He tugged out the front of his shirttails and held the medicine bottle carefully folded in the cloth. He unscrewed the cap, keeping his fingers inside his sleeve. He shook a few yellow capsules into his palm. Six. He slipped them into his pocket and tightened the lid again.

Downstairs, he went through the main entryway to the living room, so he wouldn’t have to step over Ormsby’s body again. He inspected the French door Eve had fled through. The cops would need a point of entry. The door opened onto a concrete walkway. That would work. He wouldn’t have to worry about footprints. He looked at the door’s brass handle. There was no lock on the inside. It was just a plain handle. He found the latch, a brass slide bolt, mounted on the door up above eye level. He stepped outside and pulled the door closed behind him, holding the handle with his shirttails.

He pulled the gun out of his waistband and swung it like a hammer. The noise of the glass splintering surprised him—a loud crack, like a gunshot, and then the splash of glass falling on the tile floor inside. At the sound, the crickets around him broke off their chorus. He stood breathlessly in the ensuing silence, waiting for something to happen. But not even Nora, up in the cottage, barked. Ormsby’s spread was too big for the sound to have carried much beyond its garden walls.

Keegan looked down at the concrete beneath his shoes. The broken glass had all fallen to the inside of the door, which is what he wanted. He pushed open the door now, and let it sweep the shards of glass aside in an arc, as if someone had broken in. He slipped back inside, careful to step around the broken glass; he didn’t want any of it embedded in the rubber soles of his shoes.

He slipped through the dark living room again and out to the front foyer. He unlocked the front door and slipped out onto the brick entryway.

Ormsby’s black Fleetwood was parked in an open garage just off the circular driveway. He looked up at the dark house. Ormsby had to have driven right under Eve’s open bedroom window. How had she missed hearing him come home?