“Keep your fucking hands off me!” she cried. “You knew. You knew all along, but you wouldn’t say. And now a six-year-old boy, a beautiful six-year-old boy, my boy …” Tears seemed to pulse from her eyes, and as she quivered in her rage, droplets were cast from her face. “You knew! Why didn’t you tell? Why?” She clutched herself, wrapping her arms around her body as they would be wrapped in a strait-jacket, and she looked into Brody’s eyes. “Why?”

“It’s …” Brody fumbled for words. “It’s a long story.” He felt wounded, incapacitated as surely as if he had been shot. He didn’t know if he could explain now. He wasn’t even sure he could speak.

“I bet it is,” said the woman. “Oh, you evil man. You evil, evil man. You …”

“Stop it!” Brody’s shout was both plea and command. It stopped her. “Now look, Mrs. Kintner, you’ve got it wrong, all wrong. Ask Mr. Meadows.”

Meadows, transfixed by the scene, nodded dumbly.

“Of course he’d say that. Why shouldn’t he? He’s your pal, isn’t he? He probably told you you were doing the right thing.” Her rage was mounting again, flooding, resuscitated by a new burst of emotional amperage. “You probably decided together. That makes it easier, doesn’t it? Did you make money?”

“What?”

“Did you make money from my son’s blood? Did someone pay you not to tell what you knew?”

Brody was horrified. “No! Christ, of course not.”

“Then why? Tell me. Tell me why. I’ll pay you. Just tell me why!”

“Because we didn’t think it could happen again.” Brody was surprised by his brevity. That was it, really, wasn’t it?

The woman was silent for a moment, letting the words register in her muddled mind. She seemed to repeat them to herself. She said, “Oh,” then, a second later, “Jesus.” All of a sudden, as if a switch had been turned somewhere inside her, shutting off power, she had no more self-control. She slumped into the chair next to Meadows and began to weep in gasping, choking sobs.

Meadows tried to calm her, but she didn’t hear him. She didn’t hear Brody when he told Bixby to call a doctor. And she saw, heard, and felt nothing when the doctor came into the office, listened to Brody’s description of what had happened, tried to talk to her, gave her a shot of Librium, led her—with the help of one of Brody’s men—to his car, and drove her to the hospital.

When she had left, Brody looked at his watch and said, “It’s not even nine o’clock yet. If ever I felt like I could use a drink … wow.”

“If you’re serious,” said Meadows, “I have some Bourbon back in my office.”

“No. If this was any indication of how the rest of the day’s going to go, I better not fuck up my head.”

“It’s hard, but you’ve got to try not to take what she said too seriously. I mean, the woman was in shock, for one thing.”