"You're right."

  23

  After a meal of mash and soggy, colorless vegetables, I am escorted across the yard and into the administration building for my next session with the big black shrink. He is writing, his fat jowls trembling with effort.

  When he looks up from his notes, he asks, "How are you feeling?"

  "Like I'm ready for a cheeseburger made from beef," I say, sitting. He nods and slowly stacks the papers before closing the file. He taps its manila cover and says, "You told the doctor before me that at one point you'd convinced yourself that you didn't really kill James King. Now that I know you a little, I wanted to ask you how you meant that."

  "For a while, I actually did," I say.

  "How?"

  "The human mind is a marvelous thing, isn't it?"

  "Some more than others."

  "I'll tell you."

  I took the stairs going down three at a time and almost fell. The image of James struggling and the dark stain of blood on the sheets replayed itself over and over in my mind. I started to slam the door but caught myself and eased it shut. The night air seemed colder. I breathed deep. The snow was starting to collect on the ground and on the tops of the posts along the driveway. A noiseless blanket. My skin felt tight. A bolt of fear erupted from my core and I started to run. When I reached the woods and its safe smell of rotting leaves, I stopped to look back. I half expected to see someone chasing me or hear someone yelling for me to stop. A flash of that silent lightning lit up the sky and that instant I could see down along the curving drive. Dark boot prints marked my path in the slush. A tether between me and James's body.

  I tilted my head up toward the black sky and blinked. The orange glow from the lodge gave off enough light to see the wet flakes dropping like rain. I turned and kept on running until I got to my car. My lungs felt like bags of acid and my side hurt. Blood pounded through my head. Out on the main road, a pair of headlights crept toward me. I ducked down behind my car and peered through the spattered windows. The headlights seemed to slow down, then speed back up again once it passed. I stayed in my crouch, watching the red taillights until they disappeared around the bend, heading north toward the town of Pulaski.

  I got in and checked my rearview mirror, clenching the wheel so that my hands cramped, forcing me to flex them. I took it slow, winding my way through the back roads, easing up and over the rise on Depot Road. When I pulled into my own garage, I stood there looking out, fretting over the time it took for the dark tire tracks to fill up with snow. By the time they did, my fingers were numb from cold. Jessica was in the living room. A fire popped in the grate, the reflection of its orange and yellow light flickering off the shiny surface of the carved mantel. Her feet were curled up underneath her. In her hand was a book. It all looked so normal, and she looked up and smiled at me in a way that made me feel like it had all been a dream.

  "Where's Tommy?"

  "Asleep."

  I nodded and looked down at my hands for the first time, seeing the bloodstains on the soft brown leather. I held them out for her to see.

  "You had to," she said.

  "Jesus," I said, wincing.

  She closed her mouth tight and stood up, taking the gloves off my hands. Without looking at me, she opened the screen and laid them on the fire. When she looked back, she reached up, took my face in her hands, and pulled me close.

  "It never happened," she said in a whisper, staring hard into my eyes. "That's what you have to do. In your mind. It never happened. It was Johnny G. His people. They were supposed to do it and as far as we know, they did. You were here. With me."

  "Tommy?"

  "He's a boy. They can't even talk to him. Don't lose your focus. We had dinner and built a fire. I read my book and you read the paper. Then we made love. It all happened." She paused. "You have to see it."

  I felt her hands slipping up under my shirt and her nails dragging along the skin on either side of my spine. I put my mouth to hers, felt her clenching me. Her fingers undid my clothes. She took me upstairs and made me forget. She went to the bathroom and came back with a cup of water and something in her hand.

  "What is it?" I asked.

  "Take it," she said. "It's good for you."

  "What?"

  I pinched the fat white pill and turned it over in the dim light from the bathroom. Vicodin. From a knee surgery two years ago.

  "It'll help," she said. "Trust me."

  I started to hand it back but she pushed it toward me.

  "Yes," she said.

  I took it.

