale. Lee smiled, and he smiled back; as she hurried toward him, he opened his arms.

"I didn't think you'd be here," she said, her cheek against his.

"Nice that I can still surprise you." He looked at her and said, "I only have two immediate questions: where is your husband — and is he bigger than me?"

She laughed. "I don't know — or I do know, but I haven't seen him yet. And, no, Billy isn't bigger than you."

"Does he have guns?"

"No."

"What a miracle in your land." He motioned toward the car, a black Camaro. "Then will you climb into my chariot before it turns into a pumpkin?"

"Don't you want to know—?"

"Magpie, I wanna know a whole lotta stuff. But first things first."

He opened the door to the passenger side for her and went around the car to get behind the steering wheel.

"James—" she tried again.

"No time for talking now," he said. "I have to concentrate on this P, R, N, L-D thing here."

"Why didn't you get a car with manual transmission?"

"Only the luxury models have it. And I want to be inconspicuous."

Why did she feel happy? He was probably going to skin her alive in a second, but at the moment he was cursing as he tried to type an address into the GPS, then punching it and muttering, "I know where it is anyway."

Lee covered her mouth to laugh, and he winked at her as he drove out of the alley and found his way to N Elm Street.

"Do you happen to be in Irving Park? You'd want to go that way."

She pointed, and the car swerved, a driver honking behind them.

"Stupid automatic driving," James muttered. "No nuance."

The houses in the quiet streets they crossed got bigger and bigger, with lawns that looked green even in winter, until James entered a gate, followed a small roundabout and stopped in front of a large white house with a shingled roof and shiny black shutters.

"Inconspicuous, huh?" she remarked with a twinkle.

He led her inside with a hand on the small of her back. Once they crossed the threshold, he swept her up, closed the door with his foot and ran up the stairs with her to a room at the end of the corridor on the second floor. It had a huge bed, where he carefully laid her.

"James!”

He put a finger to his lips. "Shh-hh. I've paid a million dollars cash for this. Don’t you spoil it.”

She didn’t want to spoil anything; she pulled him closer when he leaned over her and they kissed, his hand on her hair. Lee unbuttoned his shirt to touch his skin; it felt as if she hadn’t touched him in so long. As he opened her dress and his eyes ran over her, she realized that he was looking for the scars of her recent surgeries. He ran his finger over the small red line on her lower left side. "Does it hurt?"

She shook her head and he kissed the scar; he touched the line on her right side, and the one above her belly button. "Here?"

"No."

He kissed her ribs and the top of one of her breasts. "Here?"

Lee pressed against him, but he put a hand on her hip, gently moving it down. "Stay still. I don't want to hurt you."

Afterwards, lying on his chest, she muttered, "This is terrible.”

"Oh, thanks very much."

"It's terrible that you feel so good."

"What do you think you feel like?"

"Like a million dollars?"

"You’re a bargain at a million. I’d have yelled at my bankers to get me ten million cash, at least." He kissed her again and again. "Although I haven't got my money’s worth yet."

She kissed him back, hating to stop — but eventually said, "You know, the longer it takes you to ask me questions the more nervous I get."

"It's all right, Mag. I'm not going to throw a tantrum. Not when I just found out you hit men on the head with crowbars."

She smiled against his mouth. "I only ever tried to brain you with a lamp. That's how much I like you."

James lifted his head to look at her. "A more pressing problem is that there is nothing to eat in the house and I'm starving. Well, there are some breakfast things, and not enough of them. So, if the lady will get dressed, I'll take her out for dinner."

"That will be easy, since I only have one outfit to wear."

"I’m about to surprise you again.”

 He leapt out of bed and walked into the next room, returning with a towel wrapped around his waist and pulling a suitcase she recognized. She sat up.

"Where did you get that?"

"Had Diego send it from Mexico."

Lee’s mouth hung open. "You can't be serious!"

"I didn't speak to him directly. It was more of a minions-to-minions communication." He threw the suitcase on the rectangular stool at the foot of the bed and opened it. "Hope it's all in there, and there are some new things for winter. I actually entered a shopping mall to buy those for you, which was one of the things I swore I’d never do in my life. That’s how much I like you."

Tucking a sheet around her body, Lee leaned forward and pulled at the soft cardigans and sweaters he had bought, still wrapped in fine tissue paper, and at her things — until she found a bag and looked inside the zipper. The little boxes were still there. She opened one, and the diamond brooch sparkled. She pulled out the other box and freed the chain of white gold with the medal James had given her.

He fastened it around her neck. "There. Where it should be."

Although he kissed her shoulder, he didn’t mean to start anything; he jumped up and down, clutching the towel and looked like a boy with his hair falling over his eyes. "Come on, come on! I can't stay here and get excited because I haven't eaten, and all the blood will go down there, and I'll faint. Let's go now, all dirty, disgusting and full of sin. Let's go to dinner, Magpie."

EIGHT

Christmas was coming, and municipal authorities wanted everyone to know it. The main streets of Winston Salem were wrapped in lights as James drove through them to an old red-brick warehouse that had been turned into an Italian restaurant.

"I reserved the private room,” he told the smiling receptionist. “The name's Bryce. James Bryce.”

Lee smiled. He would have made a great Bond.

"Welcome, Mr. Bryce," the girl said brightly. "This way, please."

Her high heels made almost no noise as she led them over the polished cement floor to the other side of the warehouse and chatted with them, "Are you staying in town for business?"

James smiled as he pulled Lee closer. "Pleasure."

"And how do you like Winston Salem?"

"It's like a mini Gotham City."

The receptionist's smile wavered, but Lee reassured her, "He loves it."

"Thank you! Here you are."

She motioned them into a small room that must once have been an office. The city gleamed through a large window.

"Will you be hot, do you think?" the receptionist asked, indicating the fireplace in front of their table. A fire crackled and popped inside it.

James removed Lee's coat and his own jacket. "It's absolutely perfect."

"I'll send the waiter with the wine list, then."

Pulling the chair for Lee, James sat to her left. When the waiter came, he was quick to order the wine and a few items on the menu.

Once their drinks were poured, James asked, “Should I be calling you Mrs. Wheeler?"

“I never took Billy's last name. And I tried to tell you. I asked you to come so I could tell you, and you wouldn't."

"Somehow, I think you might have told me a while ago. It's the kind of thing to let drop, casually, when you see that a man's getting a bit serious about you."

“I didn’t think I could tell you any of this.” She stared at the pattern on the table cloth. "It's the worst thing I've ever done, leaving Billy like that."

"Not killing Joe?"

Lee hesitated a moment, then shook her head.

"All right. Tell me about Billy, then."

"Billy was my best friend."

"I thought that was the redhead."

"Caleb?" Lee could feel herself flushing at a certain terseness in James’ tone. "No, he wasn't my friend."

"Don't worry, I'll just ascribe that horrible choice to the slim pickings in a small town."

"Yes, something like that. It's the reason I mistrust the feeling I had this afternoon."

He raised his eyebrows. "Which of the feelings?"

"That you're a strong male who will make everything all right. Life just isn't like that, is it?"

"We can be different things to each other,” James said. “You’ll be strong, and I’ll be weak at times, I’m sure. That'd be the healthy way to live.”

Lee reached out and touched his hair. "When you were jumping up and down in the room, it was like being young again."

"Lee, you're twenty-four. That is young. I’m ten years older, and that’s still young.”

"I know. I just meant—"

"You meant before bad things happened and made us all twisted?"

"You're not twisted."

"Foul-tempered and violent?"

She shrugged with one shoulder. "A little bit. And I like you to be wild, I can't help it."

"You're supposed to scold me until I become all New Man.”

"No. You’ve got a bit of a beast. And I won't ever describe you as my best friend either, even though you do so much for me."

"It's not friendship, silly." He caressed her thigh under the table for a moment, then put his hand back on the table, tapping it. "Come on, tell me about Billy."

"You’ve heard part of the story. My mother moved here on her own, with Nathan — Cora's father. I stayed in Raleigh with my grandmother, since Mama wanted to start her life again. But then, when Cora was born and Nathan left, she wanted me here."

"Out of deep maternal love, no doubt."

"Wanted help with Cora, of course. But, James, it was just like you described back in rehab. The moment I set eyes on that little girl ... it was just as it was for you with Caitlin." She stared at him. "I just realized, that's when I began to like you. When you talked about Caitlin.”

"Well, I liked you before that.” He gave her the cheeky grin she loved. “At the first anger session, when you said you didn't understand why we had to be told that things were a certain way, only to find out they weren't. I thought, here is a smart woman, and she has the most incredible eyes and the most amazing legs."

They leaned toward each other, only to break apart as the waiter arrived with food. The man set down the entrées, explaining them, wished them buon appetite and left.

"We'll dispense with good manners because I am about to faint," James said. "You can talk with your mouth full. Cora, you were saying?"

He put spoons of bell pepper and eggplant cream on her dish and fed her pizza, biting into his own piece with gusto.

"Cora was such a happy baby," Lee continued. "And I knew that I had to be around, because Mama started drinking a lot after Nathan left. She would drink, smoke and fall asleep, and I had to be watching her so something bad wouldn't happen. She hated to be alone, without a man in her life, and she thought she wasn't going to get another man — not one to take care of her and pay for everything. It was a tragedy, in a way, because she had been stunning once, and she wasn't as beautiful anymore."

"She must have been only in her thirties when Cora was little."

"Yes, but with a bad diet, worry, anger and then drinking, it was all going away fast. And I think she knew, inside, that she wouldn't ever be able to hold on to anyone for long. I think she knew that, because she kept saying all the opposite. That men wanted her, but it was our fault if they didn’t stay. That men didn't stay with women if they had children, especially not difficult children. There were men who would sleep with her, but they wouldn't stick around."

James sat back and scowled. "Men who would sleep with her in the house, while you and Cora were there?"

April moaning and asking to be fucked, night after night. Lee put her hands to her cheeks; did they feel so hot because of the fire?

"And the man or men who … touched you?” he asked quietly. “Were they brought over to the house by her?”

She had to tell him some of the sordid stuff, but not all. She knew him enough to understand he would go on an unstoppable rampage if he found out that her mother had used her as bait when she felt her looks were fading.

“There was only one man who did that, at least when I was a child. And it wasn’t at home.”

“Who was this man?”

And where is he? That would be the next question. Even in the middle of her confession, Lee felt like smiling. Would James ever become so wise that he would let such things go? She hoped not, even as she hid the whole truth from him.

“I cut his hand with a knife, and he just left. Was never heard from again.” There were other things he ought to understand as well, and she added, "My mother did stupid things, but I couldn't blame her, James. She was born in a swamp city, poor as dirt, and she got pregnant at seventeen. Her father threw her out. What did she know? But I wanted to make sure that she didn't set the house on fire with Cora in it, and that Cora stayed happy. That was all I wanted, just what you wanted for Caitlin."

He was making a visible effort to get past what she had told him so far, and it wasn’t nearly all.

"You met Billy then?" he asked.

"I went to school, met Billy, and we became friends. The misfits, you know — the newcomer and the sick boy."

"What was wrong with Billy?”

"Congenital heart defect."

James let out a low whistle. "That's horrible for anyone, but for a child ... He must have been very sick, then."

"If you had seen him, all skinny and underdeveloped. James, I know your heart would have melted. He couldn't play because he'd get short of breath, and sometimes he'd outright faint. And sometimes he'd get taken to hospital because he had developed an infection. His father had left the mother with two kids, and she had to work three jobs, with all the medical bills too.”

The rest of the food arrived, but James seemed to have lost his appetite, or part of it. His expression was somber, even angry, as the waiter laid the new dishes on the table and left.

"I would take Billy around,” Lee said. She wanted to tell the story now and be rid of it. At least in part. “But he couldn't walk very far. If he got sick, I'd go to his house to stay by him. And then at fifteen, when Caleb and I began dating — well, I didn't see Billy all day like before, but we were still best friends. And I have to say, Caleb was good about that. He had known Billy all his life, so he would help me take Billy around, or go visit him with me.”

“Glad to know he wasn’t all bad.”

“No, not all bad. We were just very different. He couldn’t understand me, but I guess I couldn’t understand him either. And then I came down with meningitis, and my mother couldn’t take care of me. There was no money for the hospital, so she swallowed her pride and went to my grandmother, and I was sent back to Raleigh. When I returned home, a few months later, Joe was living there.”

“And what about Joe?” James asked when she stopped talking.

It took her a moment to raise her eyes; James could read the truth in them by now, and she didn’t want him to.

“I knew Joe from before,” she said. “He wasn't a bad man, but he and Mama fought like cats and dogs. I could see Cora changing, becoming more anxious. She would jump a foot high when she heard the front door, knowing it was Joe coming back from work. It wasn't him so much, it was that she knew the fights would start."

Lee stopped for a moment and sipped her wine. Her throat hurt from speaking of things she hadn't told anyone in a long time.

"It's horrible to wake up with that cold anxiety, wondering if someone is going to be mad, if there will be screaming, if someone will try to hurt someone else or you. I wanted to take Cora away. By that time Billy inherited half a house because his mother died, and his sister had already married and gone to live with her husband. Billy told me we should get married too and put all we had together, and then I could convince my mother to let me bring Cora.”

“Is that all it was?”

"Yes. Billy and I grew up together, and he could hardly walk a few steps without being out of breath. That’s all it was.”

“How did the redhead take it?”

“We had split up by that time,” Lee said curtly. “I married Billy and left school so I could work and get Cora. But that was 2012, and the recession was bad around here. It was bad. Two factories I worked at just closed, from one day to the next, and so many people were without jobs. Not Joe, though. He was a traveling salesman, making commission, and he kept bringing money home somehow.”

James listened to her in silence; she knew there wasn't much he or anyone could say. More people in the world lived like she had lived — or worse — than otherwise.

“I was going around trying to find a job that paid something decent. That's when I tried Greensboro, and that man hired me to sing. I was so happy! Because it was a better job, doing something I loved, and I would get tips. And you know how dreams are, I thought that maybe my voice really was special. Maybe someone would hear me. Or I'd put money aside to make a tape, or something. That's why I was so angry at Hunter, not just because he touched me, which was bad enough. But the worst thing is to get hope when you're in despair and then have it taken away. I understood what so many women do, at a moment like that. But I couldn't do it.” She looked at the fire, adding, “Although I guess I did something worse later.”

James took her hand. “Lee, I’m so ashamed.”

"I’m the one who’s—”

“Stop. Don’t say that.”

“Most women never resort to dishonesty, James, no matter how poor they are. I may be a criminal, but I won’t be a hypocrite.”

Giving her hand a shake, he didn’t speak for a moment, then said, “Go on.”

"That's all, really. Billy and I just wanted to take care of each other, and of Cora. We wanted to be away from the crazy grown-ups, you know? We thought we would manage things better than they had."

Picking at the corner of the wine label, James said, "And then Joe was found dead."

"Yes."

He looked at her. "And you won't tell me what happened that night?"

"Let it be, James."

"Even if you go to jail?"

"You don’t understand—”

"If you go to jail, do you think Cora will be happy?"

"At least she won't ever have to come here. She will have a normal life, with normal problems — nothing to do with poverty and murder."

He glanced at the clock on the wall. "Almost nine o'clock. I guess it's sacrifice time."

"Do you really think I like sacrifice?"

He took a deep breath. "No, Magpie. I think you were born in a sorry situation, and you tried very hard to make it better."

"Well, I guess that I didn't do any better than the grown-ups. We can only try to be decent, even if we fail."

"What do we know?"

“Not much, I guess.”

They sat in silence as he stroked her hand with his thumb, until live music began drifting to them from the main room. A male voice sang, accompanied by a guitar. James hummed, then sang along,

Comm'è calma 'a muntagna stanotte!

Cchiù calma 'e mo nun ll'aggio vista maje!

Lee smiled, remembering a cantina in Mexico, and asked as she had asked then, "What does it say?"

"It's an old Neapolitan song. He's talking about the mountain, how beautiful and calm it is. 'Everything is sleeping, everything is sleeping or dying — but I alone am awake, because love never sleeps.' "

"How does he say it?"

"E tutto dorme, tutto dorme o more, e i' sulo veglio, pecché veglia ammore."

"That's beautiful, but it's sad."

"Yes." He looked at her intensely, as if he were going to say something, but his eyes dropped away after a moment. "Enough for today, don't you think?”

It took them half an hour to drive back to the house, and they didn't speak or touch. At home he stood at the French doors of the living room and looked out at the night; there weren't city lights nearby, and the stars seemed brighter there. Lee changed into a nightgown upstairs, and when she returned to the living room he was sitting in the dark, nursing a drink. She straddled him on the sofa, opening his shirt to feel his chest.

"Now you don’t move,” she said.

He put his hands under her gown to caress her and closed his eyes as she moved. Later, when they got cold, he carried her up to bed, but lay with his back to her. He was thinking.

"You'll go to Billy," he finally said.

"Yes. My mother told me he's not well."

"I'll drive you there tomorrow."

Lee let the silence settle for a moment before she asked, "And then, what will happen?”

"Then, if he is very sick, you'll want to take care of him." He turned to face her, stroking her cheek. "And it will be hard for me to sit around wishing for a boy to die so I can have you."

She was so sick of pain and damned sacrifice, but she managed to say, "I know. I wouldn't expect it of you."

NINE

Ten days later, James faced his old, irrepressible friend Attie across the table of a fashionable London restaurant.

"What are you doing?"

"What am I doing?" Attie asked with wide, innocent eyes.

"I don't know, but I might strangle you for it."

Attie glanced around at the two women who were retreating together toward the bathroom.

"I’ll bet my family heirlooms that they are discussing the chances of Cathy getting you into bed tonight."

"You're a complete idiot," James stated flatly.

He felt tired as he looked past Attie at the street, where Londoners huddled against the snow. Caitlin was happy that they'd have a white Christmas, although the next day, December 24, would probably be as gray and grim as that day had been. Still, they'd be together, cook and open presents. They'd probably watch some special on TV and nap, then wake up to more food. It would be good and quiet.

He just wondered why the hell Attie had shown up not only with his on-again-off-again girlfriend Caroline but with another woman.

"You're glum," Attie said.

"You're boring."

"No, you're boring."

"On the contrary, I was all ready to get sloshed and exchange fun stories with you and Caroline, and you bring a stranger."

"It's not a good look, a table for three. I'm sure there is some superstition against it somewhere. And she is a very attractive stranger, you might add." Attie grimaced. "Please tell me that love hasn't made you blind."

"No, she is very attractive."

“And it doesn’t lift your spirits?”

If only things were that simple.

Hearts didn’t really break, or James’ might have six days before, as he sat in a parking lot in Greensboro watching Lee help Billy out of a car.

James had bought her the car, because she had to shuttle Billy back and forth to his doctor appointments. He had helped her pay for a specialist, because Billy was much more ill than Lee had ever seen him. On the phone, her voice was garbled as she fought to control her tears, because Lee didn’t like to cry.

It wasn’t just that she didn’t want to seem weak: she was horrified that her husband, her best friend, should be so sick — and that instead of caring for him, she had been running from the law.

Five years ago, Lee had faced an impossible situation: if she had stayed, she would have been convicted of Joe’s murder, and she would have been no help to Billy — and no help to Cora. She would have been in prison, perhaps a hindrance to people who already bore heavy burdens.

Watching her face as she helped Billy shuffle into the clinic, James could see how much she cared for him. He had been her only friend. He had been the only person apart from Cora who had loved her and not expected something from her: a young man so frail that his clothes looked uninhabited, like the clothes on a ventriloquist's dummy. What could Billy's love do for Lee, except make her even more inclined to forget herself?

What could the love of a mother like April, a she-wolf according to Paxton, do?

How could the love of a child like Cora help Lee?

Billy moved with infinite slowness, taking a deep breath at every step. He had been Lee’s only support, and he couldn’t even walk on his own.

“Fuck,” James muttered, his fingers on the door handle. He would get out of the car and help them.

He would set up a sick room for Billy in the house he had rented, and then he could help Lee every day.

But he didn’t open the car door or move as the couple disappeared inside the building. No one would understand, not in a small city like Lee’s, that a woman and her lover should take care of her husband; especially when the woman stood accused of murder.

The best thing he could do for Lee was to leave, and monitor things from far away. Or was that the best thing he could do for himself?

It didn’t feel like either as he sat far from her, in London; and Cathy wouldn’t make him stop thinking of Lee. No, not even for a second.

"Look, you did something heroic for a fascinating woman, who is now stuck with a husband in a scenario from Deliverance meets Real Crimes of America,” Attie said. “But if you're here and not there, Saint, it's because you can hardly do more than you've done. The woman of many names has the best legal team you could find. Seriously, what else can you do? Be a monk for the rest of your life?"

"Not that long, no.”

"No, because you're hoping things will get sorted out soon? Hoping for a death?"

"Don't be a prick."

"A death and an acquittal."

James' eyes moved to the window again, and he didn't realize how hard he was frowning till Attie tapped his forehead. "You have it bad, my friend."

"Fuck off."

"That is precisely the way out of your funk and, as your friend, I'm only trying to shove you in that direction, so you get there soonest. What is femme fatale's name, anyway? Not Vivien, I know that."

"Her name is the one thing I'll never disclose."

"Why?"

"You'd never leave me alone about it."

"It's not heaven spelled backwards, is it? Is it a food item, like Apple or Celery?”

"Call her Lee. Like the general."

"I can look it all up, you know.”

“Do that, then.” James gave him a grim smile. “She was sure you were a murderer for a while.”

“She was?” Attie beamed. “Tell her I adore her for it. And it was very clever of her to figure the whole thing out. Although it did shorten the number of members-of-your-family-out-of-jail by two, and I love Aunt Imogen. Can’t we get her out of prison?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Robert can go to hell of course, but Im’s worth a million of Mia. Sometimes people are just so murderable, you know.”

James knew it was impossible to contain Attie, and he didn’t try. “Strange that you didn’t tell me what you thought of Mia before I got married.”

“Well, one doesn’t. One waits till all hell breaks loose to go on about how one always knew it.” Attie leaned forward. “I do approve of General Lee. Just for the record. Fantastic body, a brain and insane courage. Two out of three of those, and I’d marry her.”

“I’m sure it’s the insane courage part that you’d drop.”

“Well, my arms aren’t as buff as yours to be carrying her all over the place for days.”

Attie's gaze wandered to the right. Caroline and Cathy were making their way back to the table.

"At least I got you a woman with a normal name,” he said. “Be charming."

"Why? She looks like she enjoys a brooder."

"Then brood. Goes with that jumper. Besides, I always feel like your successes are mine.”

“I’m sure.”

They stood as the two women took their seats again. Cathy put delicate elbows on the table and smiled first at Attie, then at James.

“What have we missed?"

Do small talk. Eat dinner. Take Cathy home. Go home. Kill Attie some other time.

At the door of her house on Earl's Court, Cathy turned to James with a bright but vulnerable smile. "Would you like to come up for a nightcap?"

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if life were simple? Then he’d just lose himself in the body of a beautiful woman for a few hours. But that was the problem of knowing the consequences of things: he would want to run away as soon as the deed was done. He would use a person and hurt her for little reason. He would go home thinking a thousand times more intensely of Lee.

"My sister is arriving," James said. "I need to prepare a few things. Another time?"

Cathy’s face showed her bewilderment. Now she might spend Christmas wondering why a man wouldn’t want to sleep with her. James would kill Attie for interfering, even with his best interest, or something like it, in mind.

His apartment was empty, because he had lied; Caitlin would only arrive the next afternoon, in time for Christmas Eve. And although his sister would soon be there, the place felt all wrong: a big space, sparsely but expensively furnished, with a privileged view of the Thames and of snow falling over black water. It was tasteful, and it felt wrong. It wasn’t a home, and there was no heart in it.

An invisible but inexorable cord pulled him across the ocean.

He poured himself a glass of whiskey, because it was cold, and walked into his bedroom. Taking the phone out of his pocket, he felt its weight in the palm of his hand.

Don't drink and dial, dickhead.

How are you, Lee? Is it bearable? Please tell me you're not miserable.

It wasn't fair of him to do that, to her or to himself.

James undressed, lay in bed watching the snow, and he thought of someone else. He thought of the pain that he could help, at least a little. It was time.

TEN

He had known it would hurt to see his aunt, and it did.

The visitors’ room at the prison seemed to have a blue filter to it. The tables, chairs and walls were blue, as was the light coming in through barred windows. When Aunt Imogen crossed the door in a sweat suit, the blue of her kind eyes seemed faded, and her skin was gray.

She stood, uncertain, biting lips that trembled. Her hair was half white now, and unkempt. James watched her clutch her plump hands together, the hands that had so often caressed his head and face — and all he felt was that he didn’t want her to suffer.

He folded her in his arms.

“Aunt Im,” he said, kissing her temple.

“My dear …”

They stayed in each other’s embrace for a moment to gather their emotions and smiled as they pulled away. He held her elbow and guided her to a chair, afraid that she might have become frail, although she looked sturdy.

“What is it that I’ve heard?” she asked immediately. “The whole thing about Vivien, and then Mexico?”

“Long story,” he said.

“Oh, but I told her I could see it. That you had never, ever felt like that in your life.” She patted his hand. “It’s wonderful, James.”

“Well, it’s actually a mess.”

“No, no, no,” Imogen said. “You’ll see, it will work out.”

He stroked her fingers. “Tell me about you.”

“It isn’t bad here, you know.” She shrugged. “Not like in the films or anything.”

“No one has hurt you?”

“Oh, no. It’s just loud sometimes, when the women fight. But there are some older ladies, like me, and we keep to each other.”

They both knew that she was going to be in there for years; Robert would get out before she did. But Aunt Im had always been able to tell what he was thinking.

“I know you won’t go see your uncle,” she said. “Even Cat hasn’t.”

“He can really rot.”

“It wasn’t—”

He cocked his head. “You’re not about to say it wasn’t his fault, are you?”

“When you hear a story like that, you might think that Robert abused my love and drove me to do something terrible,” she insisted. “But you see, all the time I acted out of love for him and thought little of myself, I was happy. It was when I started thinking of myself that things got bad.”

James pursed his lips. “That philosophy will make most people use you and spit you out. There is no end to human selfishness, Aunt Im.”

“I know, my darling. Robert would have gone away with Mia. You’d be divorced, and you’d feel disgust but relief as well. I’d have suffered, but Robert would still have cared for me. Mia would be alive, and their child would be alive.”

“And he would have realized that he missed you,” James said. “And that Mia could never have made him happy. And maybe even that he was too bloody old to be a father. But would you have realized that he isn’t worth your love?”

Her eyes became lost for a moment. “In a strange way he is, though. I know you don’t understand it, but he is.”

“Right.” He scoffed. “I guess I don’t see it.”

“Amor gignit amorem, James. It is the truth.”

Love begets love. The motto of a family that had had scant love in it, except for the woman sitting before him.

“What are you doing here?” Imogen asked softly.

“I wanted to see you.”

She tapped the table with her plump hand. “No, I mean in England. That young woman needs you.”

“It’s complicated, Aunt Im.”

She smiled and brushed the hair away from his forehead. “No, my darling. It isn’t.”

That afternoon, Caitlin arrived at her brother’s flat with a golden little puppy, and she held on to James, her cheek against his. “I’m so happy you went to see Aunt Im. You’re the best ever.”

“Nice when you admit that,” he said. “And what on earth …?”

She held the puppy with its fat belly up. It snarled, showing tiny teeth. “It’s Percy. For Percival.”

“And where do you plan to keep him?”

“With me, silly.” She opened her coat pocket and dropped the puppy into it. “See? It’s portable.”

Percy was given the newspaper James had neglected to read and proceeded to tear it into pieces as it rolled on the carpet.

“He’s going to pee all over,” James said.

He carved the lamb he had roasted, while Caitlin prepared a salad. “The pee doesn’t even smell, at his age. I’ll take him out before he poos all over.”

“I should hope so.”

"I don't think Lee has ever felt loved," Caitlin said as a way of response.

James had kept several details of what had happened between him and Lee to himself, such as the attempted theft of Mia's diamonds by "Vivien." Caitlin would believe Lee to be a woman on the run from an unjust but complex charge of murder, changing her name as she went; a woman who had tried to help him solve the Diego problem, although he had blurred some of those details as well.

“That came a bit out of nowhere,” James observed.

"You need to tell her."

"Tell her what?"

"That you love her."

He snorted in fond condescension. "You're so young. As if saying three stupid words could solve the problems of a lifetime."

"You're the one who sounds like a child now." Caitlin mimicked him, “ ‘Stupid words, bleh.' "

"I think I taught you to respect your elders. In any case, aren't actions supposed to speak louder than words?"

"Some people need to hear stupid words."

"Then they're stupid people. And Lee is as far from stupid as the next galaxy is from us."

"Well, here is my perspective,” Caitlin said, staring earnestly at him. “Light the way for her."

James wouldn’t leave the lamb alone, although it was already in slices. "What are you talking about?"

"She's in the dark. Light the way for her. She needs to understand that you want to be with her, and then she'll be with you."

"She has a very sick husband."

"Tell her you love her, and she will find a way."

"Kill him, you mean?"

"Don't be an ass. Tell her you love her."

"Maybe I'll pick up a card that says it. I'll sign it xoxoxo."

Caitlin looked at him with something like compassion. Or pity. "You have a problem, James. You need to face it sometime. You hate feelings. You only like action. Probably because of your—”

“If you say my lonely childhood with our parents …”

“—lonely childhood feeling unloved.”

“Christ. She went there.”

“You ought to know that you can show Lee all day long that you love her, and she will just think you're being noble, like she is."

James gave a cynical smile. "Should I show her I'm an absolute shit to everyone else? Maybe then …?”

"You should say it."

"Sounds like you’re in the mood to watch a Disney movie tonight.”

"See what you do? You have a problem, James. You think it's all her, but it's you."

“I think Percy just pooped.”

“Stop, he didn’t!”

“I can smell something awful.”

Caitlin laughed and ran to the puppy. “So can I.” She grabbed her coat as she passed by him. “Cowardice.”

Cowardice? No one could call him a coward, James thought as he put the food on the table and poured himself some wine.

Could they?

But when the screen of his phone lit up, he had to admit the grab he made for it, tripping over the newspaper on the floor, was a little desperate. It was only Attie, wishing them a good evening. He texted a few words back.

