I closed the phone.

Sorry. We're almost finished.

Whatever.

Did he ever do or say anything that made you fearful?

I wouldn't have gone to the market for him if I was scared of him.

Okay. Did he ever ask if he could take your picture?

She gave an exaggerated shiver. She knew I was talking about the album.

Yuck. No. I would've told him to fuck off.

All right. One last thing. Did he say or do anything that made you think or makes you think now, in retrospect that he was suicidal?

She grew distant for a moment, then went to the newspaper. She touched it, but did not pick it up.

Not like, I'm going to blow my brains out, but he was depressed. He was really scared of the police. He thought they were out to get him.

He did?

The police framed him for murder. He talked about it a lot.

I took a slow breath.

He told you about Yvonne Bennett?

How the police tried to frame him. He hated the police. He said they were always trying to get him. I mean, here's this gimpy little man going on with a major persecution complex, and it sounded so made up.

He didn't make it up.

Are they really writing a book about him?

I shook my head, not understanding, and Ivy Casik went on.

Someone came to see him about how the police framed him. The guy told him it could be a book and a movie, and all this stuff, and Lonnie was bragging how he was going to be rich, and it all sounded so absurd.

My mouth felt dry, but wetting my lips didn't help.

Who was this person?

I don't know. A reporter, he said. This reporter was doing a story about how the police fucked him over.

Ivy Casik was an attractive young woman. It was easy to imagine Byrd making up stories about books and movies to impress her.

Did you see this person?

It was just something Lonnie told me, like the dude brought this little tape recorder and asked lots of questions.

A dude who came to the house?

Yeah. Do you think he was lying?

I don't know.

I thought he made it up until I saw the paper. They really did charge him with murder. They really did drop the charges. Those things were true.

Yes, I said. Those things were true.

A new player had entered the crime scene. An unnamed person who might have approached Lionel Byrd to discuss the subject of murder, and who might or might not even exist. If someone had been looking for Lionel Byrd, I wondered how they had found him. Everyone on Anson Lane thought Lionel Byrd was Lonnie Jones.

I wondered how I could find out if Lionel Byrd's story about the reporter was true. The police should have gone through Byrd's phone records and back-checked the numbers, so Bastilla probably already knew, but she probably wouldn't tell me. Maybe the guy in the Mustang would know.