in great detail, the days and weeks of that time, of 1977, starting even before the trial began. She never referred directly or even indirectly to Harry Turner setting things up, running things from behind the curtain, but he was as present in the story as if she had named his name or he was standing there in the room with them. They’d disagreed from the start, Barry Upchurch and “the others,” until Upchurch finally got the message and shut up and stopped having ideas, or at least stopped saying them out loud.

And then came the verdict. And then the appeals. And then the execution.

“His practice picked up after the Kantke case,” she said, this time intending every bit of the bitterness she laid onto the words. “It was quite remarkable. Some of the finest criminals in Long Beach were suddenly Barry’s.”

Jimmy asked her the question he already knew the answer to.

“No,” she said. “Jack Kantke was innocent. Completely. And Barry knew it. And knew how to prove it.”

She laid it all out. It had to do with the killer behind the wispy curtains in that front bedroom, waiting, and the angle of the barrel of the .45 in that hand, the trajectory of the two bullets, the height of the shooter.

And the fact that Jack Kantke was an inch over six feet.

“They wouldn’t use it,” she said. “Barry went to the mat but they wouldn’t use it. And it killed him.”

She heard what she had just said.

“Killed both of them I guess.”

“You never knew why,” Jimmy said. “Why they wouldn’t use it.”

She shook her head and then looked at him as if maybe, now, he was going to tell her. When he didn’t, she said, “So I guess losing did take its toll. Or maybe it was seeing the ways things really are.”

Jimmy would remember that last line.

She invited him to stay for the steaks but he just shook her hand again and looked again at the portrait and went out the way he’d come in.

D. L. Upchurch was watching the fading charcoal fire.

“You can stay,” he said. “Eat.”

Jimmy looked at that face in the red and orange light. What would come to him in a minute was starting to come now.

“No, that’s all right,” he said.

“Up to you.”

Jimmy said, “Sorry about the creeping around. I really meant to come out here in the morning.”

“Old habits,” D. L. said. Maybe it was an apology, too.

Then Jimmy got it.

He stayed put in front of the man.

“She tell you about the trajectory?” D. L. said.

“Yeah.”

“The angle. The shooter behind the curtain.”

“Yes.”

“Bill Danko’s wife killed them,” D. L. said, straight ahead, eyes down. “She was five-f oot-one.”

D. L. Upchurch was a cop. One brother’s a lawyer and his big brother’s a cop, like something out of an old Warner Bros. movie.

And not just any cop, a Long Beach cop, the Long Beach uniformed cop in the newspaper picture looking out of the murder bedroom. Looking up.

Jimmy went back to the Evergreen and drank dark beer until they closed and then he was in his cabin with the tall German girl. They kissed and that’s all they did and only that because the day and the work with its tricks and surprises and reversals had gotten to him.

And because they were both so far from home.

TWELVE

A cat rubbed against his leg as Jimmy stood in the middle of the back bedroom in the murder house. It was late afternoon. Needles of light shot through pinholes in the shades taped against the windows. There was a second bathroom off the bedroom. He hadn’t noticed it the first time. She was in there. The water was running.

She came out, saw him. She was startled, but again accepted the apparition before her, even as she tried to ignore it. He did see her hands shaking a little this time.

She walked past him and sat in her chair, looking at the TV, which wasn’t on, not looking at him.

“My name is Jimmy Miles.”

“Not funny,” she said.

“I didn’t mean to scare you. I knocked. On the backdoor.”

“OK, I’m not going to talk to you,” she said. “I’m not going to talk to you because then it’ll be you and the others.”

She was only in her forties, maybe even her thirties. The other night, Jimmy thought she was older. She wore the same worn dress, faded roses, a sweater over it, slippers on her feet. He made a harsh judgment: she’d never been pretty, except maybe to her daddy.

“I