Guppo did, but he didn’t let her go. Al bounded up the steps before Stride could stop him and put his arms around his mother. She kept screaming. Police officers ran from different parts of the neighborhood. Finally, Stride shouted, raising his voice above the chaos, and everyone stopped in place.

It was silent. Al’s mother panted. Her face was furious. Her raspy voice dissolved in a coughing fit.

‘Listen,’ Al said, sounding calmer and older now, like a boy who wanted to protect his mother. ‘I don’t know what Cat told you guys, but you are on the wrong track. I swear. I don’t know anything about this ring she has, and I sure as hell don’t know anything about a gun.’

Maggie stared at Al’s mother. She was young, but she looked old. The woman wiped spittle from her lips and stared back at Maggie.

‘You know about the gun,’ Maggie said to her quietly. ‘Don’t you, Mrs. Pugh?’

Al started to interrupt, but then he saw his mother’s face, and he let her speak. She stood up straight and smoothed the housedress she was wearing. She was tall, like Al. The boy couldn’t hide his confusion. This was all new to him, but it wasn’t new to his mother.

She knew exactly what was going on.

‘Yes,’ she told Maggie. ‘Okay, yes, I do. I know all about that gun.’

*

They sat inside. One of Mrs. Pugh’s daughters made tea. The search of the house was over, but it had revealed nothing of importance in either murder investigation. There was no hidey-hole in the house or grounds in which the kidnapped women had been kept. Erin Tierney wasn’t here. She never had been. There was no jewelry from nine years earlier.

Everyone stared at Al’s mother, waiting for her story. There was an oversized photograph of Seymour Pugh with his family in a frame that leaned against a freshly painted wall. Maggie recognized the man from her visit years before. He still had the same smile, but life had corroded him at a fast pace. She wasn’t surprised to learn that he’d died of a stroke three years after she met him.

Mrs. Pugh stared at the photograph, too, and Maggie saw pride in the fierce little smile she gave Seymour. This was a woman who loved her husband, no matter what he’d done.

‘What you’re thinking is what it is,’ Mrs. Pugh finally told them. ‘It was Seymour who did it. He shot that man. Took the jewelry. Guess it doesn’t matter now, although I didn’t want Al and the girls finding out about their daddy. Seymour’s long gone, God rest him. I know Jesus forgives him. Jesus understands what he did.’

Mrs. Pugh was silent. She wiped her eyes.

‘The gun?’ Stride asked. ‘Where did he get it?’