Back at Grey Lady, he shut the front door quietly behind him. He could hear gentle snores coming from the living room. He took his shoes off by the door, and went and looked over the couch at Alice, sleeping, while another home renovation show, this one with a pair of handsome twins, played on the television.

Harry left her where she was and went up to his own room. It was warm and stuffy, retaining the heat from earlier in the day. He opened a window, took off all his clothes, and got under his single sheet. He cracked a book even though he knew there was no possibility he’d be able to read anything. He stared at the illegible lines of print, and thought about the day, and about how little he’d known his father.

Chapter 20

Then

The police returned the next evening. Not Officer Wilson with his fuzzy mustache, but a woman with a perm of tight curls who introduced herself as Detective Metivier.

“Sorry to come around during dinner hour,” she said to Jake at the door, as Alice listened from the living room, “but I have some follow-up questions for Alice.”

Jake let her in, offering her coffee that she turned down.

Alice had called in sick at the pharmacy, and was still in her pajamas and her favorite robe. She wasn’t sick, but she really didn’t want to be out in public, listening to people speculate about what had happened to Gina Bergeron. They must have been gossiping like mad in Kennewick, because they had already begun to gossip in the world at large. Alice had watched Entertainment Tonight the previous evening, and Gina was the second story. A promising model who had mysteriously died in the ocean while visiting her family. Alice had been shocked when one of the pictures they chose to show was her own favorite picture. Gina in the yellow bathing suit with the sad eyes. Well, they’d picked it because of how haunted she looked, probably. At the end of the segment, John Tesh had said something like “More to come on this story, for sure,” and Mary Hart had frowned and tilted her head. Alice had thought: Why is there more to come? Another tragic model, drugs and suicide. What else was there?

After Jake pulled up a chair for Detective Metivier to sit on, Alice, settling on the edge of the sofa, noticed that the detective held a small plastic box in her hands. It looked like a square toolbox, or a piece of medical equipment. The detective caught Alice looking at the box, and said, “It’s a kit for making a tooth imprint, Alice.”

Jake, still standing, said, “What’s going on?”

“Alice, did you bite Gina Bergeron on Friday night?”

“Yeah, I bit her on the hand.”

The detective looked a little taken aback, as though she’d been preparing for a denial.

“Can you tell me why?”