“Tell me about when you got into the car.”

“I just got in it, I guess.”

“Was Sian with you when you got in?”

“She couldn’t have been in the car with me, because how would I have run into her?”

“Sure. But I was thinking, maybe she got in, and you drove around some, and then she got out and you were still in the car. Maybe something like that.”

“I think what happened,” Jeremy said, “is she went running up the driveway and then I got in the car to catch up with her.”

“Why do you say you think that’s what happened?”

Jeremy shot me a look. “What does that mean?”

“It means just what I said. You say you think that’s what happened.”

“Yeah.”

“But you don’t know.”

“I was kind of pissed out of my mind. You remember that part, right?”

“Okay, let’s go back to earlier in the evening,” I said. “When Broadhurst found you in his car, and Sian was with you. Do you remember that?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Mostly.”

“So—Hang on again.”

A short, stocky woman was walking purposefully our way. This wasn’t a stroll. This was exercise. I was about to say hello when I noticed she had wires leading down from her ears. I gave her a friendly wave, which she ignored as she passed us.

“You’re really worried about people hearing us,” Jeremy said.

“Just being careful. So Broadhurst finds you in the car.”

“Yeah, and he’s really pissed, especially since I’ve got the key in my hand and I’m trying to figure out how to start it. But the place where you put the key in wasn’t in the usual spot, in the steering column thingy. I’d just figured out where it was, over to the left of the wheel, when Broadhurst opens the door and tells me to get the fuck out.”

“So you never got the car started.”

“No.”

“And you found the key in the car?”

“Yeah. It was sitting in the tray between the seats.”

“That seems kind of dumb.”

“Yeah, well, he did that a lot because it was his own property, and the house is a long way from the road, and he said, like, when he testified, that he was always losing keys, so if he just left it in the car, he’d find it.”

“A car that nice.”

Jeremy shrugged. “They asked him about that, and he said if he was going someplace, he didn’t leave it. But out front of his house, yeah, sometimes.”

“So he finds you in the car, with the key in your hand—is that right?”

A nod.

“So what happens to the key?”

“He takes it from me.”

“And what does he do with it?”

Water rolled in, froze our ankles briefly, and slid back out.

“What’s he do with it?” Jeremy repeated.

“Yeah.”