I found the bathroom and ran some water, scrubbing my hands and face. I blotted my face dry, staring at myself in the bathroom mirror. I had a big scratch on my cheek. My hair was matted with dirt. I found a comb in his medicine cabinet and ran it through my mop. I peed, brushed myself off, washed my hands and face again, and returned to the living room where Dwight handed me some brandy in a softball-sized snifter.

I took it neat and he poured me a second.

"Thanks," I said. I could feel the liquor defining my insides as it eased through. I had to breathe with my mouth open for a bit. "Whew! Great."

"Sit down. You look beat."

"I am," I said. I glanced anxiously toward the front door. "Are we visible from the street?"

The narrow panels on either side of the front door were frosted glass. It was the exposed living room that bothered me. I felt as if I were onstage. He crossed the room and closed the drapes. The room was suddenly much cozier and I relaxed a bit.

He sat down in the chair across from me. "Tell me again."

I went back through the story, filling in the details. "I probably should have just waited for the cops."

"You want to go ahead and call them and turn yourself in? The phone's right there."

"Not yet," I said. "That's what I kept telling Bailey, but now I know how he felt. They'd just keep me up all night, hounding me with questions I don't have the answers for."

"What are you going to do?"

"Don't know. Get my head together and see if I can figure this out. You know, I was up here earlier and knocked on the door, but you weren't home. I wanted to ask if anybody up here ever saw Jean using the stairs."

"The stairs?"

"Up from the Timberlakes' apartment. It was right down there." I found myself pointing to the floor to indicate the base of the bluff.

"Oh, that's right. I'd forgotten about that. Talk about small towns. I guess none of us are that far from anybody else."

"That's for sure," I said. At the back of my mind, uneasiness was beginning to stir. Something about his response wasn't quite ringing true. Maybe it was his manner, which was suddenly too studiously casual to be believable. Pretending to be "normal" is a lot harder than you'd think. Did it mean anything, his having lived this close? "You forgot Jean Timberlake lived thirty feet away?"

"No big deal," he said. "I think they only lived there a few months before she died." He set his brandy snifter on the coffee table. "You hungry? I'd be happy to fix you something to eat."