“I’m confused too. Was sleeping with Danny Buckhalter a fringe benefit of that generous insurance settlement?”

Her eyes widened and became teary. She dabbed them with her wrist.

“God, people talk.”

“People talk in towns like Horseheads. People really talk in hamlets like Morrow. People flap their tongues like ceiling fans when they’re living cheek by jowl in construction camps. Nobody in authority asked those questions. But I did. A neighbor saw you and Buckhalter sharing a milkshake with two straws at the soda shop. The cleaning lady spotted you slow-dancing at a club. His car was parked outside your house while Sean was at work. Whatever, you got made. Classic.”

The truth was, I’d decided to run a bluff and see how it went. This was her opportunity to deny, to retort with righteous outrage, or to flee the interview. The moment stretched. She exhaled four years of tension.

“I loved Sean. We had issues. I fucked Danny because I needed someone to fuck.”

“Past tense? Isn’t this his home? The stars seem to have aligned for you two. Melts my cynical heart to see a hardworking country boy get the girl and the cash.”

“Are you implying that I seduced him to harm my husband in a money scheme?” There was more weariness than anger in her voice.

“That would be the path of least resistance. When in doubt, look to the spouse. I’m suggesting Danny Buckhalter seduced both of you. Manipulating Sean was always the main goal. He was the chosen one. The ninth of nine.”

“Chosen?” she said. The furrow in her brow reappeared.

I did my damnedest to summon the literary specters of Holmes and Mason; Poirot and Fletcher.

“Were you aware that nine deaths occurred at the Jeffers site over an eleven-year span?”

She shrugged.

“Yes, vaguely. I worried for Sean, so I tried not to focus on the hazards.”

“All were attributed to human frailty or acts of God. A trench collapse and a small explosion took out five. Another worker was struck and killed by a car. Somebody was electrocuted. Another guy fell down a shaft. Sean jumped. So they say.”

Her expression vacillated between puzzlement and extremely wary puzzlement.

“Construction is dicey,” I said. “Dams, tunnels, nuclear reactors, atom smashers, are high-fucking-risk business, to put it in the vernacular of a buddy of mine. Badja Adeyemi also said something I can’t shake. He said the collider was constructed in reverence to blood, not science.”

“Badja is a devil,” she said with a not unreasonable trace of fear. She sipped tea and immediately broke into a hacking cough that went on longer than it should’ve.

I was implacable.

“Nine deaths, including Sean. My darker nature whispered of a pattern. That less chivalrous part of me knows without reservation what happened to your husband. Because the pieces were right there, waiting to assemble their ugly picture. See, there’s a historical precedent. The colonial expedition that first explored the caverns beneath the Jeffers site numbered twelve. Nine died in the caverns. Died or disappeared. Two and a half centuries later, nine workers perished during the construction project. What an amazing coincidence!”