“We must have left some residue on your girlfriend’s right hand. Where’s the gun, anyway?”

“It’s not at home, if that’s what you’re worried about. By the way, the questions weren’t all depressing. We had a few lighter moments. Mahler asked me if I own dogs. ‘Do you own dogs, Mr. Thackrey?’ The way he said it was funny.”

“Hilarious. You didn’t laugh, right?”

“Of course not.”

“So you were calm?”

“I’m always calm. But it was strange. Detective Somers was sitting on the sofa with her feet in Elise’s blood. All she had to do was to look down.”

Hearing himself, Thackrey wondered if the part with the blood was real. It sounded real.

“Did they ask about Vic and me?” Russell asked. “Did it sound like they ID’d us?”

“Not a peep. Maybe you guys lucked out and you’ve got some more time.”

“Maybe. The keystroke logger shows they’re investigating a murder in Fresno.”

“Yeah, they asked me if I was in Fresno in 2017. It was bizarre.”

“So nothing about DivingBell?”

“Nada. Maybe they’re not as smart as you think. At least not all of them.” Thackrey remembered Eden asking him about Elise and Reggie. For a moment he thought of telling Russell but decided against it.

“Did it sound like the cops know what happened to Elise?” Russell asked.

“What did happen?” Thackrey leaned against the headrest and stared out the windshield, his mind thrown back into the terrifying story. Fragments of memory mixed themselves with the nightmares he’d been having, so it felt like picking his way through fractured glass. “I remember cooking dinner, Elise and I eating at the kitchen counter. I look at her and I can see the Oxy going off inside her head. She does that zombie thing. Barely talking. Hair hanging in her eyes. Finally she looks at me and says, ‘When I’m dead, I want you to wrap me in a blanket and put me in the water.’ Where did she get those ideas?”

“You told us that.”

Did he already tell them? It seemed impossible. “She wanders off. I think she’s asleep in the bedroom. I’m not feeling well. So I take all the Adderall and snort five or six lines of the new shit.”

“In hindsight, probably not the best idea.”

“Next thing I know, she has my gun. ‘I’m going to kill you,’ she says. ‘I know what you did to that other girl, and I’m not going to end up like her.’”

“What’d you say?”

He couldn’t remember, but details weren’t important anymore. “I try to calm her down. I say I’ll help her. But she tells me I’m not her father.”

“What about the gun?”