“It doesn’t feel finished. It’s hard to leave when it’s not finished.”

“Oh, come on. It’s never finished.”

“Yeah, but it feels close sometimes.”

“What do you want, Eddie?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s a simple question. My therapist says we’re not grown-up until we can ask ourselves that question and honestly answer it.”

“Your therapist?”

“Yeah, I’m seeing somebody. Don’t change the subject. What do you want?”

“To catch the guy who did this girl.”

“No. Apart from that, apart from the job. What do you want?”

“I have enough riddles in my life. I don’t need another one.”

“This is the important question. What do you want? And don’t say something about getting rid of the designated hitter in the American League.”

“I don’t know. By the way, I don’t want to get rid of the designated hitter. But, seriously, I don’t know the answer. What can I tell you?”

Kate shook her head. “Did you really walk out of Truro’s press conference?”

“I think so.”

“Jesus, Eddie.”

“The investigation’s all that matters. We do it right, no one’ll care about anything else.”

“I know, and it’ll be different this time. You’ll get this guy.”

“That’s what Martin says. He doesn’t think this one’s Partridge.”

“What do you think?”

“I can’t talk about it.”

Kate reached her hand across the desk to hold Mahler’s. “Well, Eddie, you lead an unexamined life. But you’re a detective at heart, and I’m glad I’m not the one you’re after.”

“Yeah,” Mahler said. “Let’s say that’s true.”

(ii)

(WEDNESDAY, 12:35 P.M.)

“The agony of the leaves.” Tom Woodhouse poured steaming water into a porcelain pot. “That’s what tea drinkers call the unfurling of dry tea.” The retired detective smiled at Eden. They sat at a table on the deck behind his house.

“When I was on the job, I drank coffee,” he said. “But after I retired, I tried tea. Now it’s all I drink. Chinese black tea, called Keemun Mao Feng. Grows on the hillsides of the Anhui Province, between the Yellow Mountains and the Yangtze River.”

He arranged a cup and saucer for Eden and one for himself.

Woodhouse noticed Eden looking at his hands. “Arthritis,” he said. “More like claws than fingers, aren’t they? Still work, though, mostly.”

The old man poured milk into each cup and poured the tea on top of it. “Researchers at Loughborough University in the English Midlands found that putting the milk in first prevents the hot tea from caramelizing the milk fat and spoiling the tea’s flavor. Only in England would someone actually study that.”