wasn’t around,” she said. “It was disgusting for a woman her age to be doing that.”

“That made you angry?” Gil asked. He actually wanted her angry. It would make the confession easier.

“It made me pissed,” she said, as if pissed were a different emotion than anger. As if the word “anger” didn’t describe the height of her emotion to the right degree.

“Were you pissed at Justin?” Joe asked.

“No. It wasn’t his fault. She was abusing him. Sexually abusing him,” she said, deliberately enunciating every word, as if it would come as a surprise to them.

“Did you talk to Ashley about it?” Joe asked.

“That bitch? She just laughed at me.”

There was nothing new to this story. He had heard it many times. The woman, scorned by her lover, with nowhere to turn, takes her anger out on something else. Sometimes she might shred his clothes. Or run over his golf clubs. Or crash his car. Or kill his daughter.

“We know you were alone that night with Brianna,” Gil said. He was rushing to the end because he was tired of playing games with this child. She had no remorse. She somehow believed in her mind that killing Brianna was necessary to get back at Ashley.

“So?” she said.

“You were the only person alone with her that day,” Gil said.

“So?” she said again.

Gil almost rolled his eyes at her. “We know you killed her.” It was too blunt, but he wanted to shake the attitude out of her.

She finally looked nervous but was trying to hide it. Gil knew he should tell her that he understood why she killed Brianna, that it was the only way to make sure Justin didn’t leave her for Ashley, but he just didn’t have the energy. He was thankful Joe spoke up.

“My guess is that you didn’t even think before you did it,” Joe said. She was finally listening a little and seemed less concerned with keeping up her bravado. “It was just such a quick response, and you were just so angry. Then before you knew it, there you were, and there she was, and you had to do something . . .”

“It wasn’t like that at all,” she said.

“Well, then, what was it like?” Joe asked.

“Yeah, I was pissed,” she said, “but all I did was make a phone call.”

“To who?” Gil asked.

She didn’t answer.

“To who?” Gil asked again, too loudly.

Joe said, “I can go on my computer and get your phone records in just a few minutes, but it would be better if you told us yourself.”

“Fine. Whatever,” she said, all attitude again. “I called Tony.”

“Tony who?” Gil asked without thinking.

“Tony Herrera.”

An hour after her meditation class, Lucy found herself standing on the labyrinth in front of the cathedral, still dressed in her comfy sweatpants. She took the first step of the cobbled maze and started to follow its twisting path. She had left the class feeling energetic but pensive, so she drove to the cathedral and started on the labyrinth without really knowing why. The meditation class had been interesting, but the teacher had talked in a monotone voice incessantly about “following your breath,” which was an instruction that Lucy didn’t understand. The teacher did say one thing that made Lucy listen a little more carefully—she had said, “Quiet your mind.” That wasn’t something Lucy did too often. In fact, she usually did the opposite. She numbed her mind, distracted it and inundated it.

She wondered why she avoided the quiet so much. Was it because it seemed so boring as she ran toward the chaos?

The teacher had said something else. “Rid yourself of anything that disturbs the quiet of your mind.” The teacher had been talking about stray thoughts and images that came up during the meditation, but all Lucy could think of was the guilt. The old distraction that she kept going back to.

She took one of the twists of the path and thought about Del. Why hadn’t she told him what she’d really written on her note in Zozobra? Why should she care if he teased her? She did care—the guilt had somehow become important to her, and she didn’t want him mocking it. It took her a moment to realize that she was angry at him. Furious, in fact. She listened to all of his incessant blather, and he made fun of her for having real emotions? Lucy started to walk faster as she cursed Del in her head. She felt guilty about the dead woman because she was responsible.