“No.” Bayles’ face seemed almost to decompose. “I called him when I read about his wife. I asked if he was all right, if things were too hard. He said no, that you were helping him. I hardly listened. What I really wanted to know was whether he’d exposed me to the police. I hung on the line, afraid to ask and afraid to hang up. He knew. ‘Don’t worry, Calvin,’ he said, very quiet, ‘you’ll be all right, too.’ Then he hung up. I almost cried. But after that I didn’t talk to him until the night he died and then I let him down again.”

Bayles’ fingers were white on the chair. “Look,” I said. “You’re not alone in caring for Henry, or deserting him. Just tell me.”

He gave me a strange pitying look: sadness and community and comprehension. “This last will hurt you, too.”

“Then that has to be.”

Bayles’ voice was raw. “The night he died, Henry called me at home. He’d never done that before. I took it in the den so no one could hear. I was angry at him for calling there but when he began talking his voice trembled so much I forgot that. He said that my name might come out now, that he couldn’t help it anymore, but we were all tangled up in things at the bank he couldn’t explain. I didn’t understand any of it. Please, I begged him, please protect me. He said he’d tried to, that he’d called you, but you hadn’t called back and probably weren’t going to and he had nowhere else to turn—”

“Oh, Jesus …”

“‘Do anything,’ I told him. ‘Please, anything else at all. Please, if you love me.’ For a long time he didn’t answer and I thought maybe he was crying. Then he said, ‘Forgive me,’ and the line went dead. The next day I saw his picture in the evening paper. He was gone.”

We faced each other across the desk. Bayles said hoarsely, “I pushed him to it. I was his last chance and he shot himself to save me.”

I closed my eyes. “Why tell me this now, when he’s dead?”

“You were part of it, too. I want you to know what I did.”

My eyes opened to his strange expectant look. “For what? To share the guilt? I’ve earned that. But you’ll have to find absolution somewhere else. I don’t qualify to give it.”

He flushed. “That’s not what I want. You can decide whether the police should learn what I’ve told you. Henry’s dead, I know. But if it will help clear his name I won’t run from him anymore.”