“When they booked me I broke down, begging. They just looked away, all except for that policeman, Rayfield. He was staring at me from a corner like I made him sick. He wouldn’t stop.” A purple vein throbbed in Henry’s temple. “I imagined our friends looking at me like that. I saw Roland’s face, the contempt in it hardening. It came to me then. Of all of them, Roland was the one I’d sell my soul to keep from knowing. And only Roland could help.”

“So you called him.”

He nodded dejectedly. “He fixed it. I don’t know how. I didn’t want to. I was just grateful, then.”

“And later?”

“Later, it was done.”

I was silent. Henry’s eyes raised from the floor. “You do understand about not telling you, at least a little? I’d failed with Jason, and you at least respected me. It didn’t seem relevant to Lydia.”

He leaned forward as though reaching. I ground my cigarette as smoke died in acrid curls, lit another, and said, “Did you kill her, Henry?”

He went white. “I suppose I deserve—”

“Because Joanne Mooring says you did.”

“That’s insane—”

“Specifically, she says she waited here that night spying on Lydia and her husband. She swears that when Mooring left Lydia was still alive. So she started toward the house to confront her. And then, while you say you were sixty miles away, your black Mercedes turned up the driveway and scared her off.”

Henry seemed to shrivel in his chair. Faintly he inquired, “Why hasn’t she gone to the police?”

“That puzzled me until I learned about Jason. If Mooring’s his father all that would come out. And Joanne drinks. The police might not believe her and suspect Mooring instead. Not bad reasons. The one I believe is more complex. For years Jason received anonymous birthday presents from his real father. Suppose Mooring wants to protect Jason. Perhaps he thinks that if the police learn that it was he who made love to Lydia, they’ll suspect Jason of killing her. Jason wouldn’t have to be Oedipus then. Just a murderer.”

Henry’s hands twisted together. When I finished, he looked up, mumbling as if it didn’t matter, “But she lied, Adam.”

“How would you know?”

He flushed. “I never left Anniston. I was with someone that night.”

“With whom?”

His gaze was level. “A man.”

“A man,” I repeated.

He nodded. “Yes.”

“If that’s true, then you lied to Rayfield.”

“I suppose I did.”

“You suppose. Does Roland know?”

“He knows.”

I felt the pain in my skull leeching strength from the rest of me. “And he sat there with Rayfield and let you lie.”

“I’d do anything to hide this,” he said miserably. “That was something Roland already knew.”

“You lie to the police, to put yourself closer to the electric chair, and Roland watches.”