“No,” I say. And I mean it. “You have to understand something, Detective. When my wife and son died, I was in a pretty heavy fog. For a long time. I didn’t follow the news. I didn’t socialize. There was an election for president, and I didn’t vote. I didn’t even pay attention to who won. I mean . . . I was deep in the depths of despair. A lot went on I didn’t notice. I’m sorry.”

“No reason to apologize. And I’m sorry for bringing up bad memories.” But she really doesn’t sound that sorry. “But Sophia Greenfield . . . You see, the details in your book and the real details of Sophia’s murder are a lot alike. Strikingly so. In fact . . . it’s almost like you were there when she was killed.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I’m still wearing my coat. Bowman wears a white shirt, a gray suit, and crisply cleaned brown shoes. A gold watch and a wedding band. She looks like she plans to stay a while.

My coat feels tight and heavy. The heat blows out of the register across the room, making a low rattling noise. It shakes the fake plant that’s been sitting on the floor for years, gathering dust on its plastic leaves. I unbutton my coat and slip it off, feeling a little relief.

“You’re asking me if I based the book on this woman’s murder,” I say. “This . . . Sophia . . . ?”

“Greenfield. I guess I’m not asking you that anymore, since you just said you’ve never heard of the case. Although it seems hard to believe. We don’t have many murders in Gatewood, so the case got a fair amount of attention. Were you really in that much of a fog?”

“I almost lost my job, I was so out of it. I was lucky I held on. To anything.” I hate thinking of that time.

“You were lucky not to have noticed who won that election. I’ll say that. I still keep trying to pretend I don’t know the results.” She smiles at her own joke, but it looks forced. She clears her throat and taps the book with a long index finger. “In the book, you have a character named Sarah Redmond. And she gets murdered in her car in a parking lot. It’s outside her health club in the book, but still . . . Sophia Greenfield. Sarah Redmond. ‘Red’ instead of ‘Green.’ See? And they’re the same age. Twenty-seven. Right?”

“That’s just a random number. A lot of people die when they’re twenty-seven. Detective, I’m really not sure where this conversation is going, but I—”