told her to be careful in New York. “You still go to the office? I thought you were retired.”

“How long you been at this job, Inspector?”

“A while.”

“A while. You were in the army?”

“I was.”

“They boot you out?” The melancholy had been vaporized.

“No.”

“Why’d you leave? Army not interesting enough? Too tough?”

“Maybe I should go out and come back in, so we can start this all over.”

“Maybe you should just go out and not come back.”

I looked around the room. “No, I don’t think so. I think I have some more questions to ask, and I think you’re going to answer them.”

“If I don’t?”

“But you will. Sit down, General. I don’t really want to be here, and you don’t really want me here, so we’re on equal footing. I said sit down.”

The old man squinted at me. When he was younger, it was a steely look; now it was just a squint. “You have a hell of a nerve.” He paused. “No, I’m not going to sit. But I’ll answer three questions. Then you’re done. And don’t think I’m not serious, because I am. People in the army still stand at attention when I break wind.” He grinned. “You want to test me?”

“No. Three questions are fine, for now.” I let that sink in for a moment. “First, when you spoke to your daughter, you said she sounded excited. Do you mean agitated? Did she sound worried about anything, anything seem to be bothering her, any concerns she voiced to you about her personal safety? That’s all one question, by the way.”

“No, she said everything was fine.” I thought he might just shrug off the question again, but he seemed to take it seriously. “Something funny that I recall: When she called from New York, she said she’d walked in his footsteps and now she could die happy. That’s all she said before we were cut off. The second time, it was a few months later. It wasn’t a good connection, but I’d say she sounded tired. Trouble sleeping. The chants or singing, whatever it was, woke her early. It made her edgy, she said, everything being so foreign. One more thing, she said that fool husband of hers was going to get her in trouble with the locals. I’ll save you a question. No, she didn’t say why and I didn’t ask.”

“You saved me two.”

The old man grunted and walked over to the window. He moved one curtain to the side. The light didn’t exactly spill into the room—it was already late afternoon and there wasn’t much left—but the gray from outside crept along the walls until I could see that the place hadn’t been cleaned in a long time. We fell back into silence. I figured I’d give him a chance to say something else, if that’s what he wanted to do.

Finally, I stood and walked to the door. “I have a few other things to check, but I’ll be back for the last two questions. If you remember something that you think you ought to tell me, something you forgot, let me know.”

“Don’t bother coming back. There’s nothing else. You’ll be wasting your time.” He closed the curtain again. “I told her not to get into this stuff, but she wouldn’t listen to me.”

“What stuff?”

He moved over to the door. “I’m done talking to you, Inspector. Your people want something from me, tell them to put it in writing.”

3

I spent the rest of December sweeping up a few inconsequential facts about the woman who had been murdered. Or not murdered. Anything was still possible, based on what little I knew. Maybe she’d just dropped dead. I didn’t actually have a single fact about what happened to her, and the paper we had on her case told me exactly nothing. It asserted she’d been murdered. That didn’t mean anything to me. But I was starting to lean. That happens sometimes. A few facts here and there, a feeling stirs an intuition, and the next thing that happens, I’m leaning in the direction of a hypothesis.

Her father told me she said she couldn’t sleep because of the chanting in the morning. She wouldn’t tell him it was the call to prayer, but that’s what it could have been. This was circular, I knew. I assumed that what she was complaining about was morning calls to prayer for no good reason other than that Mun had suddenly shown up. Circular logic isn’t wrong, it’s round. If it was a call to prayers,