She rose, looking from Cade to me. Reason—cold and certain and unforgiving—came into her face. “You bastards.” She turned to me. “Both of you. I’ve been the battlefield where you could prove who was the biggest man—”

“Baby, I had to show you he didn’t care—”

I began moving toward him. “Bullshit, Roland: by then I’d found Mooring. You were trying to save yourself. When I talked to Joanne Mooring, I began closing in on you, except that I didn’t understand what she was telling me. Instead I suspected everyone: the Moorings, Otis Lee, and finally Jason. You were willing to sacrifice Lee and I was caught between Lee and Henry. But when Rayfield told me about Henry’s arrest and then Henry admitted what had happened I was closer yet. How did you find out fast enough to shoot at me?”

Cade still watched Kris Ann. “Coincidence,” he said absently. “I called Kris Ann right after you did and found out where you were.”

“And then you waited in the vacant lot the way you told me Henry did.”

He nodded. Kris Ann stared at him. “But people’s lives. Lydia’s and Henry’s. Ours.”

“Baby.” Cade’s voice was soft, crooning. “You’re the only one who mattered. The rest …” He looked back to me.

I stopped six feet from him. “The rest were expendable, like Henry. When Clayton told me that Rayfield had found eight hundred thousand dollars gone from Lydia’s account, all I needed was to lean on Henry until he told me who Bayles was and what you’d done. You knew how close I was: when you talked about Henry—how trapped and desperate he must feel—you were talking about yourself. I swear it, Roland, even if I could forgive you the rest I can never forgive what you did next. You maneuvered me into giving you time to think while believing I’d bought time for Henry. Then you went to work. You implied that he had no lover. You blamed everything you’d done—Lydia’s murder, Krissy’s picture, your shots at me—on Henry. You had to break my faith in him for just a few more hours. You succeeded. I didn’t return his call that night. God damn you, I could have saved him.

“The appointment you made wasn’t for eight the next morning. It was for eight that night. You made sure he never called again. It wasn’t suicide, Roland. You killed him.”

“No, Adam.” Cade’s smile flickered eerily. “You killed him, by not calling. When I put the gun in his mouth he just looked at me. He wanted to die.”

“But you’re insane.” Kris Ann’s voice was broken. “To kill Lydia and Henry. To think that was for me—”