“I was in the office and he’d gone to the mess hall. I was going to pick him up at thirteen hundred hours and we were going to drive to the bone lot. I went to get him in a Humvee. I saw Petey there, waiting for me. Just then an IED went off. That’s a bomb.”

Dance knew this, of course.

“I was about thirty, forty feet away when it blew. Petey was waving and then there was this flash and the whole scene changed. It was like you blinked and the square became a different place.” She looked out the window. “The front of the mess hall was gone, palm trees—they just vanished. Some soldiers and a couple of civilians who’d been standing there . . . One instant there, then they were gone.”

Her voice was eerily calm. Dance recognized the tone; she heard it often in witnesses who’d lost loved ones in crimes. (The hardest interviews to do, worse than sitting across from the most amoral killer.)

“Petey’s body was shattered. That’s the only way to describe it.” Her voice caught. “He was all red and black, broken. . . . I’ve seen a lot over there. But this was so terrible.” She sipped the water and then clutched the bottle like a child with a doll.

Dance offered no words of sympathy—they’d be useless. She nodded for the woman to continue. A deep breath. Lucy’s fingers intertwined tightly. In her work, Dance characterized this gesture—a common one—of trying to strangle the unbearable tension arising from guilt or pain or shame.

“The thing is . . . I was late. I was in the office. I looked up at the clock. It was about twelve fifty-five but I had a half cup of soda left. I thought about throwing it out and leaving—it’d take five minutes to get to the mess hall—but I wanted to finish the soda. I just wanted to sit and finish it. I was late getting to the mess hall. If I’d been on time he wouldn’t’ve died. I would’ve picked him up and we’d have been a half mile away when the IED blew.”

“Were you injured?”

“A little.” She pulled up her sleeve and displayed a large leathery scar on her forearm. “Nothing serious.” She stared at the scar and then drank more water. Her eyes were hollow. “Even if I’d been just one minute late at least he’d’ve been in the vehicle. He probably would have survived. Sixty seconds . . . That would’ve made the difference between him living and dying. And all because of a soda. All I wanted was to finish my goddamn soda.” A sad laugh escaped her dry lips. “And then who shows up and tries to kill me? Somebody calling himself the Watchmaker, leaving a big-ass clock in my bathroom. For weeks all I can think about is how a single minute, one way or the other, makes the difference between life and death. And here’s this freak throwing it in my face.”