He didn’t. I watched, shaking, as he let the gun lower.

Khalid and his stagehands were moving now, the time having come to close their show. Linda dragged me to my feet. Sharon took the gun carefully from Dale’s fingers, struggling to unlock his white knuckles. Khalid was strolling to the body on the floor, a cigarette packet emerging from the salmon-colored silk lining of his jacket. He tapped a cigarette loose and waved it toward me, hardly taking the time to look my way.

“Get him outta here,” Khalid said.

Amanda sat on a smooth decorative piece of sandstone at the front of the Songly house, one elbow on her knee, watching the red and blue lights of the five patrol cars before her going around and around. If she focused on them for a few seconds, stains of their colors remained when she looked away, zinging and swirling in the dark at the edge of the rainforest. All around her there was activity. Police walking in and out of the house, taking pictures, measurements, video of the crime scene. They came in a trail like ants, endless trips back and forth, going in with empty hands and coming out with brown paper bags of evidence. Few paid attention to her sitting there watching, an elvish statue drenched in blood. Some ambulance officers came after the first round of pickups, the transportation of Pip’s body, Bran’s body, Jay dazed and groaning on a stretcher. They crouched by Amanda, tried to fuss over her, their rubber fingers already probing. She waved them off. Rule one. No touching.

When the early hours were approaching, and the number of people going in and out of the house had sufficiently thinned, she stood and stretched her neck. Chief Clark was just inside the doorway of the house, looking over it all, his hands hanging by his sides. Grief. The lazy, sloppy kind. Amanda saw it tugging on his features like a thick clay mask as he turned toward her.

“I killed again,” Amanda said, gesturing halfheartedly to the spot where Bran had lain only hours earlier, gurgling out his last breaths. “Sorry.”

“Amanda, you…” The chief’s words trailed off. He tightened his lips, sucked them in, seemed to have trouble containing them all, or finding any, Amanda didn’t know. She watched, waited. But in time the chief only sighed and walked away from her, shaking his head. Now that she was back in the house, the few officers here were glaring at her. One had tears in his eyes. She wiped her blood-stained palms on the front of her T-shirt, drew a deep breath. It seemed they all were waiting for her to say something. She hoped, when she said it, that it came out right.

“She was a great copper,” Amanda said, raising her chin importantly. “And a great kisser.”