Having watched my father make moral choices that cost him money and friendships for years, I am stunned by this answer. “That’s accessory after the fact, Dad. Five years in the pen.”

“I realize that. But the situation was more complicated than you know.”

“You hadn’t committed any crime until you kept Presley’s confession from the police.”

“Listen, damn it! Ray must have seen how he upset me. Because twenty minutes after he walked out, he came back and handed me a zipper pouch. Inside it was a pistol I’d lent him about six months before, a forty-five.”

My heart slaps against my chest wall. “He killed Hillman with that pistol?”

“No. But he was always borrowing things from me back then. Guns, books, my Nikon for a stakeout, that kind of thing. You know I can’t say no to anybody. Anyhow, I’d lent him another pistol about a year before, a little featherweight thirty-eight. So, when he handed me the forty-five, I asked about the thirty-eight.” Dad takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. “He told me it had been stolen.”

I close my eyes as though to shield myself from what is coming.

“He told me not to worry about it, that he’d get me another thirty-eight. But he was really telling me that reporting the murder wasn’t an option. He’d killed Hillman with my thirty-eight, and he still had the gun. If I tried to report him, he could tell the police that I’d asked him to commit the crime and had given him the gun to do it.”

“How soon did he start blackmailing you?”

“He didn’t mention it again for twenty-five years.”

“What?”

“He had no intention of blackmailing me, Penn. Ray Presley idolized me back then. Still does, I think. But last year he got prostate cancer, and he doesn’t have health insurance. He needed money, so he started getting it wherever he could. For all I know, he’s blackmailing ten other people besides me. The point is, he had me over a barrel. I couldn’t see any option but to pay him.”

“Why didn’t you call me when he first came to you?”

“Do you really have to ask? I was ashamed. Because of me, a man was murdered.”

“You had nothing to do with that! You didn’t solicit the thing, for God’s sake. You couldn’t know Presley would kill the guy.”

Dad dismisses this rationalization with a wave of his hand. “Do you remember Becket?”

“The movie or the historical archbishop?”