She held a small notebook and flipped through the pages. I’d stayed focused on her questions the rest of the day, but with our time nearing its end, I worked up the nerve to ask a question I’d been thinking about for hours.

“What is happening with Aaron?” I asked. “And Blake?”

Rountree kept looking at her notes, but she answered. “Our friend Aaron Knicely is in quite a bit of trouble. He has a lawyer on the way, so things with him might take a while to sort through. That’s all I can really say about that.”

She added nothing else and kept turning pages.

“And Blake?” I asked.

She looked up, closed the notebook, and tucked it into a pocket inside her jacket. “He’s in his own sinking boat. We’re going to be looking into this car accident from the past. He faces legal jeopardy over that. I can’t tell you more. And we’ll be deciding about possible criminal charges related to everything you did. Going into that house, taking the phone.”

A few hours earlier, Rountree had brought me some crackers and a bag of pretzels from a vending machine. Except for those, I hadn’t eaten in hours. Despite that long stretch, my stomach felt nauseated, not empty. And when I said Blake’s name, the nausea increased along with a sour taste in my mouth. I wanted to feel relieved to be done with him, but the imagined freedom and lightness refused to come.

“He’s asked for a lawyer about the accident, so it could take a while to get sorted out,” Rountree said. “But Aaron is telling the same story you are about the accident and the events in that basement. If that makes you feel any better.”

I thought about it for a moment, looking at the scarred top of the beat-up table where I sat.

“I’m not sure it does,” I said. “I understand it, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. Someone was killed. And someone still got hurt. Bad. And I was there for part of it, acting like an idiot. Nothing can absolve me from that.”

Rountree nodded in a sagelike manner. “Not even envelopes of cash stuffed in a mailbox.”

I looked up.

“Yes,” she said, “everyone’s going to know you’ve been giving the Steiners the money. There’s no way people will think Blake did it.”

Her words started to sink in.

“Do you think the Steiners knew what Aaron was coming to do to us?” I asked. “I told you about Dawn Steiner. Could this relate to them in some way? Could they all be in on this with Aaron? Getting revenge together? You don’t know who killed Jennifer yet, do you? Was it Aaron? He said he was with her.”