In the morning, Cy reconsidered after another call from the Delgados, who insisted again that their daughter had not been in love with Graham, and as far as they could tell never dated him. Ariel sometimes went out after work, but unless she was with the Berrigans or Connie or Drake, she was always home by 7:00 or 8:00. Cy tracked down some of the rafters, and one now mentioned hearing Graham razz Ariel about her fear of the water, holding the preserver above her head, teasing. They didn’t seem like a couple.

Cy sought out Connie at the pool, soon after Polly shot off into her full, rich day, and Connie said her bit again: Graham was a murderer. She went on about Ariel’s fear of water and missing shorts. Cy was relieved when his radio went off, telling him about an altercation at the corner of Second and Park.

By coincidence, the attorney assigned to represent Shane Bobbin at the morning’s hearing was Vinnie Susak. Vinnie listened to Shane’s story, recommended he plead not guilty, and left the courthouse at 8:15 a.m. He walked into Graham’s building and dragged Graham out of his bedroom and down his shitty soiled hall and stairs, screaming that Graham was going to visit the Delgados and apologize. The elderly neighbors called the police, and when Cy reached Vinnie and Graham, they were on the sidewalk across from Peake’s, with Ned in the middle, and Vinnie saying he was going to use his prosthesis to beat his nephew to death if he didn’t do the right thing.

Vinnie refused to explain his rage to Cy, who sent him off and followed Graham to his apartment—a squalid, airless hole—to ask about the preserver and the bloodstain. He listened to the basic story—Graham loved Ariel, and they’d kept it a secret because her parents wouldn’t understand—and new explanations: Ariel threw the preserver into the brush to prove a point, but before that Graham remembered her falling on the beach, though he couldn’t remember blood. It was when they’d first gotten out, when people were still around—hadn’t anyone mentioned it? Everyone was drinking. Graham had wanted the others to go away.

Cy left, unhappy. He needed the autopsy results, but he knew the medical examiner’s office in Missoula was short-staffed.

Ned, arriving home, gave Polly a dramatic account of the fight and absolutely no information on causation. Vinnie and Nora would not be coming to Maude’s party; Vinnie would require a quiet cabin in the woods after the memorial.