  In the morning, I lifted my head up off the bed to look out through the big arching window. The bellies of the clouds were bright pink, their fringes dressed in a lavender mist. They stretched to the end of the lake and on forever after. The thought of James twisting under the pillow dropped like a stone in my gut. My arms and legs went rigid. Jessica woke, touched my face, and looked into my eyes. Her own were puffy and moist.

  "No," she said, her tongue slow and heavy. "I told you. It was a dream. You were here."

  "Oh God," I said, panic rising. I rolled over and wretched.

  "Don't do that," she said, her voice grating my ears. "Don't. You can't."

  She hurried me out of bed and into the shower, made me scrambled eggs with crispy bacon, which I picked at.

  When Tommy came down, she kissed him on the head and hugged him tight.

  "Did you forget to brush your teeth?" she asked.

  "Mom," he said.

  She just pointed toward the stairs.

  When he came back, she said, "Give your father a kiss, he's got to go to work."

  Tommy came over, kissed my cheek, and hugged me. I gripped him tight, holding on until he began to squirm. I let him go.

  "Time," she said to me. "I've got to get Tommy ready and you've got a lot to do. Go bring home the bacon."

  It felt like being pushed out of an airplane, but once I was out, it got better. It never left me, the nausea, the foggy sensation, the image of that death scene flickering up, unwanted on the back screen of my mind, but I was able to somehow go through the motions. I called my secretary and went over the coming week's calendar. I even reorganized a meeting with the leasing group to accommodate an emergency meeting James had called with the Garden State team and the company's new board of directors. Then I started my calls, mostly to contractors eager for a way into the project, talking until I arrived at King Corp.

  Ben's office was across an open area filled with file cabinets and secretaries' desks. His door was open and I could see him on the phone with his feet up. We waved to each other and I kept going. My office was just past Scott's. His was all glass and I could see the empty desk. I said hello to his secretary and asked if she'd seen him.

  "He was at the lodge last night," she said, smiling. "He's got a Jet Management meeting at ten, though, so you might get him on his cell phone on the way in."

  I said thanks and went into my own office, quietly closing the door. I had my own private bathroom in the back. I hunched down over the toilet bowl and vomited up my breakfast. I cleaned up, straining to breathe, blinking at the pale green color of my skin in the mirror, then I sat down and turned on my computer.

  She was right. I had to push it out of my mind.

  My screen was on, thick with unopened e-mails. I just stared. My jaw went slack and my eyes lost their focus.

  When Ben burst through my door, I grabbed the edge of my desk and sat blinking at him. When he told me James was dead, I shook my head like I didn't understand.

  "Stabbed," Ben said. He had his cell phone in his hand, beating it against his other palm like he was trying to shake some truth out of it. "Scott's knife. That thing from Africa."

  He looked at me. His brow was wrinkled. His mouth flat. "And Scott's gone."

  I winced and shook my head, glad for an excuse to look as pale as the image I'd just seen in the bathroom mirror.

  "Bucky saw him and James talking in the bar last night when he left. They were supposed to hunt this morning. His truck's gone and I guess Emily hasn't heard from him."

  "Jesus," I said.

  "It can't be what they think," Ben said, shaking his head. "No way. It's got to be something with the union, like Milo."

  I just sat there and stared. Through the thick fog, I saw James struggling against the pillow.

  "That's what I'm going to tell them," Ben said.

  "Who?"

  "The police," he said. "They just called. A Detective McCarthy. He wants me to meet him at his office at two."

  "Are you getting a lawyer?" I asked.

  "Why?"

  "I don't know," I said. "That's what people do. I mean, why does he want to talk to you?"

  "I don't know. He asked for you too."

  24

  I WENT STRAIGHT HOME.

  Jessica was at the kitchen table with the house plans spread out. Through the glass behind her, sunshine played on the lake and the trees up and down the hillsides. She had the architect on speakerphone, and in that metallic voice he was describing a set of marble columns that he'd come across on his last trip to New York City. When she saw me, she looked up with glassy eyes and a lazy smile that made me think about the Vicodin pills. She told the architect that she had to go but would call him right back.

