This surprised me. While I didn’t know everything about my father’s practice, I should have been aware of the case, if only peripherally.

“Who owned the property?” I asked.

“I’m checking on that. All I know now is that it was a group of investors, some local, some not. They bought the mall several years ago, when it was about to fold. They pumped millions into renovations, but the tenants never materialized. They were hemorrhaging money when the bank finally dropped the ax.”

“Is there any chance of a connection?” I asked. “Are the police looking into it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Are you serious?” I demanded. “Ezra was foreclosing on a multimillion-dollar operation, was killed on the property, and the cops don’t see a connection?”

I heard Tara light up a cigarette, pausing before she spoke. “Why would they, Work? They’ve got their man.” She exhaled, and I pictured her wrinkled lips and the bright pink lipstick that bled into the cracks.

“No, they don’t,” I said. “Not yet.”

“Well, that brings me to my second piece of news.”

I knew trouble when I heard it. “What?”

“I don’t have specifics, you understand? But word is that they found something in your house that incriminates you.”

“That’s not possible,” I said.

“I’m just telling you what I heard.”

“But… you must know more than that.”

“Not really, Work. Only that Mills about had an orgasm. And that’s a direct quote from my source.”

I thought of all the people who had been in my house since Ezra disappeared, all the parties, dinners, and casual visits. Jean had been there once or twice, Alex, too. Even the district attorney. Christ, half the town had passed through those doors at some point in the past eighteen months. What in the hell was Tara talking about?

“You’re not holding out on me, are you?” I asked. “This one is important.”

“I’ve told you all I know. That’s the deal.” Another long exhale, and I knew she had something else to add. “Have you told me everything?” she finally asked.

“What do you want to know?”

“It all comes back to the gun, Work. They want the murder weapon. Have you had any more thoughts on that?”

I saw Max’s face, and felt the dampness of that hole. I smelled mud mixed with gasoline, and suddenly couldn’t breathe. For a moment, I’d forgotten.

“Still no sign,” I finally told her.

“Would you like to make a statement? I’d be glad to put forth your side of the story.”

I thought of Douglas. “That would be premature,” I finally said.

“Call me if you change your mind.”

“You’ll be the first.”

“You mean the only.”

“Right.”

She paused and I could almost smell the smoke; she liked menthols. “Listen,” she said. “I’m not really such a cold bitch. It’s just that thirty years of this has taught me a thing or two, like never get emotionally involved in the stories I cover. It’s nothing personal. I just have to keep my distance. It’s a matter of professionalism.”

“Rest assured, you’re very professional,” I told her.

“That was uncalled for.”

“Maybe. But I seem to be surrounded by professionals today.”

“Things will work out,” she said, but we both knew the truth. Innocent people went to jail all the time, and good guys bled as red as the rest.

“Take care,” she said, and for an instant she sounded like she meant it.

“Yeah. You, too.”

The line went dead and I settled the receiver back on its cradle. Suddenly, things weren’t so clear. Why, on that night, did Ezra go to that nearly abandoned mall? His wife had just died. His family was coming apart at the seams. Who called him, and what was said in that hushed conversation? It was after midnight, for Christ’s sake. Did he go first to the office, and if so, why? My father had driven a black Lincoln Town Car, so Max’s big dark car had to have been Ezra’s, but who owned the other one? Jean had a dark car, but so did a thousand other people in town. Was I wrong? Could there be some other reason for my father’s death? I turned to an ugly reality, one that I’d shied away from because I simply could not face it. The old mall was less than a mile from where I sat. Its destruction was almost complete, but the parking lot was untouched, as was the low dank tunnel that ran beneath it. If Max was right and the killer had ditched the gun in the storm sewer, then it would be there still, lying in that grim place like the memories that had defiled my dreams, if not my very life. I would have to return, to claim the legacy of my father’s last breath, and I didn’t know if I could do it. But there was no choice. If the gun was Ezra’s, I’d know it. Then I could dispose of it, so that Mills could never use it against Jean. And if it wasn’t his gun? If by some miracle I was wrong, and it was not my sister that pulled the trigger?

I thought of Vanessa, pictured her face the last time I’d seen her. She’d kicked me out, spilled her tears on the hands of another man. Would she step forward if I asked? Would she utter the words to set me free?

I had to believe that she would. Whatever harm I’d done to her, she was a good woman.

My watch showed it was almost five. I glanced around the ruined office and, for a moment, considered cleaning it up, but this was not my life, so I locked up and left the place untouched. Outside, the clouds had pulled apart and a careworn light filtered through. People were leaving the surrounding offices, packing up and going home to the same dreams that used to mean so much to me. No one spoke to me. No one raised a hand. I drove home and parked beneath high walls of peeling paint and windows as colorless as sanded lead. And when I finally went inside, it was like walking into an open wound. Our bed was pulled apart, my desk was rifled, and clothing littered the floor. Every room was the same, yet each was worse than the last. I closed my eyes and saw Mills and her smug smile as she’d left me in the driveway to resume this slow and visceral penetration.

I wandered through the house, touched once personal and private things, then shuffled into the kitchen and took down a bottle of bourbon and a glass. It slopped as I poured it, but I didn’t care. I sat at the breakfast table and downed half the glass before I realized what I was seeing, right there on the table before me. I slammed the glass down so hard that the remaining bourbon exploded out of its mouth and settled in a wide wet arc onto the face of the newspaper that Mills had so carefully placed there for me to find.

It was the Salisbury Post, and there I was on the front page. It was not the headline that enraged me, but the fact that Mills had put the paper there for me to find. And that act, so simple, had been calculated to inflict pain. She’d caught me at home, defenses down, and slit me open with a fifty-cent newspaper.

My glass shattered on the wall. Then I was on my feet.

The writer didn’t have many facts, but the implication was more than between the lines. The son of a wealthy dead lawyer was being investigated. He was one of the last to see the victim alive and had somehow managed to compromise the crime scene. And there was a will, with fifteen million dollars at stake.

Not much, I thought, but more than enough for a public crucifixion. And soon there would be more, along with any unflattering information they could ferret out of my neighbors or colleagues.

I looked again at the paper, and future headlines flashed through my mind.

LOCAL LAWYER GOES TO TRIAL… PROSECUTION RESETS… JURY SAYS GUILTYIN IN PICKENS MURDER TRIAL… SENTENCING TODAY…

The phone rang. I snatched it up.

“What!” Brutal and short.

At first there was silence, and I thought no one was there. But then I heard a wet snuffling noise and what was clearly a choked-off sob.

“Hello,” I said.

Crying. Sobbing. A susurration of wet helplessness that dwindled to a keen so high, I could have been imagining it. I heard a dull and rhythmic thumping, and I knew it was Jean, striking her head on the wall or rocking so hard in her chair that it sounded in protest. My own problems dwindled into some distant place.