Then there was the explanation Pastor Andrés had given about his meetings with Frank Zamar at Fly the Flag. It had sounded convincing enough, that he had urged Zamar to go back to Jacqui Bysen and tell her he couldn’t make sheets for that price. Zamar must have made some sheets for the neighborhood, because April and Josie both had bought them through their churches. Had this made the Bysens so angry that they blew up his factory? After all, “We never, never renegotiate; it’s Daddy Bysen’s first law.”

Maybe Bron and Marcena, necking in a side street, had seen Jacqui and William, or Grobian, plant the device that torched Fly the Flag, and they had been assaulted to keep them from talking about it. But that didn’t make sense: Marcena had met Conrad the day after the plant burned down. If she had seen someone committing arson, she would have told him. I think she would have told him—what could she gain by keeping such information to herself?

Jacqui’s smirk when she said I’d find myself at a dead end if I was investigating those sheets, said that, at a minimum, she knew Zamar had been making them. But they still thought they’d had a deal with Zamar—she’d said they were five days behind schedule because he’d died.

And what about Freddy, Julia’s—well, not her boyfriend, the person who had gotten her pregnant. I wanted to talk to that chavo, but I wasn’t sure where I could run him to earth. He might be visiting Julia, or the pastor, or—I realized I didn’t even know his last name, let alone where he lived. Anyway, it seemed critical, maybe urgent, to find Billy first, find him before Carnifice did.

I shut my eyes and listened to the music. The Goldberg Variations were so precise, so completely balanced, and yet so rich they made me shiver. Had Bach ever sat alone in the dark wondering if he were up to the job, or did his music flow from him so effortlessly that he never knew a moment’s doubt?

Finally, I sat up and put the car into gear. Even though I was two blocks from the Dan Ryan, I didn’t think I could face all that truck traffic this evening. I retraced my path across the Calumet and picked up Route 41. It’s a winding road down here, lined with the ubiquitous vacant lots and fast-food joints of the South Side, but it hugs the Lake Michigan shoreline and is more restful than the expressway.

As I drove north, I tried to imagine a strategy for confronting the Bysens, but nothing came to me. I could picture wiping the smirk off Jacqui Bysen’s face or somehow managing to lay Patrick Grobian flat, but I couldn’t think of a way to get them all to confess the truth.