She walked due north, staying away from the sketchiest areas near the river, passing car washes and phone stores and bodegas and graffiti-covered vacant storefronts. Just as she began to grow tired of the crumbling sidewalks and faceless streets, she found herself at the entrance to the Mount Pleasant Cemetery, an oasis in a perpetually troubled city. A stone marker near the Victorian Gothic gate said 1844. She walked along the winding roads and rolling lanes, passing funereal sculptures, Romanesque crypts, and elaborate mausoleums. It was a mood.

She thought on a lot of things, but it was all scattered, impossible to dwell upon. Maybe that was a good thing. One image she kept coming back to was Linus’s vexed reaction to her confiding in him about the essence…the presence…the whatever she saw emanating from Walt Leppo’s body after he passed. She wished she had the luxury of doubting herself, of discounting what she saw. She wished she could dismiss it.

The hunger pangs came upon her suddenly. She found a Dominican restaurant nearby and sat alone eating roasted chicken and seasoned rice. What she liked best about the place was that it looked nothing like the Soup Spoon Café, where she had spent her last hour with Leppo.

Walt, what happened?

It was still light as she crossed the river back into Harrison. Her legs and feet were tired, and she thought she was thoroughly exhausted—until she saw the gathering outside her building from a block away. It didn’t register at first, and then the realization washed over her all at once, with a sickening surge of fight-or-flight adrenaline.

They were reporters. The vans were TV camera trucks, and they were waiting outside her residence on a stakeout. Now Odessa was receiving the same treatment Peters had after his scandal came to light. Now she was the pursued.

Like a bank robber with a trunk full of loot approaching a police checkpoint, she turned on her heel and walked the other way—fearing, with every step, that she would hear her name shouted and be chased. It was out there now: news of the bad shoot, identifying her. Her silenced phone remained in her purse, probably burning up with voicemails and news alerts. She felt hunted. She wiped away tears.

Her world, as she once knew it, was gone. Seeing those lights, the throngs of people outside—waiting—she knew nothing would ever be the same again.