  "I'm having the septic field put another hundred yards from the house," she said, running her finger across the plans. "He says we don't need it, but if he smelled as much cow shit as I did he'd want it farther away too."

  "The police want to talk to me," I said, sitting down beside her, throwing my face into my hands. When I realized she wasn't responding, I looked up.

  "I didn't want to call you on the phone. This detective called Ben. I asked Ben if he was getting a lawyer. I probably shouldn't have said that, right?"

  She reached out and touched my arm.

  I stared at her for a moment. Her nod was slow and insistent, and it dawned on me that she was waiting for me to go through the motions of pretending that neither of us knew what had happened, waiting for me to deliver my lines.

  Finally, I said, "James."

  "What happened?" she asked. Her voice was flat, almost languid.

  "They found him," I said, my voice oddly mechanical. "He's dead and Scott's gone."

  "What do you mean, gone?"

  "It was his knife."

  "Oh my God. He killed his father."

  I just looked at her, marveling at the strange flatness of her words. Her mouth curled up at its corners.

  "I have to go see this cop, right?"

  "Of course," she said. "He'll ask you about Scott."

  "And the union?"

  "Maybe. Does it really matter? You were with me."

  She smiled some more, her mind ticking away, enjoying every minute of her game. I parked next to a rusted blue and gold police cruiser and Ben pulled in next to me in his own car. The New York State Police Department and McCarthy's office were in a one-story brick municipal building just off the town square in Pulaski. The town had once been the site of a major government port project for the Great Lakes. But the port failed, and the highway had been built too far to the east to make up for the loss of commerce. The upper stories of the small brick buildings on the main street either boasted fading curtains or were filled with old plywood. Storefronts were marked by hand-painted signs and the ones still open showed off racks of used clothing, secondhand appliances, or neon beer signs through great sheets of dirty glass. Dust and grit layered crumbling sidewalks, and the broken curb sprouted posts from parking meters long since stolen or destroyed. Ben and I walked in together with me avoiding eye contact. There were two gray restroom doors right there and I could smell the disinfectant. The woman at the desk took us through a maze of cubicles and sat us down on some scarred wooden chairs outside an office that had McCarthy's plastic nameplate on the door.

  Ben hung his head and sighed. The door opened, and there was Bucky with a camouflage hat in his hands. His curly hair was rumpled and his eyes were red and moist, more than normal. Purple crescents hung beneath them. The dark part of his eyes found mine and wouldn't let go. My gut heaved, and I thanked God it was empty. I swallowed and looked down at my shoes, waiting for the shadow of his legs to pass before I raised my head.

  McCarthy was fifty. Lean with gold wire glasses. Dark graying hair cut short. An open-collar shirt with a tweed blazer that had a small badge-shaped pin on the lapel. He held the door and asked us to come in. We sat down in the two chairs facing his desk. On top was a stick figure made from golf tees, a dusty phone, and stacks of file folders bursting with papers.

  "He's something, huh?" McCarthy said, nodding toward the door.

  "Bucky?" Ben asked.

  "Yeah," McCarthy said. "Saw some footprints in the snow last night."

  "How was that?" I asked.

  "Couldn't sleep," McCarthy said, picking up a yellow pad and a pen off the desk. "Said he saw tracks on the driveway and followed them all the way out to the road. By the time he backtracked, they were filled in. They came from the lodge, went to some tire tracks."

  "Scott's?" I asked. I gulped down bile and sat up straight, angling for a better view of his notepad, thinking I saw my name.

  "No. One of the maids saw Scott take off around six in the morning."

  "Scott would never do this," Ben said. His hands were clasped with their knuckles braced up under his nose, like he was praying and thinking at the same time.

  "No? What makes you say that?" McCarthy asked, writing, then glancing up.

  "They had a big blowout," I said, looking at McCarthy's phone, my peripheral vision zeroed in on the pad. "James's taking the company public. Scott didn't want him to."

  I glanced at Ben, who glared at me and narrowed his lips.