Dinner was tasty, but they had a little too much champagne and far too much plum pudding. They’d open the presents the next morning. After helping him clean up, Caitlin left him in the living room and went to her bedroom to answer texts and make calls.

James avoided his phone and sat on the sofa. He should turn on the TV: it would be full of Christmas specials of some sort. There might be something good, or at least amusing. Percy was on his lap, half asleep. Hopefully he wouldn’t pee.

Reaching for the guitar next to him, James plucked a few cords. The notes started forming a song and he played it; he even softly sang it.

“Wish You Were Here?” Caitlin asked, jumping onto the sofa. “Uh-oh.”

“A song written by Roger Waters for his friend Syd Barrett.”

Caitlin’s expression was ironic. “Sure.”

“What about this one?” James started strumming I Will Survive.

She grabbed his face. “Tell her, Jamie.” Kissing him, she took Percy and went to bed.

My romantic little sister, James thought. I hope real life never catches up to you.

The phone screen lit up again, but James didn’t pick it up. At least not for a while. When it was time to go to bed, he looked at it: no messages, but a red circle indicated several emails waiting to be read. There were far too many to deal with, but most were Christmas greetings, invitations, ecards.

Only one of the emails interested him: it was from Paxton. I have the information you asked for. Interesting. Call me at any time to discuss.

Any time was underlined, so it could be now, only around six in the afternoon in Greensboro on the 24th of December. It was a working day, and Paxton picked up his phone quickly.

"Carter Paxton."

"It's James."

"Hello, dear. How is grand old London?"

"Cold and busy. Lots of people trying to get places, as usual. One day they'll fall off the edge of the world."

Paxton chuckled. "You’re missed around here."

"I miss y’all too. You said you got results?"

"Can you believe it? They arrived like Christmas presents. You were right to ask for an extremely thorough examination of the fingerprints on that poker. And, James, if I may use a very rude word: it's a clusterfuck."

"Whose prints?"

"This is the thing — that poker was wiped and then covered in blood. But we did recover a good partial fingerprint from that rather ornate handle, where the cleaning didn't reach."

James already suspected the answer, but he nevertheless asked, "Whose?"

There was a pause. "I'm afraid it's Cora's."

For a moment, James didn't say anything. It would be a tragedy, if an eight-year-old child had hit a man on the head with a fire poker several times. A child might have felt so anxious and afraid that she had found no other way to live than to brutally murder a grown man.

"But there's more," Paxton went on.

"Tell me."

"Two partial prints for April Keane too."

James sat up. "Not old ones?"

"No, etched in Keane's blood. You see what I mean by clusterfuck. Every woman in that house touched the murder weapon. And Lee touched it last, after wiping the other prints. Lee set herself up as the scapegoat."

As the sacrifice, James thought.

ELEVEN

"Lynn, are you going to do this?" Maddy asked.

"Yes!" Lee answered from the kitchen.

"I'm getting nervous!" Maddy said, appearing at the door in her bathrobe, with tissue paper tucked around the collar.

"It's five o'clock, Maddy," Lee pointed out as she opened the oven and slid the chicken inside. "Your dinner doesn't start till eight."

Her sister-in-law pulled a bag of potato chips toward her and ripped it open. "I'm starving already." She stuck a few chips in her mouth and added, "There will be traffic to Greensboro today, Lynn. We won't make it there in the usual half hour."

Lee peered inside the pot where water boiled and threw carrots and potatoes inside. "All right, I'm ready."

It was difficult to keep up with Maddy's constant anxiety about when things ought to be done. Normally they had to be done right away or she would start fretting and let everyone know it. She never stopped warning Lee that Billy was going to run out of medication, even if the prescriptions had just been filled and they wouldn't get another one from the doctor until the bottles were nearly empty.

"Then he'll start having problems, and you don't want to see that," Maddy would say. "You don’t want to see him when he turns all purple."

As Maddy sat on the closed toilet, facing the mirror, Lee covered the bathroom sink with a wide tray and laid out the tubes and pots of make-up. She felt a painful twitch inside when she thought of another scene just like that, a few months before: Luz doing her face for an event in Mexico to which she hadn’t been invited.

Life went on, leaving everything behind, especially the dead, and pulling you along. It was Maddy who sat there now, and she had only just stopped blaming Lee for disappearing.

"It ain't only money, Lynn," Maddy had said, perhaps a hundred times, because she couldn't deny that Lee's money had helped keep them afloat. "That ain't love. That's you paying to get rid of trouble. That's not what your vows were."

The "trouble" — Billy — would be sitting right there as Maddy relentlessly attacked Lee. And most days Billy was very tired, his face as pale as his blond hair, his blue eyes sunk deep inside their sockets as his head rested on the back of the sofa.

"She couldn't come," he would say sometimes, interrupting his sister's tirades.

"And might be going away again, for all we know — to jail!" Maddy would shake her head. "We may be poor as mice, Lynn, but we have been honest all our lives.”

Two messages had been painted outside: KILLER and MURDERER. Maddy had certainly shouted and complained about them. They had painted the house only ten months ago! And how would they get that horrible word off the driveway?

When Maddy was away, Lee paid to have the messages removed. Maddy had complained that it was winter, and the paint would take long to dry and not be perfect.

Just as she was calming down, she had found a dead racoon inside the letterbox, and had started again.

Since then, things had quieted down. It was strange, but apart from those three incidents, most people had accepted Lee’s return. They seemed to be giving her the benefit of the doubt. Some glared as she passed, but many more greeted her as they had always done.

And Maddy was something like family. As Lee carefully patted foundation onto her sister-in-law’s face, she reflected that it would be difficult for them to hate each other. Maddy was five years older than Billy; a lifetime ago she would bring "the kids" chocolate or candy when she came home from work, would braid Lee’s hair and talk about Ross, her boyfriend, and her dreams for the future.

Their mother would arrive in the late afternoon, drink wine coolers and smoke in the kitchen. A lot of mothers did that in Hawkshaw. Lee would never stay for dinner; she would know that Mrs. Wheeler was tired and there wasn't enough food for everyone, not all the time. People would be sensitive to each other's situation, then they'd be insensitive. It was an eternal back and forth, as if almost everyone in that town belonged to an extended but highly dysfunctional family.

Maddy had married Ross Olson, after all, and he would sometimes speak to Lee when his wife wasn't around. "It was rough on her because she wanted me to buy the house in Greensboro. And with Billy this sick, she couldn't work anymore and help out. But the upside was that we were able to save money by being here instead of paying rental. It's cheaper in Hawkshaw than over there for everything."

From the time she was eleven, whenever Lee had visited Billy, Ross had always been there. He had been like everyone's older brother, a calming influence in a place that could be volatile. Ross always seemed to understand all sides of an argument. He was the peace broker, a young man who would probably succeed in life through quiet determination.

Nowadays, he was employed as a parts analyst for a truck company, going from work straight to courses at night college. One day, he would have his own transport business.

"We'll buy our house soon," he assured Lee. "And Billy ..."

He let the end of the phrase drift. Billy won't last long.

Billy was in a bad way. It was as if the air hurt him, even as he gulped it. He could hardly walk from the bedroom to the living room, where he would stay most of the day. Lee had only managed to move him outside a few times, during sunny days, but everything had bothered him: the birds, the light, even the wind moving through the trees.

Nature wasn't necessarily a solace for someone that sick.

"Have a look," she told Maddy.

Maddy opened her eyes, blinked several times and leaned forward to peer at herself. "Can I have a bit more glitter on the eyes? It's New Year's Eve."

There was already more eyeshadow than Lee thought possible, but she applied the glitter. When Maddy was satisfied, Lee stuck the long, pointy end of a comb through her brown hair and teased it.

"Why do you like flat hair, Lynn?" Maddy asked, taking a gingerly sip of her soda through a straw so as not to spoil her lips.

Lee shrugged, thinking of how James liked to run his fingers through her hair. It made her lips curve with amusement to imagine him trying to do that to Maddy, especially after the thick cloud of product that she wanted sprayed around her head.

"Why, thanks, Lynn," Maddy finally said. "I look pretty good, don’t I?"

"You look amazing," Ross said from the door.

Maddy screamed, clutching her chest. "Ross, don't give us a fright like that. How long you been there?"

"You almost ready?"

"Have to put on my clothes, if you haven’t noticed."

"Why do you have to leave so early?" Lee asked.

"I said there will be people on the road." Maddy bustled out of the bathroom and toward her room. "Don't my husband look handsome, Lee?"

The suit Ross was wearing wasn't expensive — not like the suits Lee had seen since leaving Hawkshaw, which cost thousands of dollars, but whose cut was perfection; suits like James’, when he cared to wear them. Yet, Ross' suit wasn't cheap. It might have cost a few hundred dollars, and Maddy's small diamond earrings a few hundred more. Ross was coming up in the world, little by little, as Maddy had always hoped.

But he wasn't a handsome man with his pitted skin, fuzzy blond hair and burly build that would, one day, turn to hopeless fat.

"You don't have to answer that, Lee," he said, letting out a guffaw.

“You do look handsome, silly,” Lee said as she walked to the living room. She sat next to Billy on the sofa.

"What's going on, then?" Even the short question left him out of breath.

"They're almost ready to go."

"Oh."

Lee caressed his cheek and left her hand in his hair. He looked exhausted, and Maddy had already warned Lee that he hadn't stayed awake for midnight on New Years’ in a long, long time. However, sleep was kind to him. It was the only thing that took his pain away.

"How do I look, Billy?"

Maddy walked in on precarious heels and twirled for her brother to admire her dress.

"Pretty."

"Now you behave." Maddy took his face between her hands. "Happy new year, sweetheart."

"Happy new year, Maddy."

A sharp, short rap startled everyone for a second. The front door was pushed open by Caleb. He was dressed in a suit as well, except that his was definitely cheap. He whistled over Maddy, kissing her, shook Ross' hand and touched Billy's hair softly.

"How you doing, Billy? Ready for lift-off?"

Billy managed half a smile as Caleb perched on the arm of a chair without looking at Lee.

"I was going to help Lee take Billy to his room," Ross said.

"I'll do that, don't worry."

"Where you going tonight, Caleb?"

"Some live music over at the lake."

"That's where Masha wants to go, huh? ’Cause you don't like that place."

Caleb scratched his head at the mention of his girlfriend. "A bunch of people going there. Could be good, ain’t no telling.”

"Well, have fun," Maddy said, hugging him. "And happy new."

"Happy new."

The couple left, letting the screen swing back into place, and Caleb got up to close the door. "It's chilly for Billy. Hey, that rhymed — eh, Billy?"

"Can you take me to the room now?" Billy asked.

"Already, man? You'll leave Lynn all alone here for the new year?"

"I'll be in the room with him," Lee said. "We'll watch TV."

They managed to get Billy to his feet. Despite being so thin and frail, he was heavy, but Caleb was strong and so was Lee. They put the sick man in the hospital bed she had bought with James’ money.

Once Billy was settled, he fought to regain his breath and asked with effort, "Is anyone going to the Hoffmans'?"

Caleb's eyes flew to the photograph of Scott Hoffman, which Billy had by his bedside. It had shocked Lee to know that Scott, Caleb’s best friend, was dead. Better-off than other kids because his father had a bricklaying business, Scott had been kind to Billy, bringing him DVDs and comics. The two of them had often sat discussing the merits of some superhero over another.

Scott had been found at his house with a needle in his arm, having shot a deadly overdose of methamphetamine through his vein. The school athlete who hadn't had it nearly as bad as everyone else had succumbed to a drug most people in Hawkshaw couldn't afford, at least not for long. Caleb had already been a cop, claiming to have known nothing of his best friend's addiction.

"I'll go see them tomorrow. It's a thing," Caleb explained to Lee. "We try to go by on difficult days, you know. Holidays."

Billy closed his eyes, struggling for breath until Lee put an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. They watched him for a moment as his chest wheezed painfully, until a tear escaped the corner of one of his eyes and his face relaxed.

Lee motioned for Caleb to follow her. In the kitchen, she took the chicken out of the oven, and Caleb's eyes rested on her as if she were the meal. She didn't want to see that look from him, so she turned her back and began mashing the potatoes and carrots together, adding tiny pieces of chicken breast to the mixture.

"It will be a kindness, you know, when he …" Caleb started.

"Don't say that," Lee snapped.

"He can’t go on like this. And you can't go on like this either, Lynn."

"I've been here less than three weeks, Caleb. I can go on a lot longer."

"But you gotta get out of this house sometime. Just for a bit. Have a drink, listen to some music. I've talked to Maddy, she isn't nearly as angry as she was at you before. She'd be fine staying with Billy one night."

"I don't want to go out."

"Well, my sisters plan to ask you."

She turned sharply. "Did you put them up to it?"

"I did not — they want to see you. And you know those girls, they don't like to be snubbed."

Who in the world, except someone as clueless as Caleb, would think that meeting his sisters would be fun? They were like the love children of Godzilla and King Kong. Yet that was small town life: others decided what was good for you. You didn't turn down any invitations, you didn't snub anyone, and you didn’t retreat into yourself, unless you could show the certificate to some incurable disease.

"I know it's not really the case, Lynn, but happy new year," Caleb added. "I guess I gotta get going."

He didn't move, but she did. At the door, he added, "I hope it does turn out happy. I hope you ain't condemned. I hope Billy—"

"Caleb ..."

"I hope whatever is good for Billy happens. I'm here if you need me. If you let me."

Caleb still felt the blind stubbornness of possession. He thought it was love, the purest motivation in the world. People shoved their so-called love at you and dared you not to accept it. They shoved you too, with your face against a locker at school, or against a wall in a bedroom.

He might have forgotten the couple of split lips he had given her, but she wouldn't forget. He might have forgotten the nick she had given him with a pair of nail scissors, but he'd better not forget. Caleb had only been violent to her twice, and it had been enough.

No, there had been the third time, when she had married Billy.

Now he probably wondered if she had killed a man, and she didn't mind him thinking it.

Still, he was gone, and she took Billy's plate to the bedroom. He could only eat three forkfuls before he shook his head. Lee removed the plates and cleaned Billy's teeth. She brushed the hair away from his forehead and put on the TV.

"What do you want to watch?" she asked.

"I think someone should go to the Hoffmans," he whispered.

"Billy, it's the third year. They'll be all right."

"Scott was their only son."

Lee lay on the bed next to his and took his hand as they watched TV for a while. The news showed the fireworks that had already happened in other places of the world. They had been beautiful in Hong Kong, Berlin, Madrid.

They had been beautiful in London.

Her phone was on silent mode, but it lit whenever she received a call or message. There was a tearful drunken call from her mother.

"Why do I have to be alone? You couldn't even invite me over there?"

"Billy's already asleep, Mama."

"Really?” April sniffled. “Maybe it would be bad to drink a toast with Billy like that. You tell him I said happy new year. I hope it's goddamned happy, is all I can say. I'm so sick of everything!"

She would call again, when she got drunker and the self-pity increased.

Lee looked at the screen. She had already called Cora. Now she wanted the phone to ring, and she wanted it to be James.

She only wanted to hear his voice, but he didn’t call.

TWELVE

James didn't call because he was on his way to Charlotte.

Bliss was an empty plane, and that was where he had spent the passage into the new year — happy to miss it in the country he was leaving, and in the country where he was headed. He had spent it twice over the Atlantic instead.

James thought of Lee as he ran in the woods outside his rented Greensboro house. A run was the thing to get his circulation going after the long plane ride, although his mind raced faster than his feet. He thought Caitlin was right: Lee had always felt that she didn’t matter, and that others should come before her. Wary as he was of textbook psychological explanations, he could see why she would create aliases — women like Vivien who didn’t look like her, didn’t have her history and could remain in control of situations by lying.

The men she robbed would think they were telling her what to do, where to go, how to be, and all the time she would be doing what she had set out to do. And the money, as she had told him more than once, had been the primary goal. She had needed it for Cora, for Billy and for April.

A loud rustle to his right made him stop in his tracks. An owl perching on the thick low branch of a tree stared at him with almost indignant eyes. It had a brown and white coat of feathers, a round head and a bright yellow beak. The woods were bare and beautiful, and he enjoyed these encounters with the local fauna, but he walked away softly so as not to frighten the bird.

Back in the house he ate a quick breakfast and ran up to take a shower before Paxton, Ava and others arrived. By a quarter past nine, the polished table in the dining room was covered with papers and files. Paxton introduced Dr. Gavin Koestler, the neuropathologist he had hired to reexamine the evidence released to the defense, which included the crime weapon.

A young assistant from the firm projected a slide onto the bare white wall. It showed the crime weapon, a fire poker, and Paxton pointed at it with a laser beam as he spoke.

"From the blood on the prints, we know that April, Cora and Lee touched the poker at or after Joe's death, not before. We also know that there was an attempt to wipe April and Cora's prints, and only partials were recovered from the handle." The laser circled an ornate handle depicting fruit and leaves as Paxton continued, "These nooks and crannies are difficult to clean, so the poker — and this is the real issue here — was used, wiped clean, and only then were Lee's prints decisively added, as you can see if we show them to you with the layer of dust."

Another slide appeared, and Paxton circled the prints that were meant to be Lee's, also showing which ones were Cora's and which were April's.

"Crime scene, please."

A third slide showed the L-shaped stairs from the front door, with Joe's body lying on the ground at the bottom, facing away from the camera and toward the kitchen.

"The other visible elements in the scene are of course blood spatter, blood traces and footprints. And there, James, we got a bit flummoxed."

It wasn't the first time that James looked at crime scene photos. He had been shown the images of his wife lying on a rock, her face and limbs smashed by a fall. He had had to identify her body as it lay, cold, blue and broken, on a slab. His hand was nevertheless steady as he held the cup of coffee to his lips after asking, "Why?"

"Our expert here, I should say, is flummoxed,” Paxton explained. “It's another of those cluster thingies."

"I can hear the word clusterfuck, Carter," Ava said without raising her head from her yellow notepad.

"There's soap in this house, young lady." Paxton faced James and continued, "What do we know from the medical examiner’s report? That the actual cause of death for Joe Keane wasn't the blows, but a fall from just about the middle of the stairs, when he hit this bend and rolled on to the ground here, where he landed badly and broke his neck. However, a case will still be made by the prosecution that the fall was provoked by the blows to his head, even that he would have bled to death because of his wounds. The question is, where did these blows take place? Gavin, dear, d'you want to cover this?"

Koestler was a tall man in his late fifties with a full mane of white hair. He stood and took the laser pointer Paxton offered him.

"All right, so the prosecution supposed that Joe was on the stairs going down, and that he was hit from behind by someone on a higher step. If you look at where the blood is, then we would have to say it started about here, midway up or down. However, there are seven lacerations on his skull — which means the killer would have had to raise the poker to strike again and again."

Forgetting the laser, Koestler motioned with a large hand toward the walls in the image. "Where is the cast-off pattern? It would have to be here. No one strikes someone else like this." He took the stick they were using as a stand-in for the poker and held it low, making repeated but short striking movements. "People strike like this." He raised the stick past his shoulder. "You can see how a poker with blood on it would create at least some blood pattern on the walls and ceiling and would also drip in a specific pattern on the carpet when the killer struck again."

He asked the assistant for the next slides. "Except we just see dollops of blood on the carpet, which are consistent with profuse bleeding. And here we have smears on the wall and on the rail, which were made by the victim: these are Joe's fingers and palm, but his hand is not facing down, as if, after being hit, he was trying to hold on and not fall. The fingers and palm are facing up — as if he had turned to confront his assailant and was holding on to the rail and the wall to climb."

The next slide showed the bottom of the wall, close to the steps. "And this low spray pattern here has been described by the prosecution as a cast-off pattern. But that pattern, in my opinion, was not caused by a blow when Joe had already fallen down, for example, but by coughing or spewing."

A close-up of Joe Keane, lying on a metal gurney, followed. "You see, there is blood in his mouth. As he fell, he coughed or expelled his breath in a way that would cause this type of spray pattern."

Paxton pushed printed photos across the table for James to look more closely.

"If his assailant were a woman or a child," James asked, "and if the first blow or blows were not strong enough to kill him or render him unconscious — would he not naturally try to confront the killer and take the weapon from someone weaker than him? That would explain him turning around to climb."

"That's where we have the next clusterfuck," Ava announced.

Paxton threw her a look of gentle chagrin as Ava efficiently distributed several sets of photos of Joe Keane's skull, shaved by the pathologist, and the report, which included drawings of a man's head with marks that represented the lacerations.

"You see, six of the seven lacerations follow a similar pattern. They are the result of blows delivered from above, over what you would know as the crown or top of the head," Paxton said. "The six long lacerations were allegedly made by the point that sticks out from the poker. There is only one short blow, which hit his posterior skull near the back of his neck.”

James looked at the mess that was Joe’s scalp, with the six long lacerations Paxton described; the skin must have been raised in flaps in a few places. The hole on the back of his head was more like a puncture or dent. The report assumed this to have been the first blow, delivered as Joe looked down and descended the steps.

“These long lacerations were all made as Joe faced away from the killer,” Koestler said. “You can see where they started by the deeper hits in the frontal part of his crown. The instrument first hit there, then dragged toward the back. There is no way for Joe to have been hit just twice or three times to then turn to confront his attacker, because he kept getting hit the same way: from above and behind.

 “And yet what we don't find anywhere are skull fractures. A poker of this weight would have caused fractures, injury, edema or at least some bruising of the brain. There was only slight subarachnoid hemorrhage noted in the autopsy — as if the victim had not been hit with enough strength."

"As if he had been hit by a child?" James looked up from the report. “If there are no fractures and there is no edema, then he might have been hit repeatedly by someone not very strong, or someone who hesitated to do harm. The blows from Cora weren’t strong enough to stun him, although she kept hitting him, and after a few, he managed to turn around, grab on to the wall and rail, but lost his footing, fell and broke his neck.”

“Could be,” Paxton said with a grimace. “But he was hit seven times before he turned? If he could still turn around after that, wouldn’t he have done it before? Could Cora have become so manic that she hit her stepfather seven times in a few seconds?”

"And the point is," Koestler added, "that the medical examiner’s office concurred that these were vicious blows supposedly delivered by a strong, able young woman, since the police blamed Lynette Miller — yet these blows didn't cause a single fracture or even any edema. Also, no one does a good job of explaining the different types of blow."

"The discrepancies between these reports and those images," Paxton pointed to the wall as the assistant projected a close-up of the lacerations, "are so important that Gavin went up to Harvard, to consult Dr. Amos Azulay. He's one of the world's foremost forensic experts."

"He basically thought that the lab did a lousy job of this examination," Gavin explained. "The lab said this single dent here on the back of Joe’s head matches the piece sticking out of the fire poker, but these two things don’t match even by looking at the images. He suggested we should request exhumation, so that we can examine the skull.”

"I thought exhumation was nearly impossible to get," James remarked.

"I can make a compelling case for what was missed both in the pathologist’s examination and in the forensic findings,” Paxton said. “The cluster thing — and how it was treated far too much as an 'open-and-shut case' in the words of the prosecutor at the prelim. You see, James, no one would have much cared before, or moved their behinds, because there wasn't money involved. There was no efficient defense team, no Gavin, no Dr. Azulay. I believe that now it will be in the court's interest to concede the exhumation. Keane has no close living relatives apart from April, only a cousin — isn’t that right Ava?"

"A cousin in Asheville," Ava said.

"And I doubt that as the next of kin April can stop the exhumation, considering that her prints are on the weapon.”

James nodded. "Then let's do it.”

"But we have more," Paxton said. "Gavin?”

 Koestler stood on the tip of his toes twice before he managed to say, with a smile that almost looked gleeful, "There are no bloody footsteps by Cora Miller on this staircase." The image on the wall now showed the light brown carpet covering the steps. "Look at the dollops of blood, at the pool that formed. Considering her size and the reach of her arms, Cora would have had to be no higher than here to hit her stepfather. Now look at the blood on the carpet. It would have fallen on her feet or slippers; and even if her mama decided to give her a bath and burn her clothes, we would have a footprint, or the negative imprint of one: a clear place with the shape of her foot with blood around it. Cora would then have made more prints running up, which would have been impossible to get rid of. They'd be on the carpet."

"Which means that whole area could not have been cleaned so as to erase Cora's presence," Paxton concluded, folding his arms on the table as he looked at James. "That little girl was never on the stairs."

"She couldn't have killed Joe," James muttered.

"That leaves the two adult women," Paxton said. "And only one of them has done everything in her power to incriminate herself."

THIRTEEN

In Leviticus, the scapegoat was the animal ritually burdened with the sins of the tribe and driven out into the wilderness as a sacrifice. It would obtain pardon for all.

As James stood on Howard Lane, he thought of Lee leaving the house, bearing the weight of a crime she hadn't committed. She had left feeling guilt and misery for abandoning Cora and Billy, the two people who depended on her.

Number 247 stood on its own on the quiet street. The neighbors were hidden by bushes and thickets of trees. April Keane's house was two-storied, with three steps leading to the porch that featured a window and a narrow front door. It was the sort of unsubstantial house one could imagine blown away by a hurricane or carried by a flood. Once it must have had a coat of yellow paint, which had faded to dirty beige, and the dark shutters upstairs were peeling.

A dry lawn with more bald patches than grass undulated unevenly toward the porch, and the trees around the property were drier and more lifeless than they ought to be, even in winter. An old red car was parked in the driveway, and by glancing inside James could imagine the mess he was about to see in the house.

However, the curtain at the window twitched, and the door was flung open by April Keane. She was wrapped in a robe of terrycloth mimicking leopard spots.

"Mr. Bryce, innit?" she asked.

"I'm sorry I didn't call before coming," he said. "If it's a bad time—"

She laughed out loud. "It ain't never a bad time for tall and gorgeous!"

April stepped aside so he could go in, which he did with slight alarm at the sight of her hard, pink claws holding a wine glass. Well, it was five in the afternoon on a Saturday, and the woman had a right to her drink. He squeezed by her and into the house with a smile. Her look, through eyes the same color as Lee's, was coy.

"I apologize, it will look a bit of a mess to you at the moment," April said, hurrying around the living room to grab cups, dishes and plastic wraps.

It looked much worse than a mess; it looked like both the hurricane and the flood had been through the living room. As she bustled around apologizing and explaining, James stood near the door.

To the left of the entrance, in line with the window, the stairs went up a few steps, then made a sharp angle to continue straight to the second floor. The space between the stairs and the window, to his left, was just enough for a sofa, a television and the fireplace. In front of him there was another space with a round dining table and three rickety chairs, and beyond it, the kitchen. It was the crime scene he had seen in the slides Paxton had obtained from the prosecution.

The inside of the house hadn't seen a coat of color in a while either. He suspected that without a man in her life, April couldn't be bothered.

There was a crash of dishes in the kitchen as she called, "D'you want some wine?"

"Better not, thanks. I'm driving."

"Coffee? Or d'you drink tea? I think I have some tea here ..."

April rummaged inside cupboards, and James wanted a moment to look around. "Tea would be lovely, thank you."

Her low, muttered curse made him smile.

The stairs had been stripped of the light brown carpet of the crime scene photos. Now there was cheap wood, full of scuff marks. James walked by the bumpy sofa, whose flower pattern probably hid food and drink stains; the fireplace didn't seem as if it had been used in a while. A small shovel that must have belonged to the same set as the poker, judging by the handle, gathered dust against the wall.

On the mantelpiece, there were frames. The biggest ones contained photographs of April, and she must have been in her early twenties when they were taken. Lee had said her mother had once been stunning, and if one were to judge a person solely on features, she had. April’s skin, now blotchy, looked flawless in the images, her eyes like a tropical sea, her lips plump and pink. Her natural hair was a light brown streaked with blonde highlights, as healthy and shiny as Lee's. A bit of generous cleavage hinted at a body that must have been alluring.

A later photograph showed April sitting on Joe Keane's lap near a lake as they held cigarettes. There was already a big difference between the girl in the studio photos and the woman at the lake, although she must have been only in her early thirties then.

James moved to the more recent photo of a teenage girl. Blonde and pretty, she stood in the snow amid houses and mountains: Cora. Her eyes were almost closed in joy as she held a ball of snow and laughed. That was the happiness Lee had done so much to preserve, just as he had tried to preserve Caitlin's.

And there was Lee, in the smallest of all frames. Hers was the high school yearbook photograph that all American teenagers apparently possessed. Their forced smiles, their gaze somewhere above the lens, their innocent-looking sweaters and fluffy hair would be reproduced in newspapers, magazines and the internet as soon as anything went wrong in their lives.

She wore a blue shirt, with a gold heart hanging from a chain to lie against the crevice of her neck; she must have been the most beautiful girl for thousands of miles, or perhaps it would just be hard for him to think any woman more beautiful than Lee.

The photographer had probably asked her to smile, but she hadn't. Lee had just sat looking like she belonged elsewhere, or nowhere.

He turned away, the imprint of Lee’s face swimming before his eyes. She was tidy and loved harmony, and she would have spent a lot of time trying to make the house look nice. It would have been like Sisyphus' punishment in the underworld: starting the same terrible task from scratch every day.

Not to mention the task of dealing with April, who was swaying his way with a mug that said "Hug Me."

The edges of the mug looked brown as he took it from her, and he could tell by the scum gathering on top that the tea was undrinkable. But then, he hadn't planned to drink it.

April held up a sugar bowl. "How many?"

"I take no sugar, thanks."

"No sugar, how do you manage?"

James only smiled, and she stood glowing under his eyes, patting her neck with a long-nailed hand. She was flirting.

"Do I call you Mr. Bryce?" she asked, drawing out the vowels in his name for about three seconds. Br-aaaah-eeesss?

 Cute.

"James."

"You call me April, please. I was only seventeen when I had Lynn, you know. I'm not such a dinosaur!" She motioned toward the sofa. "Please.”

He sat, and she perched on the edge of the seat next to him, making a visible effort to keep her back straight. She wanted to seem genteel, and for a moment he almost felt sorry for her.

"I thought you had left," April pursued. "I mean, with the whole ridiculous business of Lynn going over to Billy. I told her not to do such a thing! I mean, she hadn't seen Billy in five years, and she had been with you ... how long?"

He wrinkled his nose. "Hard to say."

April threw back her brassy head to laugh. "Ah, one of those complicated things, right? When we can't even tell how it started. But still, at least some months, no? And I say, finders, keepers."

"Lee cares for Billy," James pointed out quietly.

