“Pretty soon after. He said, ‘I know. Pierce told me. He feels the same way about you, Margie.’ That’s when he told me he’d known Pierce for some time. Had been doing volunteer psychiatry at Oxnard Doctor’s Hospital—counseling sick and injured people, burnt people—after the Montecito Fire they put in a burn unit and he was their psychiatrist. Pierce wasn’t any of those things, he came into the emergency room having terrible seizures from his addiction. Dr. Harrison detoxified him, then took him on as a patient. He told me all this because Pierce asked him to. Pierce had strong feelings about me but was deeply ashamed of his past, depended on Dr. Harrison to clear the air. I still remember the way Dr. H. phrased it. ‘He’s a good man, Margie, but he’ll understand if this is too much baggage for you to carry.’ I said, ‘These hands have been hauling hay for forty years, I can carry plenty.’ After that, Pierce’s shyness mostly left him, and we got close.” Her eyes misted. “I never thought I’d find anyone, and now he’s gone.”

She fumbled for the bandana and spit out laughter. “Look at me, what a sissy. And look at you: I thought you guys were supposed to make people feel better.”

I sat there as she cried silently and wiped her eyes and cried some more. A sudden shadow streaked the facing wall, then vanished. I turned in time to see a hawk shoot up into the blue and vanish. Foot stomping and snorting sounded from the corral.

“Red-tails,” she said. “They’re good for the vermin, but the horses never get used to them.”

I said, “Mrs. Schwinn, what did Pierce tell you about the unsolved case?”

“That it was an unsolved case.”

“What else?”

“Nothing else. He didn’t even tell me the girl’s name. Just that she was a girl who got torn up and it was his case and he’d failed to solve it. I tried to get him to open up, but he wouldn’t. Like I said, Pierce always wanted to shelter me from his old life.”

“But he talked to Dr. Harrison about the case.”

“You’d have to ask Dr. Harrison about that.”

“Dr. Harrison never spoke to you about it?”

“He just said . . .” She trailed off and twisted so that all I could see was the outline of her jaw.

“Mrs. Schwinn?”

“The only reason it came up in the first place was because of Pierce’s sleep. He’d started having dreams. Nightmares.” She turned suddenly and faced me. “How’d you know about that? What was it, a real good guess?”

“Pierce was a good man, and good men don’t take well to corruption.”

“I don’t know about any corruption.” Her voice lacked conviction.

“When did the nightmares start?” I said.

“A few months before he died. Two, three months.”