“Mrs. Coughlin—your daughter’s friend’s mother—has given a statement that she picked up your daughter and brought her home that day. She said you and your wife were going out on a date, and she’d agreed to do the driving so you two could be alone.”

A long pause. “She did?”

“Yep. So how about we start over. Do you know what you were doing . . .” On and on it went. A faceless officer asking Dad where he’d been the night Mom was killed, and Dad giving him every transparent lie in the book. At one point, Dad broke down, his tears sounding angry and frustrated. Calculated? Yes, maybe even measured.

I listened to both tapes, and never did Dad offer a believable story. And he’d offered so many unbelievable ones it was impossible to think that a believable one existed. Why? Why would he lie unless he was guilty?

“Am I being arrested?” he’d asked at one point, and the officer had sounded brusque when he responded, “No, sir. We’re just trying to get a sense of what happened that night. We don’t have anything to arrest you for, do we?”

Dad’s response had been chilling. His voice flat, impassive. “No. You don’t have anything.”

I let the second tape run until it reached the end. The machine gave a squeak and then clicked off, and I was left sitting in bloated silence in my room, my legs drawn up and my arms wrapped around them.

Not, No, I didn’t do it. Not, Whatever it takes to find my wife’s killer. Just, No, you don’t have anything. Which was definitely not the same as saying there was nothing to have.

He didn’t come out and say that he’d done it. He didn’t confess and throw himself on the mercy of the court. But he’d lied. He’d done nothing to convince me that he hadn’t done it.

I popped the cassette out of the machine and put it back in the manila envelope, then took the recorder back downstairs to Dad’s closet.

But when I moved the bandage box to put it back, I noticed a stack of yellowed, clipped newspaper articles under where the recorder had been sitting. I pulled them down. The headline on the very top one caught my eye.

PRODUCER PAIRS WITH UP-AND-COMER FOR HOT NEW THRILLER

Hollywood, CA—Noted producer Bill Hollis has announced his newest film venture—an as-yet-unnamed cat-and-mouse thriller about a professional football player who is hiding the fact that he’s a serial killer, and the young journalist who is next on his hit list. Hollis, best known for the 1994 Academy Award–winning Penelope, has paired with fledgling director Carrie Kill, in what he is calling his best work yet.