"But she's been gone five years, James. There ain't nothing she can do for that poor boy! I guess you didn't meet him?" She grimaced. "I mean, I guess it would be sorta awkward ... Even though, you rest easy, I don't think that is how things are between them."

She widened beautiful eyes at "that."

Unable to help a slight frown, he said, "Lee is doing what she must do.”

Pink claws landed on his sleeve. "I'm one hundred and ten percent sure she'd much rather be with you. She's just a soft-hearted girl. Got it from me. Heaven knows, I find it hard to even see a chicken sufferin’." Her smile grew, spreading wrinkles around her face. "I'm happy that you've come to meet me. Now you see—" she threw a glum and almost frightened look up the staircase, "—what I live with. Horrible memories. I just can't afford to move!"

Lee would have used the first money she ever made or stole to get Cora away from April; but that would have probably involved some sort of pay off. She would have needed April's consent to get Cora out of the country and to a boarding school, and April was obviously moved by cash.

There was no doubt that Lee would have sent her mother enough money to buy another house. Real estate prices in Hawkshaw were as low as $50,000. He also didn't doubt that April would have spent the money Lee sent her on just about anything else.

"You didn't come only to meet me, did you?" April suddenly asked. "You've come to see where Lee grew up.”

She took his hand, and he wanted to pull it away — but he suspected that she would be happier and more cooperative if he let her touch him as she played the naive young girl.

"You can see, there are still stains here," she cried as they went up the stairs, clutching the back of his hand to the side of her breast. "I can't get rid of them, no matter how much I scrub."

Out, out damned spot.

The small-town Lady Macbeth leaned toward him as he flattened himself against the wall. "His head was shattered! Blood everywhere, and blood has a smell. I couldn't get it off my nostrils for ages. Metallic and sweet at the same time. In the morning, when I found him, he already smelled like meat. Just lying there!"

A tragic finger pointed to the bottom of the stairs, but again April clutched James' hand and kept climbing. They reached the second story, where there were three doors, with a fourth so narrow it could only be a closet.

She pulled him toward an open door through which he could see an unmade bed. "This is my room."

He stepped back. "What about this one?"

"That was the room Lee and Cora shared. Then it was only Cora's."

They passed the bathroom, decked out in furry pink carpets and pink toilet covers, and April opened the door of the second bedroom.

"I didn't really change it after the girls left. Cora wanted to keep Lee's side as it was — because Lee slept here sometimes as well. They liked to have their pajama parties." Entering, she picked up an old plastic tiara with rhinestones on it. "Princess parties. Innit cute?"

James was busy looking over the room. The right side, which had been Cora's, bore April's influence, with stuffed animals and a frilly bed cover.

On Lee's side he might have expected posters of Monet or Klimt, the taste a sensitive young girl might have picked up in a small high-school environment from an art teacher. Instead, there were postcards on the wall showing paintings of Rothko, Francis Bacon, Max Ernst. There were photographs of Louise Bourgeois' giant spiders. There were drawings too, and he knew they were Lee's.

On top of the bed there was a shelf with books: Heart of Darkness, The Sound and the Fury, The Stranger, In Cold Blood, Lolita, Anna Karenina.

How had she developed her taste? Where had she found those ideas? Why had she felt drawn to them?

"Yeah, Lynn,” April said. “Always a bit weird. Liked the opposite of what everyone else liked. If anyone said 'A' she had to say 'Z.' Liked all this devil-looking stuff."

April motioned toward the print of a Jean Dubuffet painting.

"I thought she might be an artist, you know," April went on. "Some people talk about artists starving to death, but I know a man who charges almost a hundred bucks to make a drawing of your pet. And he has a lot of work, too. And Lynn could sing as well. I didn't know about what happened with that man who was at the hearing — but James, if I told you the number of times some man just grabbed me at a job! Well, you just get away from them. You laugh it off, you push them. Lee came home that day saying the man had fired her, and all the time she had hit him on the head!"

Opening the closet where clothes for children still hung, April searched for something as she kept talking, "In any case, with the new feminist movement and all, you can get thousands of dollars out of a man for even hinting at stuff. ’Cause I don't think you can make them stop doing it, I think you can just make them pay." She moved the clothes aside, mumbling, "One day I'll have to give all this away."

With a cry of satisfaction, she produced a box. "Now this was cute. This was Lee's box. I swear I thought she'd come back just to get this box or ask me to send it to her."

She handed it to James. It was a Japanese secret box depicting Mount Fuji.

"Her father gave her that. Said it was an antique." April shook her head, lips curving down at both corners. "Didn't do much for me when I was struggling. That witch mother of his convinced him I was trying to get him to marry me, and that Lynn wasn't even his. At that age? I didn't know how to fool anyone."

James played with the box until it opened.

"Look at that, you know how to do it!” April cried. “Lynn was sweet with that box, I have to say. It was like a game for her, to go out and come back with stuff she thought was precious. I can still see her running around in her little dress. Then she rebelled and just wore dungarees, with short hair."

The box contained bits of quartz, some semi-precious stones like amethysts, turquoise and lapis lazuli, as well as silver or gold pendants: things that might have been lost by someone and found by Lee.

"Her father used to call her Magpie," April said, sitting next to him. "She couldn't resist a shiny thing."

For the first time April sounded nostalgic, even sorry for the little girl Lee had been.

"I thought he wanted nothing to do with her," James said.

"I didn’t find him for a while, it’s true, to even tell him I got pregnant. He had spent a holiday by the sea where I was waitressing and bam, it happened. And when I did find him near Raleigh, there was that whole to-do, you know. The family saying I was lying, and Lynn and me living like animals in a trailer park.” She stopped and shook her head. “Now you say what you want ’bout Cora’s daddy, but he was a man. What he did and didn’t do was all him. Lynn’s daddy — well, he was supposed to be all sensitive, but he was weak.

“Except one day, finally, there was Mark at the trailer, wanting to see his daughter. And she was only three years old. Or already three years old, depends how you look at it. But he must have seen something of himself in her — the dark hair, maybe. She's lanky, like he was. Anyway, there is something, if you look. Their hands were very alike." She motioned toward the box. "Once he came over with this box for her and told her to try and open it — and she sat there till she figured it out. She was five! He was proud of her then, and he kept saying, 'She's so smart, she's so smart,' but as if she had just inherited the intelligence from the air. I was the one bringing her up, and he had been denying she was his. All of a sudden, he had to have her. He had to take her away."

"What did you say?"

She shrugged. "I'd have done what was right for Lynn. But not just like that."

No, not without him paying you.

April shrugged. "Still, it didn't work because he died. Freak boat accident. He liked sailing — rich people, you know — and the boat just turned over."

"But Lee still went to her grandmother?"

"Yeah, a while later. When Nathan had to move here, and I was coming with him. The old witch said her son had wanted her to take care of Lee, send her to a good school. That's what he was going to do if he had lived. And, well, I thought it was better for her."

Her expression said that she had gotten nothing out of it, except to be rid of a daughter as she started a new life with a different man.

James slid open another compartment of the box. There was a photograph in it: Lee as a child, her hair short as a boy’s, and next to her an old and rusty supermarket cart with a blond boy inside.

“Oh, look at that! Lee and Billy. Didn’t I tell you about the dungarees, that’s how she went ’round, all dirty, pushing Billy in that cart to show him things ’cos he’d get so tired. Look at the lil’ cushion she got for him. Innit sweet?”

My Lee. James wondered what he had been doing when she had gone around with her sick friend. He was glad that he had returned; Aunt Im had been right.

He handed April the box.

"Don't you want to take it to Lynn?"

"I don’t know when I’ll see her.”

"Now what you talking about?" April asked, letting her hands drop on her lap with the box. "You can't just give her up like that!"

James considered her in silence as her eyes evaded his. She had been about to ask him for money; she would have said her dear Lynn would never have wanted her to live as she did — but now she wouldn't dare, because she saw that he had seen her.

As she led the way downstairs, he stood at about the height where Gavin estimated Joe to have been hit the first time. A man might survive that fall, depending how he landed. Joe had landed badly, his neck cracking as it hit the steps.

Yet Cora had not been on those steps, and Lee — it was said — had not been at home. How had the poker ended up next to Joe's body without April's bloody steps going up and down the staircase? He leaned over and looked at the ground below, where Joe had lain. His eyes detected something before he kept descending.

"I must go," he said. "But could I trouble you for a glass of water?"

"Of course! And you didn't even drink your tea. Sure you don't want another one?"

"Certain. Thank you."

April walked to the kitchen as James moved to the side of the stairs, where Joe had fallen. The ceramic floor was still the same as in the crime photos. What he had seen was a chink in one of the tiles: a large chink such as a fire poker might have made, if it had been dropped over the rail from the staircase.

FOURTEEN

Hawkshaw, population 8,362, was composed of six streets that crossed a main street where most of the commerce was.

The name of the main street was Main Street.

The other roads kept going to either side, twisting and turning around woods, with houses such as April Keane's — some better, some worse — along the way.

Main Street had a row of low, attached brownstones, a few of them boarded up. Two diners had closed; during hard times, families ate at home. A large pharmacy with a sign from the 70s, however, seemed to be thriving. There was a tattoo shop that looked new. People might stop eating out, but they probably had lots of messages about gloom, doom and injustice to write on their bodies.

The wheels of the car made a sound familiar to James, of hard rubber over water. It was raining, and the asphalt reflected the neon signs from the businesses and the traffic lights that changed slowly or just blinked yellow.

At the end of the street, there was a sign which said Blue Osprey, and a bar seemed like a good place to go, especially when it boasted a small parking lot at the back.

The inside of the place looked like the bar James had seen in just about any American movie — as recognizable, he supposed, as the British pub. In this one, the customer could choose to be at a small table surrounded by high stools, at the counter or at red booths in the left corner. Most men in a new, unknown place tended to sit with their backs to the wall. It was the atavistic need to watch out for possible dangers without necessarily being seen, although any stranger in Hawkshaw would stick out like a sore thumb no matter where he sat.

A girl was cleaning glasses behind the counter, and she had obviously taken advantage of the shop next door in her spare time, as the visible parts of her body were tattooed with skulls, roses and serpents. There was only one other customer, a man who looked like he was never anywhere but perched on the last stool at the counter.

The waitress finally came to James' booth. She had several piercings on her face and a dead stare.

"What can I get you?"

"A beer?"

"Draft or bottle?"

"Bottle."

"What beer?"

Signs on the wall told him he had a choice between Heineken, Corona, Bud, Miller and Pabst.

"Give me your most popular one."

She went behind the counter and came back to slam a bottle of Budweiser on the table. James raised an eyebrow. "May I have a glass?"

"I thought you didn't want draft."

"A glass would still be nice."

Now smiling as if he were something exotic, she went behind the bar again and took a glass from the stack above her head, showing it to him. He shook his head. She took another and another, her smile growing, until he nodded at a long, curvy one.

The girl set it down on the table more gently this time and stood watching him incline the glass to pour the beer inside.

"That's usually for soda," she pointed out.

"Well, lucky me that people drink soda, then."

"You're the Englishman," she stated flatly.

"I'm one of them."

"The one with Lynn."

The barwoman looked not much older than twenty-one. She would have been in her teens when Lee left town, but then again James supposed few things ever happened in Hawkshaw. All its inhabitants must be talking about Lee's return and Joe Keane's murder.

"Is it always this empty here or am I early?" he asked.

"You're early. It'll fill up. People start coming in at six o'clock."

"It's six."

"On Saturdays they arrive later."

James looked at the biggest neon sign on the wall. "And what does 'honky tonk' mean?"

The girl guffawed. "You don't know what a honky tonk is?"

"There's Honky Tonk Woman by Elton John ..."

"Who?"

"Someone old."

"Well, honky tonk is a bar like this one. With live music, you know."

Men had, in fact, walked in from the back carrying instruments, which they began to set up in a clear space under the sign. James dreaded to ask.

"What kind of music?"

"Country."

That might even be pleasant, if it weren't for the electric guitar a man was just then plugging to a big speaker. She followed his eyes.

"Country-rock tonight," she explained.

James groaned inside, thinking he wouldn't last long when things got loud — but things got interesting instead, when the door opened and Officer Brooks walked in dressed in civilian clothes. He wore jeans that were tight across his thick thighs, a checkered shirt under his jacket and a belt with an elaborate buckle. His eyes swept over the bar, as if he were looking for someone. When he saw James, he tried to hide his surprise, moving to the counter in an unconvincing show of indifference.

"Hey, Sara!" Caleb said, after a moment. He widened his eyes on purpose as he looked at James. "You're the Englishman, right? You were at the hearing for Lynn?"

"Yes. And you're Officer Brooks?"

"Good memory."

"You made an impression."

"I did?" Caleb motioned toward the booth across from James'. "Mind if I sit down?"

"On the contrary."

"You're early tonight," Sara remarked to Brooks.

"My sisters are coming in."

"Masha coming?"

"No, she's with her grandmother at the hospital."

"Sorry 'bout that. Wanna drink?"

"I'll have a beer too."

"Ain't taking care of that ulcer, I guess." Sara twisted wry lips at the repressive look Brooks threw her. "You want a glass as well?"

Brook's eyes flicked toward James' beer. "Nope."

Sara went to get his drink as Brooks said, "Surprised to see you here."

"Are you?"

"Guess I thought you'd gone back to England."

"I did, and then I came back here. I have three months' lease on a house in Greensboro."

"That's crazy!" Brooks waved his hand over the table in a sort of apology. "If you don't mind me saying so. I mean, you can go anywhere and you wanna stay around here?"

"For the weather," James said.

Sara returned and slammed the beer in front of the officer. "If you guys get hungry, there's pork barbecue. Cooking right now."

"That's OK, honey," Brooks said. He turned back to James. "The weather?"

"Not tonight, particularly, but you do have mild winters."

"You can go anywhere, like the Caribbean or the Bahamas or something, and you come here for the weather?"

Irony would clearly be a one-way thing in that conversation, and James only smiled at Brooks’ disbelief as the officer took a long, manly swig of his beer. "I think it tastes better like this."

Oh, the pissing contest had started. James decided to make Brooks despise him more by turning sideways and crossing his legs — something few American men ever did, and probably none in that town. His movement didn't go unnoticed. Brooks spread even more in his seat.

"Look, I hope you don't mind me saying so,” Brooks went on, mentioning what James might or might not mind for the third time. “It’s a small town and all, we tend to be plain speaking. But am I right in thinking it's not the weather keeping you here, it's Lynn? I know you're paying for that attorney of hers. He's a good one, so maybe you want to see things through to the end?"

"Something like that," James allowed.

"But you haven't known Lynn very long, have you? Let me tell you, where she goes, trouble follows. She was always like that. Always. I'd just like to warn you."

"Why, thank you, Officer."

"I read about you and your wife, and what happened up in England. I don't know if Lynn was mixed up in that. Then there's the thing in Mexico. You see what I mean. She just can't let things be."

"True, there is never a boring moment with her, is there?" James said, sipping his beer.

Brooks lowered his head as he stared at James from under his brows. Yes, that was what Officer Brooks looked like with his thick neck and shoulders, his small eyes and close-cut reddish-brown hide for hair: a bull.

"The point is, sir," Caleb went on, "what would you gain by sticking around here? You do see that you make Lynn look bad?"

"She's being tried for murder. How can she look any worse?"

"People here don't necessarily buy that Lynn killed Joe, but if she ran behind Billy's back, a boy born and bred here, a boy who's sick ..."

"Except that she's not doing that, Officer."

"Caleb. You can call me Caleb, I'm not on duty now."

"Call me James, then."

"Well, James, it's what I was saying. You here, in this small town — why would you come? A rich man like you? Why would you even stay in Greensboro? Those people of the defense, they want to sling mud everywhere, even on the police and the lab — but I can tell you something: I'd never frame Lynn for anything. Not for nothing. We take care of our people here, we don't turn against them. If she did something, as a police officer I can't cover it up. But I wouldn't plant evidence or mess up a crime scene so she went to jail. That's the last thing I want."

"I bet."

"What?"

"I'm sure you don't want her in jail."

"Lynn's difficult, but she's good underneath all that. She's kind. She's trying to do right by Billy, and you gotta let her do that."

"I'm not stopping her."

Caleb called Sara, ready for his next beer, but James opted for a Jack Daniels.

" 'Beer before liquor, never sicker'," Caleb quoted.

"That's just a myth.”

"Then bring me one too," Caleb told Sara. He turned to James again. "I know you're paying for Billy's care, but it just don't look good, you staying round like this. Makes you look bad too."

James feigned alarm. "Does it?"

The Jack Daniels arrived, and Sara had brought small shot glasses and heavy whiskey glasses. James pointed at the latter and she poured liberal doses of alcohol into two of them. It could be her way of showing generosity toward early clients, or perhaps she was hoping James and Caleb would get into a fight and liven up her evening. But when someone expected James to lose his temper, it was the easiest thing in the world for him to keep it.

"Leave us the bottle, please," James said.

"All righty," Sara replied. "Guess you don't have to worry how expensive it gets."

"Makes you look bad," Caleb went on single-mindedly as soon as Sara moved away, "like you're mooning for Lynn."

"But maybe I am."

With a noise of disdain, Caleb let his eyes fall to James's crossed legs and back to his face. "Pining for a married woman, and you don't even feel ashamed?"

"Do you?"

Again, the small eyes shot pale sparks at James, but Caleb sat back, a smirk appearing on his face. "You can't blame a man for remembering. You don't forget your first, do you?"

"Not if you have a decent memory, I should think. You may even remember them all."

"Nah, nothing's like your first. And Lynn ... well, I don't have to tell you she's special. There's girls that want you to buy them an expensive perfume or something. Lynn, now, that stuff’d only spoil her smell. She used to come over to my house, you know — my parents worked and were out till the evening. And when she left, I'd just sniff those sheets. She smelled like cinnamon. It was like you had just put some rolls in the oven, or like apple pie was cooking."

"You like to bake?"

"Funny," Caleb said, without laughing. "But you know what I mean. There ain't no woman who smells like that. I've caught whiffs of her since she came back. She ain't spoiled, don't matter how many hands she's been through."

It was James’ turn to stare without saying anything, and Caleb's grin grew wider.

"Nothing like your first one," he repeated. "It's the same for women, you know."

"I’m sure,” James said. “So much so that she went on to marry a boy who wouldn't be able to touch her. Which proves that she was either thinking no one would measure up to her first, or she wanted to never have sex again."

This time Caleb made a decisive move to lean over the table. "I've been trying to talk to you man to man about Lynn. She'll drive you crazy if you stay here. You'll just spend all your money—"

"That's hardly possible. I have a lot of it."

"Well, you'll pay for all the attorneys to get her off, you'll buy this town, what the hell do I know? She'll still do what she wants. She'll still run away from you when she feels like it. If you cared about her, you'd leave — you know why?"

"For her own good, I suspect?"

"Right. Because I told you, we take care of each other in this town."

"That reminds me of a science-fiction film I saw once ..."

Officer Brooks had had enough, and he rapped the table with his knuckles. "We'd take care of Lynn."

Their conversation was interrupted by the door, opening to admit a group of women, and Lee was among them.

Well, the Blue Osprey was the best joint in Hawkshaw, and James had expected to meet Lee somewhere. Nevertheless, she looked startled when she saw him, and more startled when she spotted Caleb. The mystery behind Caleb's urgency was solved: he had wanted James to leave and not see Lee at all.

In any case, she had recovered enough to nod at them as a woman with her cried, "Caleb, we'll sit over there."

"I'm coming!"

Caleb rapped the table with his knuckles again, more gently this time. "That's all I wanted to say. We'll take care of Lynn. You don't have to worry about her."

"Thing is, Officer," James said in a smooth tone, "I'm inordinately fond of cinnamon."

FIFTEEN

"Well, Lee, if that was your man just before you got back, I can only go: damn!" Sophie Brooks said.

Her sister frowned at the mirror. "Sophie, you respect Billy."

The three women were together in the bathroom of the Osprey, where Caleb's sisters were taking the opportunity to tease their hair a bit higher, since they thought the rain had spoiled their styles.

"You have a bigger bag, Lynn," Abby said. "Hold my comb for me? Otherwise it'll be sticking out the side of mine all night."

Lee opened her bag and let Abby drop her comb inside. She had gone to the bathroom first, to take a moment and recover from seeing James, but Sophie and Abby had followed and were talking of nothing but him.

"You can tell Caleb ain't happy," Sophie pursued.

Abby shook her head. "You talk so much shit, Sophie."

"I tell it like it is."

God save me from people who tell it like it is, Lee thought. In any case what Sophie — and Abby, when she felt like it — did was to constantly impose their unwanted opinion on others. She had, however, exhausted her excuses not to go out with them, and even Maddy and Ross had insisted that she have some fun.

What fun could it be to sit at a table with Caleb, who stared, and with his sisters, who liked to provoke arguments? What fun was it to see James across a room and not be able to touch him?

Still, she couldn't help the blood that coursed more quickly through her, or the thought running through her head in a loop: "He came back, he came back, he came back,” like some crazy jingle in a commercial.

Why has he come back?

"As if Lynn ain't thinking about that fine animal over there," Sophie went on as she inspected her own reflection. " 'Stead of poor Billy. She just can't do nothing about it, that's all. That's why I always say, think a lot before you marry."

"Shoulda married Caleb," Abby said loyally.

"You'd take Caleb over the English guy?"

"Caleb's my brother, so I wouldn't take him at all. I'm saying over Billy." Abby turned to Lee. "Although we shouldn't be talking about things like this."

"Gotta help the girl let off some steam," Sophie said with a wicked light in her eyes. "She can't be all tied up in knots inside. Right, Lee?"

Sophie didn't wait for an answer; she opened the door and they walked back to their table. The bar was filling up, and a live band of six had started playing. Lee knew everyone in it and was glad the music made conversation almost impossible.

"Can't believe you've finally come to see me!"

Lee turned in time to see the owner of the Osprey leaning over her. She offered her cheek to his kiss.

"Hi, Austin!"

"Beautiful like you always was," Austin said in his deep twang.

He had aged since she left; his hair, under the cap he hardly ever removed, was white now, and his thick nose redder than before. Austin had always been kind to Lee, letting her sing in the bar for tips sometimes, although he couldn't have paid her a salary.

"I know, I ain't doing that bad anymore," he told her. "Have two pool tables in the back, have the band Friday and Saturday. Not watering the liquor no more."

Everyone at the table laughed as he winked at Lee.

"These Brooks kids here taking care of you?"

"Yeah, they are."

"And Billy?"

"He's all right."

Austin's face showed compassion. "Everything will be fine, sweetheart."

Chief Fisher's face wasn't as compassionate when he entered the Osprey with his wife. His expression was non-committal as he spotted Lee sitting with one of his officers, and he only gave the table the barest nod. Caleb wouldn't get in trouble, but the chief obviously preferred to keep his distance from a murder suspect.

Not so Noah Wright, Caleb's partner, who walked straight to the table when he arrived. Noah had a vague smile that almost never left his face; he had been considered slow at school, but as a cop he was beloved of all, since he had infinite patience. He'd bring cats down from trees, change lightbulbs and allay the fears of old people; he'd do the things Caleb thought too small for cops to bother with.

They tried to scream over the music, but James’ presence felt like a thousand degrees of heat blowing over Lee’s skin. What was he making of the town where she had grown up? He would certainly be interested in the anthropology of any place — whether it was Windsor Palace or Hawkshaw. She found herself wishing she could sit with him and hear him say anything. James was always interesting; she loved to talk to him almost as much as—

"Dreeeeeaaaaming!" Sophie screamed in her ear.

Lee started, pulling away with a frown.

"Oh my God, Lynn!" Sophie said with a bigger scowl. "You made of china or something?"

Sophie was on her third beer, and she was a mean drunk. She pulled at her own auburn hair and pushed her chest out aggressively. "Can't even touch the girl, Jesus."

"Leave her alone, Sophe," Caleb said. "She just got frightened, that's all."

Sophie chortled with laughter. "I know what she's dreaming about."

Poor Noah had the grace to look embarrassed, while Caleb said, "Slow that drinking."

"You gonna order me about?" Sophie asked. "You go be a cop at the station. Don't give me orders, I'm your older sister."

She lifted her beer and pointed to it, asking Sara for another. "I'm gonna invite a stranger to dance tonight."

Caleb shook his head in disgust.

"You think he'll dance with me, Lee? What, you think he won't?" Sophie took the new beer Sara brought her. "When's the dancing?"

Sara shrugged, took the empty bottles and left.

The band finished the song and announced they were taking a break, and Sophie booed. Austin stepped to the microphone. "Ladies and gentlemen, how are you on this rainy Saturday night. Having fun?" He looked around and raised his bottle as people applauded. "Now, I've got something special for you tonight."

Oh, no.

"Someone who's come back to town after a long time away. Someone a lot of you used to come in just to listen to. Now this friend came back under some bad circumstances, but in this country, we don't judge no person guilty till it's proved. Until then, I'd like to ask you to give a warm welcome to a very, very special voice and person, Lynn Miller."

Not everyone applauded, but most people did — and loudly enough to make it difficult for Lee to demur. She got down from her stool, avoiding James' eyes, but as she passed Caleb, he said, "Mind what you sing, Lee."

Well, she hated being told what to do even more than Sophie. When she got to the mic, she knew exactly what she was going to sing, and told Austin in a whisper. He smiled, nodded and took the bass. Standing at the microphone, she began,

You made me love you,

I didn't want to do it

I didn't want to do it,

You made me want you,

And all the time you knew it

I guess you always knew it

Lee felt the music, the way she always did or more, because James was there.

You made me sigh for

I didn't want to tell you

I didn't want to tell you

I want some love that's true,

Yes, I do,

Indeed, I do,

You know I do.

Give me, give me, give me what I cry for,

You know you got the brand of kisses that I'd die for

You know you made me love you.

As soon as the sound of her voice died, she nodded at the applause and walked away, but not back to her table. She opened the door to the street, letting it swing shut behind her. It was still raining, and that was all she had time to think, before she was pushed against the wall.

"You don't have any shame!" Caleb cried, his face inches from hers. "Why d’you sing that in front of people?"

"That what, Caleb?" she asked calmly

"Some love song, looking at that guy like you’re gonna fall out of your clothes. My sisters bring you out so you have fun and you forget that Billy's at home."

"Is it Billy you're worried about, really? Or is it that while I'm with Billy I'm not with anyone else?"

He stepped back. "You think so much of yourself, Lynn."

She looked down. "I guess that's a gun in your pocket, then."

"Shut your mouth!" He raised his hand. "Shut your mouth! You don't know any shame, you—"

The door opened, and this time it was James. Oh, God, Lee thought for a moment, Now everyone in the bar will be talking. Everyone will be expecting a fight or a scandal.

But the sight of James, ready to defend her and incapable of staying away, filled her with joy.

"We were talking here," Caleb said.

James stepped toward him. "Were you?" He turned to Lee. "Did you want to talk to him?"

She leaned against the wall and shook her head.

He looked at Caleb. "Well?"

For a moment Lee thought that Caleb might throw a fist at James. But James stood — waiting and staring — until Caleb gave something like a shrug and walked past him. "You've forgotten how things are here, Lynn," he said as he pushed the door and disappeared.

"I haven't forgotten,” she said.

The rain fell over James' hair, his face, his lips.

"You'll be all right?"

Lee nodded. "Yeah, don't worry."

Before he moved away, he caressed the inside of her arm. "Hang in there."

"I will."

And he was gone.

SIXTEEN

Things had been set in motion inside James. It was time to make a choice, and he was aware that he was making one when he looked up an address as he waited for the Uber he had called. He wasn’t going to drive because he had drunk a bit much and planned to drink more; and he wasn’t going home.

The driver was a black man who greeted him with a cool “Hey!” His seat leaned back farther than it should, and James smiled as he got in. A rule breaker. Good.

After giving him the address in Greensboro, James added, “And if you can wait for me there, I’ll give you a hundred bucks.”

“A hundred bucks?” The man’s entire body almost turned sideways so he could look at James. “What the hell you gonna do, rob a place?”

“Nah. Nothing that will get you in trouble. I promise.”

“You promise?” The driver laughed. “All right, but do you swear?”

“If you wish.”

“Hu-hu-hu. I do wish!”

They were silent as the car crossed the night. From Hawkshaw to Greensboro it was a half hour drive, even on a Saturday night. It was one of the lovely things about North Carolina: there was almost never any traffic.

In that half hour, James might have decided to do something else, but he didn't. He liked the choice he had made.

When he reached his destination, a parking lot somewhat similar to the one he had just left, he removed his coat, dropping it in the passenger seat. “Won’t be very long.”

The driver eyed the coat. “OK. Looks like this would pay for the ride anyway.”

James walked into the bar beyond the parking lot in his shirtsleeves. He brushed back his wet hair as he approached the counter and asked for another whiskey. There was live music, but it was soft jazz, and the band was on the other side of the place. He drank two glasses of whiskey in a row, his eye on the TV above him, where an American football game was playing.

As he paid, he asked the barman, "Is your boss in?"

People in America tended to trust him because of the way he sounded. Funny, when most of the villains in their movies were British. The young man asked, "Can I say who wants to see him?"

"He won’t know my name, but he might recognize me.”

When Hunter appeared at the door, and the barman pointed at James, he narrowed his eyes and walked over.

"Do I know you?"

James nodded. "From Lynn Miller's hearing? We weren't formally introduced."

A sort of panic entered the man's eyes. He was shorter than James, but thickset. It wasn't cowardly for James to say, "Will you step outside for a moment?"

"We can talk here," Hunter said.

The smile on James' face turned into a sneer. "You're not scared, are you?" He lifted the shirt over the waist of his pants and turned around. "I don't have a gun or a knife. I just want to talk to you."

"Look, I've said all I had to say about what happened.” Hunter wagged a finger. “If you're involved with that girl, you watch out."

"Sure. Let's go outside, please."

Speaking softly and walking toward the man without touching him produced the effect James hoped for. Hunter walked backward for a moment, his eyes darting over the bar as if he hoped to keep the integrity of his property. He wasn't craven enough to ask for help, although he could have. James had to approve of that.

"It's raining," Hunter said when they walked out.

That was before he got a fist to his jaw. He stumbled back, holding his cheek and cried, "What the hell, you fucking lunatic!"

"Come on," James said. "I'm waiting for you to hit back."

"Are you kidding me?"

