I’ve lost them all. Anne dabbed the tears from her eyes with her sleeve. Ferris is right about the evidence and the charge. How can I be so sure? She wrote down her vote and glanced around the room one last time. The women on the jury would not look at her or at each other. Because there’s no killer on the loose. They caught the right guy. He did it. He admitted it. This is fucking insane.

Ferris gathered the votes in his white Ping golf cap. He then read out each slip as Caruthers tabulated.

But he didn’t need to bother. The vote came back eleven not guilty with one holdout.

All the impatient eyes in the room turned now to Anne.

May 22

[ MAY 22 ]

Pat drove down a broiling Forest Lane, returning alone from early-morning Mass. The index was going to top out at 98 degrees, WBAP reported. A Pentecost heat wave, too soon for summer, even by Texas standards. The cars around him lurched impatiently, heading west, away from the sun. Despite blasting the Cougar’s air-conditioning, the air in the car was barely tolerable, the freon cooling his clutched hands on the steering wheel but little else. The car hadn’t run right since he had it towed out of that ditch by the river. Shockingly, the fucked-up details of that incident had fallen below his wife’s radar. Thank you, AAA, for your utmost discretion for idiots like me. The heat pummeled Pat’s hangover, and he turned off the torment of the A/C as he felt the sweat pool on the small of his back against the fake leather seats. He rolled down the window in hopes for a breeze, but the air was furnaced by the concrete kiln of the six-lane road. Ridiculous, it’s not even nine in the morning. As he signaled onto Cox, he could see far to the west an anvil of purple-gray thunderclouds.

Maybe this heat will break. Hopefully before I do.