“I don’t believe God kills eighteen-year-old girls,” Wallace said.

“You’re wrong. He does it all the time. Every day. Sinners get punished.”

“I see.” Wallace’s voice became flat and cold. “Mr. Starr, your neighbors overheard you shouting at Laura the night before she was killed.”

I saw Dad’s fingers tighten on the Bible in his lap.

“Yes, we argued sometimes.”

“What was the fight about?”

“I wanted her to stay on God’s path.”

“But she didn’t?” Wallace asked.

“Not always.”

“In what way?”

“That’s between me and Laura,” Dad snapped. “How can you ask me that when God is deciding the fate of her soul right now?”

Wallace didn’t like that answer.

“Mr. Starr, did you know Laura wasn’t home last night?”

“Yes. I went to her room around ten o’clock, and she wasn’t there.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing. I went to bed.”

“Did you know where Laura had gone?”

“No.”

“Did you stay up to wait for her?”

“Yes, but I fell asleep.”

“Were you home all night?”

“Of course, I just told you that.”

“Did you talk to anyone?”

“No.”

Wallace nodded. “Mr. Starr, did you ever hit your daughter?”

Dad bolted out of his chair, trembling. His white shirt fluttered. I hadn’t seen him move so quickly in years. “How dare you!”

Wallace didn’t shrink. “You heard the question, sir.”

“Never,” my dad insisted.

“Sometimes fights get out of hand.”

“I never touched her.”

Wallace eyed me. It was as if, without saying it flat out, he wanted me to tell him yes or no. Pass the secret silently between us. He wanted to know if it was true, if Dad had ever struck Laura. Or me. I met his gaze.

“My father wouldn’t do that,” I said.

Wallace nodded. That was enough for now. I told myself that I was right, because I knew my father had never lifted a hand against me, and I didn’t believe he had ever done so to Laura. Even so, I couldn’t get Laura’s voice out of my head.

What if Dad were abusing me? Could you kill him?

I said nothing about that.

Wallace kept his attention on me. “Cindy, you’ve gone over with my men what happened last night. I’m going to ask you to repeat some of it for me.”

“Sure,” I said.

“I know you’ve been through hell, and I know how hard this is for you.”

“Thank you.”

“Please tell me again exactly what you did last night and everything that happened right up until the time when the police responded to the call. Don’t leave anything out.”

So I told him.

Well, I told him some of it. There were things I left out. About me and Jonny that night. And other things, too. Jonny chimed in along the way, about Peter and the baseball game, about the storm, and Peter’s bat lying in the field. I could see Wallace’s mind working furiously whenever Peter Stanhope’s name came up, like part of him was with us and part of him was somewhere else. I wasn’t stupid. We were practically accusing the son of one of the richest men in the city of murder. A cop hears that, and he looks for a place to run. Wallace found that place right away. A black man in the woods.