No kidding.

I put down the paper. I noticed without much surprise that my hands were shaking. I was even shakier on the inside. I caught Evelyn’s eye, and when she came over I asked her to bring me a double shot of bourbon.

She said, “Are you sure, Matt?”

“Why not?”

“Well, you haven’t been drinking. Are you sure you want to start?”

I thought, What’s it to you, kid? I took a breath and let it out and said, “Maybe you’re right.”

“How about some more coffee?”

“Sure.”

I went back to the story. A preliminary examination fixed the time of death some time around midnight. I tried to think what I’d been doing when he killed her. I’d come to Armstrong’s after the meeting, but what time had it been when I’d left? I made it a fairly early night, but even so it had probably been close to midnight by the time I packed it in. Of course the time of death was approximate, so I might have been already asleep when he started to chop her life away.

I sat there and I kept drinking coffee and I read the story over and over and over.

From Armstrong’s I went to St. Paul’s. I sat in a rear pew and tried to think. Images kept bouncing back and forth, flashes of my two meetings with Kim intercut with my conversation with Chance.

I put fifty futile dollars in the poor box. I lit a candle and stared at it as if I expected to see something dancing in its flame.

I went back and sat down again. I was still sitting there when a soft-spoken young priest came over and told me apologetically that they would be closing for the night. I nodded, got to my feet.

“You seem disturbed,” he offered. “Could I help you in any way?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’ve seen you come in here from time to time. Sometimes it helps to talk to someone.”

Does it? I said, “I’m not even Catholic, Father.”

“That’s not a requirement. If there’s something troubling you—”

“Just some hard news, Father. The unexpected death of a friend.”

“That’s always difficult.”

I was afraid he’d hand me something about God’s mysterious plan, but he seemed to be waiting for me to say more. I managed to get out of there and stood for a moment on the sidewalk, wondering where to go next.

It was around six-thirty. The meeting wasn’t for another two hours. You could get there an hour early and sit around and have coffee and talk to people, but I never did. I had two hours to kill and I didn’t know how.