  "That true?" McCarthy said.

  "That was a couple weeks ago," Ben said, shaking his head. "An argument. You don't stab your father."

  "I know," I said and I looked at McCarthy with a frown and a slight shake of my own head. "But Scott was mad. He didn't want this public thing."

  "How bad a blowout? Like physical?" McCarthy asked, pointing the pen at us.

  "Maybe he grabbed his dad," I said. "No fists or anything."

  "We separated them right away," Ben said. "Don't make more of it than it was."

  "No, but he's gone, isn't he? Who runs when their father gets murdered?" McCarthy said, jotting down a note before clearing his throat. "Only the guy who did it. Just so I have it, where were you two last night?"

  "Home," Ben said.

  "Me too," I said, forcing my eyes away from the pad. "I was actually supposed to go to the lodge to talk with James about the construction on one of our projects, but I didn't get all the bids in, so I called to cancel."

  "Who didn't come in?" Ben asked.

  "Con Trac," I said. "It came this morning."

  "And neither of you heard from Scott?" McCarthy asked, pointing the pen again.

  "No."

  "Ben said it was his knife," I said.

  "Bucky told me anyone could have gotten it," McCarthy said.

  "I thought he kept it locked up," I said. I saw the words "THREE FRIENDS" on the pad and scoured for something legible around it.

  "Where?" McCarthy asked.

  "The whole family, they have these private lockers. Big closets where they keep their own gear. Bucky could show you."

  "He didn't mention them," McCarthy said, writing.

  There was a knock at the office door. McCarthy got out from behind his desk and opened it.

  "The captain wants you," the woman from the front desk said in an urgent whisper.

  "I'm interviewing."

  "Now," she said. "He said right now. To get you."

  McCarthy smiled at us and said, "Excuse me."

  "What are you doing?" Ben asked when the door was shut.

  "What?"

  "What you're doing," he said. "You know Scott would never."

  "He was pretty mad," I said. I looked over at him. He crossed his arms so I crossed my own. "Look. I have no idea. I'm just answering the questions. Don't be an asshole."

  "You don't."

  We sat without talking. It wasn't a minute before the door opened again. This time McCarthy didn't come in.

  "Thane," McCarthy said, his face was flushed, "can you come with me?"

  "Sure," I said. My heart was thumping and the sound of ocean surf in my ears. I didn't even look at Ben. I just wanted to make it out of the room without tripping.

  I followed McCarthy through some desks and down a hallway. McCarthy opened another door. Inside was a long table, two foam cups of coffee, and the women from the FBI. 25

  "They said they flew into Syracuse that morning," I say, "to meet with James. Man, that McCarthy's face went red as a beet. You could see the muscles working in his jaw. Looked like he was gonna break his own teeth. They just snatched the whole case right out from under him. You know, the OC task force thing."

  "You don't think it was a coincidence that they were there?" he asks.

  "I guess. It was weird, though, the way they turned up all the time."

  "Witches, huh?"

  "Might as well have been."

  "What about your friend?"

  "Ben? I didn't see him until the next day," I say. "Which was fine with me. Then, when I did see him, I didn't have to worry about the friend thing. That son-of-a-bitch."

  I sat down in the wooden chair facing the two witches across the table. Amanda, the redhead, shut the door and sat down next to her partner. They were behind a small table, Amanda in a brown suit, looking the executive. Dorothy in her Windbreaker with that frizzy gray hair busting out in the back of her head. Behind them was a dirty window. No two-way glass or anything fancy, just a view of the barren trees and some train tracks. Like McCarthy, they had notepads, and also a small tape recorder pushed to my side of the table.

  "What can you tell us about last night?" Amanda asked.

  "Are we talking about James, or Johnny G?"

  "Maybe both," Dorothy said, jotting something down.

  "Or Scott?" I said.

  "Why Scott?" Amanda said, glancing at her notepad, then staring at me.

  "Detective McCarthy said he left the lodge in a hurry. James was killed with his knife, right? It doesn't take Perry Mason," I said.