“Lives alone as far as I know. Haven’t seen him around in a while.” The neighbor gave me his name. I wrote it down and thought she didn’t know what she was talking about. Maybe she was confused about it. It put me in a foul mood and I went back to the car and thought about forgetting about the day and all the people I made the mistake of meeting. It was getting late, but not late enough. I thought I should wait around until after eight and talk to the caregiver at the house across the street. I went and got something to eat and wasted time until I could come back. I wasn’t expecting much, but then I’d been wrong all day.

The other aide was still there; she helped explain what I wanted to know. She took charge and hardly let me speak. If there was anything to know, she was going to know it. The night aide was from Honduras. I didn’t have to ask, the other aide told me. Her name was Marina. They’d been working together for almost two years now. “The agency likes how we work with each other, I guess,” Marina said. I stood there and nodded my head as Marina and the other aide talked at me. “Show her the picture,” the aide told me and I showed it to Marina.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But I saw two men come out of the house that night, around the time you’re talking about.”

“Do you know who he was with?” the first aide asked Marina.

“With the man who lives in the house,” Marina said.

“You saw him?”

“I saw them come out of the house. They were on the sidewalk, and then walked down the street. I saw it. I was right at the window.”

“You saw this.”

“I was right there,” Marina said, and pointed to a place on the floor, right in front of a window. “And they were right there.” She pointed to the sidewalk across the street, in front of the house. “I didn’t think anything about it. They just walked down the street. But I saw them. Maybe he should be arrested, the man who lives there.”

“Maybe he will be,” I said. “We’ll need more information than what you saw, but it’s a big part of what we need to know. Someone might be back to talk more to you, if that’s okay.”

“All I know is what I saw. It was only a couple of seconds. But sometimes that’s all it takes.”

Maybe the guy across the street didn’t do the actual deed, but he knew who did. Perhaps he took Frank right to the guy who gave him the shot. I could have saved a lot of time and just knocked on that door across the street. It was right there.