Andrés frowned. “You have given me no reason to believe that the death of Bron Czernin has anything to do with Billy Bysen and his family. Perhaps even Mrs. Czernin organized this attack herself. Have you spoken with her? A woman who is betrayed, who feels angry, she can well commit murder, especially a woman like Mrs. Czernin, who now has a daughter gravely ill, she will not be the most reasoning person. She can well do something terrible to her husband and his lover in her anger and her grief.”

“It’s not impossible,” I conceded. “It took a lot of strength to heft those bodies around. If Ms. Czernin had knocked them out, she could have moved them with a forklift, if she had one, into whatever truck that took them to the pit. It’s all possible, but not very believable.”

The man who’d told Andrés to finish the kitchen made a great show of looking at his watch.

“I’m leaving,” I said. “But, Pastor, if Billy calls you again, tell him to talk to me, or to Conrad Rawlings in the Fourth District, if his worries about his family include knowledge of some kind of crime. There’s an awfully big tiger out there for a nineteen-year-old to grab by his tail. Thanks, by the way, for the information about Fly the Flag.”

That startled him out of his detached demeanor. “I told you nothing! And if you say otherwise, you are committing a terrible sin by bearing false witness.”

“So long.” I smiled and turned on my heel.

I left the house slowly, hoping he might change his mind and come after me with more information. A couple of men taking a cigarette break out front gave me a cheerful greeting as I passed, but Andrés remained in the kitchen.

I walked to the Czernins’ house from the jobsite, since it was only three blocks away. The day continued cold, the sky filled with clouds that rolled and twisted over the lake. Despite the bitter weather, I went slowly, not eager to face Sandra Czernin and her unpredictable rages. And wondering, too, about Andrés.

I wanted to hang him upside down from the roof joists and shake him until whatever he knew about Billy and his family and Fly the Flag came tumbling out of his head. I found it impossible to believe Andrés had set the fire at the factory, but he was an electrician. He would know where the wiring came into the plant and how to use it to cause maximum devastation. But I didn’t think he would engineer a man’s death, and I couldn’t imagine any reason he’d shut down a business that provided good jobs to the community.