Cade scowled. “No one’s seen him. I gather that when Henry called him yesterday he started screaming about ‘being trapped.’ Henry thinks Jason meant that the police had gotten there before he’d broken the news. What I think is that Jason knew before anyone. I can’t understand why you find that so difficult to grasp.”

“The sperm test. By your theory, Jason would have had to rape his mother, then kill her. Or is it the other way around?”

Cade flushed. “I don’t find incest that amusing.”

“It’s not that credible, either, and if Rayfield thought so he wouldn’t be leaning on Henry. And that business of the telephone call makes Henry look bad.”

“I take it you’re suggesting I mishandled Rayfield.”

“All that I’m suggesting is that we make a few careful inquiries on who Lydia might have seen lately.”

“By stumbling around after the police, looking worried as hell? That’s sheer foolishness.”

“Look, when it comes to people like the Cantwells, Rayfield’s on foreign ground. We’re in better shape to ask questions and understand the answers.”

Cade shook his head. “I would have thought that anyone who’d found Lydia like that would be damned glad there are police to handle it. And your Stafford Lumber trial is set for May. You should know by now that defending a five-million-dollar job-discrimination suit is full-time work.”

“You mean especially when your client thinks that manumission was contrary to God’s law.”

“Peyton Stafford’s eccentricities are beside the point,” Cade snapped. “You’re a lawyer. Sometimes a lawyer’s job is not to feel anything.”

Cade raised his head in the prideful pose he shared with Kris Ann. Our eyes locked in a strange, distasteful intimacy, as though whatever we said didn’t really matter, that what mattered was something else we never spoke but understood in the way of two animals circling each other in darkness. “Is is possible,” I asked, “that Lydia Cantwell had a lover?”

Cade’s stare turned hard. “It would contradict any notion people had of her. What’s your basis for that?”

“The sperm. If it’s not Jason, then it’s rape or an affair, and we’d better start wondering which. And who.”

“Good God,” Cade burst out. “Try to appreciate what you’re saying. Reputation is a fragile thing, lost in strange ways, often small ones and often unfairly. There will always be people now who think Lydia’s murder reflects on Henry. You forget that this is basically a small town—society’s small here, everyone’s known, and no one ever forgets. It’s not like the North. Slander Lydia with this kind of nonsense and you’ll just add to the gossip.”

I shrugged. “I’m not so sure that the Suzy Knickerbocker school of criminal defense will work here.”