James stepped forward again, and Hunter understood that he needed to fight. He swung at James, but his blow was easily avoided. James’ fist connected with Hunter's other jaw as the man staggered.

"Come on, you can do better than this!" James said.

Hunter charged at him, grabbing him by the waist and driving him back against the wall. James laughed as he hit it. "There you go, yeay!"

His knee struck Hunter in the solar plexus with a thud. That must have hurt, but it didn't stop James from punching Hunter's jaw again. This time he got a blow to his face as an answer, but he was sufficiently anesthetized by whiskey to not feel it, and to deliver two fast blows to his opponent's chest.

Hunter flew back, landing on a bunch of crates. That only reminded James that he had stuck his hand between Lee's legs where he kept the damn crates in his bar; his foot followed that memory and met Hunter's stomach as the bar owner writhed on the ground.

Still, James had been taught fair play; he turned, walking away from Hunter. "Get up."

"You fucking lunatic!" Hunter repeated. "Who the fuck are you?"

"I'll give you my name and address in a second.”

As Hunter managed to stand up, James saw that the man had more stamina than strength, and that he wasn't agile. He was able to deliver a few more blows to Hunter’s face and chest before he received one that sent him reeling. Still, he had weakened the brute as the rain pelted them with bigger drops. It was time for the exercise to end, so he drove his fist squarely into Hunter's nose and watched him fall again.

His knuckles were bleeding, and the man on the ground cursed but couldn't get up.

"All right, so it’s James Bryce — short name, and with a ‘y’ — 1167 Scarborough Street in Old Irving Park. Can you remember that?" James bent sideways to look at Hunter. "Can you? Send the police there to arrest me, like the piece of shit coward you are. Or come with your friends, I don’t care."

There was no answer from Hunter. James straightened his back and walked to the Uber to find the driver standing half out of his side to see the fight better. The man whooped with laughter once more.

“You kicked his ass,” the driver laughed. “That was like — efficient.”

“Thank you,” James said, both at the compliment and at the towel the driver handed him. He rubbed it over his face and neck and gave his home address.

Damn, he was wet and some parts of him were hurting, but he felt exhilarated. That was the unfortunate thing: men had been made, way back when, to fight and fuck — hence the state of the world. He had been taught by masters of tranquility to behave better than this; he ought to behave better, he really did, but he was a lousy student.

The driver snapped his hundred-dollar bill when he got it, and James could hear him laughing even as he closed the door to the house. Upstairs, he let the hot water in the shower run over his cuts and bruises for a while. He ought to behave better, but sometimes he didn't want to.

How could he explain it? Sometimes it was as if he saw the Bat Signal in the sky: the signal that told him to go out and get justice.

SEVENTEEN

The police didn't come, but a noise downstairs made James jump out of bed a few hours later.

Someone was trying to get into the house.

He found his pajama trousers on the chair and put them on, running on bare feet through the corridor. A closet on the way had a variety of golf clubs, and one of them would have to do as a weapon. Grabbing it, he quietly descended the stairs. Through the curtains of the living room, he could make out a shape playing with the lock on the glass doors that led to the garden.

That probably wasn't the coward, Hunter, but might be someone he had sent. Or it could be a burglar, although the real estate agent had boasted about the safety of the neighborhood.

In any case, he now had the advantage of surprise. When the door finally clicked open and the form emerged through the curtains, he tripped it with the golf club, ready to start beating it.

A woman's cry stopped him. He pulled the curtain aside and let the moonlight reveal the form on the ground.

"Lee!"

She turned around, leaning on her elbows. "That hurt!"

"What the hell are you doing here?"

The blouse slipped down her shoulder as she shrugged. "I dunno."

God, was she drunk.

"This isn't a good idea," he said, realizing he was still drunk as well.

"Why not?"

She was wet and had a playful light in her eyes. He extended his hand to pull her, and she jumped on him, wrapping legs around his torso and arms around his neck. "Why isn't it a good idea?"

James pried her hands open and set her on the ground. She took a step forward and he extended the club at arm's length to keep her away. “Now, now, kitty cat."

Lee pouted. "Why are you afraid of me?"

"Because you're acting crazy."

"I'm cold," she complained.

He circled her, keeping the club between them, and closed the door.

"I'm wet," Lee insisted.

"Kind of your fault, if you run around in the rain. Where's your coat? And where are your friends?"

"I ditched them and took a cab here.” She sneezed. “And they're not my friends."

"All right." He indicated a chair with the club. "Sit here, and I'll go get you something dry."

"OK."

He ought to have realized that her tone was too docile, because when he emerged from the bathroom with towels, she was lying sideways on his bed.

"Lee, no, no, no."

"I'm not doing anything. I'm just cold."

"Here," he offered the towels, and she started to undress.

James wanted to look, and he shouldn't, so he left the room. It was the silence that lured him back. Lee was wrapped in one of the towels, with a smaller towel around her head. The moonlight made the white-gold chain around her neck gleam. He looked away from the double temptation of her cleavage and legs.

"Why are you doing this?"

"I'm not doing anything."

"You need to go."

"Why?"

"Not going to explain it, you know."

Scowling, she said, "You touched me."

"What?"

"You started it. You touched my arm."

"That was just—"

"You know what that was." She knelt on the bed. "Provocation."

Maybe he could knock himself unconscious with the golf club, and then whatever she did wouldn't be his fault.

“Won't people be looking for you?" he asked instead.

"They're asleep. Billy won’t mind, and I don't care. Oh, James!" she suddenly cried, jumping out of bed and toward him. "What happened to your face?"

The club kept her away once more. "Nothing."

"Were you in a fight? Who d'you beat?"

"You could try to keep the glee out of your tone."

"Whoever you beat prolly deserved it."

"Your accent seems to have multiplied."

"Has it? I guess I can't help slippin’ back into it when I'm here." She swayed on her feet. "Is it horrible?"

"No, it's adorable. You're adorable all over."

She slapped down the club and moved closer to him. "Am I?"

His back was to the wall. James couldn’t run, and her lips somehow latched on to his. An electric charge ran from his toes to his head, causing havoc on the way. As the towel fell from her head, he grabbed a fistful of her wet hair, so he could kiss her more deeply.

That felt so good. She felt so good.

Throw her on the bed. Pull the towel off, and her body will be there, all warm.

Instead, he untangled his mouth from hers and pushed her. Oh, it would be so easy to give in. Being with Lee was like melting together in a sea of bliss, and the very air hurt his skin as he backed away, wielding the club once more.

“Behave, Lee!”

Unlike beating Hunter, making love to Lee would have consequences. For one, they wouldn’t do it just the once; people would know where she was going when she disappeared, and she would lose all the strange good will of her town.

"Impossible," he told her. “I can pretty much blow all the commandments, except the adultery one, if a woman is living with her husband.”

Her face fell, and she sneezed again, twice in a row.

"You'll catch your death,” he said. “Sit over there for a moment. And put this on."

He gave her a sweater, picked up her clothes from the floor and threw them in the dryer at the end of the corridor. When he returned, Lee was on an ottoman by the window, and her slumped shoulders tugged at his heart. It was as if she were facing defeat, and she had fought so hard for so long.

Unwrapping the towel from her head again, he rubbed her hair dry. It was getting long.

"You were right when you told Paxton to threaten that I'd never see you again," she said. "Even if it hurts, it's better to see you. I mean, it's better than to have you gone."

James turned on the bedside lamp and lifted her onto the armchair, taking her place on the ottoman. "Well, I guess if I came back it's because I couldn't stay away. Remember the Neapolitan song?"

"'Everything is sleeping or dying'?"

"It also says, ‘Chist'uocchie te vonno 'nata vota vedè’."

"Meaning?"

"These eyes wanted to see you once more."

"But you don't want to see me." She lifted her arms, her hands hidden by sleeves that were too long for her.

"I want to, but I shouldn't."

"I love Billy, but it isn't like that between us or I wouldn’t be here.”

"Could you come and live with me?"

She lowered her head and shook it.

"Then you see the difference."

"Because he needs care."

"And I think all these people in your town who are giving you the benefit of the doubt now would turn against you."

"Maybe. Because I'd be happy, then they'd all believe I killed Joe. I'd be happy with a beautiful man, and they'd all want me in jail."

"The redhead keeps saying you take care of each other, but people take care of people who are in the same boat. You're one of them if you live like them."

"But I'm so tired of sacrifice," she whispered.

"Then tell the truth, Lee."

"What truth?"

"That you didn't kill Joe. I know what happened."

She huddled against the back of the chair. "You don't."

He nodded. "I know that your mother killed Joe."

"No, you don't know that!"

"There's no one here listening to us, and I know it for a fact, Lee. The evidence is there."

"You're never to say it!"

"Calm down a bit. I've sworn not to do what you don't want."

"Will you be quiet when they pass my sentence?"

"I need to understand things first."

She shook her head again. "You'll never understand."

"All right." He turned to face her more squarely. "I'll tell you what I know. There are fingerprints from the three of you on that poker, all of them after Joe’s blood got on it. There was an attempt to wipe your sister's and your mother's prints, fresh blood put on the poker and your prints on top. At first that made me think Cora might have done it — and that your mother might have wiped her prints and placed hers on the weapon. You might have arrived then and told her it was best if you took the blame.” He stopped to let that sink in and added softly, “But that's not what happened, is it?"

Lee said nothing. Her eyes had become glassy as she stared at the carpet.

"Cora was never on the stairs," James pursued. "It was your mother who killed Joe."

"That isn't even the worst part.”

"No," James said. "The worst part is that she tried to frame a child for it."

EIGHTEEN

"You know that too?" Lee asked, lifting her eyes to his. There was a world of sadness in them.

"Yes. I know that too, my sweet, and I'm sorry."

"I guess I'm tired of a lot of things today,” she said with a sigh. “Even of keeping that to myself."

"It's a lot to keep to yourself, Lee."

She hugged her knees, wearing the serious expression that made her look like a little girl.

“And for the sake of full disclosure, I should tell you I went to your mother’s,” he added.

“James!”

He shrugged. “Had to see it for myself. I saw the chink on the floor, where she dropped the poker from the stairs.” He took her hand. “Why don’t you tell me everything now?”

Lee hesitated, too used to keeping her own secrets, but then she began talking in a low, lilting voice.

"Mama used to keep that poker in the room, tucked between the mattress and edge of the bed. Joe would never see it, because he'd never make a bed in his life. She told me it was her insurance — that if Joe ever went crazy on her she'd bash his head in. To be honest, I didn't think she would. You know, the boy who cried wolf, a bark worse than a bite and all that. I thought it was just talk.

"But that night I got a call from Cora. She said that something very bad had happened. She had heard an argument earlier, then Joe had left for a couple of hours, but she had stayed in her room. I'd given her an iPod, and she used to put on music not to hear things, but she said that there had been a big noise that shook all the house. Mama had come in to say that Joe had fallen down the stairs, but that everything would be all right. Mama asked Cora to take a little blue pill that was bitter, and then she came back with something wrapped in a towel. She unwrapped it just a little and asked Cora to hold it. Cora said she did what Mama asked, and that her hands got sticky, and that Mama washed them in a basin and told her to go to sleep.

"That's when she called me. She had really struggled against falling asleep. Imagine, a child who had never taken any sedatives gets a full Valium in her system and doesn't go out like a light. That's how frightened and anxious she was. I said I was coming over, and that she was not, absolutely not to leave her room.”

For a moment she stopped, and rocked back and forth, but she continued, “Everything wasn't all right. When I got there, around eleven o’clock, Joe was lying dead at the foot of the stairs. He had a pool of blood under him, and blood all over his face. I didn't have to touch him to know he was dead because his neck was twisted. There was blood on the stairs too, and the poker was lying next to him.

"Mama had snapped. It was jealousy that made her do it. She saw Joe with Jada Phillips, she probably confronted him, things got heated and she lost her mind. He must have walked away during an argument, and Mama could never stand that from anyone. Once she scratched my arm real bad because I did that. 'Don't walk away when I'm talking to you!' It would have driven her crazy if she had seen Joe with Jada and then he had just walked away from her in the middle of a fight."

Her eyes were lost again, as if she were in her mother’s living room with a dead man at her feet.

"It was hard to get up those stairs without stepping in blood,” Lee continued. “I don't know if I managed it. Mama was sleeping and so was Cora. I tried to wake Mama, and I couldn't. She would open her eyes and they'd roll back in her head; she was just snoring away. Then I thought I'd take Cora, and I'd call Caleb or Noah, or the chief — someone. I was so angry at Mama, because I knew she had tried to frame Cora and she'd let her take the blame. A child! Her child!"

James had to prompt her this time, "And then?"

"And then …” Lee gave another small shake of the head. “And then I saw Mama lying there in that mess that was her room, with all the medications to keep her calm and help her sleep, and the ashtray full of cigarettes, and all the bottles of nail polish and cream, and everything she used to try and look beautiful. She had made a mess of her life, but she had been so young when she had me — younger than I was. Her father had thrown her out, and my father had never defied his mother to help her. It was as if she had been nothing."

Lee's eyes welled with tears that fell in two fat drops over her cheeks. James resisted the impulse to wipe them away; she needed to get to the end of her story, once and for all.

"This girl who had been so beautiful and feisty had become human trash," Lee went on. "No one had ever, ever helped her, not even her own mother. Everyone had turned their backs on her when she most needed it. Was it her fault that she only ever considered herself and her own survival? I don't know. But at that moment I thought that I was her daughter, and that if I didn't love her and help her, then no one ever would. Then all her chances would be gone. She kept trying to get men to love her without understanding they wouldn't, not for long. That it was Cora and me who could give her love. She was just throwing our love away, because she didn't understand."

The tears had stopped flowing. "Mama was so used to surviving. I knew she would fight and say she hadn't killed Joe. I'd have had to force Cora to give all the details of what Mama had done to the police. I knew people would believe us. That thing of me saying I'd kill Joe, no one believed that. They don't believe it now. But they'd know my mother was capable of killing him.

"Can you imagine? My mother's two daughters would have to stand there, blame her and send her to prison.” She took his hand, “James, I couldn’t do it. Instead, I wiped the poker. I thought I'd done it pretty well, but I guess I was in a hurry, and the handle is difficult to clean. I rolled it in Joe’s blood and put my prints on it. I left plenty more prints as I walked out of the house. I took Mama’s car and emptied my account in Charlotte early the next morning, before they could stop me, and I took the plane to New York."

He caressed her hand with his thumb. “How did you get away? You were so young!”

She gave a wry smile. "Thanks to my grandmother, I had met a few criminals in juvenile detention. I guess I had made connections. One of the girls knew people who knew someone, and he got me a French passport because I speak French.”

James smiled. “Do you?”

“Oui. Also courtesy of my grandmother. She descends from the Huguenots who came over, and so did my grandfather. She thought it would be the right thing for me to go to French school.”

“Je ne savais pas,” he said.

“Non. Je ne pouvais pas te le dire. Mais maintenant, je te raconte toute ma vie.” I couldn’t tell you, but now I’m revealing my whole life.

“Tu es pleine de surprises.” You’re full of surprises. “Back to the story, then.”

“I went to Portugal and got a job — but it would have taken me forever to have enough money to get Cora over, and I was afraid for her. By that time, I had met Quinn, who knew the guy who made my passport, and he had ideas. At first, they were just crazy 'what if?’ scenarios, but as time went by, they became 'why not?' scenarios. 'Why not, we're smart, we can pull this off...' ”

“I’m not sure I like Quinn,” James said pensively. “But I’m not sure I dislike him either.”

"Oh, you two would fence with words and insults for a while, but you’d like each other in the end.”

“Would I, when he helped you find idiots like me?”

She squirmed a little. “Yes. He was good with hacking and stuff, and he would figure out what jobs we should try. We started slowly, then we graduated into more elaborate jobs. It was maybe a year before I had enough to take Cora to Europe.”

“And your wonderful mama let her child go, of course.”

Lee shrugged. “The arrangement was that I'd send her money, and she understood that it was better for Cora."

"No kidding."

"Cora knew I was wanted for Joe's death. I told her I hadn't done it, but that I had had to run away and change my name. Poor baby, she never put two and two together. She had forgotten that night and all about Mama making her hold the poker. It was all erased from her memory." Lee shrugged. "Must have been the trauma, or the Valium. She was a child. She accepted my story, my fake name, everything. We chose a school she liked, and I went to see her as often as I could.”

"And what exactly does she think you do?"

"Corporate stuff. When she asks for details I go on about such complicated things that she changes the subject herself." Lee stopped to look at him. "But I told you before. It wasn’t all noble sacrifice. There was something about stealing that I loved."

He waved a hand. "All right.”

"It felt scary and good, and I wanted more of it. When I saw how rich people lived, I wanted to take things from them. They had so much!"

James gave a small laugh, although there was no real mirth in it. "We rich assholes are misunderstood, you know."

"You were never an asshole."

He narrowed his eyes. "Never once?"

"Maybe a little. More of an arse-hole, though."

"And you never wanted to stop stealing?"

"Yes. You were our retirement plan. You had the Eye of the Cat."

"How would you ever have been able to sell that and not be caught?"

"There are ways. Collectors who'll do anything to have something beautiful, even if they have to keep it hidden, like a fetish. Or we could split the rock, but I always thought that was a pity."

"That was a cursed rock," James said grimly. "Do you think you'd have stopped, if you had got away with it?"

She thought about his question for a second. "No, not really. But do you think you'd have caught me, if I hadn't wanted you to?"

He showed his surprise. "I wouldn't?"

"I dawdled like a turtle."

"Did you?"

"Yes. I didn't know it myself, but I wanted you to catch me and—"

"And? Spank you?"

Lee threw her head back to laugh. "Maybe. And make me confess all that I'm telling you now." Her smile died. "And forgive me."

"You're not getting me to touch you, not even with the tragic confession and the big eyes." He couldn't help taking her hand again, though. "Magpie, I don't want you to suffer anymore. It's enough now."

"James, I can't have my mother in jail. I know you think I’m stupid, but I just can’t.”

"She doesn't seem to care if you go there."

"It doesn't matter. Above all, above everything, I don't want Cora ever to know that her own mother would have framed her for murder. Cora believes Mama loves her — why do you think I keep her away? We have only a few chances to be truly loved in life, and our mother should be the greatest one. When that fails, people are never right. The next people to love us will be our children, and we'll make a muddle of it because we weren't loved before."

"Is that what you think?" He dropped her hand. "You think there's only DNA love, and that's it?”

"It's the love that lasts."

"Seriously?" James couldn't help sounding angry. "Look at the mess your life is! You'd call that love?"

"In a way."

"In a very bloody sick way."

"They're the ties you can't break, no matter what you do."

"Don't be primitive Lee.”

"Who do you love?" she asked, also angrily. "Your sister. You married a woman and you couldn't love her."

"Because she was the wrong woman!" he shouted. "Wrong for me."

Lee turned sideways on the chair, still hugging her knees and looking away from him.

He stood. "What the hell will it take, Lee?"

"I don't know what you mean," she said in a small voice.

"I mean that when someone cares for you, you don't incriminate yourself for a murder you didn't commit. You don't let yourself go to jail forever — because that person will suffer."

"But Cora—"

"I'm not talking of Cora, I'm talking of me. What do you think I'll feel if you go to jail?"

Again, she looked away. "You'll survive."

"Oh, all right. So, if something happens to me, if I have an accident or—"

"Don't say that!"

"Cancer, or—"

"Stop, James! Knock on wood. Knock on wood right now."

"I see it's not just the accent that came back, the superstitions did as well."

"Knock on—"

He kicked a wooden wastepaper basket behind her. It hit the wall and then the floor with a crash. "There, is that enough for you?"

"No," she said defiantly, "you're supposed to knock three times."

James kicked the basket twice more. His foot hurt. "And now?"

"Don't get all mad, Jesus!" she said, sneezing again.

He wanted to laugh in the middle of his rage, because she was cute when she sneezed. "You’ll drive me insane soon. I'll go see if your clothes are dry."

"I think you just like the mystery," she blurted out.

He stopped by the door. "What mystery? Is there any more?"

"No."

Turning back, he caught a more naked and vulnerable expression on her face than he had ever seen.

"This is me," she said. "You know everything there is to know now."

"And you think that I'll be out of here because the show is over?"

"I don't know."

"Not every man is like your mother's boyfriends, Lee." He slowly walked back to her. "Because not every woman is your mother. This whole time all I wanted was to find out the truth, so we could really begin."

"Begin what?"

"To be happy." He swept her hair behind her ear. "I can't deny there is a fascination, but it isn't with your bloody secrets. I've been fascinated by you, by the person you've been trying so hard to hide. The girl who was strong enough to survive all this, who saw the beauty in strange things although no one had taught her what was what. The girl who'd do anything to keep others from suffering, even a crocodile of a mother. It's you I'm fascinated by, you idiot, not the thief, not the liar or the dazzler. I don't give a shit about any of those."

"And the sick, sick woman who enjoyed fooling men and—?"

He interrupted her decisively, "Let's have less about the other men and whatever went on."

"But James—"

"Shhh-hhh!" He scowled. "And you need to leave."

He got her clothes from the dryer. As she put them on, he descended the stairs, making a call. It had finally stopped raining.

"I don't want Cora here," Lee said behind him. "Not ever."

"It may not be up to you. She'll be subpoenaed, if it comes to a trial."

"You have to understand, James, if I even think she's coming, I will confess. I'll confess to every murder in the state, I swear. She cannot know, James, she can never know what Mama tried to do. I'll die before I let her know that."

His arm circled her waist. "Melodramatic, but I hear you. It won't come to that."

"How can it not?" she asked, her hands on his chest.

"I also have my secret ways."

She smiled. "Why on earth do you do all this?"

He buried his nose in her hair and quoted, " 'How much better is thy love than wine, and thy smell than all spices.' " The phone rang, and he put it to his ear. "Yes, you're in the right place. Your passenger's coming."

"Good night," Lee said, her face against his.

"Good night," he said. "And don't come back here or I’ll throw you out."

NINETEEN

Lee didn't return to James's house, and he didn't return to Hawkshaw.

He had kept his head when she had longed to lose hers. James knew people, and he had understood the situation as soon as he set foot in that town and in that bar. As soon, probably, as he talked to her mother and to Caleb.

There were a few citizens in Hawkshaw who crossed the street so as not to meet Lee, or who changed aisles in the supermarket to avoid her and pointed at her in the street. There were anonymous messages and threats, which had become less frequent. There were others who wore stony faces, wary of her, like Chief Fisher. There were those who championed her like Austin, or who lived alongside her like Maddy and Ross. And then there was the majority: those who tolerated her and would continue doing so until after her trial.

Lee understood the wisdom behind keeping the status quo and settled more deeply into her life with Billy. She followed the routine of his needs, his medications, his meals. James would text her that he was going to London, but that he would be back. During January and February, he left and returned four times, and each time she wondered why he returned.

Some days Billy sounded almost healthy, as if he could recover, and Lee wished it with all her soul. She looked for the best heart surgeons in the region, planning to take him for a consultation. Maybe a surgery could help him or even cure him; medicine was always progressing.

But a while later Billy would be exhausted again, his face ashen, his breathing labored, and he couldn’t go anywhere. It was always a step forward and two back for him, it seemed. He worried about her and the trial, and she didn’t want him to worry.

Paxton had told Lee that a forensic expert on their team had asked for the exhumation of Joe's corpse. She didn't try to stop them, not even when April called, wailing.

"They're going to unbury Joe, Lynn! Take him out of the earth, of his resting place! That's not right."

April was afraid of what they would find. Paxton wanted to cast a bad light on the forensic investigation made at the time of the murder to create reasonable doubt as to Lee's guilt, which might lead to her acquittal. The defense would, however, need to present an alternative version of events.

"I don't want blame directed at my mother or sister," Lee told Paxton over the phone. "I've told you and James that."

"You're our client, sugar, not James," Paxton said. "We shall not use anything in your defense which you don't want brought up. We just know the lab didn't do a thorough job of looking at the evidence. It's a practice more common than I'd like to admit, when they think the case is open-and-shut."

By running away, Lee had become the prime suspect in Joe’s murder, but Paxton could make mincemeat of the state's forensic evidence with good experts to back him up. She had to allow him to do it, because of James.

What will it take, Lee?

He had cared for her when she had the meanest blues, had followed her to Mexico, had carried her across a desert, had stood by her although she was accused of murder. He had given her grace, and she couldn't throw it away.

"This is me," she had told him.

All she knew was that the days were long without him, although she liked them best when she was alone with Billy. When Billy managed to hold a conversation, he would speak of things that had always united them: films, books, ideas.

Billy was kind and concerned about the world and the people in it, even as he suffered.

When others were present, existence became more tiresome. Maddy could be affectionate to Lee one moment and unreasonable the next. She would never stop telling her sister-in-law how to do the smallest thing. It's not like that, it's like this. It took the patience of a saint or of a criminal not to scream, "Shut up, shut up, shut up!"

Lee wasn’t a saint, but she was a criminal.

Caleb would come by, and she couldn't tell him not to. He was the main architect behind Hawkshaw's acceptance of her: the cop who had processed the body and the crime scene, but who gave her the benefit of the doubt. He would send Sophie and Abby to take her to a movie or to the Osprey, and she couldn't hide from them.

Sometimes Lee went to see April, but she rarely left her mother’s house without feeling exhausted or miserable.

The people of Hawkshaw had restless souls, and they made her restless. They had restless souls confined to a small space. It was James who calmed her; James, who had wandered all over the earth to see and understand things, even when they made him angry. It was James who had an infinite spirit.

She was glad to be with Billy; she longed for James.

Lee did what she could to stay busy, but a lull in time would inevitably happen, and James would fill her mind. She would think of his eyes, his voice, his body. She would press a hand over her breast, to feel as it had felt when it had been his hand, would nuzzle her own shoulder as he so often had, but it was as if she were playing a game of shadows.

In the real world, she looked out the window as Billy's vegetables cooked, she wrote lists of things that were needed, went to the shop, cleaned the house and the yard, made sure that Billy was always comfortable.

At night she lay on her bed, next to Billy's, to watch TV. She lay thinking of James and wondering why they had met each other. Some people thought that things happened for a reason; she was a better person for meeting him. Perhaps that was all it was ever meant to be.

When she woke up, the routine would begin, and she would again see things in the rational light of morning.

"Will you take me to see the Hoffmans?" Billy asked her one day as they sat outside, sketching. It was very warm for the end of February, and Billy said that the woods had all sorts of birds and animals that didn't belong there, or not at that time, because of climate change.

"Scott died three years ago," Lee said. "His parents must have learned to accept it by now."

"You never accept the death of your children."

Lee had never asked about Scott's death, but she did now: "Why was he using? He was such a healthy guy."

It took a moment for Billy to say, "Scott screwed up. He screwed up bad, but he shouldn't have died."

"Still, how can you help his parents?"

Billy frowned. "I want to see them."

"All right. A day when you're feeling strong we'll go — otherwise you'll get sick."

That day didn't seem to come, but every now and again, as soon as he felt a little better, Billy would mention Scott's parents again.

"He's talking of seeing the Hoffmans," Lee told Maddy and Ross at dinner one night. Most of the time she cooked dinner for them as well.

"That was a sad, sad thing," Maddy said. "But how could Scott do something so stupid? Meth!"

"Let it go," Ross told her. "Poor guy."

"What should I tell Billy?" Lee insisted.

Ross grimaced. "Can he take the emotion? He really loved Scott, you know."

"That's what I wonder."

"And can the Hoffmans take it? Sometimes I see them around town. I don't know them to speak to, but they looked rough after it happened. The mother especially. Now they seem to be doing better."

"It'll just stir things up," Maddy said.

"But doesn't Caleb go there?” Lee asked. “He said he went on holidays."

"Yeah, but I think that seeing Billy might be worse for Mr. and Mrs. Hoffman, because he's frail." Ross looked at Lee. "Although sometimes I believe he'll make it. You made him better."

Maddy snorted. "Yeah, she comes here and makes him all better all of a sudden — after the years I spent next to my own brother.”

"Oh, honey, of course you took care of him."

"I couldn't even work. We moved here for that!"

"All right, I didn't want to start an argument, hon."

"Then watch what you say."

As Maddy stood to take her dish to the sink, Ross widened his eyes comically for a second. When his wife left to check on Billy, he turned back to Lee. "What does he say, exactly, when he talks of going there? I mean, why?"

"He says Scott fucked up, but that he shouldn't have died. That kind of thing." Lee played with her food for a second. "You'd think Caleb would have known that Scott was using. They were really close. Or did that change?"

Ross shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe they didn't see each other as often, after Scott went to college and Caleb got into the force."

"If he knew, wouldn't he have tried to help Scott? To make him stop?"

"Can we ever stop people from doing what they want to do, especially if it's stupid?" Ross asked gently.

When Lee went to bed, Billy was still watching TV. She leaned over, putting her head on his pillow.

He turned to face her. "Lee, I'm serious. I need to see the Hoffmans before it's too late. Before I die."

"Hush, Billy. You're not dying. You're getting better."

"You'll take me there?"

"If you want, I'll find a way."

Billy looked at the TV again. "It wasn't Scott's fault that he died. It was mine."

TWENTY

One only had to look at Professor Amos Azulay to understand that he valued precision. From his carefully combed white hair, trimmed goatee and gleaming glasses to his polished leather shoes, he was the model of tidiness.

He arrived at James' house neither a minute early nor a minute late, despite wearing an old-fashioned watch in an age where all phones were synchronized. James wondered if he had been waiting outside until the arm of minutes and seconds hit nine o’clock on his wrist.

In the kitchen, the professor was glad to accept a cup of tea.

"You sounded familiar,” he said, “so I looked you up. Interesting life."

"Can't pretend it hasn't been," James replied. "Yours must not have been boring, what with opposing the settlers on the West Bank. Not an easy thing to do for an Israeli."

The professor shrugged. "Not that difficult either. Some hardliners call you traitor, some Palestinians call you a spy and you live on. Unless they really decide to kill you." He broke into a smile. "I flirted with anthropology as an undergraduate, but it isn't science."

"No. And in any case, I wouldn't call myself an anthropologist — I was just mucking about. What made you change your mind?"

"The dead people won me over."

"What, bodies calling out for justice?"

"No, mysteries. And having the tools to solve them. This—" He tapped the files he had brought. "Ah, this is very interesting."

