It was near dusk and the park was silent. Between me and the police station was fifty yards of lawn, some steps down, and the street. The fastest route was to cut straight across the grass. Instead I took the walkway where I might hear Lee’s footsteps. My strides lengthened. Forty yards to the steps, then thirty. I listened. In one swift movement Lee’s imagined knife-edge crossed my throat. Shock as warm blood spurted down my neck, quick, searing pain, then blackness. I loped from the park, across the street and up the steps to the glass doors. By the time I got inside I was breathing hard. There was no one behind me.

“What’s wrong with you?” Rayfield asked.

I leaned on his desk with both palms. “Moses McCarroll’s son is across the street. The gardener.”

Rayfield moved quickly from behind his desk, calling, “He’s in the park,” to Bast. Bast slammed down his telephone.

“How did you know?” I asked.

“Army records,” Rayfield said curtly over his shoulder and rushed out the door behind Bast.

By the time I reached the steps they were across the street running into the park. I followed them to its edge. Perhaps part of me hoped he was gone. But he wasn’t. He sat like a carving as they trotted up with drawn revolvers.

I turned and walked slowly to my car.

Nineteen

NINETEEN

That night I refused calls from reporters until Kris Ann left the phone off the hook. I had several drinks and no dinner. I felt drained. When I called him, Henry sounded the same. “Do you really believe it’s the black man?” he asked.

“It has a certain demented symmetry. But right now all you should think of is that you’re free.”

“I suppose I am.” For a free man he sounded oddly dispirited. “You sound tired, Adam.”

“I’m okay. We’ll both be better when it hits this is over.”

“Over.” The word fell emptily. “Yes, I suppose so. I should thank you.”

“Just get some sleep. I’ll call you in the morning.”

“In the morning. Surely.”

I said goodnight and put the phone back on the kitchen table.

Kris Ann was stretched out on the couch in blue jeans, staring up. I sat on the floor with another drink. She said, “It’s this man Lee that’s bothering you, isn’t it?”

I nodded. “He could have killed me, Krissy. Why lie about Lydia’s murder and then just watch me go to the police?”

“I don’t know.” She propped on her elbow to look at me. “I don’t know why you were there at all.”

“I was afraid for you.”

“The police could have found him.” She sat up, her gaze long and penetrating. “What you did was almost suicidal, like you have a death wish or something to prove—and I’m not even sure to whom. It scares me.”