Once I had it in my pocket and was driving home, I kept wondering if there was anything I’d missed. I swung into a fast-food joint, headed straight for the men’s room, and flushed all the tissues, including the one I’d used to wipe the blood from my finger, down the toilet. I tore the note written on the back of my checkbook into a dozen pieces and flushed it as well. Then, as an afterthought, I ripped up the scrap of paper from Stefanie’s mother and flushed a third time. As I exited the stall, a man washing his hands glanced at me, no doubt wondering just how severe my bowel disorder was.

I got back in the car and felt I’d thought of everything. I’d covered my tracks well.

Oh fuck.

My name and e-mail address were on a piece of paper in that woman’s house. When the police came to tell her about her daughter’s murder, she’d tell them about the man who’d been by earlier that evening, looking for her, supposedly to return a driver’s license.

Think. Think.

My fingerprints weren’t anywhere at Stefanie’s house. As far as anyone could tell, I had not been inside. I could stick with the story that I’d found her driver’s license. Ditch the purse behind Mindy’s, if I had to. Police could think some kid stole the purse, driver’s license fell out, I found it, attempted to return it. Went to the address on the license, met her mother, got a further address, went there, found no one at home, window smashed in, thought that looked funny, called 911.

That way, I’d look less suspicious. Being the guy to make the call.

I’d crack in an instant. Five minutes under the hot lights and I’d spill my guts.

No, no, I wouldn’t. I could pull this off.

But first, I wanted to get home and look inside Stefanie Knight’s purse. What I wanted to find in there was nothing. Nothing that would lead someone to want her dead if she’d lost it, been unable to produce it, to give it back.

When I got home I went straight to my study and was taking the purse out of the bag when I heard Sarah call to me from upstairs. “Zack? That you?”

I tossed the purse behind a box of old papers I kept under the desk and went upstairs, finding her in our bedroom, emptying a basket of clean laundry and slipping it into drawers.

“How’s Kenny?” she asked.

Kenny? I thought. Was there something wrong with Kenny?

“Huh?” I said.

“Kenny’s wife. How’s she doing?”

It came back to me. “Aww, she’s okay. She’ll be fine. Should be out in a day or two.”

“That’s good,” Sarah said. “He didn’t say what’s wrong with her?”