In the months before the trial, Max and I figured out that dating would ruin a perfectly good friendship. By then, the friendship meant too much to us to risk that. He recovered from his injuries and went back to New Hampshire to pursue his MBA at Tuck. He came back to Las Piernas often, though-he hired some friends from Dartmouth to help him start a company that would develop applications of GPS technology, and based the company in Las Piernas, where he planned to live after graduation.

The day the verdicts were handed down, he left our post-trial celebration early to catch a flight back East. Before he left, he gave me a hug and said, “Write to me. Call me collect. And keep slaying dragons.”

Lefebvre stopped by the party for an hour or so, and was the first person to notice that I wasn’t drinking. “Driving tonight?” he asked when he was sure he wouldn’t be overheard.

I glanced at O’Connor, who was quietly downing one scotch after another. “I think that would be best.”

“You two are getting along now, I see.”

“We still have our occasional differences of opinion,” I said, which made Lefebvre smile. “But I like it when we tackle a story together. It’s hard to describe, but there’s a kind of energy there that I don’t always feel when I work on my own.” I shrugged. “This is going to sound corny, but I like him because he tries so hard to do the right thing.”

“Corny, huh? Maybe not. I’ve been reading some of the articles you’ve written together-it’s a good partnership, I think. And speaking of partnerships-I hear that you’ll soon be related by marriage.”

I sighed. “For as long as it lasts. Yes, my sister Barbara and his son Kenny are getting married. The only upside to this is that Kenny has moved out of O’Connor’s house and bought a place of his own.”

“You don’t place much hope in their future?”

“I shouldn’t be so negative,” I admitted. “They’ll probably be together forever. Kenny needs constant care and attention. My sister loves providing it- to a healthy male like him, anyway.”

He studied me after I said this, and I found myself hoping he didn’t ask me what I meant by it. He probably knew about my father, but he changed the subject.

“I wanted more of these old questions to be resolved,” he said, “but I have worked in law enforcement long enough to feel relieved that at least Ian and Eric now have felony convictions on their records. If they fail to win appeals, I’ll be happy.”

“I know what you mean. I just wish Betty Bradford had called me back.”

“Maybe she will, one of these days.”

“She’s passed up a huge reward, and if the person who was her boss was convicted today, she should have stepped forward.”

He shook his head, but didn’t comment. We both knew the big fish got away. And neither of us thought there was a hope in hell he’d be caught.

When last call rolled around, O’Connor and I were the only ones still in the bar. O’Connor was under full sail. Still, he managed to walk fairly steadily to the Karmann Ghia, and didn’t have too much difficulty getting in.

I drove him home. He was sobering up a little by then, and invited me in for coffee. I had been to his house many times by then, and he to mine, but this was something he had never done before. I accepted the invitation, but watching the clumsiness of his movements, seated him at the kitchen table while I made the coffee. Never let a drunk loose in a kitchen. Too many sharp implements, and the simplest tasks will take forever.

I made coffee that was the equivalent of forty-weight motor oil. He drank three cups of it. I could see him coming into focus, so I asked, “What is it, O’Connor?”

“What’s what?”

“What’s eating at you?”

He shrugged. “I was thinking of Ian and Eric’s catechism, and wondering if I could have become Mitch’s Yeager’s enemy before I was eighteen.”

“When you were a copyboy?”

“Maybe before that, even.”

“What do you mean?”

He didn’t answer. I poured him another cup of coffee.

“I was thinking of Maureen tonight, that’s all,” he said. “I think of her every day, but sometimes…like that night when you were in that tunnel… God, did that worry me.”

“Who’s Maureen?”

He seemed surprised I didn’t know, then looked down at his coffee. “Was…who was Maureen.”

After a long silence, he told me the story of his missing sister, and how he blamed himself because he had not walked her home that night. He talked of the misery his family had experienced, of the years of waiting for her to return. Of how even the discovery of her remains, while a relief of one kind, hadn’t brought him the peace he had hoped for. He spoke with bitterness over the fact that her murderer had not been caught. He seemed to blame himself for that, too.

I thought of the many times, over the past few months, when we had talked of unidentified bodies and missing persons. Not once had he mentioned Maureen. I realized that not even the loss of Jack could compare with the painfulness of this wound.

“We had been so close,” he said quietly. “I miss her to this day.”

I couldn’t think of a thing to say or do to comfort him. I wanted to hug him, and while in later years that would become a natural part of our friendship, it was not yet. Finally, I said, “When you told me about the way she felt about your work-she was proud of you. I think she still would be proud.”

“Do you?” he asked. “I wonder.”

“I’m sure of it.”

He smiled softly then said, “It’s late, Kelly. Will you call me to let me know you’ve got yourself home safely? Don’t worry you’ll wake me.”

I called him when I got home, thinking of that night when he searched for me along the bluffs, and of his admission tonight that he had been afraid for me. I vowed that if he ever again wanted to see me safely to my door or wanted me to call him when I got home, or check in with him during the day, I would not fight it or refuse to do as he asked. These requests were not, I saw at last, overbearing protectiveness. His fears came out of a devastating loss, one that had haunted him all his life.

At work the next day, thinking of how drunk he had been, I wondered if he would remember telling me about his sister. He drew me aside and said, “I know you heard my sad tale with a kind heart, Irene, so I won’t regret the telling of it. But I have no right to use my sister’s memory in such a way. I would be grateful if we did not speak of it again.”

We never did, directly. We often did, in a thousand other ways.

Neither of us ever forgot Maureen O’Connor.

PART III. LEX TALIONIS

“Did I appeal to the law-I? Does it quench the pauper’s thirst if the king drink for him?”

– MARK TWAIN, Life on the Mississippi

February 2000