“No doubt,” said Werner. “But those fibers and that DNA aren’t linked to our names in the system. The police would need to suspect he’d been in our house if they wanted to do anything with that information.” He took a sip of his cappuccino.

The lump around his eye had grown, Helen saw. A dark crescent was developing on the outer edge of his eye socket. His lip was so swollen that it interfered with his speech.

After a brief silence, she said, “He might have told somebody that he was planning to rob us.” She gave him a probing look. “That’s a possibility, right?”

“Of course. But then the other person would be an accomplice, so they wouldn’t exactly rush off to tell the police.” His eyes wandered over to the flat-screen TV hanging on the wall, which was playing a recap of a tennis match.

Now that the worst of the shock had passed, the manager in him was beginning to take over. Werner was acting as if he had a business problem to solve. And she had been assigned the role of insubordinate employee.

“You aren’t at work, Werner,” she said softly. “We have to do this together.”

“Not necessarily.”

“I think you’re underestimating how much work it is to dig a deep grave. It’ll take you hours, maybe even a whole day. And I presume you won’t be able to get all the way out to a genuinely remote spot like that in your car, will you?”

He nodded thoughtfully.

“So he’ll need to be dragged there. And then you’ll need to cover the tracks made by his body. Assuming you haven’t been caught by that point.” She shook her head. “It’s too risky.”

“We could do it together. It’d be quicker that way. And not during the day, but at night.”

“That would look even more suspicious if somebody saw us.”

Werner stood up and looked down at her with irritation. “Do you have a better idea, then? You were the one who shot the boy, not me.”

“What should I have done?” she asked sharply. “Talk to him? He was completely crazed—probably on drugs.” A shiver ran down her back at the memory.

“He didn’t have to die, Helen.”

“That’s not what I—”

“What I mean is I wasn’t the one who created this problem.”

She leapt to her feet and struck the table with her palm. “You’re the one who brought a gun into this house without thinking to discuss it with me. And you’re the one who didn’t want to call the police.”

“You shot him three times, Helen. Three times.”

“I was panicking.”

“And yet you still managed to hit him three times, even though you’ve never fired anything more than an air rifle in your entire life.”

“I don’t know why—”