It was impossible to get a preview of Azulay's findings, since Paxton, Ava and their assistant chose that moment to arrive.

“My Lord, James,” Paxton said, patting his tie. “I’m hoping you have something sweet …”

James opened a white box full of doughnuts and showed them to Paxton, who laid a hand over his heart.

“My dear, you can’t imagine the relief. I fairly felt a fit of hypoglycemia coming on and didn’t know if I was going to be able to make any sense. Oh, you didn’t neglect the sprinkly ones, you are clever!”

Koestler joined them ten minutes later, and they gathered around the dinner table once again. Paxton, happy with a cup of coffee and a dish bearing four different doughnuts, got the assistant to connect Azulay's laptop to the projector.

"Are we getting fireworks, Professor?" he asked, leaning back in his chair, fingers interlaced behind his head.

"I'll let you be the judge of that," Azulay said. "All right, so this is what we have."

He projected a split image on the wall: to the left the old photo of Keane's skull from the autopsy; to the right the exhumed skull with patches of hair still clinging to it.

"I'd like you to notice the lesions are the same on the scalp right after Keane’s death and on the skull that was dug up. The report says that on November 29th, 2013, Joseph Keane was attacked and repeatedly bludgeoned on the stairs of his home. The autopsy estimates seven blows with a blunt object. Some dragged along the scalp, causing, as you see on this original image, long lacerations where the skin was lifted. These blows pierced the skin all the way to the skull, and you can still see the ridges in the new images. This single small dent here was described in the autopsy as a straight shape consistent with the part that sticks out of the poker."

Azulay tapped the image several times, saying, "Wrong, wrong, wrong."

The front legs of Paxton's chair hit the ground and a great smile spread on his face. James sat perfectly still, waiting for the professor to continue.

"As my esteemed colleague Dr. Koestler observed, the fire poker, used with force great enough to cause profuse bleeding, would also cause fractures on the skull. Where are they? Not in the old images, not in the new ones — and not in the pathologist's report. There aren't even superficial fractures. I have reviewed thousands of cases of death by blunt trauma, and do you know in how many of those I found no brain injury, edema or at least subdural hematoma?" He looked around the table. "None."

"It's as we thought, then," Paxton said. "They made a mess of it."

"It's much worse than you thought," Azulay said, projecting the image of the crime scene. "Every single conclusion they announced in the report about this scene reveals their will not to see."

He clicked his laptop, showing them a close-up of the ceramic floor with blood on it. "What do you see? The lab says that these drops and smears would have been left by the defendant, Lynn Miller, who had bloody hands, or some part of a garment steeped in blood, as she walked out of the house. Wrong — because this isn't a drop of blood, it's a dollop. Whoever left this was freely bleeding, not carrying blood by proxy, as it were."

The laser pointer circled a smear. "And this was made by a shoe on fresh blood as it fell." He pressed another key, showing a man’s shoe. "This is what Joseph Keane was wearing, and you can see blood drops and other blood patterns on it. But what do you think is significant about this smear on the floor?"

The next image fit the two previous ones together: the toe of Keane's foot and the smear. "It indicates that Keane's shoe was facing the inside of the house. And look where it was."

Once again Azulay projected the entire the crime scene on the wall, this time with a red circle around the smears he had just shown them. They were near the front door.

James leaned forward to peer. "Do you mean that he was bleeding as he walked into the house?"

"I do. And here is a separate clear image which would confirm my finding," Azulay went on, showing another slide. "You can see the footprints of the accused, Lynn Miller, pointing outside, but over blood that was already there. And the stairs ..." He stopped and shook his head. "Well, the stairs tell many stories."

"Many lies," James muttered.

Ava and Paxton glanced at him as Azulay hit a key several times to get the crime scene back onto the wall. The professor used the pointer.

"We have the assumption by the lab that the perpetrator bludgeoned Mr. Keane here on the stairs — that these smears on the wall and rail indicate that he turned and tried to face his attacker or climb the steps, until he fell and broke his neck. But all the wounds are on top of his head and were made from behind. None are on his forehead or on the side of his head, which would be the case if he ever faced his attacker. Abrasions on his hands and arms could have come from a carpet burn as he fell, but they were not blows from a poker. That means he had no defensive wounds on his arms, hands or shoulders.” He stopped to look at them. “Joe and his murderer never faced each other once the blows began, I assure you."

Taking a few steps back, the professor combed his goatee with his fingers. "The question for me was: why was it thought that the bludgeoning took place on the stairs? Because it was the obvious conclusion when you find dollops of blood on the stairs, smears where the victim may have held on to keep climbing, a cast-off pattern consistent with coughing or spitting blood as he fell, and his own body lying at the bottom of the steps."

Another tap, and the poker appeared.

"And then there is the one thing that clinched it," Azulay pursued relentlessly, "at least in the eyes of those who cannot bother to truly see: a weapon lying next to the corpse, full of blood and fingerprints."

He turned to look at the people held captive by his presentation. "A prop."

Stepping forward, the professor ran his hand over the image of the poker. "Because I can categorically affirm, gentlemen and lady, that this is not the murder weapon at all."

TWENTY-ONE

A mind, stripped of facts it had deemed conclusive, went into overdrive. James began shuffling different possibilities as everyone in the room stared at Professor Azulay, who smiled at the effect of his revelation.

Could he be mistaken — this precise man, this expert?

If he weren't mistaken, who was lying?

What was the point of a prop?

"How sure are you of this?" Paxton asked.

"One hundred percent," Azulay said. "I had the weapon and I had the skull. It's not a match."

Ava snapped her mouth shut. "But the crime lab also had both things, and they had a recently deceased victim with the scalp still there. Could it be that time …"

Azulay shook his head, clicking his tongue in denial. "Absolutely not. I told you, it was the will not to see. The medical examiners had the body and the police had what they thought was the weapon with the defendant's fingerprints on it. Lynn Miller had run away. The examiners shaved the victim's skull, saw the lacerations and went, bingo. The contusions on the body were consistent with the fall from the stairs, and the broken neck explained itself. Why would the lab bother with Keane’s shoes and the dollops of blood pointing inside when a woman had incriminated herself?"

"The state lab at the time was constantly overwhelmed," Paxton said slowly. "It was before we got the regional one in the Triad. Still, if this negligence can be proved beyond all doubt, we might even be able to avoid a trial."

Azulay's head oscillated from one side to the other as he pursed his lips. "The prosecution might fight the accusation that the lab disregarded the physical evidence in a felony. Apart from possible lawsuits, it would discredit them for many trials to come."

“It will make them squirm a bit,” Paxton admitted.

Again, Azulay looked at his notes and proceeded as if he were giving a lecture. “Let’s start with the single laceration, or rather avulsion, on Keane’s posterior skull: according to the report, this was the first blow, perpetrated from above and behind Keane as he descended the stairs and looked down. The report claims that this avulsion—” He projected the old image of a deep, horizontal cut showing Keane’s pink flesh beneath it “—matches the shape of the protruding end of the poker. It does not.”

The next slide showed several surfaces of varying texture, from clay to bone itself, bearing marks.

"Compare them. The lesion on the victim's skull is shaped like a crescent, whereas the poker would make a straight cut.” The top part of the skull appeared again. “Also, what the report assumed to be six separate lesions on the crown are a symmetrical parallel pattern of marks. It is even described correctly in the autopsy as 'tri-pronged linear lacerations'. They assumed these were multiple blows from the same object. In fact, the symmetry of these marks shows that the crime weapon does not have a single iron prong that sticks out as the fire poker has, it has three prongs."

James leafed through the autopsy. "Symmetry? They state here that these lacerations had varying depths, lengths and widths."

"Yes, which would still be consistent with a three-pronged weapon — it depends where most of the force is employed, normally in the middle if it’s a clean blow. The two sets of three lacerations are equidistant and linear. This would not be the case with a weapon like the poker falling willy-nilly to cause a laceration at a time. Furthermore, the absence of fractures and injury to the brain, which Dr. Koestler has already noted, would indicate that the crime weapon was a lighter object than an iron poker.

“This is why these blows did not kill Mr. Keane or leave him prostrated where he was first struck. He received a first tentative blow that punctured him once, on the back of the head. The perpetrator might have held the weapon in an awkward grip and only one crescent-like — not straight — piece of metal punctured his posterior skull all the way to the bone. Perhaps scared of Joe’s reaction, his screams or the blood running, the killer strikes again, but only twice, with a three-pronged weapon. The long linear lacerations indicate that Joe moved after being hit each time, trying to get away. The prongs dragged across his scalp, scratching bone.”

"Could it be something like a rake?" Paxton asked.

"I have tried rakes and not found one I'm satisfied with yet, but yes. Something like a rake, or even a garden cultivator tool."

James stood. "May we go back to the steps, leading in?”

Azulay switched slides. "Here?"

Nodding, James studied the image. "Are you saying, then, that the murder didn't take place in the house?"

"I think the murder took place outside." Azulay pointed again. "I think these dollops of blood show Joseph Keane entering the house while bleeding from lacerations to his skull. He left this trail as he went toward the stairs. He must have been terrified by the attack and blinded by the blood running down his face. As he reached the halfway point in the stairs, he might have stumbled or missed a step. His hand was slippery from having touched his own blood. He tried to hold on to the wall and rail, fell, and as he hit the step, he exhaled the blood that had been running from his head over his mouth, which is why we get this spray pattern at the skirting board here. Then he kept falling until he landed badly and broke his neck."

It was Paxton's turn to stand. "Why, why, why was the fire poker there, then? Why the prop?"

"Ah, my friend," Azulay said. "There we enter in the territory of psychology. Not an exact science, so I cannot help you."

"Psychology or deviousness," Paxton remarked.

"Perhaps both," James said. "Could April Keane have followed her husband outside after the argument and delivered these blows with an object that had a long handle? Would that not explain the lack of force and of fractures?"

Azulay pulled at his notes and looked at them as he talked. "April Keane is five foot five and the victim was five foot eight. If she had a rake, even with a long handle, she could not deliver clean blows from above such as these."

"What if April stood somewhere high up, waiting for her husband to pass?" Ava asked. "Like on the porch, when he passed below?"

"Someone on higher ground, on a porch on a step, would need Keane to just stand there, facing away. Once the first blow failed to render him unconscious he moved, hence the long lacerations, and a perpetrator who was shorter than him would then have to follow him. The next blows would have been dealt on his neck, but not on the top of his skull. All the blows were delivered from behind, by someone taller."

Lee was five foot nine — a tall woman; taller than Joe. The light from the projection made James narrow his eyes as he turned. His own skull throbbed as if someone had relentlessly beat it.

"So, Keane is attacked outside," James said as he paced. "I can't imagine that it was very far from the house if he was losing blood, getting weak and panicking. Any trail that could be found at the time, showing where he came from, was utterly ignored by the cops and the forensic unit and is long lost to us. Keane might have run over the lawn, or through the woods — it will be impossible to know now. In any case, let's say he managed to get away from the killer and into his house. As far as I can see, there are only three possibilities."

He leaned against the table and raised his fingers to enumerate them. "One, the killer knew Keane, and this was a premeditated attack. This person waited for him outside, perhaps even arranged to meet him. In this case, the person was profoundly inept, not having chosen a heavy enough object as a crime weapon and trying to kill Keane near his own house. It's not entirely out of the question, but I'd say it's unlikely.

"Two, the killer knew Joe, but didn't premeditate the murder. He lost his head during some argument and, as Joe turned, he grabbed the first implement he found — something that would be at hand outside — and hit him with increasing determination and precision. That would probably mean the killer was not only taller than Keane but stronger, since Keane fled instead of attempting to fight."

"Why didn't the killer finish him off?" Ava asked. "Keane got into his house, but why wouldn't the killer follow him? Look how feeble that door is, those windows."

Koestler, who had been silent so far, piped in, "He'd have to go for broke and kill a woman and a little girl as well."

"But that's what tends to happen when someone loses his head," James said. "He would have seen that his only chance was to get in the house, kill Keane, his wife and little stepdaughter, if they happened to wake up. Or—” He stopped for a moment, looking at the crime scene again. "Or he must have hoped that Keane wouldn't talk about the attack he had just suffered."

"Because Keane had done him wrong and wouldn't want it to be known?" Paxton wondered.

"Or because they were together in some sort of shady deal,” James explained. “April said in the hearing that Joe was bringing money home, but Joe was unemployed at the time.”

Ava frowned. “I thought he was a traveling salesman on commission, maybe free-lancing? There has been quite a bit of that since the crisis.”

“Yes, but during a bad recession, sales decrease,” James said. “Would a free-lance salesman be making good money? What if, instead, he had been doing something illegal? He and the killer disagreed over whatever this was, and once Keane got away, the killer knew he would keep quiet about the attack so as not to expose his own criminal activities."

The people in the room considered the scenario in silence, until Azulay said, "A less extravagant alternative would be that the killer was a stranger. Some straggler who came upon Joe outside and saw the opportunity to rob him. This person grabbed a garden implement and hit Keane, hoping to stun him. He found that he hadn't knocked him out and tried again — and when Joe managed to somehow drive him back and get inside his house, he gave up and ran away."

Paxton's tone was soft, "That is the worst possible theory for us, you know."

"Because it's a flimsy alternative to the theory that Lynn Miller did it?" Azulay asked.

"Exactly. In case we can't make the whole trial go away by threatening the prosecution with clusterfuck, the 'stranger who happened to be passing' is the worst alternative to offer a jury."

Ava threw Paxton an amused look, and he winked at her. "Clusterfuck" described the case far too well for him to try and find another word.

"We can't count on dismissal of the case," Paxton went on. "We need a good alternative or Lee isn't off the hook, I'm afraid. Above all, there is the prop." He pointed to the poker that lay next to Keane's dead body in the image. "Why was it there?"

James knew April had put Cora’s fingerprints on the poker and dropped it over the rail, but he didn’t offer the information; Lee didn’t want her mother to be incriminated, although the key to the puzzle was the lovely Mrs. Keane. "What can we do to build a better case against the lab?" he wondered.

"Our case for dismissal will be stronger if I keep looking for any kind of object or implement that could match these lesions," Azulay said. "But I haven't had any luck so far."

"And I'm retesting what was found under the victim's fingernails and in the lacerations,” Koestler said. "This will take another week — but we know that some of the material already processed came from outdoors: splinters of wood, not consistent with the railing of the staircase, earth, gravel, etc.”

“Joseph Keane was attacked outside, that much is certain.” The professor was already closing his files and shutting down his laptop. "Dr. Koestler and I will inform you of the next findings."

"We still have a lot of work to do," Paxton warned James as they said goodbye.

Once they were gone, James absentmindedly ate whatever he found in the fridge as he kept going over the events on the night of Keane’s death. The answer to the mystery was in the missing hours between the fight Joe had with April and his tumble down the stairs.

Sitting at the long dinner table, James grabbed the different reports to read them.

April had said that she and Keane had fought between six and eight in the evening. After that she claimed to have taken a Valium, which was a lie. She hadn't taken it then, because records showed that Cora called Lee at 10.37 p.m. Keane had already fallen down the stairs — the whole house had shaken, as Cora told Lee — and April had already made the girl touch the fire poker. Therefore, April hadn't been sedated at eight o’clock, right after the fight, as she claimed. Lee, however, had found her mother and sister asleep around eleven, when she arrived at the house.

It was April who had decided to use the fire poker, which Azulay claimed with complete certainty was not the crime weapon but a prop. Could she be an accomplice in Joe's death, told by the real murderer to divert attention with a false weapon and her little daughter's fingerprints? Had she had a lover then, or had she been party to the shady business that was bringing money home?

In short, had someone else told her to make a mess of the crime scene?

The rest of the story had been told to him by Lee, and he had no reason to doubt her anymore. She had arrived perhaps a quarter of an hour after Cora's phone call, she had cleaned the poker and put more blood and her own fingerprints on it.

But there was Joe's two-hour absence between the hours of eight and about ten.

Where did he go? James wondered.

Perhaps no farther than his front yard, or the woods on either side of his house — to meet someone, or to get hit on the head by a complete stranger.

Perhaps he had gone farther.

The words on the report got blurry as James' thoughts raced. The puzzle was about to lock into place, he could feel it, and maybe he was looking at everything the wrong way.

Maybe the key to the murder wasn’t April, but Joe himself. People had done things that night, and there was a reason for everything they had done, even if that reason was mad or stupid. As usual, the human beings involved in the crime had all had their own needs, desires and motives — as usual, they had been at odds with each other.

And there was a name, also neglected by all, which he now saw written in a report. A name he had heard from Paxton, from April during the preliminary hearing and from Lee.

Jada Phillips. The woman Keane had probably been seeing behind his wife's back.

TWENTY-TWO

"If I hadn't brought you with me, sitting here and watching her would seem quite creepy," James said.

From the passenger seat next to him, Ava stared at the restaurant before them. "Well, I'm not sure it's a very good idea."

The wind buffeted the car, cold air seeping in through tiny cracks in the windows. Ten days before, the tiny town of Massey would have looked ready for spring. But the weather had turned again, even as March approached, and the wooden restaurant where Jada Phillips worked seemed about to fly off like Dorothy’s house in the Wizard of Oz.

The athletic blonde woman they were watching moved around setting tables for lunchtime.

When Jada's ex-husband told James that she had left for Massey in 2016, he had called Ava, requesting her to take a field trip with him and bill him for her time.

"Don't you want a private investigator to do this?" she had asked. "We have two really good ones we work with."

"No, I'd rather go myself. And she might open up a bit more easily if you come as well."

They had driven beyond Raleigh that morning. Between the ages of three and eleven, Lee had lived around that area, but James would think about that later. Now he took the map of North Carolina from the glove compartment and put it in his coat pocket. "You should take the lead, if you don't mind.”

"Good morning," Ava said in her sweetest voice as they reached the restaurant. "I'm wondering if you can help us? We're looking for Miss Jada Phillips?"

"That's me." Jada wore a dark sweater and trousers, and a small striped apron with pockets. "Who are you?"

"I'm Ava Sullivan, from Paxton and Associates, and this is James Bryce. We were wondering if we could have a quick word with you?"

Jada looked from one to the other in slight alarm. "Associates? Like in lawyers? You coming about the alimony? I'm not talking 'bout that with you!"

"Oh, no!" Ava waved her hand. "No, we don't have anything to do with that. We're representing Lynette Miller."

The name stopped Jada mid-flight. "Lynette Miller? In Hawkshaw? The stepdaughter who killed Joe? They told me she had been caught.”

"It's a bit of a long story," Ava said. "I think you open at twelve and it's ten-thirty, so can we take a moment of your time?"

"I just don't see what I have to do with any of that."

"It will only take a moment," James insisted.

Glancing up at him, Jada seemed to hesitate. People were bustling in the kitchen, but on the floor there was only one other waitress setting tables.

"I don't have much time."

"We won't need much," Ava assured her, dimpling pleasantly.

As James had imagined, Ava's presence put Jada at ease, and he had his usual advantage: being a well-dressed foreigner who spoke a Downtown Abbey sort of English. He didn't look like he needed anything from people — and Jada's reserve was already melting as she led them to a table at the empty end of the place. She offered them something to drink and they settled on sparkling water, which she served with slivers of lemon and ice despite the cold.

James didn't speak as Ava informed Jada of the new developments in Keane's case and the fact that Lee's trial was going to take place in a few weeks.

"So, you see, we knew we had to talk to you. We have to figure out what happened during the time Joe was absent," Ava concluded.

"Why would you that concern me?” The fear in Jada’s smile confirmed that she knew something about that night. “If you think I was with Joe before he died, that's just stupid gossip.”

"It’s a new line of investigation," Ava explained. "One that the police neglected. And it will have a bearing on the trial."

Jada tapped her own chest. "You think I'm a suspect?"

"You were seen with Joe that night," James said. Ava's shoulders stiffened in shock at his lie, but he had to play bad cop. Having watched Jada for a few minutes, he suspected that he could make her talk, and he was certainly not backing away from the possibility. "If there is a trial, the time frame during which Joe was absent will be extensively investigated. You might become the centerpiece of the trial, when you didn't really do anything to Joe. Wouldn't that complicate your alimony, since it would give your husband the excuse of adultery?"

"I—I—" Jada’s face showed increasing panic. "I didn't do anything."

James’ eyes held Jada's. "We don't think you did anything except go somewhere with Joe that night. But we can't help what other people are going to think."

“If my husband gets hold of this …" Jada said, rubbing her forehead as she asked Ava, “Can he stop the alimony because of Joe?"

"I'm not a divorce attorney," Ava said with a sympathetic grimace.

"We are trying to avoid a trial," James insisted. "That's probably the only way for you not to testify before a jury in open court."

"Jesus," Jada muttered. "So, if I talk to you, I won't be called later?"

Ignoring Ava's obvious disapproval, James said, "Probably not for Lee's trial."

"Who saw me with Joe?" she asked.

Time to be vague. "Those areas that look empty are the most treacherous. People behind every tree and bush, or just passing by."

The woman wrung her hands. "I can't live just on what I make here. I have a child!"

"Help us help you, then."

"Look, it wasn't even an affair," Jada said, leaning forward earnestly. "We just saw each other a few times, that's all. April watched him like a hawk, and I was scared of that woman. That woman’s crazy!"

"What was different about that night, then?" James pursued.

"He said they'd had a big fight and he was done with her. He wanted someone to talk to. I knew that wasn't all he wanted, but I didn't mind. My husband wasn't in town. We were two people fed up with our spouses, and we were keeping each other company.”

Ava was almost as interested in the story as James, and she had forgotten to look censorious as she asked Jada, "Where did you meet?"

"He walked over to my house; it's about a quarter of an hour away. I got my sister to babysit and drove out on the road to meet him." Jada added with a puzzled frown, "I could swear it was safe. I wasn't taking no chances, because either April or my husband could have killed us."

"And where did you go from there?"

"To the cabin in the woods. We'd been there about three times,” Jada said. “It wasn't Joe’s house, it was a friend's, and it was more than half an hour away, so we felt safe. He always took me to the cabin when the friend wasn't there. But that night someone was."

"Who?"

She shook her head. "I never got a look. Joe would always park way up before we could even see the house and go and make sure — although I'd tell him, ‘Hey, if it's a friend and he doesn't mind, why don't you ask him beforehand if the house is free?’ And he said he didn't want to, because he'd have to explain why, and they'd ask who he was with. And that he had as much right to be there as any of them. Still, every time he would park way up out of sight and sorta run down, you know, to see if anyone was in. And this time he came huffing and puffing up the driveway and said someone was there and we had to get out. And he told me to duck in the seat, hoping whoever it was didn't run out and see me, or didn't know who I was."

"Did someone run out?"

"I didn't see anyone. But Joe just kept saying, 'Fuck, fuck, fuck' and driving backwards up the path, and when we got to the road we were out of there like bats out of hell."

"Did anyone follow you?"

She shrugged. "He kept looking in the rearview mirror like he expected to see the devil on our tail, but I don't think so. And, after a while, he didn't look so worried anymore, not about being followed, though he was still spooked."

"And then?"

"He got out at the same spot we had met, not too far from his house — I saw him going that way through the trees, like he was hiding. I was kinda scared too, by the way he was acting. It's like we ran into a bear's den or a wasps' nest or something."

"Didn't you ask who the 'friend' at the cabin was?"

"He couldn't say. Then I asked if it was anyone who knew about us, and he said no, definitely not. I thought he screwed up, you know. His friend was there, he hadn't asked for permission, and he'd have gotten in trouble. Maybe the friend was with a woman that wasn't supposed to be there either and he'd have gotten mad. But there wasn't no one following us. That was just Joe's paranoia.” She stopped and shrugged. “I guess I didn't think about it anymore. As soon as I heard he was dead, I thought it was April that had clocked him one like she was always doing. To be honest I worried for a second I'd be next — but everyone was told it was Lynn Miller for sure. I kept quiet about the cabin because it didn’t have anything to do with anything."

Before she could ask for more assurances that the story wouldn't get out, James asked, "Can you tell us what that cabin was like? What do you remember about it?"

Jada's face had become canny. "Are you sure and certain it wasn't Lynn Miller? She ran away, and the police was pretty sure. And if it wasn't her, it must have been her mama, I'm telling you. Like I said, she had already hit Joe with stuff that might have killed him."

"Just humor me for a second, won’t you?" James said in a deep, smooth voice, still holding Jada's gaze. "What can you remember?"

She stared at him with parted lips for a moment, then blinked twice and said. "It was a wooden cabin, not very fancy or anything. Lots of trees around, all trees. There was a boat, like a small motor boat, covered up and with wheels, so there musta been a creek or something close by. Inside — well, I remember thinking it was such a man's place. No woman's touch anywhere, just plain, and a bit of a mess. There was a sofa and that's pretty much where we ... you know. Not even a sheet or anything. There were some bottles of booze, some glasses — men don't really clean up after themselves. Didn't look like they ate there or anything, there were just some snacks. Joe brought his own booze, he washed the glasses we used and put them back where they were. I noticed he did that all times we were there. Like he was leaving everything as he found. There was a bathroom, too, pretty bare and smelling of moisture. It was all kinda falling apart. I thought maybe they used it for girlfriends but also to hunt or something. Yeah, there were guns. Rifles and stuff."

"What was it like outside?"

"I was only there during the day once. It was still fall then, so there was still leaves and all. I could see there was a shed made of cement. I thought maybe they kept the boat in there sometimes."

Taking the map from his pocket, James opened it on the table. "Would you be able to tell which woods you were at?"

Jada laughed. "North Carolina is fairly all woods! And there’s lots of creeks and lakes." She leaned forward to peer at the map. "We went on this road north, I'm pretty sure, and it was a wooded area, so anywhere around here, I guess."

"Would that be in Rockingham County?" Ava asked.

"Maybe. It was north for sure."

"Anything you remember seeing there, or near there, which would help?" James insisted.

Sighing, Jada shut her eyes. "When we got to the smaller roads, closer to the cabin, there were billboards, like several of them in a row? Oh, there was a water tower, but like an old one. Like the ones made of tin? And it said 'Woody's' on it. I remember that, ’cause I thought it was cute."

"Was it on the road?"

"Not on the main road. On the road where we turned into the property."

"Anything else?"

She sat thinking for a while but shook her head. "Just trees and trees."

"One more thing," James said, folding the map. "Did Joe ever hint that he would soon have money and that he could give you things, make your life easier?"

"Oh, yes." She scoffed. "Don't you men always promise that, when the blood's up?"

"Can you remember what he said?"

"The usual. 'You'll see, I'm gonna make good. We're gonna get outta this town, it won't be long.' More stuff like that, but you know what, I didn't really listen. I had a kid, and Joe was just talking. How was he going to make good, with everyone suffering in that economy, and he without a job? At least my husband worked, even though he wasn't giving me nothing but aggravation."

James smiled warmly at her. "Thank you, Ms. Phillips."

She touched his sleeve. "Is this gonna get me off the hook? Of having to talk about it in court?"

"We'll do our best."

Jada Phillips still looked worried as she walked them to the car.

"I think you're barking up the wrong tree," she told James. "April Keane did this, or poor Lynn Miller did it because Joe finally lost it and was going for April. Poor girl had to defend that bitch of a mother. I heard the closest people are the ones who usually kill you."

The closest people. As James and Ava drove away, he reflected that he had been hearing that a lot. The closest people are the ones who hurt you, who lie, who kill you. And it wasn't that way only among the less privileged. He thought of Mia, of his uncle, of his aunt. Betrayal happened everywhere, but there were different stories too: of loyalty, of love, of sacrifice.

"I'm not sure that was legal," Ava said, trying to tidy up her windblown hair.

"Are you angry at me? I was the illegal one."

"James, if she needs to be called as a witness in the trial, the prosecution can say the defense browbeat her."

"It will never come to trial, Ava."

She cocked her head at him. "How can you be so sure?"

"We are very near finding out what happened, that's how. And it doesn't involve Lee. What we have to do is find that cabin, and everything will be explained. Will you give Carter a call and see if he can get people on to it right away? Find the cabin, find the deed and who owned or owns it."

Opening her bag, Ava took her phone. Before she dialed, James said, “I need to stay around Raleigh a little.”

"Uh-oh. Are you going to go rogue some more?”

He smiled. "It won’t be this bad.”

Ava gazed at him for a moment. “You love her a whole lot, don’t you?”

“It’s a question of justice.”

She gave a small laugh. “I deal with justice and injustice every day. This isn’t all it is.” She looked at the phone again, hitting Paxton’s number. “I’ll make my way back home. You go do what you need to do.”

TWENTY-THREE

April Keane had told James that she had lived in a trailer park near Lee’s father, and Paxton’s research had confirmed the fact. Lee had been in that park between the ages of three and six.

The park, he knew, was after Raleigh and on the way to Durham — but he didn’t go see it. Instead, he kept to the woods until he found himself before iron gates that led to a large white house in the distance.

The contrast between the imagined trailer park of Lee's early childhood and White Oaks, her grandmother’s home, almost belonged in the realm of the absurd.

Mrs. Frances Bergeron lived in a lavish colonial mansion complete with neo-classical columns, numerous windows and a wide front door that opened onto a sweeping staircase.

“Gone With the Wind, anyone?” James muttered, adding a bright “Good morning” to the uniformed maid who opened the door. She was a muscular black woman in her late fifties.

“Good morning,” she replied with a slight frown.

“I believe this is the home of Mrs. Bergeron? Would you be so kind as to beg her pardon for my unannounced appearance and ask her if she might receive me? I’m James St. Bryce.”

The maid nodded and left him under a gleaming chandelier as she went toward the drawing rooms, or however they were called there. James ran a finger over the round table that bore a large flower arrangement. It squeaked; no dirt, of course.

The maid soon returned to announce that Mrs. Bergeron would see him. Over softly creaking polished floors, she led the way to a large sitting room where a woman waited.

Mrs. Bergeron was slim and wore tailored trousers and an expensive silk blouse under a gray cardigan. Her short hair was swept back from a face that was still beautiful despite her age. Instead of smiling, she measured James with a frank stare before she offered her hand.

"Good afternoon," she said.

"Thank you for receiving me," he said, also without smiling.

“I do know who you are. I read the newspapers, especially when people I know appear in it. But I’m sure you suspected that.”

She motioned for him to sit on a sofa exactly like her own, upholstered in a tasteful pattern of flowers over a white background. "Have you had your lunch? Then, perhaps, coffee or tea?"

