Cade began listening. I wondered how Henry felt and sounded. Cade was telling him, “It’s better at your place.” He listened again, nodding, then casually answered, “Eight will be fine. Bye, now,” and hung up. Henry would never imagine Cade’s hand shaking as it put down the phone. His forehead glistened with the beginnings of sweat. “Eight o’clock,” he said tiredly. “God, I hated that.”

“How is he?”

“I don’t know.” Cade shook his head. “I just don’t know.”

“Think he’ll call one of us tonight?”

“If he does we can’t talk to him. I want both of us there, especially me.” He looked up at me, bursting out, “It’s you who’s made this disaster, letting Henry manipulate you until you’ve built a case against him by accident and then baited Rayfield into coming here to finish it.”

“Look, Henry asked me to help.”

“Did he? Or did you force him to pretend to want that while trying to scare you off with Kris Ann’s picture and then gunshots, so that he could ask you to stop helping for your own good. Think—you’re not clever enough. Not once since the killing has he told you anything you haven’t forced out of him. He’s maneuvered you until he couldn’t anymore—”

“Save it, Roland. This is hard enough.”

Cade looked incredulous and then his face became blurred in front of me. “Do you think I like it?” he was saying.

My skull was a blinding ache. I blinked once, saw Cade again. “Clearly not,” I answered. “But whether that’s on Henry’s account I wouldn’t know.”

Cade gave me a long, wintry glare before asking, “Now what does that mean?”

“You probably hate Jason Cantwell more than I do. More, even, than you hate me.”

He stared until he was sure what I meant. “She told you?”

“Yes. I understand now why you gave her that gun. It would have been simpler to tell me about Jason.”

“That was between us.” Cade’s fist crashed down on the desk. “Damn you, you’re like a skin graft, stuck where you don’t belong. For two cents I’d rid us both of you—”

He stopped, eyes narrowing as I stood, dug in my pocket for two copper pennies, clinked them in the cup of my hand before I tossed them underhand so that they hung for an instant above the desk, fell, hit his chest, dropping silently on the soft rug. “They’re yours,” I said. I turned my back and went to find Clayton.

By the time Clayton dropped me off it was dusk and I was having trouble with balance. I passed the guard on my porch without speaking. Kris Ann’s face as she met me was a double image. “Are you all right, Adam? Let me call the doctor.”

I leaned in the doorframe. “No need. I’m just tired.”