Vincent said, ‘You played it quite well that day. Remember, you said Sly would need to find somewhere else to live if he was involved? Something like that. But it sounds like he was a piece of shit for an awful long time. So did you finally decide enough was enough? Or was it all just misdirection?’

Nothing. She held her faintly imperious bearing. Quite a feat, given her diminishment.

Erin said, ‘Generally at this point, people try to tell us it wasn’t meant to happen that way, no one was meant to get hurt. Something to that effect.’

Mrs Crow wasn’t looking at her. She was facing Vincent. She said, ‘The first time I saw you was the morning of the killings. You were in the parking lot of the train station. You’d had your altercation with Mr Gutierrez. We drove past. And then again, outside Lamar’s house. You came up onto the driveway as we were leaving.’ She looked at Erin. ‘Both of you did. I was worried you’d seen us, even with the tinted glass.’ She nodded toward the front of the house. ‘When I spoke to you later, it was clear you hadn’t.’

He heard Erin breathing very carefully beside him.

Vincent said, ‘Feel better, getting all that off your chest?’

She shrugged. Tiny shoulders lifting her sweater. ‘It feels like nothing. I have three months to live.’ Rheumy eyes shifting between them. ‘If anything, it feels good to know I’ve retained the courage to be honest. To say they deserved what they got. It’s the nature of the business. They stole a truck with a thirty-million-dollar cargo, and we had to recover it.’

Silence. A breeze picked up, and sent a fluid blue network of pool-reflection across the ceiling.

She said, ‘Don’t expect sympathy, or remorse. I’ve lost family, too. People I love.’

She stared at them, jaw clenched beneath its stringy vestments. As if daring them to tell her that the world didn’t owe her everything. Like here she was, a victim of the take-take-take reality of life.

Erin turned in her seat, looked at him. ‘I think I’m done.’

She got up, and Vincent followed her out, Erin moving better now despite the limp, carrying herself straight. He paused for a moment at the front door, looked back at the woman still there in the living room, studying her e-reader. She didn’t even glance up. Vincent left the front door open and walked over to the car and got in beside Erin. He started the engine and backed the car around then got them rolling slowly up the driveway toward the gate.

Erin said, ‘Wait.’

He braked, brought them to a stop.