Gorrie supposed the messiness of the scene was another of the things that had niggled at him these past nights. In his experience, women tended to avoid ruining their faces when they did away with themselves. They swallowed pills or poison, slit their wrists in the bath, went to sleep breathing automobile exhaust. If they used a pistol, the fatal shot was most often pointed at their chests. You couldn’t state it hard and fast, naturally. But neat was the preference. A fit specimen like Claire Mackay, who cared about her looks . . . Gorrie wouldn’t have thought she was one who’d leave herself to be found mutilated. And then there was her racy wear. It wasn’t what she’d have put on before polishing the nails, setting the hair in rollers, and going off to dreamland. A woman didn’t slip into a provocative nightie like that, make an irresistible package of herself, unless she was in what you’d call a romantic mood. Yet Claire’s passion for Ed had gone into a sudden tailspin, hit some jagged divide in the moments before it would have brought them to an act of love.

Gorrie shifted in his chair, his frown deepening. What had her husband done to turn things bad?

Gorrie stared at his sleeping wife in the silence. Shadows crowded him. There hadn’t been a passing car for a while, and the corner traffic signal flashed meaninglessly at an empty street. He had wondered at the absence of a suicide note. In the bungalow, he’d noticed that the wee’un had been fine attended. His room was small but tidy, his pajamas and linens freshly washed, the closet shelves stocked with nappies, cotton bobs, and the like. There were toys and stuffed animals in his crib, bright-colored mobiles hanging above it. Fine attended. Yet in the time between Claire’s putting a shot in her husband’s head and turning the gun on herself, she’d seemingly given no thought to what the consequences would be for the child. Not even to snatching up a piece of paper and scribbling the name of a family member, godparent, friend, some preferred or appointed guardian who would see to his welfare. Instead, she had abandoned her responsibility, left the state to decide what was to become of him.

Gorrie had seen a lot in his twenty-five years on the job. More than he wanted. He knew better than to make assumptions. Still, this affair seemed curious. And there were some further peculiarities he wanted to straighten out in his head when the forensic reports arrived from the lab. That wouldn’t be for another couple of weeks, he’d been told . . . but Gorrie knew how to put on the hustle.