“You sure you never left the house that night?” I ask. “Went looking for a little fun. Seems like a pretty dull time at the house. You didn’t decide to ride into town for a drink maybe?”

“No. I didn’t fucking leave the house that night.”

“Just one more thing. You want to give us a DNA sample?” He has no idea we don’t have DNA from the scene to compare his to, but hopefully we will soon.

He jumps to his feet. “No, I don’t want to give you a DNA sample. Can I go?”

Joe and I exchange glances. “Okay, Mr. Pearson. We’ll be talking to you again.”

“Do whatever the fuck you want.”

When he leaves, Joe and I huddle. “He doesn’t do himself any favors,” Joe says.

“Obnoxious twit,” I say. “But Mrs. Pearson’s information is interesting. We’ve got something of a timeline.” I tap my notebook with my pencil.

“If what Mrs. Pearson says is accurate, yeah. If the doctor was awake at twelve, he could’ve waited for her to go back up to bed, given her a few minutes to fall asleep, and slipped out the door. She’d been hearing cars on the road all night, so if the doctor took off, she might not have been able to distinguish his car from the others if she’d been listening.”

* * *

Laken Ferris is a bundle of nerves. She looks tired, not as glamorous as she had at the beginning of the investigation. Her story meshes with Mrs. Pearson’s. She says she had another drink after Mrs. Pearson went up for the night, then she and her husband followed suit. She estimates they were in bed by eleven-thirty, as far as she remembers.

Mr. Ferris is red-eyed, but otherwise, he looks composed. He sits calmly, hands folded in his lap. His story matches his wife’s. They went to bed, didn’t hear a thing.

“Mr. Ferris,” I say, “we’ve been looking through a lot of information and discovered that you had a restraining order taken out against you six years ago.”

His face blanches. “What?”

“A restraining order, Mr. Ferris.”

He drops his head and rubs his eyes under his glasses. “My mother took that out,” he says quietly.

“Your mother?” Joe says, feigning surprise.

He nods. “It was no big deal. My mother was a bit . . . disturbed. My father had died and left me some things.”

“What kind of things?”

“Baseball cards. Other sports memorabilia mostly. Nothing my mother had any interest in. And it was my stuff. Anyway, my mother was ill. She died shortly afterward. She wasn’t in her right mind. When I went to see her, I asked for the boxes, and she told me I couldn’t have them. I went up into the attic anyway. She freaked out, and when I came down with the first load, she pushed me and scratched my arms.”