When we reached the gray Olds, I said, “I know you’re going to tell me I’m laying more shrink stuff on you, but I don’t believe your situation’s comparable to Hansen’s. He had access to firsthand information about the murder and kept it to himself for twenty years. In order to do that, he convinced himself Chapman had been hallucinating, but those details—cigarette burns, the way they moved Janie—say he knew better. Hansen engaged in two decades of self-delusion, and who knows what it did to his soul. You tried to do your job and were ordered off the case.”

“Following orders?” He gazed up the block absently.

“Fine,” I said. “Torment yourself.”

“Hansen paints, I don’t,” he said. “We all need our hobbies . . . listen, thanks for your time, but I need to sort things out, figure which way to go with this.”

“What about the main point we got from Hansen’s story?” I said.

“Which is . . .”

“What you were getting at with that final question in the studio about anyone else being at the murder. Chapman spilled his guts to Hansen but made no mention of Caroline Cossack or Willie Burns. Meaning they probably weren’t there. Despite that, the Cossacks stashed Caroline at Achievement House for six months and had her tagged with a behavioral warning. Burns returned to the streets, got busted for dope, took a big risk by getting himself a job at Achievement House. Maybe he skipped on Boris Nemerov because of what he’d seen at the party. If he went to jail on the drug beef, he’d be a sitting duck.”

“Burns as a witness.”

“Maybe he followed the King’s Men because he figured there’d be more doping and he could peddle more merchandise. Caroline could’ve just been hanging with him. Or she wanted to hang out with her brothers—the odd little sister who’d always gotten shunted to the background. The initial motive for Janie’s murder was to silence her. Luke Chapman may have died for the same reason. Caroline and Burns would’ve been extreme liabilities.”

“Victims, not murderers,” he said. “And all the more likely to be dead.”

“Those two photos preceding Janie’s death shot. A dead black guy and a mangled white female mental patient. Maybe whoever sent the book was trying to tell you about two other db’s.”

“Except, as you pointed out, the dead black guy was in his forties, which would be Burns’s age now, not twenty years ago.” He took hold of the door handle. “I need to develop a few migraines over this. Ciao.”

“That’s it?”

“What?” he said.

“You go your way, I go mine?” I said. “Is there something you aren’t telling me?”