“I’m going to tell you some things I shouldn’t,” I said. “I’m going to tell you some things that can hurt me, that maybe you won’t want anything to do with me anymore, and that would hurt me. I don’t want that. But it’s who I am, who I am, not your brother. He was helping me. That’s all he was doing. Everything is my fault.”

She didn’t say anything.

“I do small jobs for people. Mostly stealing stuff. They tell me what they want and I go and get it. That’s it. I never hurt anyone. Frank never hurt anyone. All we did was steal stuff for other people. That’s all we were doing down there. And some guy hits us, hits Frank, some guy who apparently was using a name Frank had made up. I don’t know why or how he had the name. I don’t know why he was there following us or whatever it was he was doing. Maybe he was trying to stop Frank. Maybe he was going to kill him and got into an accident. Maybe he killed him later. I don’t know any of it. But I know I need to find out who it was, who it really was. And we can’t let the cops know about any of it. And I need to know if they told you anything else about any of it.”

“They know about you,” Casey said. “Or they think they do. They suspect. They told me you stole things. They said you worked for someone else. They didn’t tell me anything more than that.”

“It’s true,” I said. “But Frank wasn’t part of it. He didn’t know anything about who I worked for, none of that. He was only helping me. He was trying to help me get out of it. You need to know that. All your brother did was help.”

“I want to help,” Casey said. “But you have to tell me what happened. All of it.”

I told her, more or less. Just enough for her to help, or think she was helping. I told her that we had taken something but I didn’t tell her what it was, and that the job had been where Frank was killed, that he’d been killed taking the thing back. I didn’t tell her it was in the house where the kid was. I didn’t tell her that.

“I don’t see how it makes sense,” Casey said. “How does the kid fit in?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe he doesn’t fit. Or maybe he was trying to stop whoever wanted the thing in the first place. We left someone unhappy. They wanted something and didn’t get it.”

“They didn’t get it from Frank?”