Every light blazed in Shane Lyons’s house. Half a dozen cars crowded the street, including two parked illegally on the front yard. Family, D.D. guessed. Wives of other troopers. The support system, kicking into gear.

She wondered if Shane’s boys had woken up yet. She wondered if their mother had already broken the news that their father would never again be coming home.

She and Bobby stood shoulder to shoulder at the front door, faces carefully schooled, because that’s how these things worked. They mourned the passing of any law enforcement officer, felt the pain of the officer’s family, and tended to duty anyway. Trooper Shane Lyons was a victim who was also a suspect. Nothing easy about this kind of case or this kind of investigation.

An older woman came to the door first. Judging by age and facial features, D.D. pegged her to be Tina Lyons’s mom. D.D. flashed her credentials; Bobby, too.

The older woman appeared confused. “Surely you don’t have questions for Tina right now,” she said softly. “At least give my daughter a day or two—”

“She called us, ma’am,” D.D. said.

“What?”

“We’re here because she asked us to come,” D.D. reiterated. “If you could just let her know Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren is here, we don’t mind waiting outside.”

Actually, she and Bobby preferred outside. Whatever Tina had for them was the kind of thing best not shown in front of witnesses.

Minutes passed. Just when D.D. was beginning to think that Tina had changed her mind, the woman appeared. Her face was haggard, her eyes red-rimmed from weeping. She wore a fluffy pink bathrobe, the top clutched closed with one hand. In the other, she held a plain white catalog-sized envelope.

“Do you know who killed my husband?” she asked.

“No, ma’am.”

Tina Lyons thrust the envelope toward D.D. “That’s all I want to know. I mean it. That’s all I want to know. Find that out, and we’ll speak again.”

She retreated back to the tenuous comfort of her family and friends, leaving D.D. and Bobby on the front stoop.

“She knows something,” Bobby said.

“She suspects,” D.D. corrected quietly. “She doesn’t want to know. I believe that was the whole point of her statement.”

D.D. clutched the envelope with gloved hands. She looked around the snowy driveway. After midnight in a quiet residential area, the sidewalk studded with streetlights, and yet pools of darkness loomed everywhere.

She felt suddenly conspicuous and overexposed.

“Let’s go,” she muttered to Bobby.

They moved carefully down the street toward their parked car. D.D. carried the envelope in her gloved hands. Bobby carried his gun.