They settled on coffee, as James was a decided snob about tea. Mrs. Bergeron turned to the maid. "Will you please see to it, Celia?"

The Bergerons, according to the internet, had made their fortune in trade during the 18th century, and the house was authentically Georgian. It was full of good antiques, most of which had probably been there for generations. The French doors to James’ right showed a well-kept lawn with imposing oak trees and weeping willows.

Once they were alone, Mrs. Bergeron again focused on him. "I believe your mother was friends with a great friend of mine, Claire Smith-Rhodes?"

"Yes, Lady Wentworth.”

"Claire and I went to school together. That was before she married Sir Harry."

Mrs. Bergeron didn't, as James had feared, drone on about possible common acquaintances in high circles. She was direct: "Why on earth is someone like you messed up in this tawdry affair?"

A woman who didn't mince her words; that would be more useful to him than one who kept her opinions to herself.

"I had a tawdry situation of my own," James said. "And Lee helped me with it. Among other things."

A corner of Mrs. Bergeron's mouth went up at the mention of "other things." She was no one's fool.

"You came here to find out about her father's family? Is that the missing piece in the puzzle that is my granddaughter?"

"I guess you could say that. Does it bother you?"

His question almost took her aback, but she rallied. "If it did, I wouldn't have received you. But what is it you need to know? Aren't things clear by now?"

"I wouldn't say that. A lot is unclear. For example, who actually murdered Joseph Keane."

There was a delicate snort from Mrs. Bergeron. "Lynette, of course. She might as well have left a signed confession."

"I wonder.”

"That’s because she wants you to.”

Celia’s face betrayed no opinions as she entered carrying a tray. She poured the coffee from a gleaming silver pot, handing James a china cup and offering him cubes of sugar.

"Boys lose their head around a beautiful girl," Mrs. Bergeron said, stirring her cup. "It's stupid, but hard to blame them when it's what nature intended. As mothers, we are told not to interfere — even my husband said that, when my son Mark got to that age. 'Let the boy live,' he told me. Well, we did what we could; we certainly taught him about birth control. Then he goes off, meets April Miller by the seaside, has some sort of romance in a hut and three lives are ruined: April Miller's, my son's and a child's."

She straightened the cardigan over her shoulders. "It's what every mother wants to avoid, because we know life. We know the consequences of a mistake can be very far-reaching. But April was so uneducated that she couldn't even find Mark to tell him she was pregnant. He went off to Harvard and she couldn't think to go back to the marina and find out his full name or where he was from. Apparently she tried to go home to have the child and got thrown out by her father."

"Just terrible,” James said tonelessly.

"I can feel sympathy for that,” Mrs. Bergeron said. “After all, a son we had brought up with constant advice and information had impregnated a girl. What would a girl born near a swamp know? When she finally found Mark, the child was almost three years old. My son was a decent young man, but we gave him the benefit of our advice."

James thought he didn’t need to ask, but did anyway: "And what was your advice?"

"That girl wanted to fleece him, and she had to be kept from the knowledge that she could have a paternity test forced on him. Mark gave her money anyway, to get her out of that horrible park. Only to visit them and find April Miller drunk, the new house a pigsty and the child half naked and hungry."

For the third time, she drew the cardigan about her, shaking her head in extreme disapproval. James tried not to picture the scene as Mrs. Bergeron went on, "It was clear that by giving her money he was just feeding an alcoholic her bottle, and that April was going to destroy that little girl. Mark felt he had to save Lynette, of course. For him, the whole thing became about getting her out of there. But the more Mark tried, the more that creature realized she could get money out of him for herself. And we were absolutely not going to let Mark give her those quantities of money. She was selling her own child!"

April's ignorance and endless greed on one side and the Bergerons' puritan self-righteousness on the other: how much suffering had that meant for Lee?

"As soon as April saw that Mark had begun to love his daughter, she decided to hold out for as much as she could get,” Mrs. Bergeron said. “For three years, every time he went to get Lynette, April was waiting for money. He was already paying for her house, for her food, her clothes — but it wasn’t enough.

“Well, I'm glad she never got to ask for a paternity test. Mark died in a silly boat accident; it was really very silly, it should never have happened.” She took a moment to stare at the photo of a dark-haired man in his twenties that sat on a side table to her left. “April no longer had any claims on anyone, and I told her so. 'Come at me, and I'll go at you. I'll get child services to look at the way Lynette lives, and you'll probably be put in prison.' Which, let's face it, was the place for her. She had found another man, and she was happy to get rid of her child. I had to give her some money, of course — but I told her it was all she would get. And my granddaughter came here, to me and to my husband. Here!"

She twirled a finger in the air, commanding his admiration, but that wasn't enough. "Come with me," she said as she stood up with no effort, despite her age.

Neither did she display any difficulty as she climbed the staircase to the second floor, followed by James. She led him to a room halfway across the corridor. It was a girl's room, full of light, with a large four-poster bed and pale silk curtains. Mrs. Bergeron straightened a set of silver brushes on a vanity table near the window as she talked.

"This was Lynette's room. She couldn't even understand that it was all hers when she first arrived. And she wasn't slow, oh no, she was a very clever six-year-old. My husband passed away a year after that, and it was only Lynette and me. But I guarantee you, Mr. St. Bryce, that she had the best of the best of everything. Ask anyone in this house how she was treated."

James inspected a shelf that held toys and books. He asked, "Did you like her?"

Once again, his direct question startled Mrs. Bergeron, but she wasn't a liar. No, she wasn’t the sort to live the delusion that she had been a loving grandmother. She frowned as she thought about it and finally answered, "Sometimes. When she was more like Mark. I could see him in her, beyond her mother's looks."

"How was she like him?"

"She amused herself, like him. She wasn't a messy child, or at least I taught her not to be messy, and she learned. I let her go into his room, she liked to do that. There were his books there, his notebooks, his music." The old woman let out a short laugh. "Do you know, I once asked her why she liked to be in there, and she said: ‘I’m studying my own archeology.’ I thought that was quite brilliant for a girl her age."

A girl so clever she could discover things by herself, spending the day alone with her imagination and away from the care or affection of any adults, just as James had done at Deerholt.

"I remember there was a game I played with her," Mrs. Bergeron said as they descended toward the living room. "I had noticed that she would go through the house, and that she would stop the longest at the finest things. I would show her two similar objects and tell her to pick which one was the best. She would almost always get it right. I'd like to think that was Mark in her.” Her voice hardened as she added, “The only cheap thing he ever picked up was April Miller."

A crystal bottle with water and ice had appeared on the coffee table in their absence, but James shook his head when he was offered a glass. "Did you show her your jewels as well, by any chance?"

"Ah. Of course, you know she stole from me. Yes, Mr. Bryce, I showed her my jewels. I taught her to understand why a gem was good. I don't know if I encouraged her criminality — I think it was there already. And it was unnecessary of her to steal, because she would have inherited my things one day. But, you see, she was greedy. Furtive. Maybe it was in her genes."

"Is that why you let her go?"

"What do you mean?"

"When she was eleven her mother asked for her, and you let her go."

"I had no legal claim over Lynette, and I wasn't going to give the mother money, as she was asking. I wasn't going to play that game."

"Had Lee done something to make you angry?"

"No, I just—"

"You didn't love her," he insisted.

"I was not going to get in a custody battle with that woman."

"But surely you would have won. You must have access to excellent lawyers, unlike April."

Her eyes didn't waver, but they became frostier. "I wasn't going to do it. I wasn't going to have our name dragged in court, all the horror paraded, that creature talking of my son. But no one can say I didn't look out for Lynette. When she was sixteen and had meningitis, she would have died if it hadn't been for me. I stepped in once more to save her. I brought her here and gave her the best care — the top doctors, at the top hospital."

"And later she stole a ring from you."

"That was her thanks." Mrs. Bergeron nodded several times. "She invaded my home when I wasn't here, opened my safe and took my diamond ring."

"Nothing else?"

"No."

"Were the other jewels elsewhere?"

"What difference does it make? She stole, after all I did for her. I let a small amount of time pass for her to learn a lesson and withdrew the charges. She needed to see where a life of crime would lead." For a moment, she considered James, and then said what she had probably been waiting to say all along, "Mr. St. Bryce, the world has changed, but you know deep down that people shouldn't mix. It's always a bad idea. We have a different understanding of life, of everything than they do. We’re like oil and water. I'm sorry to be blunt, but it's the way it is. Listen to what I'm telling you — don't make decisions you'll regret forever."

Instead of acknowledging what she had said, James asked, "Have you ever heard of Rathlin Island, Mrs. Bergeron?"

"I don't think so."

"It's off the coast of Ireland. Queen Elizabeth sent one of my ancestors there with Sir Francis Drake to storm the stronghold of a Scottish rebel. After a fight, the castle surrendered. The St. Bryce who was there had to block the Scots from landing while the English forces murdered every person on the island."

Mrs. Bergeron lifted an eyebrow. "You're talking of a war that took place five hundred years ago."

"No, I'm talking of a massacre. They didn't just kill the soldiers, or the civilians in the castle. They went to the caves on the beach to find women and children who had hidden there and murder them. Six hundred Scots and Irish killed.”

"Your point being?"

"That in your family, in mine, or anyone's, you'll find people much worse than April Keane. We just cleaned up nicely."

"Thank you for the history lesson,” she said with a lofty stare. “But civility, manners, education impose themselves through time, and then they are carried mother to daughter, father to son. Sometimes, in their absence, grandmother to granddaughter. And this is what I tried to do for Lynette. One can reflect on one's mistakes; in her case, I didn't make any."

It was James' turn to nod. "Well, thank you again for receiving me."

He stood, and so did Mrs. Bergeron. As they moved to the front door, Lee's grandmother added, "You have the eyes of an intelligent man, but like my son you've fallen for looks over substance."

"I've met a lot of beautiful women in my life. It's not Lee’s looks I've fallen for."

With an impatient sigh, Mrs. Bergeron said, "I wish my advice could keep you from the fate my son suffered. Would you want to look at a daughter of yours and see her turning into Lynette?"

The notion surprised James for a second, then he said softly, “Olapa oibor inkera.”

“Pardon?”

“It’s a Maasai saying. Means that children are like the bright moon.”

Her lips twitched. “Meaning wonderful?”

“Meaning they bring joy. I didn’t use to think so, necessarily — I used to think the world was no place for them. But now that you mention a little girl just like Lee, I’m looking forward to ensuring that she is happy from the day she is born.”

"Then you're besotted by a criminal," the old woman said curtly.

James stepped out and turned toward the old woman long enough to say, “She was worth more than the ring, you know. Much more.”

“Goodbye, Mr. St. Bryce.”

Mrs. Bergeron closed the door, and James got into his car. Still afraid of losing his temper, he drove slightly fast, but when he made a turn on the gravel path, Celia was standing under a tree. James stopped and rolled down the window. "Would you like a ride somewhere?"

"I want to talk to you real quick."

She glanced up to make sure they couldn't be seen, but she had chosen a good spot. They weren't visible to anyone in house. She climbed in and pulled the car door closed.

"It's about Miss Lynn—Miss Lynette. I heard Mrs. Bergeron talking to you. The worst of it, you know, is that she really believes all that horse manure. She believes she did the best by that child. Well, if giving a little girl everything that's material and no understanding or love, I guess she did."

"She does seem to like things more than people," James remarked dryly.

"Look, I've worked here a long time. Mrs. Bergeron taught me how every little detail should be; I learned, and she respects me. She pays me better than many other people would. But I just wanted you to know that Mrs. Bergeron gave Miss Lee that ring." Celia held up a finger. "She gave it to her. She showed that child the ring a million times, and when Miss Lee came back sick, she asked Mrs. Bergeron if she could wear it because it was pretty. And in front of my face Mrs. Bergeron told that girl, 'You can have it, because I don't want people to say I wouldn't give you a ring when you're about to die.' "

"She said die?”

"That was exactly what she said, to a girl who was afraid. She looks real strong-willed, Mrs. Bergeron, and she is — but she minds and minds what people say about her. In my book, though, you don't tell a child that she's about to die. You don't act like you're more worried about a ring!” Celia crossed her arms and shook her head. “If you ask me, Miss Lynn went from a bad mother to a worse grandmother. And when she came back to get the ring from the safe, it was because her grandmother had given it to her. She didn't die, so the ring was hers.”

James nodded quietly. “I’d agree.”

“Don’t mistake me, Miss Lynn had that wild streak — but I say good for her! If it wasn't for that streak, she might not have made it. And I don't know if Miss Lynn killed a man or not. What I know is that she didn't steal a ring. That's all."

Celia opened the door and got out, adding, “One of the first days I came to work here, I was out in the sun airing Mrs. Bergeron’s rugs, and Miss Lynn, little as she was, walked out of the house with this tall, cold glass of water on a china saucer. She walked over the whole lawn to me balancing that glass so she wouldn’t spill it. She told me, ‘You must be so thirsty!’ ” A tear shone in Celia’s eyes, and she wiped it away angrily. “And she was going to get told off by her grandmother for offering that glass, and even worse that saucer, to a servant — but I saw the heart in that little girl, and I never saw anything different. So, now, you tell Miss Lynn that I send her my big love, and that I know she’ll be all right. There has to be some justice in this world.”

She stepped back and slammed the door with passion.

Putting the car in drive, James saw the house appear in his rearview mirror and repressed the desire to set a big fire so he could watch an old witch burn.

TWENTY-FOUR

It was March, it was snowing — and Billy was dying.

He would be gone in a matter of days, the doctor said. If they took him to hospital he could last longer, and they would make him comfortable, but Billy had begged them to wait. No one wanted to go to the hospital, not even to die, and Maddy agreed that it was a cold, clinical end.

"They'll just be sticking tubes in him like he was a thing," she sobbed in the kitchen.

They had protected Billy for so long, and neither she nor Lee could believe he was about to leave them; but he had no more good days. His decline was gentle, and Lee was thankful for that. They gave him the morphine the doctor prescribed, and he lay watching the sky through the window.

"We've had the snowy owl here," he said. "Isn't that crazy?"

"The weather's gone mad."

"Yeah, it will probably be all sunny again next week, and then spring will really start."

Lee's vision became blurry at the thought that he wouldn't see it.

"Do you remember Corolla?" he suddenly asked.

How could she forget? It was where they had gotten married, after taking several buses from Greensboro to the coast. They had spent their honeymoon at the seaside because Billy wanted to see the wild Spanish mustangs that ran free there. Once they reached the beach, they had chosen a spot and sat eating sandwiches, which was all they could afford. Billy had begun to think the horses wouldn't appear — but a group of them had run down the dunes and past them on the shore.

"They were the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Lee, I know you don't believe in another life, but I do. I kind of have to. Do you think you can you leave my ashes there, on that beach?"

Lee tried hard not to cry. Billy wouldn’t like it. "Of course."

"Even if there isn't another life, I'll be recycled, right?"

He laughed, and she laughed with him, but hid her face on his shoulder.

As the week passed, he became sicker. Again he spoke of Scott, although he hadn't done so in a while. "Will you go see the Hoffmans, Lee? Will you tell them I'm sorry?"

"But what are you sorry for, Billy? You didn't do anything to Scott."

He swallowed with great difficulty. "I kept quiet. I think I should have said something, but Caleb told me it would make everything worse." Closing his eyes, he was quiet as he fought for breath. "They don't know about the money."

"What money, Billy?"

"Scott's money."

She was confused. "You want the Hoffmans to know that Scott had money?"

He squeezed her hand with surprising strength. "No, it's bad money. Caleb shouldn't keep it, he should burn it."

"Caleb?"

"Tell Caleb to burn it."

She never found out what he meant. That night, Lee was jolted awake by the branch of a tree tapping the window. The moon was too bright, almost like a spotlight, and created sharp shadows in the room. She got up to close the curtains and turn on the small lamp. When she crawled into bed again, she took Billy's hand; it was stiff and cold, and she knew that he was gone.

Lee didn't call Maddy or Ross, because there was nothing they could do. She lay with her head on Billy's shoulder and waited for dawn. Her friend was gone: the little boy who had loved her after her father and before Cora. The little boy she had loved.

Her friend was gone.

At six o'clock she knocked on the door of the master bedroom, and as soon as she opened it, Maddy began to wail. Ross put his arms around his wife and rocked her for a moment, but Maddy wanted to see Billy. She went to him in her pajamas, her hair disheveled.

"I talked like he was trouble to me," Maddy said. "I didn't mean it."

Ross stood at the door, wiping red eyes, and couldn't speak.

There had been a day and then another — and in between them, death had come. A death always demanded action, and they moved a little aimlessly at first: Lee made coffee, Maddy stayed by Billy, Ross made calls. They wondered what to wear before people got there to take the body.

The funeral home came, because Ross had arranged everything a while ago. They only had to be warned.

Lee didn't cry until Billy was on the gurney and they covered him. “No, no, no, don't cover his face!”

Ross patted her shoulder, but a pain both hollow and keen filled her stomach.

They had to go to the funeral home to decide things. They could only cremate him two days later. In the meantime, Lee felt cold in her bed and thought of Billy, cold in a fridge.

Caleb went by to say he was sorry, and he was sad. Lee remembered what Billy had said about him and money, but her mind was bruised; she didn't want to think of it. There was something soothing about Caleb sitting with her, Maddy and Ross. They had all known each other for so long.

A few days later, when they got the urn with the ashes, they talked about holding a service. People would want to say their goodbyes.

Maddy said that she was putting Billy's urn in a niche at the local cemetery. They would close it up in the wall with a plaque that bore his name. Lee had to tell her about Billy's request.

"That's totally out of the question!" Maddy said fiercely.

"He asked me, Maddy. He said it was the happiest moment of his life."

"You're inventing stuff, Lee!"

"Why would I invent that?"

"You just want something crazy, like you always do. You always have ideas, always something else. We're not driving to Corolla, that's just the fancy stuff you come up with!"

"Maddy, I wouldn't invent anything, he asked me. He said he was happy there."

"Why, because he was marrying you? Marrying the woman who abandoned him? You think you're so special. This isn't about you, Lee!"

Ross shook his head at Lee, asking her to leave it alone, and held Maddy.

"And you can go now and be free," Maddy said. "You can go to the English guy now."

"Maddy, sweetheart, that's not fair," Ross said.

"I don't want to be fair," Maddy screamed as she stood up, pushing her chair aside to run out.

"I'm sorry, Lee.” Ross sighed. “She cares for you, she really does. She doesn't mean it."

He went after his wife, and Lee stayed alone at the table. It was a hard thing for a sister to lose her little brother, and Maddy was suffering — but Lee had made a promise. It wasn't about what Maddy wanted either, it was about Billy.

TWENTY-FIVE

All his life, James had hated the telephone.

It had been worth living in jungles, deserts and temples, just so he didn't have to hear it ring. Destiny, however, loved irony: he had been glued to his cell phone for days, waiting to find out how Lee was.

A fire crackled in the downstairs sitting room, where he lay on the sofa reading a book. He couldn't understand a word of it. When something knocked on the glass, he jumped. Lee's face peered in, her fingers against the pane, and he leapt over the couch to open the door. Without saying anything, he lifted her from the ground; she put her face against his shoulder and her legs around him. It was still snowing, and he closed the door and carried her to the fireplace. After a while, he helped her remove her coat.

"Be careful!" she said before he threw it on a chair. "Billy's in there."

It wasn't like Lee to talk metaphysics, although people did unusual things when they were grieving. Still, she was looking at the coat in his hand.

"What do you mean?"

She pointed at the pocket. "Billy's there."

James jumped to his feet again and she stood up with him. Taking the coat from his hand, she laid it on the sofa and turned with a plastic bag in her hand. "Billy's ashes."

He took a step back. "Lee, have you gone bonkers?"

"I don't know," she whispered.

"Will you — will you set that down?"

She left the bag on a small table behind her. "Is it really wrong of me, James? He asked me."

"Asked you what?"

"To take him somewhere."

James scratched his head. "Well, isn't there an urn, normally?"

"Yes, but that went into the wall."

His mouth hung open for a moment. "Do you mean you replaced Billy?"

"I stole him." Lips trembling, she stared down at her hands. "I promised!"

"Hey, don't cry," he said, dropping by her side.

"I promised him! But Maddy won't hear of it, she says I'm just inventing things. And I can't insist, because she's miserable. What do I do? If you think it's very wrong, I'll take him back."

"What did he ask, exactly?"

"He wanted to be taken to the beach, in Corolla. Do you remember, the wild horses I told you about? I think you looked them up, to find out where I was from."

"Yes, I remember that."

"Billy loved animals — so much! He said the horses were the most beautiful things he had ever seen. And James, he spent his whole life confined. It's wrong to put him inside the wall, although Maddy means well. But I don't know if I'm doing something horrible.” She stopped and took a shuddering breath. “Why does it always have to be like this? You talked of the commandments, but they don't begin to cover stuff that happens!"

A laugh escaped him, and he wiped her tears away. "No, they don't."

"I thought I was doing the right thing when I replaced him, and that Maddy would think he was there while he would be where he wanted to be. But now I'm thinking that it's not for Billy, it's for me that I'm doing this — because Billy’s gone, and it's Maddy that should matter. I should be able to bear knowing he isn't where he asked to be, and his sister should have him. I'm being selfish, aren't I?"

James shook his head. "People who wonder if they're selfish usually aren’t.”

"What do I do?"

She hardly ever asked for his help, but she was asking for it now.

"Let's take Billy where he wanted to be," he said.

Her face lit up. "Really, James? You'll come with me?"

"Of course, you lunatic."

"You don't think it's weird?"

"It's a bit macabre."

A small sob escaped her. "Is it macabre?"

"No, no, no." He pulled her so that she straddled his lap, facing him. "No, it's not. Isn't this place about five or six hours away?"

"About that."

"Let's go, then."

"Now? At night?”

"I'll drive, and we'll be there by morning."

Her eyes filled with grateful tears. "All right."

“Don’t cry, darling.”

“You can call me darling again?”

“I never stopped. Not in my head.”

They were on their way twenty minutes later, a hastily packed bag on the back seat and Billy in a cloth bag on Lee’s lap. Without divulging details, James had called Paxton and asked him for help with a few arrangements, apologizing for the late hour.

"I'll get my secretary on to it. Don't you worry, everything will be set up when you get there."

It snowed less and less as they drove east, and often theirs was the only car on the road for long stretches. Lee had fallen asleep, her hand on his leg as if to make sure that he was there. He felt grateful that he could do something for her, after all that he had seen and heard.

At daybreak, they stopped at a diner to have coffee and something to eat. A message from Paxton's secretary told James where to exchange the car for a rented 4x4, the only type of vehicle that could drive in Corolla.

Another text gave him an address.

The sun rose higher as they reached the Outer Banks and drove on sand. It was going to be a beautiful day, with a silver-blue sky. The sea was to their left, and to their right there were houses with steep gables. A woman stepped onto the beach from one of them, waving.

"You got us a place?" Lee asked.

"We have to do this right, don't we?"

They parked on the side and the wind wasn't cold as they stepped out of the car.

"You found it!" the house owner said pleasantly.

"Straight line." James shook her hand. "I'm sorry about the last-minute notice."

"Oh, that's all right." She motioned toward the wooden stairs that led to the deck of the house. They climbed with her as she glanced back. "No luggage?"

James smiled. "I'll get it later."

"You on holiday?" she asked with the usual friendliness of Carolinians. "Just come to take a peek at the horses?"

"Yes."

She walked into the house before them. "They're a sight to behold. Sometimes they come right up here. You're not meant to get close, though — fifty feet maximum. They're endangered.”

After she left, James found Lee on the deck, covering her eyes as she looked up and down the beach. "What if they don't show up?"

"They'll show up."

Lee kept watch for a long time; they even walked along the dunes and a little inland, but there were no mustangs. Finally, exhausted by the previous days, she fell asleep on the living room sofa. The bag with Billy was on a table by the door, and James sat in the sun, taking over her vigil.

He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them the horses were on the shore, running.

"Lee!"

She sat up with a gasp as he grabbed Billy and her hand to run down the steps. They shouldn't venture too near the sea, or the horses might change direction.

It didn't happen. They were having a good gallop, their manes flying: twelve horses, most dark brown or chestnut, with a white one among them. It wasn't long before they ran past, lifting the water with thick hooves.

"They're beautiful," James cried.

For a few minutes they ran with the mustangs, but they were soon left behind and stopped by the water.

"Ready?" he asked Lee.

Her eyes were dry, but there was sorrow in them. "It's illegal to throw him in the water."

"That's in case there are bathers, I think. There isn't anyone here, and it's too cold for them to come any time soon." He smiled at her. "I've done some illegal things in my time."

When the sea covered their knees, Lee made a hole in the bag, slowly letting the wind take Billy away from them.

"Bye, Billy," was all she said.

James carried her on his back up the steps of the house and into the bedroom, helping her take off her wet jeans, which he hung to dry outside with his. She was only wearing a T-shirt when he returned, and she straddled him again, putting her cheek against his.

“Your skin comforts me," she said, removing her top.

He held her close. The sun was inside the room with them, and she was getting warmer. It wasn't lust that made them kiss, or that made him caress her back — or lust that made her press her breasts against his chest. Lee pulled him down on the bed, and their lips couldn't stop kissing, or their hands holding on to each other.

TWENTY-SIX

"It's so sweet of you to come, Lynette."

Mrs. Brenda Hoffman, Scott's mother, sat looking older than her fifty-two years, her hair shot with silver strands, her face crumpled with wrinkles. Her sorrow was gentle but deep, yet it had been a shock for Lee to see her so changed.

Mr. Hoffman was in town more often than his wife, and Lee had had a glimpse of him. In the last few years he had also aged, just not as fast.

"Billy asked me to, or maybe I wouldn't have dared," Lee said. "I didn't know if you'd want me here."

"Of course we would," Mrs. Hoffman said, patting her arm. "We always thought there must be some other explanation for what happened to Joe."

Lee suspected that Chuck Hoffman wasn't a great believer in her innocence. He was a cautious business type who must think the correct solution to Joe’s murder was that Lee had killed him. In any case, he hadn't acknowledged her presence when they crossed each other in the street, and she had preferred to see Mrs. Hoffman at an hour when he would be away at work.

"It's so sweet of Billy to have thought of Scott, even when he was leaving us," Mrs. Hoffman said.

She began to weep softly, her tears falling on hands that lay inert on her lap, as if they had become paralyzed, or turned to stone. When Lee thought of Cora, she could well believe there was no greater pain in the world than losing a child, and Scott would have still seemed like a child to his mother. She wiped the tears away from Mrs. Hoffman's hands, knowing that there would be more and not minding.

"It's the thought of youth wasted, you know," Mrs. Hoffman said. "Billy gone and Scott—"

Her eyes followed the photographs on the walls and mantelpiece. Many showed Scott as Lee had first known him: the freckled boy smiling in true joy, or the teenager with a confident smile, dressed in football gear.

Something had gone wrong for that boy.

"We never dreamed this could happen," she said, "We never saw the signs of drugs. Aren't we supposed to notice something? For a while I blamed Chuck, because he didn't like that Scott had chosen environmental science. Scott was meant to study administration and help the construction business grow, and Chuck felt he was throwing everything away, and just when the economy was picking up. He didn't disinherit Scott, but he wasn't going to help him get his degree. Scott got loans and a grant, and before he left university he started to make some money. He even bought his own house."

"Here in Hawkshaw?"

"Yes, a ten-minute drive from here. Scott had become successful so quickly — why would he be taking drugs? I blamed Chuck because I thought it was the pressure of having those college debts. We aren't rich, but we could have helped him."

Lee stroked Mrs. Hoffman's hand. "It's a horrible thing, but sometimes people just take drugs for fun. Because it makes them feel good, or because their friends like it."

"But Scott wasn't stupid! If he had smoked some marijuana I'd understand, but this was chemical stuff. He knew this could kill him."

"Maybe it was just unlucky. Just the one time—"

Mrs. Hoffman interrupted her, and her voice was almost harsh, "He was injecting it. I've read about meth, it's not what a casual user does. And then other things made sense, like why he wanted to move out, why he had insisted that we shouldn’t go by his house without calling." She gave a sudden sob. "He wasn't found for two days because we didn't dare go there, although he wasn't answering the phone. We had to call poor Caleb."

"Caleb found him?"

"Him and Noah. It must have been such a shock to Caleb, but he was an angel to us then, and he has been an angel since. I couldn't go there and look at Scott's things, so he cleared the house. He's kept some things we'll want, one day. When we can stand to look at them."

Tell Caleb to burn the money …

"And it's absurd," Mrs. Hoffman went on. "I mean, Scott wanted to work in environmental protection. It was a passion of his, taking care of nature and all that. He was so healthy, so into sports! I know that kids do this to have fun, sometimes, but it doesn't make sense! You just couldn't see a sign of drugs in him. I go over it and over it, and I just can't see it."

Lee had begun to feel a little nauseous, and she wanted to leave, but Mrs. Hoffman held on to her hand.

"It's heartbreaking, but nothing was your fault," Lee told the grieving mother through lips that had become stiff.

"Kids get so angry at their parents, especially at their mothers, for interfering; but then we have to spend the rest of our lives thinking, 'If I had only noticed, if I had only stopped him.' Then I'd have my boy with me."

When Lee left the house, she drove aimlessly for a while. Finally, she parked near the police station and called Noah.

"Where's Caleb?" she asked.

"He’s out on a quick errand. Did you try his phone?"

"Does he have the day shift?"

"Till six."

"Can you come for a quick coffee? At Dolly's?"

"Yeah, I guess. Now?"

"Please?"

Dolly's was a small diner off Main Street, and there was less likelihood of Caleb driving by it and finding her talking to Noah. He would want to know what that was about.

"I've been to see the Hoffmans," Lee said when Noah arrived and sat across from her. "Well, Mrs. Hoffman."

Frowning, Noah took a moment to process the thought. "How come you went there now?"

"Billy asked me. He talked a lot about Scott."

"It's real sad stuff, Lynn."

"Did you, Caleb or anyone know about him using?"

"Nope." Noah shook his head decisively several times. "No one. I mean, Caleb's face when we found him … He was white as a sheet for days, poor guy. Was his best friend, even if they had been seeing each other less ’cause of work. Scott joked one day that I was Caleb's new girlfriend — but he wasn't really jealous, just making fun."

"What did Caleb say?"

