“Okay. Thanks. Did you hear from him when you were married?”

“No. I expected a telegram or something—after all, he was getting off the hook—but nothing came.”

Leland drank his coffee. What kept sticking at him was Betty’s lie about the time MacIver had come home bleeding. The insurance file placed it around the middle of 1949, nearly three years after the marriage. Leland wanted to believe Kaminsky on everything else, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t take the chance. Kaminsky was a likable, convincing man, but he had admitted too many weaknesses for Leland to think that even he believed everything he had said. This is the truth as I know it: these are the lies Betty told to me. I try not to think about them.

Leland had gained very little for a morning’s work. There were things to tell Mrs. MacIver, but he had hoped for more: that there had been a previous attempt at suicide, that what MacIver had told about himself was at direct odds with what his mother and first wife could prove. Proof: no one thought to keep records anymore. It was too much work. Leland had only to look at his own memory to know how fallible memory was. It took work to capture things as they had happened. Kaminsky had talked off the top of his head, so had Mrs. MacIver. Norma had come prepared, but all she knew was the tail end of her husband’s life—and just the things he had done, never what he had thought. He had never told her his real thoughts. What Leland had heard today indicated that MacIver had had good reason for never telling. Still, there was the suddenness, the unexpectedness, of his death, the hurried verdict of the Clausen County coroner, the handling of the afternoon of August 12 by the Clausen County police. Leland had not even moved toward that yet. He could not help thinking what no detective ever wanted to think: that a man could make his moves without leaving a trace. The chance of failing was strong enough for Leland to feel it, like the shock of anger he had felt when the door had slammed at his back.

Upstairs, a door opened. “Murray? Are you still down there?”

“Yes, honey. What is it?”

“I’m coming down.”

“No, stay in bed.”

They could hear her on the stairs. Kaminsky couldn’t turn his eyes from the doorway.