The car prowled along the dim alley shrouded by a thicket of leafless trees. She had counted the number of houses from the Raleighs’ to the corner, eight, so she could backtrack like this. An animal darted across the path—it wasn’t a pet but carried itself on its haunches like a raccoon or possum, its pink eyes refracting the headlights like dull crystals before it scuttered below a hole in a fence. Anne pulled up to the driveway in the back. The door to the garage was shut, lights out. The papers reported that Raleigh’s kids had been staying with families from First United and had not returned since that awful night. Nothing to see. The back of the house less revealing than the front. Just the off-whiteness of the garage door and an asphalt drive oil-stained and cracked. Anne sat there, her foot on the brake, staring at that handle on the garage door. Say for a minute it wasn’t Raleigh. The alley is dark but too narrow to hunker down in and not be spotted from a passing car. If it was a neighbor, the fences on either side of the driveway offer no line of sight. Is there another perch to watch the house from? Anne couldn’t find it, and then realized if there were, that person could be watching her. Danger didn’t feel imminent but rather as if it had moved through a while ago.

And so Anne sat there, focused on the driveway where the minister’s wife had been strangled. Like Peggy, the house offered only silence. As close as Anne now was to the horror of this assault, it felt distant. Strip away the scandal of this case, what’s left? Something fierce and predatory, she thought. An ignorant animal attacking another in the dark. She had to stop ruminating reasons to believe one theory or another. Is he really wrestling with demons? Is there even such a thing? There were plenty of blind alleys that offered no answers, and she had to stop crossing the line in terms of her own research of the case. She knew better, but she couldn’t abide by the evidence presented only in the trial. The trip to Credo Drive was near intentional, as had been the visit to First United, two weeks before. She had sat in the empty winter light of the pews, gaining no insight. Now, in the cold, dark car, she parsed the suicide note. It stopped just short of admission. Why not go for the full absolution? He had a guilty conscience but was too weak to free himself.