“Obviously, Detective, if I knew this woman was going to end up murdered, I would have done anything in my power to stop it. But she told me she was okay, and that’s all I could go on. I wasn’t at my best back then.”

“You’ve said that.”

“Are you telling me the husband is the prime suspect?” I ask. “If he was cheating and she caught him, maybe that led him to silence her. It’s been two and a half years, and you haven’t been able to make an arrest.”

“But she thought you were behaving inappropriately,” Bowman says. “She told her husband she saw the man with the dog lingering outside the house late at night. Sometimes after midnight. She thought that man was trying to look in the windows at them. At her, presumably. How is a woman supposed to feel about that? Do you see how this looks for you, Connor?”

“I told you I didn’t mean them any harm. I was . . . curious. I was . . . floundering.”

“Here’s what I’d like to do, Dr. Nye. Just in the interest of covering all my bases.” Bowman sounds reasonable and calm. We could be two coworkers shooting the breeze in the company break room, casually spinning out options for the project we’re about to launch. “We took quite a bit of forensic evidence at the scene of Sophia’s murder. Fingerprints. Hair samples. DNA. The whole nine yards, as my father used to say. If you’d just consent to some tests and provide some samples, then we could eliminate you from any further consideration in this matter.”

Eliminate you from further consideration.

Bowman doesn’t care about my not calling 911 when I saw Sophia and Zachary having a fight. She’s still fixated on the details in the book and my time in Sophia’s neighborhood.

She thought I was watching them, acting strangely.

And Bowman sure is hoping I was because she thinks she’s going to catch a murderer.

“I’m not staying for this.” I stand up. “You said I was free to go whenever I want, so I’d like to go.” I realize I don’t have a car. It would be much more dramatic if I could simply storm out of the police station and drive off. Less so if I need to call an Uber to take me away.

“That may have changed,” Bowman says.

“What changed?”

“My flexibility on letting you go,” she says. “As a matter of fact, I feel compelled to remind you of your Miranda rights before any further questioning occurs. I’d hate to have my investigation derailed because of a procedural error.”