Her look wavered between hesitant and bold. “It’s not your fault,” she finally said.

“Sure. I know.”

She shook her head with a small, doubting smile, and was gone.

I stared down at the motion. Halfway through the fourth page I flung my pencil against the wall and went to the police station.

Rayfield and Bast sat stirring coffee, torpid and diminished-seeming, like actors without roles. “What do you want?” Bast demanded.

“To be certain it was suicide.”

“Suicide,” came his sardonic answer, “or self-defense.”

“Even without a note?”

Rayfield swiveled to stare at a window blocked by venetian blinds. “Two-thirds don’t leave any,” Bast said.

“It’s hard to believe that Henry Cantwell would do that.”

“Well, you’d better get used to it. Suicides are tough to fake. You have to get every detail right: the victim’s fingerprints not only have to be on the trigger but the cylinder. Cantwell’s prints were on both, his wound was a contact wound like suicides have usually, and the bullet looks to be from the same revolver that was fired at you.”

“Was it registered to Henry?”

In profile Rayfield’s jawline worked. “Look,” Bast said, “Alabama’s full of unregistered guns, especially over fifteen years old, like Cantwell’s. They didn’t start registering them until after Kennedy was shot. The first one, that is.”

“Then you’re not troubled that he used a gun you can’t trace.”

Bast shrugged. “Not really. There were no strange prints in the house and no one had broken in. Plus, for a murderer to get everything right, Cantwell would have to be a very cooperative victim. It’s time to start living with it. Henry Cantwell stole his wife’s money, then killed her and tried to kill you. You’re lucky to be alive.”

“But someone could have—”

“Let it be,” rasped Rayfield. His face, still turned to the window, was slate gray. “He killed himself, now let it be.”

Bast rose from his chair to stand between Rayfield and me. “It’s done with,” he said.

His voice was final. Nothing remained except Henry’s funeral.

Cade and I went, separately, Cade because Henry’s sister had asked it, me for reasons of my own. Kris Ann stayed home. “I can’t go,” she told me. “I can’t resolve this yet.” She had said almost nothing else about Henry. But there was still a strange alertness to her, a sense of watching and listening, and the revolver remained hidden on the mantel. I had decided to give her time, and to go to the funeral alone.