“I didn’t,” she said quietly. “I don’t know what I was thinking of, but I didn’t notice him at all. Just so used to seeing the old truck.”

“But you said you saw Aubrey that day.” Bobo looked at her quizzically. “The sheriff told me.”

“I thought I was lying. But apparently, I did see her, after all.”

Connor grew impatient at Fiji’s interruption. “So I pulled up beside her and asked her if she wanted to go for a ride. She laughed, said she was tempted since it was a cute guy like me asking. She said she was going to hike to the river and back, so she could surprise Bobo when he came home. She was going to tie a scarf on a tree out there to prove she’d done it.”

Bobo’s head fell on his chest and his face twisted. He was squeezing back tears, and it was painful to watch.

Joe and Chuy slipped through the door and stood to either side of it, like sentinels. No one remarked on their coming or explained to them what was happening. The tingling of the electronic chime sounded weirdly commonplace in the pervading tension.

“What happened then?” Fiji asked Connor.

“So, she always flirted with me. Like that ‘ordinarily I’d love to take a ride with a cute guy like you,’” Connor said, his voice high in imitation of the dead woman. “Bobo, I want you to know that I just wasn’t interested in her that way.” Bobo did not acknowledge his words, but Connor went on, “I’m not one of these guys who kills women for sex.” His voice was laden with contempt. “But it was like she wanted my attention, she had to feel like I was interested in her,” Connor said. “I didn’t get it. But she said, ‘Don’t you dare follow me, now!’ in this chirpy voice, and she switched her butt as she walked, like she was saying, ‘Yes, follow me,’ so I drove after her in the truck.”

Aubrey’s pathological need to be admired had met up with another pathological need.

“She started out across the bare land to the river, and I bumped along behind her. She looked back once and laughed, and then I got a little mad, so I speeded up. She started running.” And Connor smiled again. “Then she wasn’t laughing.”

He stopped. He smiled. He said nothing.

“And you hit her with the truck?” Shawn said, as if he were still holding out some hope that there had been a huge mistake.

“She made a bigger thump than the dog, that’s for sure! She actually went up in the air.”

Fiji could not stand that Bobo was hearing this. But he would not leave, and she would not ask him to.