She nodded. “We played duets. There were two pianos in the house then, my mother’s baby grand and an old player piano. Sometimes Ira and I would race each other through the music.”

The metronome ticked off four beats in a measure. The cacophony of birdsongs in the surrounding trees refused to conform to the rhythm.

“Mallory, why did he come to the house that day? Did your mother continue his music lessons after Ira’s father stopped the therapy?”

“The therapy never stopped. Ira missed her. He kept showing up at the house on his regular schedule. His father was supposed to be watching him while Darlene was working, but he wasn’t much of a baby-sitter. So there was Ira, standing out in the yard. My mother couldn’t turn him away.”

Charles sat with the ignition key in his hand. The metronome was slowing its ticks, filling each measure with a single note. The birds were singing louder, faster, in such a rush to get the music out. Tomorrow morning, when they were on the road and beyond the reach of Augusta’s sanctuary, it would be all too quiet, miles of road and -

“You never asked me if I killed Babe Laurie,” said Mallory.

“I didn’t need to. He was hit from behind with a rock – not your style. Now if they’d found him with a nice symmetrical bullet hole and less mess, that would’ve been quite different.” He turned back for one last look at the Shelley house as he put the car in gear. “But I had the feeling that I was the only one in that room who didn’t know the killer’s name.”

“Not true, Charles. Riker and Augusta have their own ideas, but they’re wrong.”

“And the sheriff?”

She turned away from him now. “No one cares who killed Babe Laurie. It just doesn’t matter.”

“I’m so sick of hearing that. I care.” The car moved out of the yard, and then he brought it to a sudden stop on the dirt road. “Are you saying the sheriff knows, and he’s not doing anything about it? You know too, don’t you?”

Of course she did. But she kept her silence. Why had he even bothered to ask? Well, he sometimes forgot that she still followed the children’s code of not ratting on thy coconspirator.

“Hints, Mallory? Anything at all?”

She looked at him for a moment, perhaps weighing trust, as if that were in question after everything she had put him through. The metronome made a tick. He waited for the next beat, but the seconds dragged by. Then it ticked again.

“There’s no proof,” she said.

“Fine, I’m not looking to make a citizen’s arrest. But if you don’t give me a sporting chance to work this out, I’ll go stark raving mad.”

“I told you the hospital was storing old hardcopy files on the mainframe. When the clerk scanned Ira’s first hospital record, she must have seen the old lab report for VD. She flagged his computer entry for a prior child abuse. When I hacked into the hospital computer, there was no file in the system yet, just the flag, Ira’s name and the disease.”

“Child abuse? But he was no longer a child.” He held up one hand. “No, wait – I’ve got it. Tell me if I’m wrong. I know Ira’s diagnosis was changed from autism to profound retardation.” In the absence of a separate facility to treat autism, that was the only way to qualify him for a state therapy program. “That and his dependency on his mother gave him the legal status of a minor child. Right?”

“Right. So when Darlene brought Ira into the emergency room with his broken hands, the abuse flag came up on the computer. The hospital was obliged to call the sheriff.”

The metronome never ticked again.

Riker had mastered the art of one-armed packing in ten minutes flat. He opened the top drawer of the dresser and wadded up his underwear the better to smash it into his suitcase. Normally, he never moved this quickly, but he was almost home free and not taking any chances. The metal clasps snapped shut. Done.

But too late.

Shit!

“Not so fast.” Charles Butler was leaning against the doorframe, all but wearing a No Exit sign around his neck.

Riker sank down on the bed beside his suitcase. He wished he had a drink. He had been looking forward to a comfortable chair in the airport bar and maybe swapping a few war stories with Tom Jessop.

“About Travis’s deathbed confession.” Charles closed the door behind him. “Why did you back up the sheriff in a lie?”

“I think you know.” But now it dawned on the detective that knowledge and belief were different things in Charles’s strange relationship with Mallory, this blind friendship which kept her cloaked in innocence despite every bit of evidence to the contrary. Riker had a more pragmatic form of loyalty. If Mallory had shot an elderly nun in a wheelchair, he would assume the nun had it coming to her.

“So you still believe Mallory did it.”

“The motive is pretty strong.” Riker was making an effort to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. Derision was undeserved. Charles’s blindness touched him as nothing else ever had. “She also had opportunity and no alibi.”

“Because Babe was in that mob? The logic is a bit flawed, isn’t it? Travis was there too, but she saved his life. You must realize she couldn’t have had any idea who was in that mob. She was inside the house, locked in a – ”

“She could hear everything from her bedroom, Charles. Listen to the birds.”

Charles turned to the closed window. The tree in the yard was indeed full of singing birds, and their voices easily penetrated the glass. And now that he paid attention, he could hear Betty on the front porch. She was greeting new guests. The voices of a man and a woman were not so clear as the birds, but he could pick out the odd word in their conversation.

“Augusta gave me a tour of the Shelley house,” said Riker. “I saw the kid’s room. Did you notice the window near the top of the closet? I never saw a thing like that before. Augusta said the closet window was pretty common in old houses built before electric lights. Now Mallory couldn’t have seen anything. It was too high up for a little kid. But you know she heard something – maybe not Travis’s voice, but something, maybe just a few words. She wouldn’t have understood what was happening, but she put it all together when she saw her mother after they were done with her. I told you the kid had more to work with than the sheriff did.”

“Travis only stoned a dog. Alma was there too, but she took her rock home with her. If Mallory heard – ”

“Charles, drop it.”

“That mob was Malcolm’s work, not Babe’s.”

“The whole mob is accountable – that’s the law. For Christ’s sake, that’s even Mallory’s law!” Riker held his silence for a moment, calling back his temper.

“You’re right, Charles. Malcolm had to implicate every witness at that meeting, everyone who might’ve led the sheriff back to the letter, the blue letter. But even if some of them didn’t throw rocks, they all watched that woman die. They never moved to help her, they never told. There are no innocent people here.”

Riker walked to the window and pulled up the sash. The sheriff was leaning against his car in the street below. “Hey, Tom. Two minutes, okay?”

“Take your time.”

Riker closed the window again, and now he turned around to finish off Charles Butler. But gently, he cautioned himself.

“Oh, yeah, I think she did it. That’s why I backed up the sheriff on that bullshit confession. At the time, I was just so happy that Mallory didn’t take out the whole town.”

Oh, wait. She did take out Owltown. It was level ground now, wasn’t it? Ah, but most of the human casualties were only punctured and burned.

Charles only stared at him with sad eyes.

“What do you want from me?” Riker picked up his suitcase and set it near the door as a hint that Charles might move away from the room’s only exit. No good. The big man showed no signs of moving.