“Well, you’ve met Gordon’s son, right? Jay? Smart kid. Sort of quiet and intense, but a decent boy. He transferred into the high school in October when Gordon arrived in town. The other kids gave him a hard time—some really terrible stuff. Will felt bad about it. You know Will, he likes everybody, everybody likes him. He made a point of reaching out to Jay. The two of them have become friends.”

“I’m betting Gordon didn’t like that idea,” I said.

Norm shook his head. “No, he most certainly did not. I mean, it was obvious that Gordon and Jay had a bad relationship. As a father, I get that. Will and I have always been close, but even with him, the teenage years haven’t exactly been Saturday in the park. That’s just the age. But Gordon seemed to have no clue how difficult it was for Jay around here. Empathy isn’t exactly a job requirement for partners at white-shoe law firms.”

“Get to the argument,” Ajax said impatiently. “What was it about?”

“In the middle of Ruby’s deposition, Gordon pulled me outside. He told me to keep Will away from Jay. He accused me of using my son to goad Jay into spying on the litigation. Needless to say, I didn’t take that well. I told him that I would never exploit my son like that, and that if either of the boys tried to give me inside information about the case, I would have shut them down on the spot. I also told him that he should be grateful to Will, because Jay had no other friends around here and was incredibly isolated and unhappy. Gordon told me to mind my own business, and I couldn’t really object to that. It wasn’t my place to interfere. So I let it go, and that was the end of that. When we went back inside to continue the deposition, Gordon acted as if nothing had happened. He was a master at compartmentalizing things.”

“It must have made you mad,” Ajax insisted. “Gordon attacking you and your son like that.”

“Of course it did. But not mad enough to kill him.” Norm’s mouth bent into a tiny smile. “Not even during a monster’s moon.”

“Where were you on Sunday evening?” Ajax asked. “I didn’t see you at the 126.”

“Kathy wasn’t feeling well. We stayed home.”

“Can anyone verify that?”

“No. The two of us watched a movie on our new VCR. I got her a copy of Wuthering Heights. She loves Olivier.”

Ajax sat down next to me and scowled like a chess player who didn’t see any winning moves. None of this was going the way he’d expected. When he didn’t ask anything more, I leaned forward on the sofa and took over the interview.

“Norm, do you have any idea who could have done this to Gordon?”