“You remember what happened to Sean?”

“The dumb bastard squashed him,” she said.

“The dumb bastard being Brian.”

She pointed in the general direction of the house across the street. Even though she was in a windowless basement, she got it more or less right. “They’re a bunch of bastards, them Gaffneys.”

“You don’t get along?”

The old woman shrugged. “They’re not so bad lately, but he’s a dumbass and his wife’s a bitch.”

“Albert and Constance,” Duckworth said.

“And they got a slut daughter, too. Forget her name.”

“Monica,” he said.

“That’s it.” She glanced back at the TV. “I forgot he was dead. He would have made a great president. Better than Reagan.”

“You must have been very upset when Brian ran over your dog.”

“Yup. Got back at them right away.”

“What did you do?”

She smiled slyly. “I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

“You might arrest me.”

“Why don’t you tell me anyway?” he said.

“If you arrest me, I’ll deny that I told you. Do we have a deal?”

“Sure.”

“I went over there late one night and slashed a few tires.” She smiled proudly, showing off teeth the color of caramel.

“Well,” Duckworth said. “Did the Gaffneys accuse you?”

She shook her head. “They never said nothin’ to me. They wouldn’t have been able to prove it, so what’s the point?”

“You might be right.” Duckworth leaned in a little closer. “How about more recently? Sometimes there are things that are hard to forgive, or forget, even after several years have gone by.”

“That’s for sure,” Mrs. Beecham said.

One thing Duckworth knew for sure was that this old woman couldn’t have abducted Brian Gaffney and held him captive for two days while she carved a message into his back. But that didn’t mean someone couldn’t have done it for her.

“Mrs. Beecham, do you have any children? Anyone else who might have been very angry with Brian about what happened to the dog?”

“Never had children.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Mr. Beecham—that’d be Lyall—was shootin’ blanks, if you get my drift.”

“I see. So there was no one else who’d have been deeply troubled by what happened to Sean.”

“Well, Sean wasn’t too fucking happy about it,” she said, and Duckworth got another look at those stained teeth as she grinned.

“Why Sean?” he asked. “It seems like an unusual name for a dog.”

“We named him after my brother.”

“Your brother?”

“Yeah. Sean Samuel Lastman, rest his soul. Kind of a dumb way to remember him, but what the hell. You do what you can.”

“What happened to your brother?”

“He died nearly thirty years ago. Fell off a roof he was shingling.”

Duckworth thought of the woman upstairs. “I just met Norma. Is there a family connection?”

Her eyes briefly sparkled. “Here’s something pretty amazing. Norma came to work for me a couple of years ago. And we get talking, and I was telling her about my brother, and turns out Sean was her daddy.”