Noah gave a short laugh. "He said I was prettier than Scott's new girlfriend."

"Who did he mean?"

"Can't remember who his girlfriend was."

Noah was probably the world's least distrustful cop. Caleb had followed Scott's joke by referring to another man: a man who had become Scott’s close friend, and someone apparently not very savory.

"Can you remember who he was going around with? I mean what friends?"

Squinting, Noah tried to remember. "We went through it at the time, to see where he could have bought the stuff, or who from. Could have been anyone. And we didn't know a single person who might have been shooting up with him. He was alone when we found him."

"Where in his house?" Lee pursued.

"In the living room, rubber round his arm, needle sorta hanging from the other hand, like he had just shot himself up. It was pretty horrible, Lynn. Only time I saw a dead person that wasn't old except for—"

"Except for Joe."

He shrugged. "Yeah."

"And there were drugs in his house? More meth somewhere?"

"Yeah, a crystal. Right in front of him."

Lee shook her head. "Doesn't make any sense."

"Well, sometimes you get into people's lives, even in a small place like this, and you find out stuff you never imagined." Noah looked at her again. "I don't mean—"

"It's all right, Noah. You can talk about Joe."

"Well, they said in court that we made a mess of things when we found him. Maybe we incriminated you without meaning to."

"My prints were on the fire poker. You didn't screw up the scene that bad."

His eyes widened. "Then you did kill him?"

"I'm not allowed to discuss it. But thanks for telling me about Scott."

"Don't think about morbid stuff just because Billy died, Lynn. Try to go out more and all. You gonna stay with Maddy and Ross?"

"I have to figure something else out."

"All right. If you need anything, I'm here."

He went back to the station as Lee asked for another coffee and took the phone from her bag. She googled and read: Environmental science degrees challenge students to combine skills and knowledge from a variety of different fields. This could mean exploring aspects of biology, chemistry, physics, Earth and marine sciences ...

Chemistry.

Mrs. Hoffman had seen no signs of drugs in Scott because he hadn't been taking them. He had been making them.

Tell Caleb not to keep the money. Tell him to burn it.

Caleb had found Scott's body — and Caleb had cleaned out his house.

Lee wished she could help the adrenaline coursing through her as she sat knowing that there had been foul, foul play.

Scott had been murdered.

She paid for the coffees like an automaton, able to perform physical functions while her mind took her elsewhere. Somehow she found herself in the car, driving to Caleb's house.

He was at work until six o’clock, and it was only three. She could get in and out much more quickly than that. There wouldn't be any danger to it.

You thought that in Mexico.

No, it wasn’t the same. Here she was on her own turf and breaking into Caleb's was easy enough. It was easier than asking him questions. No one in Hawkshaw would pay for an alarm or bother with one; doors and windows were easy to open, especially for Lee. She chose Caleb’s back entrance, since the fences were high and the neighboring houses one-storied.

With no attic or basement, the place was small. Lee moved swiftly through it, knowing that Caleb wouldn't keep money in any obvious place — not when he had a girlfriend. He would know that women sometimes look through men's things to see if they're cheating, and that at other times they might decide to tidy up.

He would hide the money as well as he could, but he had no safe, so there was only one place where he could conceal things: under the floorboards. A room at the back had a desk and a computer. Lee moved around it, tapping her heel on the boards, and finally got a hollow sound close to the wall. On her knees, she pushed the carpet aside, looking for the edges of the loose board. She lifted it carefully.

There was a hole, and inside it a duffel bag. Pulling the bag toward her, she unzipped it to reveal a great quantity of money in small bills: money that hadn't come from the bank, but from the street. It was untraceable money, ready to be thrown out into circulation again.

It was drug money.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Lee stared at the money for a long while before she noticed the navy-blue passport with an elaborate coat of arms on the cover. It was stuck inside the paper band around a wad of bills, and it had been issued by the island of St. Kitts and Nevis.

It was issued to Scott Hoffman.

She knew about citizenship-by-investment in St. Kitts. Before she decided that the Caribbean was too risky, she had considered giving $200,000 to a development fund in those islands or others, like Antigua and Barbuda or Dominica, in exchange for a wholly legal passport.

Transparency laws were being tightened every day in the age of terrorism, but Scott had died three years before, when he might still have gotten away with laundering money in St. Kitts. Meth was a profitable business, one that had given him quite a bit of cash in what must have been a short period of time. He had died at twenty-one: how young could he have been when he started cooking the drug?

It was a shock to know that Scott — friendly, generous, trustworthy Scott — might have been a drug kingpin in the making, but Lee didn't believe for a moment that he had done it alone. To sell meth, he would have needed knowledge of the streets. He would have needed someone who could procure the chemical ingredients, far from the place where he lived. He would have needed contacts to move the drugs.

Scott could never have done all that alone.

There was a phone inside the duffel bag; she picked it up, turning it on. It had a photo of the Hoffmans on the home screen and was low on battery, but still worked. All messages had been erased. Why had Caleb kept Scott's phone?

In any case, she had to get out of his house. She took a photo of the passport and put everything back in its place, except for the phone, since it might contain more clues to Scott’s death. As she walked out, locking the door behind her, she kept thinking there were more people involved in all this, apart from Scott and Caleb. It was far too big a job for two kids such as they had been three years ago.

A loud ringing startled her as she got into her car. For a second, she thought it might be Scott's phone, but it was Caleb, calling her.

"Why you going around asking questions about Scott, Lynn?"

Noah would have looked puzzled or worried until Caleb got out of him that Lee had called him to Dolly's. It hadn’t taken long.

"Why shouldn’t I ask about Scott?"

"You weren't even here when it happened. I told you I took care of the Hoffmans. I went to see them. What damn stupid idea you got in your mind now?"

She sounded calm as she asked, "How did he die, Caleb?"

"You know."

"That boy never took drugs."

A silence preceded Caleb's reply. "No? Then how did he die?"

"He was cooking meth."

"The hell, Lynn? He had an overdose. We have the evidence."

"Was it another open-and-shut case, Caleb?"

She could hear Caleb's breathing; he was walking, probably trying to get out of earshot of others, and his voice was low when he warned, "Lynn, you stop getting involved in shit. Scott killed himself, I got proof. Don't you open your mouth about this to anyone, not anywhere — you hear?"

"And I got a message for you from Billy. He said, don't keep the money. Burn it."

The silence was much longer now. She had expected it to be.

"I don't know what that means,” Caleb said.

"I think you do."

"Lynn! Goddamn it, you don't know what you're playing with!"

Lee hung up, but her phone rang again almost immediately; it was Caleb. She turned it off.

First things first: she needed to get out of that street. She drove toward the high school, where she could park behind the football field, and sat grasping the steering wheel.

The wise course would be to go to Chief Fisher with the money, but he thought she was a murderess bent on discrediting his office. She couldn't even go to Noah, who would probably just ask Caleb to tell him the truth and might end up killed as well.

James. He had asked her to think of him as her partner. He had helped her every time she needed it, but he would tell her to stay away from more complications before her trial. He would tell her not to get involved in anything else, and he would be right.

He would be right, too, to think that she was reckless and stubborn. Something had happened in that town: Scott had been murdered, perhaps by Caleb; and Caleb would bury the case if she didn't get proof. He might be capable of killing her, who knew, but she wasn't afraid.

Once more she turned on Scott's phone and connected it to her cable so that it would charge. What would she find in it that could help her? His contacts had been erased, and she spent a while trying to recover them without managing. The phone had been cleaned of calls, messages, and even its internet history was blank. But there were apps that had been deleted from the home screen and were still in the phone.

She found Google Maps: an address had been searched in early 2014. It was north of Hawkshaw and Greensboro, in Rockingham County. It seemed to be, from what she could tell by zooming in, a place in the middle of a forest or woods.

The place where Scott had used to cook the meth. The lab.

Turning on her own phone, Lee wrote the address in her own more modern GPS app. It started to talk to her as she drove. It was a friendly female voice, and Caleb wasn't calling her anymore, which probably meant he was moving toward something or someone. Perhaps he was moving the same way she was.

Idiot. You're an idiot. You're doing it again. You provoked Caleb. You need to call James, you need to tell him. You can't go to this place alone.

James would stop her. He would want to go to the police when ...

The realization surprised her: when she couldn't do that to Caleb. Not before she was sure.

She had to be beyond sure that he was the heartless killer of his friend. It was possible; anything was possible — just as it had been possible for Scott, a young man of promise, to make drugs for profit.

Anything was possible. No one ever knew anyone else. But she needed proof that Caleb was guilty.

He hadn't laundered the money or destroyed it. Why?

Lee didn't trust the authorities not to commit an injustice, not to put away the wrong people for Scott's murder, not to come to a facile conclusion. She trusted them even less than she trusted Caleb, and she had to find out the truth for herself.

These thoughts occupied her mind as she drove as fast as she was allowed on the highway toward the point indicated in the map. A series of huge billboards announced the pleasures of junk food before the voice said, "After 0.1 miles, turn left. You have arrived at your destination."

To her left there were woods, a gate, then more woods for a good stretch. The gate must lead to the property where Scott had set up the lab. The whole country was full of meth labs in woods, trailer parks, farms and even apartments.

Apparently, however, Scott, Caleb and their accomplices had splurged on a place away from Hawkshaw and surrounded by trees.

Lee parked on an empty dirt path to the right, making sure that her car was hidden from view. There wasn't any traffic, and she ran unseen to the other side of the road, skirting the fence as she watched out for cameras. She had no idea how paranoid or how prepared they were at that property, but when she saw a gap in the wire fence, she crawled under it.

Her bag strap was long, and she hung it across her body and made her way amid the trees. The lab could be anywhere in the woods, and she might give herself away before she even found it.

After a quarter of an hour, she heard water and saw from her vantage point that a brook ran through the place. It formed a small lake surrounded by willows before narrowing again. Scott's job had been to protect the environment and the quality of water, and he had in fact been polluting it in the worst possible way.

Lee picked up a strong, unpleasant smell before she spotted a cement shed to her left. It was a simple construction with dirty white walls and a roof of corrugated metal. As she passed it, she glanced through the windows. It was completely empty — eerily so. Abandoned sheds always had something inside: tools, gallons, empty containers, construction materials or debris. Something.

Nothing was inside the shed, except the strong smell of cat piss. Lee no longer had any doubt that Scott had been cooking meth in that place. Now she must find out if Caleb had been his accomplice, and who else had been working with them.

She rounded the corner carefully and saw a small covered boat on wheels, and beyond it a wooden cabin. Lee stopped short as Caleb’s voice floated to her.

“It’s over now. People are following clues, and they’ll find this place.”

A man replied in a low voice that she couldn't make out. Lee crept closer, hiding behind the trees. The cabin looked a bit ramshackle, like the house a man might use for hunting or fishing. The open door had a thick wooden bar on it, probably to keep it shut when the owner was outside, so that animals didn't wander in.

Caleb was now within view, standing in his uniform with both hands on his waist as he faced whoever was behind the corner.

"I ain’t gonna say anything about you, you bastard. I can't, can I?"

"And I'm supposed to believe that, with Billy gone?"

The voice reached Lee, loud and clear before the muzzle of a rifle appeared, followed by a tall, burly form she knew well.

Caleb reached for his gun. "Put that away!"

A shot rang out instead, and Lee muffled a scream as Caleb was thrown backwards onto the ground.

"I'm sorry, buddy. I just can’t risk it," Ross said, standing over him.

TWENTY-EIGHT

"Well, well, well, things keep getting interesting," Paxton said over the phone.

James had just come out of the shower and stood rubbing his hair with a small towel as he put the attorney on speaker.

"We've found the cabin Jada Phillips told you about," Paxton continued. "At least, we're pretty sure that's it. 'Woody's' gave it away. It's a defunct business in Rockingham County, and used to advertise on those old water towers. There's only one tower like that left, and only one road with the billboards she described. From there, our PI looked at properties along the stretch and found three. One was quite interesting. It's owned by a Caribbean firm in St. Kitts."

"A Caribbean firm? The plot thickens."

"It thickens even more than that. From 2016 on, property taxes for it were paid in cash, but once someone was stupid enough to write her name on a receipt. You'll never guess who."

"Just tell me."

"Madeleine Olson."

"Madeleine ...?" James dropped the towel and picked up the phone. "Do you mean Maddy, Lee's sister-in-law?"

"I'm guessing so. Isn't her husband's name Olson?"

The cold, sick feeling that struck James was familiar. "And the St. Kitts business is in whose name?"

"Still trying to find out. That might take a bit longer; they're notoriously tight-lipped over there, but there will be documents for the corporation somewhere. I'm guessing it will belong to the Olsons, or why would she be paying taxes on it?"

For a moment, James stood thinking. "Why would they stop paying through the corporation? If they were trying to hide something, that would be stupid."

"We'll find out when we know who's behind the company. But Joe Keane was friends with Maddy Olson and her husband, and he was using their cabin for his romantic encounters — except that he was sufficiently scared of them to drive out of there like a bat out of hell."

"And get his head bashed in right after," James said, walking into the closet to grab a pair of jeans and a sweater.

"Drugs," Paxton observed dryly. "That would explain his grand claims of soon being able to take Jada Phillips away, and also his family staying afloat through the crisis, although he had no job.”

"Lee's there,” James said.

"Pardon?"

"Lee's in their house, and they must be counting on keeping their connection to Joe a secret so that she takes the rap for his murder. If they realize that I've spoken to Jada Phillips ... I have to go to Hawkshaw."

"Wait a moment, James — isn't it better to let the police handle it?"

"I need to get Lee out of that house as soon as possible."

"Well,” Paxton said with a sigh, “I guess it's best if you do that. But be discreet."

"I'm sure she'll answer the phone and I'll just tell her to meet me somewhere. Can you please forward the address of this cabin to me?"

"Now, honey, you can't go there!"

"Might not have to, but please do it."

James had spoken with a confidence that he was starting not to feel. He dialed Lee's number, and it went to voicemail. He redialed, and again he got voicemail and left a message for her to call him back immediately.

She might have turned off her phone for some reason, or not be next to it. But phones in the US also went to voicemail when the person you were trying to call was out of range.

Why should anything be amiss at that exact moment? He was just being absurd, but he was dressed, his shoes were on and he ran down to his car, putting Lee on automatic redial as he placed the phone on the holder and drove toward Hawkshaw.

Another more insistent voice in his head asked him why would her phone be off, or why would she be out of range? It was a voice that turned his blood as cold as a river slowly freezing. He kept getting Lee’s voicemail, and he thought of another time when he couldn’t find her, in Mexico. She had been in mortal danger then, and he couldn’t help but believe that something was wrong.

She would have called him back by now, if she weren’t out of range. But where could “out of range” be in North Carolina?

The days were longer now, and although it was four-thirty in the afternoon, the sun wouldn't go down for a while. As he drove toward Billy's house, James went over what Lee had told him about Maddy and Ross.

Maddy Olson was preoccupied with money, with becoming secure, buying a house, having children.

Ross Olson was one of the smartest people Lee knew. Now that Billy was gone, Ross would certainly start his own company and leave Hawkshaw. Ross, Lee had said, took night courses in business administration.

Ross would know that he could open a shell company in the Caribbean to act as a front for his drug business. He could probably figure out how to launder money through it. But what would Joe Keane's role have been in all this? The traveling salesman could have procured things they needed in different places, to avoid suspicion. He would know where to find the right chemicals, produced right in the state. In any case, his role had ended early, when he had shown himself to be untrustworthy by taking a woman to a cabin where they cooked meth.

Joe Keane, the big mouth, had been bludgeoned to death for that slip. What would Ross do to Lee, when he discovered that her lover had been talking to Jada Phillips and could place Joe at his cabin on the night of his murder?

James parked two streets away from the house and walked toward it under the cover of trees. There was only one car in the driveway, and it wasn't Lee’s. It was a new Toyota: a better car than the Olsons ought to have been able to afford.

Maddy appeared in the living room with a mug of coffee in her hand. She took the remote control and turned on the TV. Apparently, she was alone and didn’t seem to be under any stress.

"Go through, go through," he told the phone as he walked back to his car and hit redial.

The dreaded voicemail again …

As he sat behind the steering wheel, wondering where to go, James told himself that Lee couldn't be at the cabin in Rockingham — unless Ross Olson had taken her there and hidden her car.

Although Hawkshaw was small, James drove so quickly that his tires screeched as he parked before the police station. It would be absurd to repeat the same situation they had just gone through in the desert; he needed backup this time. He needed people with guns.

"I'd like to speak to Officer Brooks, please," he told the receptionist.

"Officer Brooks took a half day off," the woman told him. "A private matter. Anyone else?"

"Is the chief in?"

"Who may I say—?"

James could see the chief from where he was, and he didn't wait. Chief Fisher, as the plaque on his table said, was reading Wrestling News with a frown of concentration. He looked up as the receptionist called out, without bothering to move from her place, "Visitor for you, Chief!"

"I'm sorry for barging in," James said. "But I need your help."

"You're Lynn Miller's Englishman,” the chief stated after staring at him over his glasses.

"Something like that.”

The stone on a large ring gleamed as Chief Fisher placed his hand on the table, over the newspaper he had folded. "What help do you need?"

"You may know I'm involved in Lynette Miller's defense. It's a long story, but we found a house where Joe Keane took Jada Phillips on the night of the murder. It turns out that Ross Olson is connected to that house. And Lee is missing."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." The chief leaned back in his creaky wooden chair. "Can you slow down there a second?"

Instead, James looked around the station. "Lee is missing, Officer Brooks is missing, and we have to get to that house."

"Well, if you have something in the nature of a lead, we'll look into it, but—"

"I'm asking for your help, but if you don't come, I'm going alone."

There was no time to waste. James turned, walking at a swift pace toward the exit. More urgent creaking told him that the chief had gotten out of his chair and followed him. "Hang on there, sir. Sir? You can't just—"

Officer Wright walked into the station, looking from James to the chief as Fisher said, "Sir, can you hold on one second?"

James stopped. "I've been through this before, and we barely have a second. If there isn't a problem, it will be an hour of your time. If there is a problem, you'll be preventing another murder. The murder of an innocent woman."

"What innocent woman?" Noah asked. "What's going on?"

"He's talking about Lynn Miller,” the chief said.

"Lynn? Murder? She was fine just a while ago."

James took his arm. "When?"

"Less than two hours ago. I went to have coffee with her. She wanted to know 'bout Scott Hoffman."

"Who's Scott Hoffman?"

"A boy who died of a drug overdose," the chief explained, and would have gone on remonstrating with James, except that he was interrupted.

"Fuck me," James cried, hands over his eyes. "She has figured it out and gone there.”

"What—?"

Stepping toward the chief, James said urgently, "Listen to me, I know where she went. We need to go there. Now."

Instead of protesting, Chief Fisher looked half hypnotized. "OK. Wright, you'll drive us."

The three men walked together to the police car outside.

"Watch your head," Wright said, probably out of habit, as he opened the back door for James.

Chief Fisher cleared his throat. "And where is this place?"

Opening Paxton's message, James forwarded it to Wright's phone. The officer put it into the GPS app.

"That's out of my jurisdiction," the chief remarked. "We'd have to get the local PD involved."

"We will," James said, holding on to the edges of his temper. "After we make sure no one is being killed."

Fisher turned around to look at James. "I don't know how things are done in England, but here we can't just go into another county with guns blazing."

"In England most citizens don't have guns."

Fisher squinted at him. "You really sure Lynn is in danger of life?"

"Yes, and I promise you that every minute counts."

James had more than a bad feeling now; he knew that Lee was in trouble. Again. The important thing was that the car was moving, and that it was moving fast. Wright obviously had little reason to ever turn on the siren, because now he did so with a certain flourish. As they drove down Main Street, people ran out of stores to see what the hell was going on in that sleepy town, where people didn't know each other as well as they thought.

Even in places with tricky coverage, calls could sometimes go through. James kept dialing. "Come on, Lee. Come on, answer!"

But she never picked up.

TWENTY-NINE

From the cover of the trees, Lee watched in stunned silence as Ross walked to Caleb, rifle at the ready. He nudged the man on the ground with his foot and, getting no response, crouched and took the gun from Caleb's holster, frisking him for more weapons. Finally, Ross pulled the radio from Caleb’s shoulder, smashing it with the butt of his rifle.

Now that the officer presented no danger, Ross touched his neck to feel for a pulse. He seemed to find one, as he muttered, "Shit, buddy. I wanted it to be quick.”

Caleb was alive, and Lee had to distract Ross somehow. Then she might be able to get the rifle off his hands, or Caleb’s Glock, which he had tucked into the back of his waistband. But Ross wasn't a fool; if she betrayed her presence he would kill her, or at least knock her unconscious.

Shaking his head as if with regret, Ross pulled the tarp from the boat and threw it on the ground, then dragged Caleb inside with a grunt of effort. The pool of blood on the ground revealed that Caleb had a serious wound and needed help as soon as possible.

It was obvious by his expression of regret that Ross wouldn't manage to execute Caleb in cold blood. He was going to throw him inside the deepest part of the lake, probably weighted with rocks.

But it was all open space between Lee and them. She would never get to Caleb, but she was closer to the cabin than they were. If she managed to trick Ross into entering it, she could lock the door on him from the outside. Ross didn't seem worried about the prospect of being seen: it was a weekday, and the sun was beginning to go down. It was unlikely that someone would row by to help her.

She rummaged for the phone inside her bag with one hand, in the off-chance it might work there, while her other hand searched for a rock on the ground.

And then, as if to prove that it could work, the phone rang, loud and clear.

Ross turned, and his eyes locked with hers showing surprise, then horror.

"Lynn," he muttered. As she fumbled to get the call, he stepped forward, repeating more loudly, "Lynn!"

The phone stopped ringing before she could answer, but Ross hadn't yet raised his rifle. Lee had hesitated in Mexico when an old man attacked her, and she wouldn't do that again: she threw the heavy rock, hitting Ross on the right shoulder. He yelped in pain, the arm with the rifle dropping to his side. She was only going to have a moment, but it was long enough for the only thing she could do: run inside the cabin that stood between them and pull the door closed.

Lock it, lock it!

The damned old door fit badly, but it had a latch inside. Lowering it gave her time to turn the big rusty key in the lock several times. She jumped back as a fist hit the wood and Ross said, "Lynn, open the door!"

"I don't think so," she said, looking around for something she could use as a weapon.

There was nothing inside except a sofa and the cloth that covered it. The cabin had obviously been emptied. She ran into the small bathroom, but it had no mirror she could break to use the glass as defense.

Why was Ross there? Caleb had probably called him, and they had met to make sure there was no sign of them left in that property.

"Lynn, listen to me," Ross said through the crack. "Please, please don't make me hurt you. I don't want to."

She looked at her phone; no signal. Call me! Keep calling me, it might go through again!

"You shot Caleb," she said as she forwarded the GPS map of her location to James and wrote, I'm in this place! Caleb is hurt. Hurry!

The message might go through the next time a bit of signal reached them, but would James — or anyone — make it to her in time?

"He's not dead." Ross pleaded, "I didn't want to hurt him, and I don't want to hurt you. I'm not a killer, Lynn. I was just desperate. We needed to care for Billy. We needed money, and I had a bad idea. I swear I wanted to give up, but things got out of control."

It wouldn't be wise to voice her doubts or talk about Scott. She had provoked Caleb before because her gut had told her that he wasn’t capable of harming anyone; not really. That same gut now told her that Ross would be ruthless. Standing in a flimsy cabin with an armed man right outside and telling him she knew he was a murderer was just about the dumbest thing she could do.

Negotiate until you can think of something. Time is running out for Caleb.

"Ross, I'm scared of you."

"Don't be scared, Lynn. How could I hurt you? We've gone through a lot together, haven't we?"

"Yes. You took such good care of Billy, Ross."

"I just couldn't make ends meet with the medical bills. Not even with your help, Lynn. Maddy needed me. She has nothing to do with this. She doesn't know."

"All right."

"Now, please open the door."

Open the door, or I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow the house in.

The door rattled; she wished she had the big wooden bar inside, but she only had a flimsy latch and a flimsy lock on bad wood.

As the door rattled again, Lee searched inside the bag that hung across her body. If only she had carried mace or a pen knife. If only she had a gun!

Her hand found something sharp. Abby's comb. It had been there since the night at the Osprey.

All she had was a fucking comb, but she took it, holding it next to her body, just as Ross kicked the door open, splinters flying from the lock. He stood there without pointing the rifle at her and looked haunted. "I don't want to hurt you, but what am I to do? I did this for Billy, for our family."

"I sent you money," she said.

He took a step forward. "I know you did. We all did what we could, but bills pile up and you never get out from under them. I can't go to prison, Lynn. I want to live with Maddy and have kids."

Now he was right before her.

"I don't want you to go to prison," she whispered.

"But how can I trust—?"

He was close enough. She drove the long metal end of the comb toward his left eye.

Ross moved, and the comb tore through his eyelid, which opened like an envelope and flapped over his temple. Blood spurted out as he screamed, fingers hovering over his bulging socket without daring to touch it. Lee didn’t waste a second: she kicked Ross' groin with all her strength, and when he flew against the wall, she pulled the rifle from his hand and ran backwards.

She wasn't going to have mercy, not this time. Raising the muzzle, she pulled the trigger.

There was a click and nothing more. Ross hadn't shot his way inside because there were no more bullets in the rifle. But even in pain and with a bleeding eye, he was already reaching for the gun behind his waistband.

Lee leapt outside, slammed the door of the cabin and pushed the heavy wooden bar across it. A bullet hit the door as Ross shouted her name.

He would have a hard time shooting through the thick wood of the door with a Glock, but she couldn't stick around to see what would happen. Her phone still had no coverage: to save Caleb she had to stem his bleeding and get him away from that place.

Lee’s best bet was the creek, since she wouldn't be able to lug Caleb up to his car, which was parked on the driveway at the back of the cabin.

"Caleb!"

She jumped into the boat, pulling at his shirt so that she could find his wound. The bullet had entered his side, and she saw no exit wound on his back. He was very pale, and although the hole was in his muscle, he was losing a lot of blood. She tore a strip of her own shirt and began to fold it several times.

"Caleb!" She slapped his face softly. "Caleb, can you hear me?"

His eyes rolled several times and his white lips opened as he tried to speak. Finally, his lids lifted. "Lynn?"

"Caleb, you've been shot. I need to get you away from here, but you have to help me. Put pressure on this." She placed the hard square of cloth over his wound and his hand over it. "Just hold that with all the strength you got, you hear me?"

"Yes."

"Don't pass out."

"I'll try not to."

Jumping out, she pulled the boat toward the water. It moved easily on the wheels until she gave it a last tug to get it off the dolly and onto the water.

Caleb remembered where he was. "Ross?"

A roar answered him. Ross was kicking the door, and Lee could see it bulge with the blows. A second of silence proceeded two shots that splintered more wood.

Caleb raised his head to look but winced with pain and let it fall again. "The fucking guy shot me! He shot to kill!”

The propeller was in the water, and Lee pulled at the string in the outboard motor. It didn't start. Shit, she had forgotten to put it in neutral. She tried again, but the motor wouldn't start.

"No fuel," Caleb said weakly. "That's the sound of no fuel."

"God damn it!"

"He had cans of gasoline back there. Round the side of the house. And I'm guessing you don't have ammo? In my car there's ammo and another rifle."

"All right, I'll be back."

"Lynn, careful 'cos he got my Glock. There's fifteen rounds in that thing."

Wonderful.

The door of the cabin still held as Lee ran past it, although Ross was giving it some mighty kicks. Sooner or later he would manage to open it, and this time he would no longer try to talk to her. He would shoot her dead, and Caleb too.

She saw the container of gasoline and a box of big matches, but she hesitated. Maybe Ross would break the door down before she could fill the fuel tank, which meant that she would need Caleb's rifle. Lee decided to keep on running toward the police car; she had almost reached it when she heard glass breaking, a buzzing by her ears and loud cracks.

Ross had broken the back window and was shooting at her. She ducked out of his range: to kill her, he would have to put his head and his arm out and run the risk of losing his gun. He was too smart to do that.

She could still get to the gasoline, but more glass broke at the front of the cabin. Ross could now shoot both ways, hitting her if she tried to get to the car or to the boat. He would also soon clear the window of shards and step out. There was no way for Lee to reach Caleb, unless she created another diversion.

"Lynn, I'm gonna get out there," Ross said. "You blinded me, but I'm still willing to talk to you."

No, you aren’t.

Lee took the container and began throwing gasoline on the wooden walls of the cabin. She talked over the sound of the liquid spilling, "I don't believe you Ross. I'm scared!"

"Come on, Lynn! It's still me! I’m not a monster. I’ve known you since you were a little girl.”

"I'm scared, Ross."

I'm not scared of you, motherfucker. Lee stepped back and picked up the box of matches. It really only took one for a good fire to light and catch. The whole side of the house began to burn.

"You crazy bitch!" Ross screamed inside the cabin.

He might still shoot her if she went to get the rifle, but the front of the house was on fire, and it would be hard for him to stand at the window, so she took the chance and ran to the boat, jumping in again.

The fuel line didn’t fit in the container, and glass was flying from the back of the house. Ross was about to make it out the bathroom window.

Taking the oar, Lee pushed the boat further onto the water and began rowing with all her might.

"Caleb? Are you there?"

"I'm here, Lynn."

"Are you pressing like I told you?"

He nodded once, but his freckles stood out on his white face. She took the phone from her pocket and handed it to him. "Keep hitting redial with your other hand."

Caleb took the phone with slippery fingers and obeyed. She managed to row them beneath a weeping willow, out of sight. Ross was still breaking glass, but there must be only a few shards now. She didn't have a funnel, or anything that would help her to pour the gasoline into the small hole of the tank. Why didn’t they just have an old-fashioned motor?

Maybe the boat did have fuel. She turned the valve handle to choke setting and again she pulled the cord. It didn't start, and now there was an ominous silence coming from the cabin.

Ross stood on the banks, looking at the traces the boat had left on the water with one naked eye and another that blinked too much. He had still not dared cover his wound, as if afraid to tear the lid completely off — or as if fearing he might give himself a terrible infection.

"Come on, Lee!” he called out. “You got a dying guy with you, you got no fuel, and you can't make it. Be reasonable, we'll talk. I swear, Lynn. I swear on Maddy."

"He's got shots in that thing still," Caleb whispered. "Don't believe him."

