Paul Andersen turned, as if relishing the audience. He spat a yellow-black gobbet of chewing tobacco onto the snow, took from his pocket a small box, which he opened. From it he formed a piece of tobacco into a small cube, fit it to the gap between his upper lip and his gum, then put the box in his pocket.

“You’d think at least they would cuff them,” said Elsa.

“I know,” I said. “You’d think.”

A new stand-in, a man, stood on the lawn in front of the house. There were marks on the ground, silver crosses made with duct tape, numbered from 5 through 16.

“Where’s Vee?” I said.

Elsa looked anxiously toward the empty chairs where she and Vee had been sitting. “She was there just now.”

Paul Andersen said something to his brother. John Andersen raised his arm, pretended to fire a shot. The men laughed.

The birdlike judge walked toward the men’s defense team. She spoke to the huddle of lawyers, though she kept eyeing the men. There was a long pause.

Elsa was gripping my arm tightly. “Is it bad that I want those men dead?”

“I know what you mean,” I said.

“What was I expecting, right?”

The simplicity of the scene made the whole thing so much worse. The standing figures; the taps to the shoulder, to the leg, to the temple, to the right lung. And throughout it all the Andersen brothers, eyes bright and chests puffed, all fighting-cock bravado and private jokes, as they made small corrections to the positions of the shooters, of the victims.

Elsa let go of my arm. “Oh.” She jumped across the rope, began running toward the chairs. I looked up, confused. There was Vee, and there was Bror, with his wild hair and his gray robes.

A voice, very close. “Hello, Cal Curtis.”

I looked around. It was Tvist, smiling, carrying three cups of coffee in a triangle he had made of his hands. “Like one? You’d be doing me a favor.”

I reached forward, took the cup nearest Tvist’s fingertips.

“Stupid way to carry hot drinks.” He bent his knees, put down the two remaining cups, shook spilled coffee from his right hand onto the pristine snow.

Paul Andersen’s voice, saying no, not like that, like this.

Seven paces. Not eight.

Tvist was standing now, sipping experimentally from his cup.

“Why aren’t those men handcuffed?” I said.

“We don’t deal in gestures. No one here is in any danger.”

We stood watching the men. I saw that Paul Andersen remembered every step, every shot, every face that passed before his gunsights. I felt how he savored the memories, how he breathed in the disgust in the faces of the survivors, of the bereaved. I knew that there was in him an enjoyment of the precision of the killing. In his brother too.