“They’ll give you dinner there, too,” Stone said.

Tom nodded. “Thanks.”

“Do you need us for anything else?” Stone asked.

“We’ll get your statements tomorrow,” Tom replied.

“Well, let’s get home, then.” Stone got up and led his party to the station wagon and the MG.

—

Back home, Stone said, “I’ll bet that somebody besides Lance could use a drink.”

“Hell, yes,” Dino said, and everybody else nodded. He explained to Viv and Primmy what had happened.

“Stone,” Primmy said, “you’re stuck with me until those boys are dead.”

“I’d better leave in a day or two,” Carly said. “I’ve got graduation ahead of me. So I’ve got to pack and ship my things somewhere and get Tim’s car back to his parents.”

“Do you have a car?” Stone asked.

“With my first paycheck on my new job,” she said, “wherever that may be.”

“Do you still want to practice law, or do you want to be a cop now?”

“I worked hard for that degree. I’ll stick with the law.”

“I understand that you interviewed with my firm, Woodman & Weld, a few weeks ago.”

“Yes, I guess I interviewed with at least a dozen.”

“Had any offers?”

“Two or three. None that I particularly wanted.”

“Woodman & Weld were impressed,” he said. Stone wrote a name on his business card and handed it to Carly. “Call Herb Fisher tomorrow. You’ll be starting a week from Monday as an associate. You’ll spend your first couple of weeks in bar exam class with the other new associates, and you can bunk at my house until you’ve had a chance to look for your own place.”

“You can just snap your fingers and do that?”

“Well, no. You started the process with the firm when the recruiters visited Yale. And you and I have had a pretty extensive series of conversations. I’ve talked it over with Herb and our managing partner, Bill Eggers. Everybody’s enthusiastic.”

“Wow,” she said. “It seems you’ve taken the trouble to solve all my problems at once.”

“You’ll be starting a new life. You’ll have plenty of problems to solve on your own.”

—

The following morning, the Maine State Police homicide detectives came to Stone’s house and took statements from everybody. Lance made arrangements for the Jacksons’ remains to be shipped home to Georgia.

Stone called on Ed Rawls for a conversation he had known was coming.

35

Stone went through the two security gates, one of them a heavy log. He found Ed Rawls seated on his front porch with Sally, his British girlfriend. Sally was shelling peas into a bowl on her lap, while Rawls guarded her with a scoped long gun across his. Sally finished her peas, brought them coffee, and went back inside.

“She doesn’t want to hear conversations like this one,” Rawls said.

“How does she know what they’re about?”