How was she going to stop Ross without a gun? He had begun walking toward them on the banks. In a moment he would find them, and he would kill them.

"Keep pressing on that wound, you hear?" she whispered back to Caleb.

"What you gonna do?"

She put her fingers to her lips as her hand closed around the oar. There was only one chance for survival, and that was to surprise Ross before he got too close. On light feet she hit the shore and ran among the trees.

"Stop!"

Lee froze. Ross had left the path, guessing what she might do; he was right behind her.

She turned, the oar still in her hand. He was too far to reach. Lord, but he looked a mess with blood all over his face, neck and chest. His hands were cut, his hair scorched, and he was panting. At least I've done a bit of a number on him, Lee thought as she stared at the black barrel of the Glock. She had always told herself to go down fighting.

"You won't leave this alone, will you Lynn?" Ross asked. "You won't ever be quiet, not like you were for your mama, though she never did anything good for anyone."

Thoughts ran through Lee's head — of April, of Cora of Billy. So many thoughts of Cora and Billy.

"I'm so sorry," she said out loud, although she was saying it to James, and he wasn’t there. She had done it again: that's what he would think. He would think that she hadn't trusted him; that she hadn’t wanted to be happy with him, and she had.

"I'm the one who's sorry," Ross said.

There were tears running out of his right eye. People weren't always all bad. Sometimes they just got desperate, and that was the real tragedy. Ross held the gun with both hands and made a whimpering sound to bring himself to pull the trigger.

"I'm so sorry, Lynn, but I can't let you live!"

THIRTY

Thick smoke spiraled through the trees, and James could both see it and smell it as they drove toward the cabin.

"Shit, something's on fire," Chief Fisher said, reaching for his phone.

"It's the place we're going to," James said. "Hurry up!"

Noah stepped on the gas as they sped by the billboards Jada had described and turned toward the gate. The smoke was too thick for them to use the driveway, so they left the car after the gate and began to run down through the woods.

"Don't shout," James told the others. "She might have been taken hostage, or she might be hiding."

Chief Fisher took out his gun and coughed, his eyes streaming. "Now you let us take over, Mr. Bryce."

"Sure," James said as he kept running. Surely not.

The smoke was drifting the other way; he only needed to get away from it so could get his bearings. Either someone was inside the cabin (not Lee, not Lee...) or it had been set on fire to hide evidence of meth cooking. He caught a glimpse of water a long way down and made his way through the trees.

"Mr. Bryce!" the chief called in a loud, exasperated whisper.

James put his finger to his lips, and they had no choice but to follow him. Good men, that's the way to do it. They had their bloody guns, which would be useful. He wished he had one.

"Watch out!" Noah shouted.

James instinctively ducked, just as something flapped over his head. He knew it was a bird, a large one by the sound of the wings, and he lay flat on the ground, his hands over his head. A bird usually only attacked a man if it had a nest nearby, in which case it could get unreasonable. He glanced up to see that Noah and Fisher had also dropped to the ground, and a hooting drew his eyes to a naked branch above them.

An owl, opening its wings to full span. Blimey, it did look big like that, and its black talons, clutching the branch where it had perched, looked dangerous. The bird’s yellow eyes stared at him as it opened a sharp little beak to emit a more threatening noise.

That beak and those talons could certainly create some damage, if mama owl decided to land on a man's head.

James' eyes widened as he stared at the bird. Those talons could certainly create tri-pronged linear lacerations.

"Owls dive-bomb people sometimes," Noah whispered as he crawled sideways to get out of the creature's vicinity. "They been getting aggressive lately."

They could attack people — and that's what one of them had done to Joe Keane in the woods next to his home.

All the time, it had been an owl. An owl that had created such deep and painful lacerations on Joe's head that he had entered his house in a panic, profusely bleeding, had missed a step on the stairs and fallen, breaking his neck. And if April Keane hadn't put Cora's fingerprints on a fake murder weapon and dropped it next to him, Lee wouldn't have thought her mother had killed Joe; she wouldn't have set herself up or run away. There was so much that would never have happened to her.

These thoughts raced through James’ head as he said, "It was an owl. Joe.”

The chief looked up at the bird, as all three men managed to move slowly out of the way without provoking its fury. "Are you saying—?"

A voice below made them stop in their tracks. It was a man's voice, but James couldn't hear what it was saying. He rushed toward it, leaving the policemen behind.

"We can't—" the chief began again.

James didn't care what Fisher thought that he could or couldn't do. He weaved through the trees until he reached the level of the creek. The burning cabin was behind him, the water to his right, and a weeping willow in front followed the curve of the banks. There was a small boat, like a dinghy, under the tree, but he heard the voice again, ahead and slightly to his left.

"I'm so sorry, Lee ..."

As James rounded a corner, there was the big, burly form of Ross Olson, and beyond him there was Lee — holding an oar, her other hand in the air. Olson had a gun.

"... I can't let you live!" he said.

"No!" James shouted.

Olson turned, and James saw his horrible, staring eye, a flap of what looked like skin and nerves over his cheek and a bloody face. Then he heard a loud, dry noise and felt an impact on his chest, as if he had been pushed, and a burning.

Somehow, he was lying flat on his back, looking at the branches above him. They were beginning to have leaves, and the blue sky looked pretty. Spring was coming.

He heard Lee’s scream and, before his eyes closed, he thought, Lee, the whole time it was only an owl.

THIRTY-ONE

In the harsh light of the hospital, Lee's downcast look stirred James’ compassion, but the acute pain he felt at the tiniest movement reminded him to appear stern.

He couldn't help wishing he hadn’t been such a ponce and fainted; he wished he had seen the blow Lee had delivered to Ross' face with an oar. Or, rather, the two blows. She had knocked him unconscious and broken his jaw.

His Lee was something else. In her wake there had been a burning cabin, a man with broken bones and without an eyelid, and another man saved by her courage.

And there had been Lee and James, almost killed once more by her belief that she had to face things alone.

He frowned as she threw a hopeful glance his way. She really needed to learn — because she had had to fight almost to the death because of a danger she might have avoided, if she had only trusted him.

It was time to sit up, and it hurt like nothing had ever hurt before. The bullet hadn't caused more pain than a blow, the wound hadn't burned as much as he thought it might, and he was used to stitches — but a tiny nerve hurt something awful, as a native Carolinian might have said.

Yet he was dressed, his arm in a sling to avoid more movement, and he was ready to go. Lee ran around the bed to help him. He wanted to kiss her, but he wasn't going to. She really needed to learn. There were only so many times that fate would let you get away from sure death.

Again he scowled at her, and she leaned against the bed, her body making nice shapes.

"You'll never talk to me again?" she asked.

"Hurts to talk," he said curtly.

"Here's the lucky man!"

Paxton walked in followed by Ava and proceeded to shake his head at Lee. “My, my. Were you trying to kill James before he paid me, sugar?”

Ava patted Lee’s arm. “He’s all right, though. It’s what matters.”

“Hmmm,” James said.

“You’re off the hook, dear,” Paxton announced to Lee. “The lab work returned traces of owl DNA in those lacerations, apart from the evidence under Joe’s nails that includes bits of feather and wood bark. They say it was most likely a great horned owl.”

“I assume it has four talons, and that first puncture on Joe’s head was the back claw?” James asked.

“Yes, Nature Man.” Paxton smiled. “The owl took a good hold of Joe’s head with all four talons on one side and three on the other. Perhaps that’s why Joe managed to dislodge it. But he got those long lacerations when pulling the bird off, that’s for sure.”

Lee shook her head in wonder. “All that time, Joe was just attacked by a bird.”

“It was a bit of a—” Ava glanced at Paxton. “—a confusion.”

“I guess I added to it,” Lee said. “Won’t they indict me for messing with the crime scene?”

“They don’t know you did that,” Paxton said. “And I think their tails are between their legs at the moment. Once all the paperwork clearing you is through, we might even prosecute them, if we have a mind to it.”

“We don’t,” James said decisively. “We want it to be over.”

Nodding her agreement, Lee said, “Yes. Please.”

Paxton looked at James. “About that other matter?”

“Can you give me a moment, before you go there?” James asked.

“Sure, dear. We’ll wait out here.” He looked at Lee, then back at James. “You two will be all right. Come on, Ava.”

“It was … strange to work for you,” Ava told James. She turned to Lee. “And you’ve got to get a little bit less crazy, but you’re fierce.”

The attorneys almost bumped against the doctor on their way out. The man walked in looking down at a clipboard and briefly glanced at James but kept writing on the chart. "A few inches lower and that would have been your heart."

"You don't say."

"Crazy story, from what I hear," the doctor continued, still writing. "But if you're happy to leave today, I'm happy to let you go. Always better to avoid infection." He held up an orange bottle and rattled the pills inside. "That pain should subside on its own soon, but in the meantime I'm prescribing Vicodin."

James and Lee began to laugh as if on cue.

"I guess it's an inside joke?" the doctor said, looking from one to the other.

"We met over Vicodin," James said. As Lee crept closer to him, he mouthed, "No."

"Will you be changing his dressing?" the doctor asked Lee. "If you go over to the nurse station they'll show you how to do it. Won't shake your hand, Mr. Bryce. I know it would hurt."

"Thanks for everything."

"You bet," said the doctor, walking off briskly as he clicked his pen a few times.

Lee was still there. "Won't you ever forgive me?"

"Don't know. But cute pout."

"James, I couldn't talk about what I found out because of Caleb. I had to know more before I ratted on him."

"There's always going to be a reason, Lee. You'll be protecting someone or wanting to make sure of something, and you'll do it again."

"But you almost died! I've learned now. If I promise never, ever to—"

He interrupted her, "I think I've aged ten years since I met you."

"I'm sorry.” She looked at her own feet. “Because it only did me good to meet you."

He narrowed his eyes. "Good try. I've been cooped up too long. I'll wait for you outside." As she moved, he added, "A nurse costume might go some way toward obtaining a pardon, by the way."

It was worth hinting at forgiveness: he got a naughty look from her as she left the room.

James didn't immediately go outside. Instead, he popped the Vicodin. It would start working in a moment, and he tolerated the pain as he moved down the hall to another room. The door to it was open, but he rapped it with his knuckles anyway.

"Mr. James Bryce," Caleb said from the bed in a raspy voice.

"May I come in?"

"Sure!"

Caleb seemed expansive; he probably had some drugs in his system as well, considering he had undergone exploratory surgery just a few days before. He was gaunt and pale, but his eyes were darker than usual as he smiled.

"You look all right," he observed.

"Hurts like a fucker," James confessed. "Caught a nerve."

"They had to take a piece of my liver,” Caleb announced. He was competitive.

"But you'll make it, huh?"

A shadow fell over the officer's face. "Only the good die young."

"Your friend Scott wasn't so good."

"No. No, I guess that was a disappointment. He didn't have to do what he did — lots of people poorer than him are honest."

James leaned against the wall. "You still protected him."

"I was protecting his parents. Didn't want them to realize what Scott had done. I almost grew up in that house. They were great folk to me."

"Why did you keep the money, if you weren't ever going to use it?"

Perhaps it was the drugs, or the brush with death, but Caleb looked pensive. It was the first time James managed to see him as a kid, young in years and experience.

"I don't know. When you grow up without money, it gives you a turn to see so much of it — and then realize you should burn it. You think maybe someone will need it — someone will need a doctor, or a place to live or something."

They stared at each other for a second, and James almost wanted to laugh, thinking that his parents had once wailed about being poor. Most people had to make too many of their decisions based on money; even the rich did so, although he didn't have a lot of sympathy for the dilemmas of his class.

"So, did the lab confirm the owl thing?" Caleb asked.

"Yes. Lee has been cleared."

"Dang. I guess I wasn't prepared to be that kind of cop. I'd never have thought about an owl, even though I know they can dive-bomb people sometimes. One went for my friend's dog once. But hell, there was a fire poker lying right there!"

"It was a mess, and the lab didn’t do its best work, but a more experienced cop like Putney ought never to call any case open-and-shut."

"We all sucked,” Caleb said softly. “I was shitty, Putney was shitty, the lab. Scott was shitty, and Ross was a huge piece of shit."

"Ross will certainly pay for being a shit, and Scott paid with his life. Ross probably killed him, you know."

"He what?"

Poor Caleb, it seemed, would never make much of an investigator.

"They've found a short blond hair inside the rubber that was around Scott's arm," James explained. "It was also overlooked at first, because his death was set up to look like an overdose. I’m sure it will turn out to be Ross' hair."

"Why the hell would he kill Scott?"

"Maybe Scott was flashing the money too openly? He bought a house, didn't he? Or maybe Scott had a change of heart, or a fit of conscience. Ross wanted a steady, stable business, but he allied himself with a kid and with a big mouth like Joe."

"Maybe he'd have killed Joe, if the owl hadn't,” Caleb remarked. “For taking Jada Phillips to the cabin, with the lab just hundreds of feet away. I mean, that was pretty dumb of Joe."

"Criminals are not often smart people. But it was a convoluted case. The most obvious crime wasn't even committed by a person."

"You figured it out,” Caleb said. “And Lynn did as well."

"I figured out some things because I care about Lee, and because I could afford to get good people on the case. She figured out things because she's smart."

Caleb nodded. "Yeah, she's smart. Always was. And she has more guts than anyone I know. All this stuff was right under my nose, and I figured zilch. Imagine, if I had seen it she might never have left."

Easy there, Officer. She did leave, and she ain’t staying either.

"But the poker?" Caleb frowned. "Who put the poker—?"

"All will come to light quite soon, I'm sure," James said. He unglued his back from the wall, trying not to grimace. "And you'll be all right."

"Well, I guess I'll be going down for tampering with evidence and hiding some bad secrets."

"You did it for Billy, no?"

"Yeah. Couldn't leave Billy and Maddy without a breadwinner — but I didn't know Ross was a murderer. I thought he'd been making and dealing drugs, and that he was going to stop. He did stop. No one used that lab in years; Ross just couldn't sell the land because it was in Scott's name. That day I told him to go there and destroy it, though there wasn't anything inside anymore.”

Paxton had found out that the corporation in St. Kitts had been set up by Scott. Although Ross had probably administered everything behind the scenes, he hadn't wanted anything in his name — until his wife made a cash payment for property taxes and foolishly asked for a receipt. How that must have thrown him for a loop … James wondered what had made him send Maddy on that errand. Perhaps he had been out of state, but it had been a fatal mistake.

Everyone made a mistake, sooner or later, but there had to be someone there to notice.

"What you did is a serious offense for anyone, especially for a cop," James told Caleb. "I guess your career will be ruined, but you can still work in private security or something like that."

"With a rap sheet?"

"That attorney of ours is interested in taking your case."

Caleb whooped with laughter. "I can't pay that man. I ain’t got no more money under a floorboard, James Bryce."

"He'll do it pro-bono."

"Why would he do that?" Caleb's eyes widened in understanding. "Oh, did you put him up to it?"

"You said people take care of each other in your town, don't they?"

"You're not from my town, though."

"Lee is. Sort of. And if she risked her life to save yours, it must be worth saving." James tapped the metal at the foot of the bed. "You take care, Brooks."

Caleb's voice stopped James before he left the room.

"English guy!"

"Yes?"

"You take care of Lynn. She looks like she doesn't need it, but she does. Everybody does. And if you ain't good to her—"

James scoffed. "I'll probably get an oar to the face or a comb through the eye."

A delighted chuckle rose from the patient. "That's right." Caleb's expression sobered a little. "She'd leave you, James Bryce. And then you'd spend your life trying to find someone that can make you forget her."

"I know that. I just wish she'd stop trying to kill me."

As he walked down the hall, there was more whooping laughter from Caleb. "That ain't never gonna happen, English guy!”

Was Lee ever not going to be trouble? In any case, she was still worth it, and she was already outside, leaning against his car. As he approached, she unfolded plain blue scrubs and shook them. "Nurse costume, as requested."

He raised his eyebrows and made an African sound of disdain with his tongue against his teeth. "You really don't care to be forgiven, do you?" As he got into the passenger seat and she behind the steering wheel, he added, "On the other hand, perhaps you might be able to rock that. You could try."

She turned to smile at him, and he allowed himself to smile back. A moment later her eyes took on an uncertain look as they searched his face. "Where are we going?"

Poor Magpie, she didn't yet know where she belonged. She would find out, but first James said, "Your people really like the word 'closure', don't they? Then I think there's a stop we ought to make."

“Maddy won’t forgive me.”

“You know I’m not talking about Maddy.”

Lee did know, and she seemed more scared than when facing a Glock.

"But you're in pain," she said in a small voice.

"The Vicodin has kicked in. And I can give you a pill, if it will help your state of mind. Sometimes, a very few times, it's better to confront bad things in your life when you're high."

"What kind of advice is that?"

"It's what the Buddhist monks told me." James put the car on D. Stupid transmission. "Drive, Mag. Let's get this over with."

THIRTY-TWO

"Well, it's a crazy, crazy thing, this owl business," April Keane said, tapping her own chest with long-nailed fingers. Today the polish was red. "Who on earth would have thought?"

She cleared magazines and plates from the sofa, as if Lee and James had come on a social visit.

"My poor Joe!" April added. "Still, Lynn, you'll be cleared now. I'm happy for you."

The look on Lee's face made April stop short after taking a step in her direction. The woman would actually have tried to embrace her daughter.

April stepped back instead. "Why you looking at me like that for, Lynette?"

"How am I looking at you, Mama?" Lee asked, and she sounded tired.

"Like I done something to you." She gestured toward the stairs. "Like all of that was my fault!"

For a moment James thought that Lee wouldn't be able to get the words out, but she struggled, her throat working, and managed to say, "Why did you put Cora's prints on that poker, Mama? Why did you drop it next to Joe?"

"You don't know that I did that!"

"I do know. Why?"

Different emotions succeeded each other on April's face, none of them good. James watched her calculating what her reaction ought to be, how much she should disclose, whether sincerity would give her the best advantage or whether she should keep feigning innocence. Finally, an expression that was tough and canny at once settled on her features, and she said, "Everyone would've thought I done it."

Lee shook her head slowly. "And you thought it better they should believe Cora had killed her own stepfather?"

"Cora was a child."

"Exactly!"

"As a child, she wouldn't have been taken to prison," April shouted, the veins on her neck jumping. "She'd maybe have gone talk to a doctor or something. A shrink. They'd have let her go."

"Mama, you'd have let your eight-year-old daughter be questioned? Treated like there was something wrong with her? You'd have drugged her and let her get all confused, thinking she might have killed Joe?"

"And you think Cora would have wanted her mama in jail?"

Lee looked mournful. "No, she wouldn't. She's far too good to want that."

"In any case, when they found your prints I thought you'd done it." April shrugged. "I thought it had to be you, or why would your prints be on the poker?" Again, the woman shrugged. "I thought you done it, Lynn. You were always violent."

James couldn't help laughing at this. April's head snapped toward him, but her expression softened quickly, and so did her voice as she pointed out, "But good things came from it! You went off and made money, 'stead of being married to Billy in a hick town. You met James ..."

"I went off and learned to steal," Lee said in a hard tone. "I learned to fool men into wanting me, so I could take their jewels."

April's beautiful eyes widened, as if she had never heard of such behavior. "Like you stole your grandmother's ring? She always said you'd become a criminal."

What a piece of work.

"She was right,” Lee said.

"But if no one ever caught you, you're like Robin Hood, you stole from the rich and gave to the poor." April cackled as she took a pack of cigarettes from her pocket and lit one. "Can that money you send me be traced? I don't want no more trouble, Lynn."

"Then I guess I'll send you no more money," Lee said.

Her eyes, so like her mother's, had finally gone flat. Had she understood there was no point? It was April who was lost, cut off from humanity by her incapacity to feel for anyone else but herself — not Lee, who felt too much.

"What do you mean?" April asked. "You gonna abandon me, Lynn?"

"I won't be stealing anymore, so I guess I'll have no money to send you."

"What about James?" April turned to him. "You're rich, you won't let her mother starve and beg in the streets!"

Lee stepped between them, almost as if to protect him. "James' money isn't mine. And you won't starve. You have a job."

One of April's delicate eyebrows rose. "Maybe then Cora needs to come home and help out."

The woman April hadn't yet met appeared in Lee, and James stood back, letting her have her moment.

"Maybe I should remind you that you tampered with evidence," she told her mother coldly. "You tried to incriminate a child for murder. You drank and slept with men while your children were in the house. You went off with men for days, leaving your children alone with nothing to eat. I think that Social Services will take one look at you, then one look at me and my rich boyfriend and Cora won't ever have to step foot in Hawkshaw."

April Keane didn't back down easily. "Well, maybe I should tell them how you made your money."

"Good luck proving it," Lee said, turning away.

"Lynette!" The red claws reached out, holding on to Lee's arm. "You can't have such a hard heart. Think of everything I done for you, for Cora. I was just a girl when I had you, living in a trailer park by myself, but I didn't give you away! I know you didn't want me to go to prison for something I didn't do! And it worked out for the best — you met a man who's devoted to you."

Lee shook her head and said, “Goodbye, Mama."

James let her pass, placing a hand on the small of her back so that she would know that she wasn't alone, and that she was doing the right thing. They walked outside as a breeze blew through the leaves, and the sun peeped through them. It was a beautiful afternoon.

But the harridan behind them wasn't done. April came to the door, her voice lowering by two octaves like a devil's in a horror film. "Do you think devotion lasts, Lee? Do you think you're more beautiful than I was, and you'll be able to hold on to him?"

By the slight stiffening of Lee's shoulder James could tell that she was listening to her mother.

"Every man I ever met wanted me, when I was your age," April went on, stepping onto the driveway. "They promise the sun and the moon, and then it's all gone, like it never happened. What do you think your English billionaire here will do? He can have all the beautiful women he wants. How long he gonna want you? You're just like me!"

James stopped at this with a look of withering contempt. "Not in a million years.”

He took Lee's hand. They kept walking as April screeched after them, "It ain’t gonna last forever, Lynn. Get what's coming to you while you're young. Leave them before they leave you! Not like your stupid mama!"

There was a sob at the end of the sentence and Lee almost stopped, but James held her fast and didn't let her. That devil had abused her for too long.

"Where are we going?" Lee asked for the second time that day as he pulled her by the hand. "The car is that way."

"A little walk. Want to show you something."

She was quiet, trying to process the fact that there was no closure to be had with a woman like April, until they stood on a grassy knoll.

"Oh, the dogwood!" Lee cried.

The trees before them had burst into an explosion of white flowers, even though it was only mid-March. The dogwood stood shedding petals, transforming the clearing in that shabby suburb into the landscape in a fairy tale.

"Billy would have said it’s climate change, but he always loved them,” Lee remarked.

"Well, I think it's a metaphor."

"For what?"

"If you look back that way you see a messy house with a narcissist inside. Nothing can cure her.”

“But—”

“You once told me that I followed things to the last consequence by refusing to be around my parents. I’ve heard how many times you use the word ‘Mama,’ Lee. I know you love her in spite of all she has done. But she is missing parts. She can’t love you or Cora, and it isn’t even her fault.”

"I guess." Lee gave a deep sigh as she tore her eyes away from the house below them. "You just keep hoping that you can fix things."

"You can’t fix people." James nodded toward the dogwood. "And spring means new life. As long as you're not allergic, it’s a great time to start again. You have a lot of love in you, and you can be happy. With Cora. With me."

Her eyes were clear but a little frightened. "What will I do?" She gave a small laugh. "I just realized I've lost my occupation."

"You're a capable woman. More than that, you're talented. You'll figure something out — just don't be a private investigator or anything that will get you in trouble."

She laughed. “We would make a good team, though.”

He looked at his sling. "Please."

Her head turned toward her mother's house again. "We have to be happy while it lasts."

"Yes, listen to your mother. She is wisdom itself. I'm a shallow man, only interested in an admittedly gorgeous piece of arse and in a bunch of stupid secrets."

"You're anything but shallow. But I'm her daughter, I guess. In my life I saw the same things she saw."

"Your life has just begun, and you're your father's daughter too."

Lee frowned. "Why do you say that?"

"I met the formidable Mrs. Bergeron."

"James!"

"Saw where you grew up, saw your father's room, your little Japanese box and spoke to a lovely lady named Celia—"

"When did you do all that?"

"—who told me that you never stole that ring from your grandmother. It was given to you."

"My grandmother said not."

"It was given to you when she thought you were dying. You survived, and she took it away."

Her smile turned sad. "Does that explain everything about me?"

"Nothing explains everything." He brushed the hair away from her forehead. "But I think you just wanted something to shine a bit in the middle of all this muck. You wanted secrets you could control."

She flushed, embarrassed by his scrutiny. "Why, James Anthony, you are sentimental."

"Poetic."

"You think I'm cured?"

He embraced her with his free arm. The movement didn't hurt very much, thanks to the Vicodin, and it felt good to hold her. "You're cured of at least one of the conditions you had when you met me."

Lee laughed. "You are unbearable.”

"I’m hurt, and you promised to play nurse." He looked up. "Also, we'd better get the fuck out of here in case there's a killer owl. I don't think the one that attacked Joe was ever arrested. In fact, let's just get the hell out of Hawkshaw."

"And go where?"

James smiled. "Home."

EPILOGUE

Lee kept her eyes closed to feel James's stubble against her shoulder, his movement in her. She let out a gasp.

"Quiet," he said.

He said her voice excited him, but so did his. When he collapsed on the mattress, she rolled over his body. It was hot, even though it was only seven o'clock and only June; but the windows were closed so no one heard them. Still, old beds made a lot of noise. She put her face against the sweat on his chest.

"Let's save something for later," he said.

"You're a vigorous old man."

He pulled her hair back, holding it in a ponytail behind her head and forcing her to look at him. His eyes were lazy and alert at the same time, and he looked happy. He was going to get his way, as he always did.

"Will you behave?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Won't ask you to promise. You lie."

"I think you'd catch me, and I'd be afraid of you then."

He laughed. "You're not afraid of anything."

Afraid of losing you.

James could read her mind these days. He held on to her and rolled again. Now his face was above hers, and his body between her legs. "Not going to happen. Oh, damn, here I go again."

"I thought you said to save—"

"Quiet."

***

Eleven o'clock, and it was only bearable in the shade. That's where James waited. He sat under a leafy tree in his shirtsleeves, his jacket folded over the back of a chair. Mount Etna looked quiet behind the red villa. He hummed and sang a piece of the Neapolitan song,

Comm'è bella 'a muntagna stanotte

Bella accussì nun ll'aggio vista maje...

There was laughter, and the noise of feet running. He smiled when Cora appeared with flowers in her hand.

"What do you think, James?"

She was fair and looked red from lying in the Sicilian sun.

“You need sunscreen,” he said. He inspected the flowers. "Bigger.”

Cora gave a full-throated, happy laugh — a laugh like Lee's, when Lee felt carefree. The girl ran back toward the garden again. "He says bigger!"

"James!" Caitlin called, raising her head above a shrubbery. "She needs to be able to carry it!"

"Bigger!" he insisted.

They giggled. He would probably have to find ways to keep them busy a lot of the time, or they'd run rings around him, all three of them. He smiled, enjoying the belief that he would be the man of the house, making sure they were all right, that they had what they needed and were happy.

What an illusion; he couldn't make people happy if they weren't. Those girls were happy, though, and Lee was learning.

He sat humming an Italian song in a crisp white shirt and well-cut dark trousers like a character in The Godfather. But those were the good things in life, he thought as Lee appeared across the swimming pool at the top of the steps: to see a woman in a simple but beautiful white dress, her dark hair loose, her long legs in no need of heels. He stood and waited for her to run to him; she arrived a little breathless — and she was welcome.

"James ..."

He tried not to smile. Of course she still had doubts; he had been waiting for them.

"We don't have to do this," she said.

"Oh, but we do."

"Why?"

"For one, you can't steal anything of mine anymore, when it will all be half yours anyway. And then because of the girls." He pointed, and Cora waved, holding up the bouquet. "It’s high time they had a family, even if they’re going back to school. I'm glad I've got them on the lookout for you.”

"That bouquet's huge!" Lee cried.

"Another thing to keep you from escaping. You look beautiful, by the way. My heart's beating sort of fast."

"Don't be silly."

He took her hand and put it on his chest. "It's like I've got tachycardia."

She caressed him. "Then let's not. You could have a cardiac arrest."

"We have to, now."

"Why?" she asked, almost in agony.

"Because there's this very charming old stone building where they're waiting to marry us. It will be quick and painless, no speeches of any kind — and then there is this great little restaurant, family affair, climbing on the rocks over the sea. They've been hanging flags all morning, Star and Stripes and Union Jacks, to celebrate our union. The mother has been cooking, the cousins are the band and the sons the waiters. I said the boys could dance with Cora and Caitlin, so they're looking forward to it. And then there's the boat, which will be waiting so we can sail off. Imagine how many people you'd disappoint if you ran.” He frowned. “It would be very rude.”

"We'd do all that, but just not the part—"

"Where we get married?"

"Yes, just not that.” She held on to his lapels. “Come away with me."

The smile now spread over his face. "Are you asking me to run away from me? This manages to be insulting and flattering at the same time. But no."

"James …"

“You’re a world of trouble.” Putting his arms around her, he shook her a little. "But we're getting married today, Magpie. And I'll twist your arm if you try not to say 'I do,' and I'll twist it again for you to sign the register. Although I do fear what you may be able to do with a pen."

She laughed, then became serious again. She had been a serious little girl with dark hair and a quick mind, facing life all alone — but no more.

"We are happy, James,” she insisted. “The girls are happy. Why do we need to get married?"

She still doesn't understand. Light the way for her.

"Because I love you, Lee.”

There, he had said five words. And such was the power of words, when they were true, that her beautiful eyes had filled with light, as if a sun had risen inside them — so he held her face and repeated three.

"I love you."

Thank you for reading the Deadly Lies trilogy. I hope you’ve enjoyed this love story and these mysteries.

If you have enjoyed it, please take a moment and leave a quick rating and review on Amazon. We writers are more thankful for reviews than you’ll ever know!

And if you enjoy psychological thrillers without romance, The End of Fear, a novella on Amazon now.

Check it out here.

In the meantime, below you’ll find other titles by the same author under a different pseudonym.

Historical romance as Lara Blunte:

The Last Earl

The Abyss

To Be King

(Winner of the Wattys 2015)

Contemporary romance as Lara Blunte:

A Man in Africa