‘And I had to give a statement—they interviewed me—and I got back to Rochelle’s in Redondo and … I’m sorry, it’s getting a bit much.’ Voice wavering. ‘I can’t even say it.’

‘Is she okay?’

He heard her swallow. ‘I, I came back, and they’d left her in a cupboard. Can you believe that? All taped up and not even able to speak. Her eyes, my God, the look in her eyes: you’ve never seen anything like it. They’d taken her car, too. I don’t even know what to say about it. The world’s coming apart at the edges, it really is. It’s terrible.’

Vincent said, ‘The police told me what happened. I just wanted to check you’re all right.’

‘Well, thank you. Yes, I’m— Why did they tell you about it? Do you know what’s going on?’

A cop’s face appeared at the wire-mesh window. Vincent said, ‘They’re interviewing me right now. I’ll call you soon.’

He went another ten minutes with the San Luis Obispo police detectives, and then they were replaced by two women from the FBI who asked him about his interactions with Colton Locke the day before. Then a guy from the DEA seconded to a Sheriff’s task force asked him about the heroin in the soup cans. That took him through to eight-thirty pm, at which point the SLO detectives came back in and said there were some colleagues on the way up from Santa Barbara.

Vincent said, ‘Can we give it a rest? We’ve been at it almost five hours now.’

The detectives were both in their thirties, a man and a woman—Colin Blythe, and Louise McAllen—and in their blondness and tanned symmetry they could have been siblings.

Blythe said, ‘Five hours is nothing. If you’re struggling, we can get you a comfier chair, though.’

McAllen consulted her notebook. She turned the pages very carefully—fingertips at the corner—as if the paper itself were evidence, part of the crime.

She said, ‘The scene examination’s turned up two types of ammunition so far. There’re some nine-mil cartridges, presumably from the MP5, but there was smaller brass too that looks to be five-five-six.’

That’d be right: Gutierrez’s weapon was probably an AR-15, which would have been firing 5.56 mm NATO rounds.

She said, ‘You told us Clemons came in with the MP5, and Crow had a ten-gauge Ithaca, but we haven’t recovered anything that would take the smaller ammunition.’

Vincent said, ‘So what are you saying?’

Blythe said, ‘Are you sure there wasn’t a third shooter?’

Vincent looked at the wall, as if trying to remember.

‘There were two shooters. I’m sure there were only two shooters.’

Technically correct: Delroy and Gutierrez had been the only ones to open fire. He was confident that didn’t count as honesty, though.

McAllen said, ‘Five-five-six.’